Participants’ report of a Hands Off march in Detroit, where thousands converged at the Detroit Institute of Arts. It was one of over 1,200 that took place on April 5 in the U.S.
reports
‘Hands Off!’ Evanston fills the streets
April 6, 2025Participants’ report of a HANDS OFF demonstration in Evanston, Ill. The protest was one of over 1,200 taking place in every state of the Union–a first step in taking control of our destiny and creating the kind of world that will make it impossible for fascism to ever rise again.
Tesla Takedown: participant report
March 30, 2025Participant report from one of hundreds of popular “Tesla Takedown” actions on March 29 around the world. Resistance is growing as more people are exposed to the anti-Trump movement and experience its indispensability.
Why the Hell Another Gaza War?
Why war? To keep the current Israeli government in power. The less democracy, the more power to Netanyahu. But good news: mass protests by Israelis, reserve soldiers not showing up when they receive draft notices, and The Supreme Court holding firm.
Bad [cuts] to the bone: DOGE at work
DOGE is slashing grants, contracts and jobs in federal agencies. Especially Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility, climate change, education and food safety. Resisting fascism means looking for ways to fight for real reform as steps toward revolutionary development by and for humanity.
Demonstration to “Release Mahmoud Khalil Now”
March 22, 2025A demonstration in Detroit, Mich. to “Release Mahmoud Khalil Now,” made up of many students and organizations. They also demanded: Trump stop attacks on Free Speech and student deportations.
Veterans protest attacks by Trump/Musk
On March 14, over 3,000 veterans and allies demonstrated at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., against Trump and Musk’s cuts to veterans’ federal jobs, services, and benefits. The demonstration came together quickly showing that people aim to restore democracy.
Canada defends itself
March 19, 2025Trump began a trade war, insisting that Canada would be annexed by the U.S. He denied the legitimacy of Canada in terms like Russia’s before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But Canada is not for sale—or for conquest.
Destroy Columbia University? Because they can
March 14, 2025On March 7, a task force created by Trump’s executive order cut $400 million in grants from Columbia University, accussing it of continued failure to protect Jewish students “from antisemitic harassment”, and of denying them learning opportunities. This is part of an ongoing repression since last spring’s campus protests against Israel war on Gaza.
200,000 women march in Mexico City on IWD
March 12, 2025More than 200,000 women took to the streets on March 8 in Mexico City. It was a day of protests, marches and conviviality that lasted more than 15 hours. This was the largest International Women’s Day march in the city in recent years.
In Memoriam Ed Sederbaum
Gay activist Ed Sederbaum died in November at the age of 78. His activism was multi-faceted. Very appropriately, he was known as the “grandfather of the Queens movement.”
Students, superintendents resist erasing history
March 6, 2025Superintendents, teachers and students resist attempts to destroy K-12 education. We refuse to be less than wholly human, and to give up on the “power and richness of the whole” in education.
Basic principles that will reinforce a new Syria
February 25, 2025We, the undersigned, affirm in this statement a set of foundational principles to fortify the new Syria, provide a framework for the transitional period, and help establish the political order for which the Syrian people rose up under the banner of freedom and dignity.
Grooming Gangs
February 19, 2025“Grooming gangs” in England have lured thousands of girls into prostitution. Only a few abusers have been convicted. Studying successful tactics and groups created by survivors gives us confidence to replace exploitation with a compassionate society.
Netanyahu’s excuses hide his real fears
February 16, 2025Netanyahu doesn’t want the Gaza ceasefire deal to last, because that might end the war, which would have bad repercussions for him, including having to face his trial on corruption charges. Hamas wants a deal so it can get its VIP prisoners out of jail.
Detroit immigration raids and resistance
February 11, 2025Susan van Gelder presents a mix of reports, information, commentary and dialogue about the ICE raids against immigrants in Southwest Detroit, as well as the actions to resist it.
Detroit braces for Trump’s ICE invasion
February 4, 2025Rumors about ICE are spreading in Southwest Detroit. In a school, student absences are already elevated. Meanwhile communities are gathering resources and planning activities. The sooner we gather, more people can be helped.
Amazon workers strike
December 24, 2024A striking driver at an Amazon warehouse near Chicago speaks. We are demanding better pay, better working conditions, respect and to be treated as human beings.
Lead-editorial article: The U.S. election as manifestation of counterrevolution
December 6, 2024Counterrevolution is the guiding principle of the Trump campaign and the dominant characteristic of politics worldwide. Although revolution does not appear to be on the horizon in the U.S. or in most other countries, capitalism is stumbling through a global crisis, both economic and ecological, psychological and communal.
Editorial: Who Can Stop’s Israel’s War Crimes?
November 22, 2024Who can stop Israel’s genocide against Palestinians? Israel’s citizens need to confront their own rulers for this cycle of madness to end. Those in the U.S. also bear a heavy responsibility, and must pressure the government to stop arming Israel’s genocide.
A poem by Sunshine Lombré
Poem read by the author, Sunshine Lombré, at an abortion rights demonstration in Evanston, Illinois.
The importance of Palestinian history
November 15, 2024Dr. Alice Rothchild, feminist obstetrician-gynecologist, received the National Arab-American Museum annual book award for ‘Old Enough to Know’, in which recent immigrant Palestinian children who have been bullied in school, learn the history of Palestine through their grandmother’s stories.
Israeli soccer fans out of control
November 10, 2024On Nov. 7, Israeli soccer fans were attacked in the streets of Amsterdam, bringing harsh memories to the Jewish community. However, news coverage barely touched on the Israelis’ provocations that led up to the attacks.
‘Historic Sellout’: LALIT Communique on UK-Mauritius Chagos Agreement
October 5, 2024The Mauritian organization LALIT expresses its opposition to the UK-Mauritius Chagos Agreement, which formally recognizes the sovereignty of Mauritius over the Chagos Archipelago but authorizes continued operation of the U.S. military base on Diego Garcia for the next 99 years!
Resistance grows to library book bans
September 30, 2024Far-right campaigns aim to ban sex and LGBTQ+ themed books from children’s and teen’s sections in public and school libraries. Nevertheless, resistance finds multiple paths to defend the freedom to read.
Review: ‘The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America’
August 28, 2024After Roe v Wade was overturned after nearly fifty years, what will it mean to be a woman in America and what kind of country is it becoming? This is what the book ‘The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America’ explores, reviewed by Adele.
Discussion article: Venezuela, another betrayed revolution
August 15, 2024Making a brief retrospective of the Bolivarian project in Venezuela, begun in 1998 with Hugo Chávez, and tracing its connections with Nicaragua and other Latin American countries, Baltodano reflects in this article about the current situation of democracy in the continent, after Venezuela’s recent elections.
Love as a revolutionary force
August 14, 2024Review of the book ‘El capital amoroso’ by Jennifer Guerra, a five-part essay that challenges our ideas and practices of love in modern society, and aims to restore its revolutionary meaning.
Oaxaca towns against mining projects
August 3, 2024Statement by the No to Mining for a Future for All Front against the attempt of the Cuzcatlán company to start mining in El Llano, Sitio Santiago, Oaxaca.
Detroit Dispatch #11
July 23, 2024Retired women in Detroit speak for themselves about Project 2025, whose authors are connected to Trump.
Review: Gaza Writes Back
July 19, 2024Review of “Gaza Writes Back,” a collection of short stories, the majority written by Palestinian women, in the wake of Operation Cast Lead, perpetrated by the Israel Defense Forces 2008, through 2009.
Mexico: The Struggle for Self-Determination in Ostula
July 12, 2024Statement with demands by the Nahua community of Santa María Ostula, Michoacán, who in July were brutally attacked by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, with no response from state and federal authorities.
WSU students against genocide
May 31, 2024In-person report of a visit on May 28 to the Wayne State University students’ encampment in Detroit against Israel’s genocide in Gaza
UK mail software robs postal workers
May 16, 2024In 1999, new Horizon software was installed in post office branches across the UK. Immediately, sub-postmasters and postmistresses experienced inexplicable shortfalls from their branches. It has been called “the UK’s most widespread miscarriage of justice.”
Columbia meets encampments with force
May 9, 2024A participant in the 1968 antiwar student occupation at Columbia University draws parallels to students there protesting genocide now. In both cases, administrators lacking reasoned arguments ordered police assaults that failed to quiet protests and spurred actions on campuses across the U.S. and internationally.
Students against genocide speak for themselves
Interviews with several students from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., about the protest encampment there against the genocide in Gaza.
New Farsi translations from “Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution” by Raya Dunayevskaya
May 7, 2024New Farsi translations are available from Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution by Raya Dunayevskaya
Review: When Men Buy Sex: Who Really Pays?
April 30, 2024Adele reviews ‘When Men Buy Sex: Who Really Pays?’ Canada’s most comprehensive book on the struggle to abolish prostitution.
VW workers in U.S. South unionize!
April 24, 2024Workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., voted three to one to join the United Auto Workers. This gives hope that racial, ethnic and sexual divisions will not slow down the drive for auto worker solidarity in the South and across the country.
Black bookstore forced to close
April 17, 2024Liberation Station, a Black-owned children’s bookstore in Raleigh, N.C., is closing less than a year after it opened on Juneteenth 2023, due to a series of threats.
Review: A We without State
March 15, 2024The pamphlet ‘A We without State” by Yásnaya Aguilar Gil, a voice of the Mixe people, deconstructs the word “Indigenous” and poses the idea of a world “not as a sum of national States…but as an ever-changing, collaborative and adaptable conglomerate of tiny social structures, as my community.”
Review: Deep Care: The Radical Activists Who Provided Abortions…
February 28, 2024Adele reviews a fascinating history of three interconnected projects of the radical feminist community in the Oakland, Calif., area over the past 40 years: an underground self-help abortion network, clinics run on feminist principles, and clinic defense organizations.
Call for Convention of News and Letters Committees, 2024
February 25, 2024Call for Convention of News and Letters Committees, 2024
Review: A More Beautiful and Terrible History
February 22, 2024Van Gelder reviews ‘A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History’, by Jeanne Theoharis, now available as ebook. The work is a deep critique of 21st century recall and commemorations of the Civil Rights Movement, and thus a valuable weapon to fight the suppression of Black history.
‘Israelism,’ a documentary
February 14, 2024Van Gelder reviews documentary ‘Israelism,’ in which two U.S. Jewish teenagers, filmed over a seven-year period, became disillusioned and then opposed their pro-Israel education. Since Oct. 7, 2023, requests for screenings have risen, despite discrediting, censorship and suppression.
On the Anniversary of the 1871 Paris Commune: Women, youth and education in revolutionary Paris
February 12, 2024In this essay, originally published in the March 1985 N&L, Erica Rae takes up the new kind of education arising in the 1871 Paris Commune. She focuses on the role of women during this historic turning point, especially the revolutionary educator Louise Michel.
In Memoriam Erica Rae (Erica Sufritz) 1958-2024
February 8, 2024As youth, woman, and educator, Erica Rae (Erica Sufritz) made many contributions to News and Letters Committees since she was a teenager. We will miss the comrade who loved music passionately and sang with the North Shore Choral Society and who cheerfully worked alongside us for revolution for her whole life.
Universities under far-right attack
January 26, 2024The “resignations” of presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard revealed the philosophical failings in academia, which is under attack by the far right for not suppressing criticism of Israel. Why didn’t academia know how to respond to the events in Israel/Palestine?
Immigration deadlock reveals inhumanity
January 6, 2024While immigrants suffer as winter settles in North America, the new year arrived without a Congressional bargain on immigration. Republicans not only demand harshly restrictive immigration measures but want to make Biden look bad by blocking accomplishments.
Farsi translation of “Israel’s war and Hamas attack stoke retrogression”
December 28, 2023Many thanks to the translator and publisher of the Farsi translation of our “Israel’s war and Hamas attack stoke retrogression”!
جنگ اسراییل و حملهی حماس؛ محرک سیر قهقرایی / فرانکلین دمیتریف / ترجمهی ناصر برین