Takes up: Opening of the Disability Cultural Center in San Francisco; ‘Everyone Is Good at Something’ by Indian photographer Vicky Roy; and new steps in the struggle for the rights of people with disabilities in Ireland.
San Francisco
Thoughts from the Outside: A way out of no way
July 19, 2022Faruq takes up “Civil,” a new documentary about human rights champion Benjamin Crump. To do right in this world, Crump, a lawyer, filed suits in a variety of civil and human rights cases including winning large settlements for the families of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
San Francisco holds May Day rally
May 20, 2022Participant report: the San Francisco May Day demonstration addressed labor organizing, bread and butter issues, and political repression in Iran and Turkey.
Tens of thousands march for abortion rights
May 19, 2022In San Francisco on May 14 over 10,000 people marched for the right to abortion and against the U.S. Supreme Court which has now lost all legitimacy. A million people marched in over 450 events across the U.S. to show their anger at the Supreme Court’s impending reversal of Roe v. Wade, which had legalized women’s right to abortion.
Thoughts from the Outside: Homelessness & the needed humanism
February 5, 2022Faruq observes that the money going into the “homeless problem” is spent on mediators, not the people who are homeless, who must be related to as human beings, as part of setting afoot a new human being for the whole world.
Thoughts from the Outside: Whitewashing history
November 16, 2021The opposition to “critical race theory” is an old idea in new clothes, whitewashing U.S. history based on a mythical past. We can’t find a way out until we face the horrors of reality, not just in history but in life.
Youth hold Climate Strike in San Francisco
November 10, 2021As part of the ongoing Fridays for Future, on Aug. 27 several hundred, mostly youth, gathered in San Francisco to call attention to environmental racism, the climate crisis, and public health.
Youth Vs Apocalypse
September 29, 2021As part of the ongoing Fridays for Future, on Aug. 27 several hundred, mostly youth, gathered in San Francisco to call attention to environmental racism, the climate crisis, and public health.
Thoughts From the Outside: Capital is out of control
June 29, 2021Where I work among the homeless on the street, I see the infinite degradation experienced by those discarded by capitalist society and barely surviving on its margins. There were always those who live on the edge. Karl Marx was describing the lack of transparency in social relations: what appears to be a free decision to sell your labor is nothing of the kind. Yet people stay away from thinking about how all labor, even paid labor, is forced labor.
No funding to Tatmadaw
May 8, 2021Mostly Burmese protesters gathered in front of Chevron’s headquarters in San Ramon, Calif., to say stop funding the bloodshed in Burma. Every week since the coup, the Free Burma Action Committee holds a protest in San Francisco.
Thoughts from the outside: Epidemic #2: fentanyl
January 30, 2021In the richest part of the country the Fentanyl epidemic is greater than COVID. What I see on the street every day is what Marx projected: a growing redundant and discarded population.
Anti-racist protests across the U.S.
July 1, 2020Protests of George Floyd’s murder and police brutality in general have erupted all over the U.S. Here are in-person reports of demonstrations in Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Outrage in San Francisco
May 31, 2020Since May 29, there have been ongoing demonstrations sparked by the outrage over the police murder of George Floyd. They spread throughout the many San Francisco Bay Area cities including ones not especially known for activism like Walnut Creek.
Thoughts from the outside: A mind of one’s own vs. COVID-19
April 29, 2020What is “visible” to the system is only “economic” activity: earning and spending money. We see that playing out in the debate over opening the economy vs. protecting lives. People’s lives, our humanity, are being pushed aside to continue production for production’s sake.
Voices from the inside out: On becoming human
March 11, 2020Faruq reflects on the question of social interaction in the modern capitalist world, seen from the point of view of someone who has spent several years in prison.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2020, Part One
January 22, 2020Readers’ Views on Capitalism and climate; Mideast upheaval; Trump the Mullah?; war crime hero; Trump’s judges; detransition debate; and women’s liberation.
Voices from the inside out: A ‘free world’ view
January 21, 2020Former prisoner Faruq writes of how in prison he “figured out how to become truly myself” and how that is manifested while on parole.
Voices of young and old from the Global Climate Strike
November 4, 2019On the first day of the third Global Climate Strike, Sept. 20, 2019, millions of people, mostly teenagers, marched across the world—the biggest climate action ever. Hear the voices of youth and adults in Chicago, Detroit and San Francisco.
San Francisco is dangerous for youth
September 2, 2019D. Chêneville reflects on the dangerous situation youth face in San Francisco after learning that a 15-year-old he had just met was murdered.
Homeless in jeopardy
September 1, 2019Malcolm reflects on the increasing crisis of homlessness in San Francisco after the sudden death of a homeless man at the University of California-Berkeley.
San Francisco Youth Climate Strike
May 3, 2019Bay Area youth exuberantly join in a global march for the climate, raising awareness of climate change.
San Francisco Youth Climate Strike
March 25, 2019Report on the March 15, 2019, Youth Climate Strike in San Francisco.
Queer Notes: March-April 2019
March 10, 2019Queer Notes on the Auckland Pride Festival; Denise Ho Wan-sze; two newly-elected Democratic governors making strides for Queer rights; and a history of Compton’s Transgender Cultural District in San Francisco.
California fires are not ‘natural’ disasters
December 2, 2018Climate change and downed power lines from PG&E are the reasons for the unprecedented wildfires in California in 2018, despite Donald Trump’s attempt to put blame elsewhere and open California forests to more logging.
Nicaraguans rise up against Ortega
September 20, 2018Nicaraguans rally in San Francisco to raise awareness and support for the spreading anti-government protests in Nicaragua against President Ortega and his government’s brutal oppression.
30,000 march for the climate in San Francisco
September 19, 2018On Sept. 8 over 30,000 came out in San Francisco for the Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice, which had counterparts worldwide.
Demonstrations for refugees cover the entire U.S.
July 25, 2018“Families Belong Together!” was the rallying cry for in over 700 cities and towns across the U.S. and some in other countries. Rallies of tens of thousands were held June 30 in Chicago, Los Angeles, and several other cities.
SF walk against rape
May 5, 2018Many survivors of rape, and their supporters including youth from City College of San Francisco, and Transgender people took part in the 13th annual San Francisco A Walk Against Rape.
Struggle against solitary confinement continues!
March 10, 2018Bay Area Californians rally against all forms of solitary confinement including for those released from indefinite solitary into level IV general population who are experiencing conditions worse than they experienced in solitary.
Women’s Marches sweep the world
February 3, 2018Women’s Marches took place around the U.S. and the world in 2017 AND 2018, once again showing that the opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump is alive, thriving, militant and exuberant.
California fires from global warming and incompetence
November 14, 2017The massive wildfires in the North Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area that began on the night of Oct. 8 have sent a shock wave through the entire region. Most in the region feel the fires were preventable.
Woman fights ICE
August 31, 2017On July 20 a remarkable collection of people from many faiths gathered in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices in San Francisco to urge them to release Veronica Zepeda from Mesa Verde Detention Facility.
No to police during mental health crisis!
May 3, 2017A forum on “Responding to Mental Health Crises without Police” heard from a number of local groups attempting to organize our communities to deal with mental health crises.
Scientists march to safeguard the truth
March 17, 2017Report on the March for Science and other actions from scientists to protest the Trump administration’s attack on science.
San Francisco clears more land for rich
Report on the resistance against eviction and “development” in the Bay View/Hunters Point (BVHP) area in San Francisco, California.
The Ghost Ship fire
January 26, 2017A view of the fire at the Ghost Ship that takes into account the capitalist nature of rents, evictions, land use, and how youth, by the way the live their lives, are fighting back.
Democracy in the streets votes Trump out!
January 23, 2017Reports from the huge Women’s March from participants in Chicago, Ill., Detroit, Mich., Oakland, Calif., Nashville, Tenn., Memphis, Tenn., Los Angeles, Calif., and New York City.
Shut down all of today’s Alcatrazes!
September 14, 2016On Aug. 23, California’s Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition leafletted the staging area for trips to Alcatraz prison raising discussions with locals and tourists about how solitary confinement is torture.
Kaepernick sit-down ‘bigger than football’
September 12, 2016San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s sit-down during the USA’s national anthem draws criticism and support while protesting racism and police brutality.
Two-tier ruins Muni
January 25, 2016The two-tier contract between the San Francisco Municipal Railway and the Transit Workers Union was shoved down workers’ throats.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The meaning of revolutionary archives
June 27, 2015In celebrating the online publication of the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection, we present excerpts of her Introduction/Overview to Volume XII, which takes up the Marxist-Humanist concept of archives as not only retrospective but perspective, in the quest to establish “continuity with the historic course of human development.”
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: The Free Speech Movement
July 7, 2014Suddenly, a generation of new radicals was born to replace “the silent generation” of the 1950s. By winter 1964 a new form of revolt, with a new underlying philosophy, called itself the Free Speech Movement. It becomes necessary to view the moment when the student revolt culminated in a mass sit-in.
Stop the spies and lies
May 19, 2014200 youths of all races gathered at the Norwalk Fusion Center on the First National Day of Protest. Protests were also held in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston, Dallas, San Francisco and Oakland.
Readers’ Views, Jan.-Feb. 2014, Part 1
March 8, 2014THE SYRIAN REVOLUTION AS TEST OF WORLD POLITICS
I have been active in a number of student groups around labor and women’s issues. We always talk about “intersectionality” and recognizing different struggles. Somehow that didn’t seem to apply, though, when it came to the Syrian Revolution. Suddenly people didn’t want to talk about it. I [=>]
Hyper-‘gentrification’
March 5, 2014Displacement of lower income people in San Francisco has entered a new stage because of the massive expansion of Silicon Valley and massive real estate speculation.
Rallies across U.S. against Keystone XL pipeline
March 21, 201340,000 in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.–I drove from Memphis to Washington with three others and joined the 40,000-plus people there on Feb. 17 for the Forward on Climate Change rally, the biggest ever held on climate change in this country. Yes, the 15-hour drive was long. Yes, it was super cold. Yes, we stood for a [=>]
Pelican Bay families support prisoners
February 21, 2013From the January-February 2013 issue of News & Letters:
Pelican Bay families support prisoners
Editor’s note: California Families Against Solitary Confinement (CFASC) came together during the prisoners’ 2011 hunger strike initiated by prisoners in Security Housing Unit (SHU). To support the prisoners’ ongoing movement, specifically the Agreement to Cease Hostilities (see Nov.-Dec. 2012 N&L), CFASC [=>]
Mock SHU draws crowds
October 3, 2012Photo by Urszula Wislanka for News & Letters
San Francisco—The San Francisco Mime Troupe invited the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike Support Coalition (PBHSSC) to put up a mock Security Housing Unit (SHU) cell at their performances of “The Poor of New York,” a satire on bankers. The SHU is where prisoners are kept in [=>]
Wage theft in Memphis
September 29, 2012Memphis, Tenn.—Activists have formed a Stop Wage Theft Coalition in Shelby County, Tenn., to lobby the Shelby County Commission to create a Wage Theft Ordinance that will create a process for workers to file complaints against bad employers. The industries most responsible for wage theft are construction, landscaping, restaurants, those who employ farmworkers and temporary [=>]
Study/discussion series: Global Crises, Global Rebellion, and the Needed Philosophy of Revolution
September 27, 2012You’re invited to a nationwide series of five Marxist-Humanist discussions on:
Global Crises, Global Rebellion, and the Needed Philosophy of Revolution
Central to today’s reality is the worldwide capitalist economic crisis, the deepest since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the context for occupations and revolutions across the globe. We will explore the meaning of this [=>]