Adele reviews ‘When Men Buy Sex: Who Really Pays?’ Canada’s most comprehensive book on the struggle to abolish prostitution.
reports
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
Discussion article: Netanyahu’s war against Gaza
December 21, 2023Luis M. Saenz writing in ‘Trasversales’ argues this is not a war between Israel and Hamas, but a brutal operation by the Netanyahu government against the population of Gaza. Any vision leaving no Palestinians, or no Israelis, in historical Palestine is reactionary. Solidarity with the Palestinian population—which is not solidarity with Hamas—is a duty.
‘Internal Melodies’: music and dialectic
December 16, 2023Can dialectics be expressed musically? ‘Internal Melodies,’ the new album from pianist Dan Tepfer and saxophonist Miguel Zenón, is a journey from one’s outermost external reality to one’s closest self, from reason to emotion, from the social to the individual and back again.
La guerra de Israel y el ataque de Hamás avivan el retroceso
December 7, 2023La guerra genocida de Israel sobre Gaza, así como los atroces ataques de Hamás que la provocaron, están llevando al mundo en una dirección reaccionaria y exponiendo la inhumanidad de los poderes dominantes, así como el retroceso de buena parte de la izquierda (Traducción al español del artículo “Israel’s war and Hamas attack stoke retrogression”).
El mandamás del petróleo al-Jaber es perfecto para encabezar la COP
El presidente de la Conferencia Climática Internacional (COP28) es el sultán al-Jaber de Emiratos Árabes Unidos, quien también encabeza la compañía petrolera estatal de dicho país. Las empresas de combustibles fósiles son el enemigo de la humanidad. Lo que se necesita es derrotarlas: no rogarles que hagan lo correcto, sino quitarlas del poder (Traducción del artículo: “The perfect COP head is the oil honcho al-Jaber”).
Ni la guerra genocida israelí contra los palestinos ni el terrorismo de Hamás: sí a la revolución social
December 5, 2023Los ataques del 7 de octubre por parte de Hamás en Israel desencadenaron una nueva fase de guerra y reacción. Israel amenaza con un genocidio con el apoyo de Estados Unidos. La ocupación israelí no justifica la forma en que partes de la izquierda celebraron los ataques de Hamás, que socavan los movimientos de liberación y avivan la reacción. Levantar la bandera de la liberación no debe posponerse, mientras mantenemos nuestra solidaridad con el pueblo palestino y nos oponemos a la guerra genocida de Israel y a las acciones terroristas inhumanas. (Spanish translation of the article “No to Israeli genocidal war against Palestinians, no to Hamas terrorism, yes to social revolution!”)
The perfect COP head is the oil honcho al-Jaber
December 2, 2023The president of the international climate conference COP28, is president, Sultan al-Jaber of the UAE, who also heads UAE’s state-owned oil company. Fossil fuel companies are the enemy of humanity. What is needed is to defeat them, not to beg them to do the right thing, but to remove their power.
From the Archives: Terrorism Is Not Revolution
November 29, 2023The way some of the Left glorified the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of mainly civilians by Hamas calls for a deeper examination of the contradictions and retrogression underlying that type of pseudo-revolutionism.
Palestinians and Jews look for solutions together
November 23, 2023Susan Van Gelder reports on two meetings in Michigan supporting both Jewish and Palestinian people affected by the Israel-Hamas war in the West Bank.
In Memoriam Dan Bremer
November 14, 2023Dan Bremer passed away in October. We remember his kindness, his profound grasp of world and local politics, and his steadfast commitment to a more humane world based on the Marxist-Humanist philosophy of human liberation.
Review: American Women and the Fight for Equality
October 31, 2023Adele reviews ‘Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality: 1920 to 2020’ by Elizabeth Griffith, a history of the U.S. feminist movement from the years leading up to the achievement of women’s right to vote to 2020.
Guatemalans rally against attacks on newly elected president
October 23, 2023A Guatemalan speaks, interviewed at an Oct. 19 demonstration in Chicago protesting the corrupt forces attempting a judicial coup against President-elect Bernardo Arévalo.
Evanston rallies for abortion rights
October 18, 2023In person report of the Oct. 15 Pro-Choice Rally and March in Evanston, Illinois.
Angela Terrano, 1929-2023
October 17, 2023Angela Terrano died on Oct. 1. She was the managing editor of ‘News & Letters’ from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s and the co-editor of the 1976 Marxist-Humanist pamphlet ‘Working Women for Freedom’. She made an important contribution to Charles Denby’s 1960 pamphlet ‘Worker’s Battle Automation’.
Blue Cross workers demand end to outsourcing jobs
October 10, 2023Blue Cross workers walked out two days before the UAW began calling auto workers off their jobs on Sept. 14. “We have the same demands as they do,” one worker told News & Letters.
Women have Reason and a voice
October 7, 2023There’s a backlash against the progress of women. Social media allows men to get away with saying outrageous things. Let’s insist the voice of Reason coming from women, not only women’s passion.
Climate activists march in Chicago
September 21, 2023In-person report of the Sept. 15 mobilization in Chicago to protest political inaction in the face of climate emergency.
In memoriam, Paul Geist (Paul Knopf 1927-2023)
In memoriam Paul Knopf (1927-2023), a jazz composer and performer; a revolutionary activist, philosopher and Marxist-Humanist; a poet, a lifelong learner with an encyclopedic mind and a friend and comrade to people both famous and unsung.
Right threatens AIDS funding
September 9, 2023Reauthorization of funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has been abruptly bogged down by Republican legislators under the false claim that it supports abortion providers.
Tomorrow We Will Celebrate Women’s Day: A statement from: Abahlali baseMjondolo Women’s League
August 8, 2023On Aug. 9 we honor women who gave their lives in struggle. We cannot continue to accept the violence that is all around us. We need to build a peaceful society in which there is full equality between men and women, a society in which land, wealth and power are shared.
‘Succession’ and the dehumanization of today’s world
August 5, 2023‘Succession’ is a TV series vaguely based on the family running the Fox Corporation. It shows the immense influence of such a company in the daily life of U.S. citizens, but what shocked the reviewer most is how it depicts the dehumanization of human relationships in today’s world.
To the 61st International Antiwar Assembly
August 4, 2023Message in solidarity with the annual international antiwar assembly
Hugo Blanco (1934-2023), Peruvian Revolutionary
July 19, 2023Marxist, activist and defender of the Indigenous movement, Peruvian revolutionary Hugo Blanco (1934-2023) died in June. His history shines a light on the needed exploration of the conflictive, contradictory story of Marxism and the Indigenous movement in Latin America today.
Hollywood strikes
July 17, 202360,000 Hollywood actors joined the 70-day-long screenwriters’ strike. Despite the glamor, all who work in this $134-billion entertainment industry under the capitalist system are subject to exploitation and alienation like any other worker.
Review: ‘Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements’
February 2, 2021A feminist review of “Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements.” The author, Charlene Carruthers, sees it as “a book for all people who are curious about and committed to the struggle for Black liberation.”
Black homes matter
January 30, 2021Report on “#Black Homes Matter” podcast with experts taking up how one in three Detroit families have lost their homes, often due to the fact that Detroit homes continued to be assessed as if no change in market value had occurred and that one of the highest property tax rates in the nation.