Columnist Terry Moon explains why Marxist-Humanists refer to anti-abortion activists and organizations as fanatics and zealots.
torture
Editorial, August 2023: Abortion bans—cruelty is the point
August 19, 2023The 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.
Queer Notes: March-April 2023
March 21, 2023A Lesbian mother in Mexico was reunited with her young children thanks to Lesbian Mothers in Mexico and All Out; about 50 high school students of the Wyoming Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) met with state legislators on the GSA’s biannual Civics Day; and in Tunisia, NGOs circulated a petition demanding freedom for a Trans woman and Trans man sentenced to prison for suspicion of taking part in an LGBTQ+ event.
Resistance in Burma
A Burmese woman activist speaks about the war against civilians by the Tatmadaw and the need for solidarity.
Woman as Reason: The torture of abortion bans
April 29, 2020Abortion bans during the COVID-19 pandemic are cruel, based on lies, and constitute torture against women, causing not only more deaths, but also revealing the contempt with which women are held and the danger in forcing women to give birth against their will at this time.
Woman as Reason: Abortion in the time of COVID-19
April 15, 2020Abortion bans during the COVID-19 pandemic are cruel, based on lies, and constitute torture against women, causing not only more deaths, but also revealing the contempt with which women are held and the danger in forcing women to give birth against their will at this time.
Treat PTSD from the torture of solitary
March 10, 2018Prisoner Human Rights Movement representatives call on California government officials to provide mental healthcare, support groups and other relief to prisoners formerly in solitary confinement who are living with PTSD.
Editorial: Abuser-in-chief trashes women
November 12, 2017The 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. .
‘Detroit’ offends Detroit
September 5, 2017Detroit activists reviews the film, “Detroit,” and finds it insulting to actual history and a “brilliantly filmed wasted opportunity.”
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.
Chelsea Manning is not yet free
January 29, 2017Chelsea Manning received a Presidential commutation but deserves much more. She is owed a pardon, compensation and an apology
Free Russian radical Ildar Dadin!
November 27, 2016In-person report of a vigil in Chicago against the torture of Ildar Dadin and other political prisoners in Russia.
Voices from the inside out: Wisconsin prisoner hunger strike
September 17, 2016Prisoner Robert Taliaferro writes of the Wisconsin maximum security facility prisoners’ hunger strike to end the inhumane practice of long-term solitary confinement and for improved medical care for prisoners with mental illness in segregation.
Turkey’s Erdoğan – the pious dictator
September 7, 2016A view of what the failed coup in Turkey has wrought, including mass arrests of teachers, trade unionists, doctors, medical personnel, and others as Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, makes a grab for total power.
Workshop Talks: Why allow Assad to kill the sick?
Healthcare worker Htun Lin takes up the relationship between workers in healthcare in the U.S. who are told “not everyone can be saved,” and what is happening in Syria where the Syrian government, Russia and Iran are bombing civilians including–or especially–hospitals and healthcare workers.
‘We defend the earth’
July 6, 2016Indigenous people, mostly women, respond to a video about their community, the ejido of Tila, which struggled against the government who tried to take their land and are now an independent community.
Women battle war, terrorism and anti-abortion fanatics
March 8, 2016Foregrounding 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.
Call for Convention 2016
February 28, 2016Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2016-2017
‘Wellness check’ is Orwellian for torture
January 26, 2016Women prisoners in Central California Prison are battered by so-called wellness checks.
Editorial: Chicago’s racism on trial
January 23, 2016On the deadly racism of the Chicago and U.S. police and the creative response from those struggling against it.
California prisoners battle barbaric U.S. ‘justice’ system
October 26, 2015In California the ongoing struggle of prisoners against the U.S.’s barbaric criminal justice system reached a milestone in the effort to totally transform a society in which millions of poor, unemployed and people of color end up in an inhuman gulag.
Handicap This! September-October 2015
September 6, 2015A roundup of the situation of people with disabilities and how they are fighting for their rights including in Mexico, a prison in Carlisle, Penn., outrage against the shackling of two young students with disabilities in Covington, KY, the banning of a child with cerebral palsy and autism in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, and disabled people in Iraq who face neglect and isolation.
California prisons’ punitive ‘wellness checks’
September 3, 2015Pelican Bay Prison guards use court-ordered “wellness checks” to harass prisoners. They make it impossible for anyone to get any sleep as they rampage through each SHU pod for 10-20 minutes.
Philip Zimbardo and Marx’s Humanism
August 30, 2015A discussion with Philip Zimbardo followed the San Francisco premiere of “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” a movie based on his notorious 1971 experiment. It raises questions about the meaning of being human, which for Marx turned on needing human beings as free beings whose self-determining, free, conscious activity is not a mere means but the first necessity of life.
Woman as Reason: Twenty years after Srebrenica: A Women’s Court demands justice
June 28, 2015Now there is the convening in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on May 7 of the Women’s Court on war crimes against women during the war in the 1990s. Women came together from all corners of the former Yugoslavia to demand justice for the crimes committed against them during the wars and the suffering that followed.
World in View: U.S. police blotter
May 7, 2015Tulsa: Eric Harris murdered by Sheriff’s “reserve” cop; North Charleston: cop murder of Walter Scott videoed; Chicago: meager reparations for victims of police torture.
South Africa bloodies Black workers
April 30, 2015Durban, South Africa—On April 8 Abahlali baseMjondolo supported a march against xenophobia organized by our comrades in the Congolese Solidarity Campaign together with the Somali Association of South Africa and other migrant organizations. There was a permit for the march and yet the police would not allow it to go ahead.
What solitary means
January 30, 2015Nothing can prepare you for entering the Security Housing Unit (SHU). It’s a world unto itself where cold, quiet and emptiness come together, seeping into your bones, then eventually the mind.
Being in the SHU
November 24, 2014Crescent City, Calif.—The physical and emotional toll of being in the SHU (prisons’ “Secure Housing Unit”): • Manic guards off their meds. • That last good photograph stamped with a boot. • Classification hearings postponed for potlucks. • The daughter whose eyes fill when you ask innocently, who are you?…
Prison hunger strike commemorated
From the November-December 2014 issue of News & Letters
Oakland, Calif.—On Sept. 6 about 100 people in Mosswood Park commemorated one year since the suspension of the historic 60-day hunger strike, the third of its kind, by California prisoners opposing the torture of solitary confinement. The Security Housing Units (SHU) prisoners’ unprecedented cross-race [=>]
Racist election deepens reactionary direction of U.S.
November 20, 2014The U.S. government took an ominous, reactionary political turn in the 2014 midterm elections, with Republicans taking control of the Senate. Extreme pro-war Senators like Joni Ernst in Iowa and Tom Cotton in Arkansas join veterans like Senator “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran” John McCain, who will now control the Armed Services Committee and is hell-bent for new “boots on the ground” in Syria and Iraq. The whole Republican campaign—including these pro-war, pro-fossil-fuel, pro-“fetus is a person” candidates—ran on a cynically deceptive anti-Obama mantra….
No rehabilitation
July 7, 2014From the July-August 2014 issue of News & Letters
Oakland, Calif.—On June 14 Critical Resistance (CR), an organization working for the abolition of the prison system, held a community forum on California Department of Corrections and rehabilitation (CDCr). (Prisoners refuse to capitalize the “R” because there is no “rehabilitation.”)
The forum took up new [=>]
Readers’ Views, July-August 2014, Part 1
From the July-August 2014 issue of News & Letters
RESPONSES TO MARXIST-HUMANIST PERSPECTIVES
The Marxist-Humanist Perspectives (N&L, May-June 2014) give a critical assessment of the polarization between the oppressive forces of capital’s social relations and humanity’s efforts to realize human dignity. It shows humans are not just passive victims of capital. First [=>]
Solidarity with Guantanamo hunger strikers, Part 2
March 5, 2014“My decision to go on hunger strike points to the need for new forces to defend the idea of universal human rights. Although the number of inmates refusing to take food at Guantanamo has recently declined substantially, solidarity remains a vitally important factor.”
Readers’ Views, Nov.-Dec. 2013, Part 2
December 15, 2013Readers’ Views from the Nov.-Dec. 2013 N&L: SYRIA AND WORLD POLITICS; WARS PAST AND PRESENT; PHILOSOPHY AND MASSES; PRISONERS READ & SPEAK
Solidarity with Guantanamo hunger strikers, Part 1
December 10, 2013London, England—Some found it strange that a man voluntarily stopped eating for over 20 days. I found it hard. After all, I like to eat as much as anyone else. Yet my decision to go on hunger strike in support of Guantanamo Bay prisoners had a deeper, political meaning.
I was in good company. The usually [=>]
Maroon the Implacable
December 6, 2013Faruq, a prisoner at Pelican Bay State Prison in California, reviews “Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz” (PM Press, 2013), written by a revolutionary theorist forced to endure the psychological and physical torture of solitary confinement for the past 40 years.
Pelican Bay prisoners suspend their hunger strike
November 19, 2013The PBSP-SHU, Short Corridor Collective Representatives hereby serve notice upon all concerned parties that after nine weeks we have collectively decided to suspend our third hunger strike action on Sept. 5, 2013. To be clear, our Peaceful Protest of Resistance to our continuous subjection to decades of systemic state-sanctioned torture via the system’s solitary confinement units is far from over. Our decision to suspend our third hunger strike in two years does not come lightly. This decision is especially difficult considering that most of our demands have not been met (despite nearly universal agreement that they are reasonable).
Support striking prisoners!
July 4, 2013Since February, prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have carried on a massive hunger strike to protest indefinite detention in abusive conditions with no end in sight…. On July 8th California prisoners being held in solitary confinement at the Pelican Bay “security housing unit” (SHU) for indeterminate periods will resume their hunger strike.
Escape from Camp 14
April 10, 2013Escape from Camp 14 is the story of Shin Dong-hyuk, the only person born in a North Korean slave labor camp to escape, doing so at the age of 23 in 2005. Shin’s life is testament to the putrid essence of that militarized, state-capitalist totalitarian society.
California hearings on prison torture
March 24, 2013Sacramento, Calif.–On Feb. 25, around 100 people, mostly family members of prisoners organized as California Families Against Solitary Confinement (CFASC), gathered on the state capitol steps. They shared their stories before a historic second legislative hearing on California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDC) policies regarding prisoners held in the Security Housing Units (SHUs). An [=>]
State of the U.S. wars
March 19, 2013Editorial
The opening of Barack Obama’s second term made it clear that, despite all talk of ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is to be no end to the state of permanent war either abroad or at home.
President Obama promises to end the war in Afghanistan after 13 years. But the Afghan people have [=>]
March-April 2013 issue of News & Letters is available on the web
March 16, 2013The March-April 2013 issue of News & Letters is available on the web.
News & Letters, Vol. 58, No. 2
March – April 2013
Lead
From India to Egypt to U.S., women fighting for freedom
Two recent events have shown the deep and seemingly intractable worldwide oppression of women and, at the same time, revealed women’s militancy and determination to [=>]
Close Guantanamo
February 24, 2013Los Angeles—On Jan. 10, 150 activists gathered outside the downtown Federal Building to protest the ongoing torture and indefinite detentions of Muslim prisoners for a decade, without charges. The press conference was sponsored by Amnesty International, Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, and Immigrant Communities for Justice and Peace. Pacifica Radio KPFK, Global TV [=>]
Pelican Bay prisoners aim to end hostilities
December 11, 2012Hunger strike unity logo created by a Pelican Bay prisoner
Agreement to End Hostilities
(NOTE: All names and the statement must be verbatim when used and posted on any website or media, or non-media, publications)
August 12, 2012
To whom it may concern and all California Prisoners:
Greetings from the all PBSP-SHU [Pelican Bay State Prison-Security [=>]
Reverse convictions by tortured confessions
February 23, 2012Chicago—Twenty-four Black men are still in jail almost 40 years after the first allegations of torture were brought against the Chicago Police Department.
In every case, their confessions were obtained illegally through torture.
On Nov. 5, 30 people, including the mother of Javan Deloney and family members of four or five other torture victims, met at the [=>]
The wars at home
May 8, 2011From the new issue of NEWS & LETTERS, May-June 2011
Part II of
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2011-2012
Revolution and counter-revolution take world stage
Contents:
- I. The Arab Spring
- II. The wars at home
- III. Japan: earthquake, tsunami and meltdown
- IV. Revolution, organization and philosophy
- V. Marxist-Humanist Tasks
(Part I was posted yesterday. Parts III through V to come in the next few days)
II. The [=>]
Torturer Jon Burge’s reign of terror
April 5, 2011Editor’s note: Mark Clements spent 28 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. He was one of many tortured under former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge’s reign of terror. Clements is now Chairman of the Wrongful Convictions Committee of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. The following is excerpted from [=>]
Readers’ Views (Jan.-Feb. 2011)
February 28, 2011THE OPPOSITE OF WAR IS NOT PEACE BUT REVOLUTION
Your Statement, War threat over Korea,” issued on your website on Dec. 9 had it just right! “The continuing threat of war on the Korean Peninsula underscores the urgency of the Marxist-Humanist perspective that the opposite of war is not peace but revolution.”
And you had it right [=>]
Stop the culture of torture
November 18, 2010From the Nov.-Dec. 2010 issue of News & Letters:
Forum: Stop the culture of torture
Chicago–At the end of September the Illinois Coalition Against Torture gave venue to torture victims and their primary lawyer at “Jon Burge GUILTY–beyond the trial.” The event featured Mary L. Johnson, mother of a still-imprisoned torture victim; Flint Taylor, battling lawyer for [=>]