While 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.
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.
The stories told by 12 women who bravely sued Texas over its draconian so-called “exception” in its abortion ban, show that the point of the ban is to cruelly strip women of the right to control our own bodies and lives. Freedom is the enemy of the anti-abortion fanatics.
More than 50,000 migrants are known to have died worldwide since 2014, revealing inhuman conditions that force so many people to flee their homes, indifference of governments, and official acts that caused the deaths of hundreds of migrants.
Supporters of a Winnipeg cafe opposed threats made against a drag story hour; Granbury, Texas, school district is investigated after ordering librarians to remove all LGBTQ+ books; Indian photographer Nishat Fatima’s exhibition seeks to raise awareness of the various dimensions within the LGBTQ+ community.
Readers’ Views on: Iran and Philosophy of Revolution; Corruption of ‘Justice’; Prisoner Unity; Voices from Behind Bars
In school districts across the nation all eyes are on 4,500 striking teachers in Columbus, Ohio, who agreed to return to the classroom after a three-day strike under a “conceptual agreement.” This army in red T-shirts sparked widespread parent refusal to log in to remote classrooms set up while the teachers were out.
Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has overturned women’s right to abortion, the profound ramifications of that unprecedented decision are becoming known. Women are fighting back, from the Women’s March, to Black women, to Teens for Reproductive Rights, women will reclaim the right to control our own bodies.
Takes up: UK waffling on protecting LGBTQI+ people from so-called conversion therapy; reviewers are calling ‘Badhaai Do,’ Harshavardhan Kulkarni’s Indian dramedy film about Lesbians and Gay men, bold and refreshing; Gay man Venton Jones won the Democratic runoff primary for Texas’s 10th House district against queerphobe Sandra Crenshaw; and a teacher in Florida created a template letter that cleverly works around Gov. Ron DeSantis’ hate-filled Don’t Say Gay Bill, HB 1557.
Readers’ Views on: Abortion Bans vs. Women and Freedom; Anti-War, Pro-Democracy Voices from Russia; Patriarchy Attacked; Putin’s Brutal War
Readers’ Views on: Putin’s Brutal War on Ukraine; War on Yemen; Canadian Convoy; Trucks and Tribes; and Abortion Politics.
LGBTQ+ students are protesting injustice in Kenya, Florida and Texas; the suspected suicide of Gay mayor Kevin Ward highlights suicide risks for gay men; Black Trans woman Ju’ Zema Goldring’s unjust arrest; and the banning of conversion therapy for people under 18 in New Zealand.
Texas, Florida and Oklahoma have recently passed laws that threaten Queer kids and can be directed against any marginalized group. No matter which politician is in power or what political party is dominant, they will do little to protect oppressed groups or benefit the lives of regular people in any significant way.
In Chicago, four to five thousand rallied and marched downtown to make it clear that women in the U.S. are continuing to fight back against the inhuman anti-abortion legislation that has been surging across Republican-dominated statehouses for years.
In Chicago, four to five thousand rallied and marched downtown to make it clear that women in the U.S. are continuing to fight back against the inhuman anti-abortion legislation that has been surging across Republican-dominated statehouses for years—this, despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today’s descendants of slaves are asked to accept an interpretation of history that centers on acts of the government, not on those of slaves asserting themselves in their lives. Biden’s recognition of the day slaves “received” their freedom from the government, might help secure the African-American vote for the Democratic Party. But even this limited freedom is under attack.
Pro-LGBTQ+ Solidarity Workouts in Poland; Transgender girl Kai Shappley testifies to the Texas Senate; Queer-Art hosts “Response to Anti-Asian Shootings in Atlanta” exhibit; International Transgender Day of Visibility.
Readers’ Views on: Trumpism, Racism and the Specter of Fascism; Vaccine Inequality and Injustice; Organizing Amazon; Can Humanity Survive?; Criminal Injustice; Trust Women; Marx’s Humanism and Love; Why Read ‘N&L’?
The way business and government prepared—or failed to prepare—for the Winter Storm Uri disaster and the way they responded to it tell a bloody tale of climate obstruction, greed, indifference and cruelty.
Murders of Trans and Gender Nonconforming people; vigil for Avril, a Trans student harassed at a French high school; New Orleans’ underserved and at-risk communities, including LGBTQ+ people, and the homeless and poor living with HIV/AIDS; swell of support for Trevor Wilkinson, suspended in Texas high school for nail polish.
FEMA’s failure to include people with disabilities in its response to natural disasters; airline passengers with disabilities gain a bill of rights; George Mason University sororities turn down AnnCatherine Heigl, who has Down syndrome; Texas is penalized for underfunding special education programs.
Readers’ Views on: Puerto Rico:Trump’s Katrina; LGBTQ in Australia; Transgender in Texas; Women’s Liberation; Racism in Canada; Detroit and “Detroit”; Labor and Robots; Haitian Revolt; Why Read N&L?; and a Correction.
The Trump administration’s attack on both abortion rights and birth control panders to their anti-abortion fanatical base–in the process torturing a 17-year-old immigrant who tried to get an abortion after being locked up for illegally crossing the border. .
Puerto Rico is devastated by hurricanes, with climate change a factor, and by the administration’s racist malign neglect, atop an existing debt crisis the masses did not create. Real solidarity came from below. .
Round up of news about LGBTQ people including: Transgender people rally against Texas discriminatory bathroom bill; International Non-Binary Day celebrations; World Pride 2017 was celebrated in Spain; and Illinois becomes the second state in the U.S. to pass legislation banning so-called Gay and Transgender panic defense.
The administration’s war against truth and reason, such as climate change denial, calls for more than fact-checking. What is needed is to establish a totally opposite ground, that of liberation.
Readers’ Views on: environmental and social crises; Martin Luther King Day; healthcare crisis, Donald Trump and the election; brutal “justice”; and who reads News & Letters.
Readers’ Views on: Racism and Revolt Put U.S. on Trial; Life and Death Under the Class Divide; Environmental Struggles; War and Atrocities; and Women’s Lives at Stake.
The wildfires sweeping Alberta’s tar sands region provide a window onto the state of the environment and the multidimensional worldwide struggle against pollution and climate chaos fueled by capitalism’s drive for production for the sake of production.
People’s suffering, no matter the price of oil, demonstrates capitalism’s inherent deep ties with climate change and economic destruction.
Foregrounding the new formal solidarity between Trust Black Women with Black Lives Matter, we explore the thought and actions of women worldwide, including the struggle for reproductive justice in the U.S.; women fighting war and terrorism in places like South Sudan and Syria, the successful fight of domestic workers to organize, and the need to make the revolutionary content of such actions explicit.
Dishonestly edited videos accusing Planned Parenthood of illegally selling aborted fetal organs for profit have now become fodder for politicians who vow to destroy Planned Parenthood, and who mislead and grovel before their Right-wing anti-woman base.
A roundup of women’s actions worldwide including: feminists jailed in China before International Women’s Day; the unfair and punitive jailing of Purvi Patel for having a miscarriage; the fightback against the increase in sexist, racist, homophobic and classist harassment in Sci-Fi fandom; and the women’s hunger and work strike against terrible conditions at the Karnes Detention Center in Texas for migrant women and children.
From the July-August 2014 issue of News & Letters
UNCHAINING THE DIALECTIC
Raya Dunayevskaya’s 1953 breakthrough on Hegel’s Absolute Idea enabled her to illuminate a path not traveled by previous generations of revolutionaries. She is quite emphatic in raising the importance of “Unchaining the Revolutionary Dialectic” (May-June 2014 N&L), and capturing what [=>]
Roundup on advances and resistance on same-sex marriage in churches and states.
Few people relish pollution tourism and fewer still can so appropriately express their disgust and delight as Andrew Blackwell in “Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World’s Most Polluted Places.”
While experiences in the squares of the Arab Spring, in Turkey’s Gezi Park, in the streets of Spain and Greece, and in the U.S. Occupy Movements have revealed moments of what new human relations between women and men could look like, those moments of hope and exhilaration have been followed by devastating reaction and retrogression.
A pedestrian walking by our clinic summed up the absurdity of anti-abortionists: “Why would you take life advice from someone screaming standing on a sidewalk corner?!”
A.H., Clinic escort
Midwest
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Here’s my favorite quote from our favorite protester this morning “I bet you guys voted for that Halfrican American Obama!” What is wrong [=>]
The only way to get out of Administrative Segregation is by attending the Gang Renouncement and Dissociation Process. After many months I was told that I could not attend this program because the units do not house inmates with wheelchairs and don’t have cells or showers for the handicapped.
Readers’ Views, September-October 2013, Part I
An overflow crowd at Bluestockings Bookstore in New York City heard Hallie Boas speak on “Come and Take It: How the Fight to Protect Wom¬en’s Healthcare Is Launching a New Wave of Feminism in Texas.”
Nationwide protests erupted immediately after the outrageous July 13 acquittal of George Zimmerman for murdering 17-year-old African-American high school student Trayvon Martin last year. Within three days, thousands of protesters came out in dozens of cities, and a new group called the Dream Defenders began a 31-day occupation of Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s office.
Climate chaos takes an ever increasing toll. In this year of extremes: the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is at a record low; July was the hottest month on record for the U.S.; almost 80% of U.S. agricultural land is in a drought comparable to the 1930s Dust Bowl; this year is on track [=>]
Washington, D.C—Fourteen of 74 ADAPT activists arrested in April for protesting Chair of the House Budget Committee Representative Ryan’s proposal to cut Medicaid funding by $800 billion were sentenced in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.
During the court proceedings, Mike Oxford, an ADAPT organizer from Kansas, made a statement on behalf of the [=>]
Amarillo, Texas–The people in charge of this prison unit’s law library (which is in charge of providing indigent inmates with supplies and postage) flex their supposed power on the poor prisoners. They are known to openly and willfully interfere with inmates’ legal work and appeals, while being free to abuse the poor who are incarcerated [=>]
Middle school student Noah Hornik of Palo Alto, Cal., is organizing the “It Gets Indie” benefit concert in San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall to raise awareness and support prevention of Queer youth suicide. Noah was motivated by suicides of Queer youth, witnessing numerous incidents of harassment, and the passage of Proposition 8.
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