Takes up: middle school students protesting the ban of a symphony honoring the Stonewall Uprising; a protest in Australia against gender-affirming care restrictions; and a lawsuit in Botswana to make same-sex marriage legal.
Wisconsin
Voices from the Inside Out: New prison policy violates the law
February 5, 2022A new Wisconsin policy on mail to prisoners breaks the law and violates their rights, senders’ rights and due process.
U.S.’s distorted agriculture
November 30, 2021Driving across the U.S. one is struck with the amount of corn grown and to the destructive ways in which it is, for the most part, used.
Voices From the Inside Out: Monopolies hurt prisoners
September 21, 2021Not a month goes by when we don’t hear of some city, state or country challenging corporate monopolies, acting as the guardians of citizens’ rights to avoid corporate abuses. But companies are awarded monopoly status to sell inferior products for inflated prices to the prisoner market, exploiting prisoners and their loved ones.
Voices from the inside out: Prisons enable COVID
March 11, 2021A prisoner who got COVID-19 writes about how prisons have reprehensibly mismanaged the COVID-19 crisis, harming prisoners, line staff, their families, and the community at large.
Prisons mismanage COVID-19 crisis
February 7, 2021A prisoner who got COVID-19 writes about how prisons have reprehensibly mismanaged the COVID-19 crisis, harming prisoners, line staff, their families, and the community at large.
Trump re-election battles concentrate system’s myriad crises
October 24, 2020In addition to pandemic, climate, and economic disasters, we face the specter of pre-emptive counter-revolution. Self-activity of masses in motion is needed not only to defeat Trump but to move beyond society that breeds Trumpism.
Voices from the inside out: Black prison lives matter
August 28, 2020Mass incarceration, and disproportionate treatment by all aspects of the Prison Industrial Complex, is a cultural knee on the neck of the Black community as a whole.
Voices from the inside out: COVID-19 in prison
May 3, 2020Depending on the state and their prison system, healthcare inside is marginal during the best of times. Some prisons in Wisconsin are better than in most states, but that care is not consistent throughout Wisconsin’s facilities.
Thoughts of COVID-19 in prison
April 1, 2020In prison here in Wisconsin, the guys are not as engaged as people in the community simply because of the nature of where we are. We are still in a relatively sterile environment which would change dramatically if someone comes in from the world and is a carrier. Healthcare inside is marginal during the best of times.
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.
Voices from the inside out: Promises broken
August 31, 2019A prisoner’s critique of Wisconsin’s Governor Tony Evers’s broken promise of reducing prison population in the state to half.
Voices From the Inside Out: Wisconsin’s prison system on trial
January 24, 2019Prisoner Robert Taliaferro looks forward to what a new governor in Wisconsin may mean for prisoners, especially prisoners of color, who have suffered under Governors Tommy Thompson and Scott Walker.
Voices from the inside out: Parole is broken
March 16, 2017Wisconsin Gov. Walker’s plan to replace the state Parole Commission with a Director of Parole would reduce the likelihood of parole in order to save a mere $1.8 million a year, while spending $200 million a year to keep aging parole-eligible prisoners locked up.
Voices From The Inside Out: Wisconsin prison destroys books
November 26, 2016Prisoner Robert Taliaferro tells of how a Wisconsin prison destroyed all library books that had been damaged in any way, thus depriving prisoners of their rights and adding “fuel to the fires of revolution.”
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.
Nuclear waste traveling to your neighborhood
Anti-nuclear activists expose the dangers of high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) being shipped around the country, the conundrum of what to do with it and the lies the U.S. Department of Energy tells to make HLRW appear safe.
Readers’ Views: September-October 2016, Part 1
September 14, 2016Readers’ 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.
Black Lives Matter
May 3, 2015The long-simmering outrage of Black masses has broken out into a movement against this racist society, particularly its pattern of racist killings by the police. It has not only reverberated internationally, but also made itself felt in the battle of ideas and the sphere of theory.
Readers’ Views, September-October 2014, Part I
August 31, 2014From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters
U.S. CRISES: RACISM, POLICE, LABOR STRUGGLES
New York News and Letters Committee prepared a flyer on Eric Garner (see: “NYC Police murder Eric Garner” this issue) headlined: “Wanted For Murder: Daniel Pantaleo.” It denounced the fact that the cops who killed Garner are [=>]
Voices From the Inside Out: On prison and race
July 7, 2014From the July-August 2014 issue of News & Letters
by Robert Taliaferro
Race has always been at the forefront of this nation since its founding. It seems ironic that the generation that produced the country’s first Black president is also the generation that is seeing the advances made in civil rights during [=>]
Boston Marathon bombing
May 9, 2013The Boston Marathon bombing follows mass killings in the past year in an Aurora, Colo., theater, at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The body count might have risen sharply if the bombs had been of dynamite like what killed four little girls in 1963 at a Birmingham church, or of the fertilizer type that killed 168 people and destroyed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, instead of relatively low-tech gunpowder bombs made by amateur bombers.
The politics of degenerate capitalism
May 2, 2013The 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.
Attacks on organizing
April 6, 2013The number of unionized workers in the U.S. last year dropped by 400,000 members, to 14.3 million workers. Assaults on unions like right-to-work legislation in Indiana and Michigan and laws narrowing the right to union representation in Wisconsin had a huge impact on unions. The most important development is the transformation of union leadership from being militant fighters to contract concessionary specialists and corporation supporters.
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 [=>]
‘We are one’ campaign
May 21, 2011Oakland, Calif.–Dozens of labor groups rallied at Frank Ogawa Plaza on April 4th as part of the nationwide We Are One campaign in support of public sector employees in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana. It was the 43rd anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination. King had gone to Memphis, Tenn., to join Black sanitation workers’ struggle [=>]
Militant labor and corporate attacks
May 15, 2011Detroit–A new militant spirit in labor is now coming into play, sparked by the militant struggle against the onslaught of Wisconsin unionized public workers. This opposition is re-energizing the union movement and producing new leaders who are expressing their opposition to their own union leaders and their concessionary mentality. There is positive promise in these [=>]
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 [=>]
May-June 2011 issue of News & Letters is available online
May 6, 2011News & Letters, Vol. 56, No. 3
May-June 2011
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2011-2011
Revolution and counter-revolution take world stage
Revolution and counter-revolution have forced their way to the center stage of history. In Tunisia and Egypt, revolutions have opened tremendous possibilities and spread the fire of their passion all across the Arab world and from China to the [=>]
NYC pro-union rallies
April 12, 2011New York–There have been union rallies here and throughout the state every day to protest the unionbusting legislation in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio as well as the anti-union budget proposals put forth by New York City Mayor Bloomberg and New York Governor Cuomo. These budget proposals would lead to renegotiating pensions, gutting seniority rights and layoffs of [=>]
I love LA, not job cuts
April 9, 2011From the March-April 2011 issue of News & Letters:
Los Angeles–On Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, over 700 city workers gathered for one hour at City Hall under the theme “I love LA” to protest cuts in city services and layoffs, with more furloughs and deferred raises. A speaker said that the $588 million giveback from deferred [=>]
Michigan support rally
April 7, 2011Lansing, Mich.–It was a dreary, overcast, cold day at the Capitol building here on Feb. 26 when over 2,000 came from all over the state to show solidarity with workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere. Driving in from Detroit, one could pick out those heading for the rally by the bumper stickers on their cars.
The sound [=>]
Readers’ Views (March-April 2011)
April 2, 2011THE MIDDLE EAST EXPLODES: WHAT HAPPENS AFTER?
The Middle East events are bringing lots of people to talk about 1979 as well as the 2009 movements in Iran. I appreciated Raha’s essay in the Jan.-Feb. issue, Philosophy and Iran’s revolution: Where to now? because it raises the question of what could go wrong right now in [=>]
In-person report: Wisconsin at front line of class war
March 23, 2011Madison, Wisc.–Day after day, tens of thousands of people–and over 100,000 on Feb. 26–have taken to the streets around the Wisconsin State Capitol building. They filled the Capitol rotunda with protest signs and rallies for over a week. As you walk towards the Capitol you can hear loud chanting and drum playing spilling out of [=>]
Corporate assaults on workers and women
March 20, 2011Editorial:
As the national assault against the working class in the U.S. increases, most openly evidenced by the orchestrated attacks aimed at destroying public employees’ unions, workers and their unions are challenging these vicious attacks. The most blatant attack, by Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin–who introduced legislation to eliminate the right of public worker unions [=>]
March-April 2011 issue of News & Letters available on the web
March 17, 2011New issue of News & Letters is now available on the web:
News & Letters, Vol. 56, No. 2
March – April 2011
Lead
Revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya shake world order
The revolutionary movement that began in Tunisia in December, when 26-year-old street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi burned himself to death in protest at the confiscation of his unlicensed [=>]