The Supreme Court gutted the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. This dismantling of one of the most important Civil Rights Movement’s achievements exposes the anti-freedom nature and the virulent racism and sexism that pervade this society.
voting rights
Review: A More Beautiful and Terrible History
February 22, 2024Van 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.
Review: American Women and the Fight for Equality
October 31, 2023Adele reviews ‘Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality: 1920 to 2020’ by Elizabeth Griffith, a history of the U.S. feminist movement from the years leading up to the achievement of women’s right to vote to 2020.
Votes that matter
November 8, 2022The election of 2020 gave a giant push for the Right to turn elections into weapons for abrogating rights and freedoms, especially those of women and minorities. It is a primrose path to outright fascism.
Editorial: SCOTUS trashes freedom
September 6, 2022The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions reveal its aim to aid in the destruction of democracy and ride the winds of racism, sexism and neo-fascism. It has assigned itself to the dustbin of history.
Count every vote!
November 28, 2020In virtually every Bay Area city at least several hundred came out to “Count Every Vote” rallies on Nov. 4, the day after the election with the feeling, as one speaker put it, “vacillating between anxiety and hope.”
Detroit voters speak truth to power
November 26, 2020People in Detroit, Mich., involved in counting the vote of the 2020 presidential election speak for themselves of their pride in fighting Republican intimidation and their anger and determination to keep fighting against racism.
Detroit Dispatch #10: Concerns about the election
October 4, 2020Against bureaucratic hurdles, community leaders and activists in Detroit, Michigan are trying to encourage the vote for the November election, especially among young adults.
II. The true pandemic war
April 29, 2020Draft thesis for discussion about where the world is heading, and what to do about it from a revolutionary standpoint. Part II. The true pandemic war: A. The capitalists’ class war; B. Subjects of revolution fight back; and C. Pandemic class war reveals the social structure.
Right’s war on voters
January 21, 2020Republican state officials around the country are enacting policies to depress the vote of poor people, students, and people of color to extend their minority control of state and federal government.
Trumpism aims to bleach the census
June 26, 2019The Trump administration’s attempt to manipulate the census could undercount some communities by 17% in an effort to calcify white minority rule.
World in View: U.S. prisoners strike
September 26, 2018Prisoners in at least 17 U.S. states, and one Canadian prison, took part in a nationwide strike beginning Aug. 21, 2018. The strike presented a list of 10 demands that have been pushed into the national and international consciousness.
Inauguration of neo-fascism faces widespread revolt
January 23, 2017The lightning move by Republicans in Congress to prepare to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare—before Donald Trump even took office, with only the vaguest idea of what is to replace it, and with full knowledge that a large majority of Americans oppose the repeal of its most important provisions—gave a sign of how far the new single-party government intends to roll the clock back, with dizzying speed.
Union betrayals
November 30, 2016Latina union activist in Detroit questions how working people lost out in the school board elections and the ballot measures in the recent election and, noting that the AFL-CIO supported the Dakota Access Pipeline, asks, “Which side are you on?”
I. Discontent, revolt and reaction in the U.S.
May 6, 2016Part I of the Draft Perspectives 2016: Discontent is seething in the U.S. among workers, youth, Blacks, women, LGBTQ, including elements of the new society. Fear of revolution is powering neo-fascism opposing the revolt.
Review of Feminism Unfinished
August 30, 2015A review by Adele of “Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women’s Movements,” by Dorothy Sue Cobble, Linda Gordon, and Astrid Henry (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York, 2014). This book is a brief overview of the history of the feminist movement in the U.S. from the period after women’s right to vote was won in 1920 until the present.
Handicap This! Nov.-Dec. 2013
December 8, 2013Bus discrimination in Leeds, England; school sit-in in Pennsylvania; Russia “psychiatric” repression; Montreal voting rights