The rulers are not about to sit back and let revolt freely develop. All sorts of reactionary ideas and attitudes have been ushered into the mainstream of politics and the media.
United States of America
Readers’ Views, March-April 2013, Part 1
April 25, 2013AMERICAN CIVILIZATION REMAINS ON TRIAL
American Civilization on Trial (ACOT) is not “Black history.” Rather, Blacks play such an enormous role in the U.S. that their history that is in ACOT is a history of America.
Octogenarian
Midwest
***
The movie Django Unchained could have been an ad for the NRA’s position on the current [=>]
American Civilization on Trial
April 8, 2013Raya Dunayevskaya’s sublimely researched American Civilization on Trial: Black Masses as Vanguard (ACOT) deserves a place among the U.S.’s most honest historical treatises.
Car wash wage win
April 7, 2013Another car wash in the Bronx unionized after a protracted struggle with the management of the company. Sunny Day Car Wash initially fired twelve workers for trying to organize a union. The workers, Mexicans and Ecuadorians, fought back and protested their dismissal for two months.
Arctic ice in retreat
March 29, 2013World in View
by Gerry Emmett
Arctic ice in retreat
The National Snow and Ice Data Center and NASA indicate that the extent of Arctic sea ice this January was the sixth lowest since satellite observation began. Air temperatures were 2 to 5 degrees Celsius higher than average across much of the Arctic Ocean (4 to 9 degrees [=>]
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 [=>]
Lincoln and ‘The Abolitionists’
March 23, 2013The 150th anniversary of the Civil War, and of the Emancipation Proclamation in particular, has a lot of people talking about that history and race relations today. Steven Spielberg’s movie Lincoln is less the cause than the effect of this surge in popular interest. Lincoln is very moving and beautifully made, with excellent acting and shrewd writing.
Tony Kushner’s screenplay [=>]
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 [=>]
The Black dimension and Women’s Liberation as revolutionary reason
March 18, 2013From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya:
Editor’s note: For Women’s History Month, we present excerpts from “An Overview by Way of Introduction; the Black Dimension,” Chapter 6 of the book Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution. The chapter serves as an introduction and overview for the book’s Part Two, “The Women’s Liberation Movement as Revolutionary [=>]
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 [=>]
Readers’ Views, January-February 2013, Part 1
March 9, 2013RAVAGES OF CAPITALISM SHOW NEED FOR NEW WORLD
The article on “Climate chaos and capitalism” (Sept.-Oct. 2012 N&L) is very relevant, especially the conclusion about how capitalism’s contradiction is that the growth of the economy, of capitalist production, means more global warming and climate change worldwide.
Activist for humans and environment
Los Angeles
***
The technologies we [=>]
Review of No Snowflake in an Avalanche
February 28, 2013No Snowflake in an Avalanche, by Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein and Davin Seay (Vireo, 2012)
An extraordinary organization arose to combat an extraordinary threat. Lawyer Mikey Weinstein was a graduate of the Air Force Academy, located in the religious Right territory of Colorado Springs, Colo. In 2004, his son Casey, a freshman at the Academy, [=>]
Why ‘green on blue’ attacks?
February 27, 2013From the January-February 2013 issue of News & Letters:
Why ‘green on blue’ attacks?
London, England—Richard Walker was described by family as a “proud, patriotic man.” No doubt believing Britain’s role in Afghanistan as vital to the curtailment of terrorism, Walker deployed to the war-torn country as part of the 28 Engineer Regiment. His death on Jan. [=>]
March against violence
February 25, 2013Chicago—Dozens of people marched on Chicago’s South Side to take a stand against violence on Jan. 15, followed by a speakout and vigil. Occupy the Southside organized this “King on King march” down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive from 63rd to Emmett Till Road.
“We’re here,” explained a Black woman activist with Occupy the Southside, “because [=>]
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 [=>]
American Civilization on Trial: Black masses as vanguard and the dialectic of history
February 4, 2013From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation
Editor’s note: This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Marxist-Humanist classic American Civilization on Trial,originally with the overline “100 Years after the Emancipation Proclamation,” whose 150th anniversary was January 1, 2013. The original subtitle, “The Negro as Touchstone of History,” was [=>]
Disability rights: The fight to stay alive
December 6, 2012Chicago—The U.S. disability rights movement has a rich and diverse history. It is the only class of people that you can suddenly become a member of at any time or place. It does not discriminate by color, sex, income level, age, ethnicity or sexual preference. But for those who have had no experiences with disabled [=>]
Post-election Venezuela
December 4, 2012The reelection of Hugo Chávez as president is an important moment in Venezuela and Latin America as a whole. After more than a decade in power—during which his administration practically eliminated illiteracy, drastically reduced misery and poverty, including far greater access to food and healthcare, and improved housing—the majority of the population continues to support [=>]
The Cuban Missile Crisis and its test of movements’ negative character
November 28, 2012From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya
Editor’s note: On the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, we present Raya Dunayevskaya’s analysis of how it tested not only the rulers’ rash folly but the anti-war movement’s short-mindedness–a lesson still urgent today. She wrote this piece as a Political Letter on Oct. 25, 1962, titled “Marxist-Humanism vs. [=>]
Obama’s re-election doesn’t end clash of two worlds
November 26, 2012by Franklin Dmitryev
The two worlds of the rulers and the ruled shone through the suffocating blanket of propaganda surrounding the election in which Barack Obama won a second term. A pronounced gender gap and long lines at the polls in African-American and Latino areas reflected the determination to defeat the reactionary Republicans and retain the [=>]
November-December 2012 issue of News & Letters is now available on the web
November 24, 2012Lead
Obama’s re-election doesn’t end clash of two worlds
The two worlds of the rulers and the ruled shone through the suffocating blanket of propaganda surrounding the election in which Barack Obama won a second term. A pronounced gender gap and long lines at the polls in African-American and Latino areas reflected the determination to defeat the [=>]
Readers’ Views, September-October 2012, Part 2
October 16, 2012From the September-October 2012 issue of News & Letters:
Readers’ Views, Part 2
REVOLUTIONARY SYNDICALISM DISCUSSION CONTINUES
The discussion article on “Revolutionary Syndicalism” (July-August N&L) reminds me of when it was considered a major force of revolution. There was a syndicalist party, the Socialist Labor Party (SLP), that thought we could vote in socialism. [=>]
Readers’ Views, September-October 2012, Part 1
October 15, 2012CAPITALIST CRISIS AND REVOLT
I appreciated Franklin Dmitryev’s Lead article in the July-August N&L, on “Spain, Greece, Europe: Capitalist crisis and revolt,” for showing how the so-called “radical Left” is not really so radical. They think they can solve things through managing the economy and redistributing wealth, and channel energy into politics.
The boldfaced paragraph in the [=>]
Shameful lack of services for Trans seniors
October 9, 2012Chicago—The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently banned discrimination based on gender identity or expression. All healthcare facilities which accept federal money, including Medicaid and Medicare, cannot discriminate against Transgender nor gender-variant patients.
This only underlines how pervasive discrimination remains. The Services and Advocacy for LGBT Elders’ (SAGE) report, “Improving the Lives of Transgender [=>]
Boycott Chick-fil-A
October 8, 2012Photo by Bob McGuire for News & Letters
Chicago—Picketers gathered in front of the only Chick-fil-A in Chicago to protest the company CEO using his chicken joint as a bullhorn to attack marriage and other civil rights for Gays. We were outnumbered by the customers who had streamed in for Chick-fil-A “Customer Appreciation Day,” [=>]
Assange: Law, politics and human rights
October 4, 2012London—Protest can be violent. Yet whilst violence towards demonstrators often goes unremarked even in an avowedly democratic nation such as Britain, police violence towards foreign officials, as may have occurred during an attempted storming by British police of the Ecuadorian Embassy, seems a little too much to handle.
Foreign Secretary William Hague has since attempted to [=>]
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 [=>]
Workshop Talks: Chevron refinery’s ‘acceptable risks’
September 15, 2012Workshop Talks
by Htun Lin
On Aug. 6, a huge toxic plume, caused by a massive fire from a leak at the Chevron refinery, spread over Richmond, Calif. Immediately afterward, the hot topic of discussion on the local TV news became what this would do to gas prices, not what it has done to the environment and [=>]
September-October 2012 issue of News & Letters is online
September 9, 2012Lead
Reactionary U.S. election shows capital’s contradictions
“We built it!” roared the delegates at the Republican Party convention in Tampa. It was the perfect expression of the presidential campaign and of capitalist thinking in general. The truth is that workers built the social wealth. Capitalists take it from the workers, and the government gets a portion.
Mitt Romney [=>]
Readers’ Views, July-August 2012, Part 2
August 15, 2012RICH AND DUNAYEVSKAYA: A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP
Thanks for your In Memoriam to Adrienne Rich. It revealed a dimension that many who were appreciative of her poetry and feminism may not have known—Rich’s exploration of Marx’s ideas through her reading of Raya Dunayevskaya. One piece Rich wrote was titled “Dunayevskaya’s Marx.” It was crucial how you [=>]
ADAPT activists sentenced
August 7, 2012Washington, 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 [=>]
Vets used and abused
August 3, 2012Memphis, Tenn.—When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, the military did find weapons of mass destruction in the form of chemical weapons. This was not made public, because the weapons had been a gift to Saddam Hussein from the U.S. Since the canisters still showed they were U.S. government property, they were destroyed, by the [=>]
Occupy Movement faces racism
August 2, 2012Chicago—On June 18, Occupy Chicago held the first of a series of discussions on “The Elephant in the Room: A workshop about dismantling racism in the Occupy Movement.”
Discussion was lively, and comradely, among the majority Black, Latino and Native American participants, but represented just the beginning of an effort to “voice the unvoiced.” One Latino [=>]
Workshop Talks: Capitalism trashes union democracy
July 16, 2012Workshop Talks
by Htun Lin
The “Great Recession” we’re living in will continue so long as we accept that there is no alternative to capitalism. It is a lie perpetuated by the dominant ideology.
In the past year, the Occupy Movement has given many of us hope that things can change. One idea in the movement is that [=>]
One billionaire, one vote
July 14, 2012Editorial
“For Sale” signs for public offices will be popping up all over the country following Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s stunning victory this month over the effort to recall him from office. Walker’s revoking the right of public unions to negotiate contracts created national and statewide protests that rocked the nation for months.
The recall campaign pitted [=>]
July-August 2012 issue of News & Letters is on the web
July 8, 2012News & Letters, Vol. 57, No. 4
July-August 2012
Lead: Spain, Greece, Europe: capitalist crisis and revolt
When the bailout of banks in Spain was announced on June 9, the immediate reactions revealed the two worlds that exist in every country. The Spanish masses intensified their protests, marching directly on both banks and government, while Greek and Spanish [=>]
Earth Summit 20 years on
June 2, 2012To mark the 20th anniversary of the original “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, here is what we wrote about it at the time (from the July 1992 News & Letters):
Ideological pollution at ‘Earth Summit’
by Franklin Dmitryev
The UN Conference on Environment and Development (or Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, began June 3 with [=>]
Paths of destruction
May 14, 2012From the May-June 2012 issue of News & Letters:
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2012-2013
III. Paths of destruction
A. From war to war to war
War is one of the rulers’ most potent counter-revolutionary weapons when faced with economic crises and revolt. With a military stretched thin, one eye on China, and the failures of Iraq and [=>]
Rally for locked out sugar, tire workers
April 12, 2012Chicago—Locked out workers from American Crystal Sugar plants in North Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa joined locked out workers from Cooper Tire in Findlay, Ohio, and came to Chicago on Feb. 25 as one stop in their regional tour to raise support, “From Fargo to Findlay: A Journey for Justice.” Workers from Chicagoland met them at [=>]
Immigrant workers ‘March for Dignity’
April 11, 2012Berkeley, Calif.—On Feb. 17 over 500 people joined a “March for Dignity,” endorsed by Occupy Oakland, in support of the over 200 mostly Latino workers fired the previous month, despite Berkeley being a “sanctuary” city (meaning the city pledged to not cooperate with discrimination based on legal status). An I-9 (Employment Eligibility Verification Form, for [=>]
Honduran prison fire
April 6, 2012World in View
The Comayagua national prison fire may have started accidentally, but the horrific result—at least 360 deaths—was anything but accidental. With the fire raging, prisoners remained locked up for half an hour. The Comayagua fire chief said that prison officials initially stopped firefighters from entering, citing security protocol.
The prison was grossly overcrowded. Indeed, the [=>]
New attacks on women take fascistic turn
March 20, 2012Editorial
The depths of this society’s inhumanity have been laid bare by the intensity of the war on women’s bodies, minds and lives. Poor women are taking the brunt as those in power in state and federal governments mount an assault so reactionary that birth control, something considered a settled fact of life, is actually in [=>]
Flint’s emergency manager targets labor
February 29, 2012Flint, Mich.—In November, Flint was placed under the control of an emergency manager for the second time. This time is different, because under a law passed in March of last year the financial manager can end collective bargaining agreements (with state approval), run up debt, increase property taxes and sell property.
The first time around Flint [=>]
Rights for immigrants!
February 21, 2012Los Angeles—On Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, 250 to 300 people, mostly youth, demonstrated against “Secure Communities” (SC), Sheriff Baca and President Obama’s attack on Mexican and Latino/a immigrants. SC forces local police to act as federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, supposedly against undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes here. Besides [=>]
Readers’ Views, January-February 2012 (part 1)
February 18, 2012Readers’ Views (part 1)
THE STATE OF THE WORLD AS WE BEGIN 2012
I’m deeply enamored of the contents of every issue of N&L. This is because the articulation of the various issues addressing the multitude of socioeconomic crises, brought on by economic contraction affecting capital relations, points to how deep the revolution must go. In [=>]
Miners’ lives bought at discount rates
February 17, 2012Detroit—A $209 million settlement, and a record $10.8 million in fines: that’s what newspaper headlines, TV and radio news reports throughout the nation proclaimed on Dec. 7 for the mine safety violations that killed 29 coal miners on April 5, 2010, at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia. It was then owned by [=>]
Blaming Post Office workers
February 9, 2012Battle Creek, Mich.–For nearly 200 years the U.S. Post Office Department functioned as a public service agency. The delivery of the mail relied almost exclusively on manual labor, with management in the hands of politically appointed individuals. More recently, however, it looks as though the renamed United States Postal Service may go the way of [=>]
Dialectics of revolution in Africa, Asia
January 31, 2012From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya
Editor’s note: The upsurge of freedom struggles from Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street makes it imperative to learn from the revolutions of a half-century ago in Africa, Asia and Latin America, not alone as the excitement of masses in motion but as illuminating the role of theory and organization, [=>]
Stop leeches bleeding public schools dry
December 21, 2011Stop leeches bleeding public schools dry
New York City—”The Trial Is On! The People of NYC are gathering to put the perpetrators of education crimes and human and civil rights violations against our children on trial—in our own People’s Court!” On Oct. 15, the Coalition for Public Education (www.forpubliced.org) took testimony from parents, teachers and [=>]