The Trump Administration has taken more and more Native lands and favored “production-oriented livestock” like cattle. To protect our rights and sovereignty, but most importantly, protect Mother Earth and all her animals from corporate greed, we must stop this while we still can.
A reading list that includes Bible stories will be required of five million Texas public school K-12 students beginning in 2030. Texas and other states are already well down the road of illegally forcing religion into public schools.
On June 12, Dr. Sullivan and Mrs. Richie Jean Jackson’s home–a key hub in planning the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March–formally opened at the Henry Ford Museum’s Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Mich.
Filmmaker Hind Meddeb documents the 2019-2021 Sudanese Revolution, from the historic sit-in by youth demanding a civilian government and freedom, to the military coup. Learning from young revolutionaries around the world strengthens our fight at home.
AI is drastically changing education. Pausing its use and respecting educators’ experience with students is urgently needed. The April 21 resolution to implement major limits on educational technology in Los Angeles is an example of parents and educators working together for quality education.
In-person reports of the March 28 No Kings demonstrations in Chicago, Evanston, the San Francisco Bay Area, Detroit and Washington, D.C. The events were held in 3,300 locations in the U.S., plus several more in other countries. Eight million people took part.
Appeal from Judith LeBlanc, of the Native Organizers Alliance Action Fund, to resist data centers, which threaten the environment and have harmful effects on communities, especially Black and Native.
Review of ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’, by Marjane Satrapi, graphic short stories by Iranian and international writers and artists, published on the first anniversary of the murder of Mahsa Jina Amini by the Iranian “morality police,” which sparked the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.
Takes up: a whitewashed required curriculum for introductory sociology in Florida’s 28 public community colleges; a loan-limit policy by the Federal Student Loan Program that could have disastrous implications for the medical field; and implications of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” in Indiana colleges.
Participant’s report on the Jan. 30 rally in far Northwest Detroit to demand ICE out of the city.
A discussion of what femicide really is, triggered by a definition of the word in the bourgeois press.
In Oklahoma, Maine, Florida and Chicago, Van Gelder gives us a view of battles in defense of public and higher education. The rightist moves against state and local K-12 school districts and even individual teachers, staff, parents and students attempts to instill fascism and Christian Nationalism from the cradle.
From food safety to public health, from immigration to Black history to Israel’s war on Palestinians, the Trump administration is stripping access to important information. But every strategy to attack information and thought has generated new resistance.
A view of the educational situation in several states of the U.S., from budget cuts and ideological repression to language discrimination and the introduction of AI in classrooms.
‘Plundered,’ a study of housing in Detroit, reveals widespread predatory governance: local governments raise public dollars through racist policies. Its author spearheads a dozen community groups that assist individuals to regain their property.
Participant report of the Coalition Against Genocide’s protest in Detroit on Aug. 2: “We are determined to stop the Israeli government’s ongoing siege and murder of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.” said the author.
Columbia University acquiesced to the Trump administration which restores their federal funding and grant money but agreed to punish students exercising their free speech against the genocide in Gaza. In addition, Columbia will have to pay $221 million to the federal government. This “is a disaster for higher education,” says Todd Wolfson, National President of the American Association of University Presidents.
The Trump administration has doggedly tried to destroy public education by cutting its funding, barring children of undocumented parents from Head Start, sabotaging school lunch programs, as well as what is taught. His national school voucher program continues the attack.
Anthony Davis’ 2019 opera tells the story of five boys from East Harlem, New York, wrongly convicted of the beating and rape of Trisha Melli. The composer blends an incredible range of musical styles in a “frank engagement with race, gender and power in America.”
Takes up: Administrators, teachers, staff, parents and supporters protest bills in Indiana that would reduce public education funding; the fight against a program that separates low-performing schools from their geographical districts in Tennessee; and Trump misusing Title IX to strip Maine of education funding.
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.
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.
A 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.
On 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.
Superintendents, 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.
Susan 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.
Rumors 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.
In California’s worst wildfires in its history, important factors include a century of land and water mismanagement and fossil fuel use that generates global warming. The fires brought out the best, mutual aid from below, and the worst, hateful scapegoating disguising climate denial. A global vision and humane principles in organizing ourselves are fundamental to a sustainable future.
Facing Trumpist attack on public schools, teacher Susan van Gelder traces history of the struggle in the U.S. for free education, from Reconstruction to the present. She highlights what we must fight for and the forces of retrogression.
Susan van Gelder reviews ‘Peregrina,’ a multimedia 80-minute one-woman performance, telling the story of femicide in Mexico and the movement of Mexican women to combat it.
Dr. 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.
On 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.
Far-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.
Retired women in Detroit speak for themselves about Project 2025, whose authors are connected to Trump.
In-person report of a visit on May 28 to the Wayne State University students’ encampment in Detroit against Israel’s genocide in Gaza
In 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.”
Van 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.
Van 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.
The “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?
Readers’ Views on: Israel/Palestine; Revolt in Iran; in Canada for 2SLGBTQIA+; Trump, Biden too old to run; Racism in Tennessee; Prisoners miss ‘N&L’; Memorial for Paul Geist and Dan Bremer; Texas targets pregnant women & refugees; Ohio targets women and democracy; Revolutionary history; and Raining on those with disabilities.
Susan Van Gelder reports on two meetings in Michigan supporting both Jewish and Palestinian people affected by the Israel-Hamas war in the West Bank.
Dan 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.
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.
Reauthorization 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.
60,000 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.
Early this spring, Palestinian-American attorney and activist Huwaida Arraf was invited to speak at Bloomfield Hills Senior High School. The debate among Jewish, Arab and Muslim community members over whether her talk was anti-Semitic and anti-Israel continues to intensify.
More than 25,000 women dressed as handmaids formed human chains in 70 locations across Israel on International Women’s Day, protesting against proposed laws to turn Israel into a theocratic dictatorship.
Fifty years ago inmates at Walpole Maximum Security Prison in Massachusetts assumed the management of the prison for two months until the state and the prison guards’ union pressured the Corrections Commissioner to allow what became a violent retaking of the prison.
“You’ve heard of a POWER OUTAGE—we are calling for a PAYMENT OUTAGE.” A flyer circulated by Detroit activists responds to the one-two punch of more frequent and longer-lasting widespread power outages AND an 8% rate increase request by DTE Energy, the gas and electric supplier for Detroit and the surrounding suburbs.
“You’ve heard of a POWER OUTAGE—we are calling for a PAYMENT OUTAGE.” A flyer circulated by Detroit activists responds to more frequent and longer-lasting widespread power outages AND an eight percent rate increase request by DTE Energy (the gas and electric supplier for Detroit and the surrounding suburbs).
