May 2001

NOW MORE THAN EVER, WE NEED YOUR HELP!

It did not take "100 days" for George W. Bush to establish what has distinguished his retrogressive reign-the unprecedented speed of his attacks on all the forces for freedom.

On his very first day in office, women's right to choose was in his gunsight as he outlawed funds for any international organizations that counsel women on family planning or abortion. The most blatant of his immediate attacks on labor came with the killing of OSHA's ergonomics regulations in face of serious job-related injuries, from back injuries to carpal tunnel syndrome, suffered every year by over half a million workers.

At the same time, so many potentially lethal environmental attacks were perpetrated against us in the first "100 days," it seems an endless list-ranging from the scrapping of new regulations to reduce cancer-causing arsenic in drinking water to withdrawing U.S. support for the international agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

Perhaps most potentially deadly of all was Bush's push for a massive missile defense system and a new generation of nuclear weapons.

It is not that this retrogressive onslaught was unexpected. The multidimensional protests against his selection for the presidency were likewise unprecedented. That opposition was the strongest on the part of the Black masses, who have always felt capitalism's oppression the most sharply, whether measured in poverty, unemployment and the prison warehousing of youth or the ever growing police brutality against the Black community.

The outrage that exploded in Cincinnati last month may well be seen as triggered by Black opposition to Bush's national policies as by the fifteenth killing of a Black man by the Cincinnati police in the last six years.

The voices of revolt were heard loud and clear as well at the protest in Quebec City, of tens of thousands of youth especially, against global capitalism's attempt to drive us down to the most barbaric level of this degenerate system.

These voices from below are heard in every issue of NEWS & LETTERS, unseparated from the articulation of the philosophy of revolution of Marxist-Humanism. Never was it more important to keep alive a paper like NFL as a crucial part of deepening the struggle against the retrogression that threatens us all. BUT WE CANNOT DO IT WITHOUT YOUR HELP.

Although we continue to have no paid staff, the costs for keeping us alive have kept rising. We have been hit hard this year with increased rent, increased postage costs, and increased printing prices. At the same time, we feel it crucial to bring out a new edition of AMERICAN CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL: BLACK MASSES AS VANGUARD -which continues to prove itself in life with every new revolutionary development in America since the birth of the Civil Rights Movement. In addition, in conjunction with this we are planning to issue a new pamphlet on Black America in the 21st century as well as a collection of philosophic essays published in NEWS & LETTERS.

NEVER WAS YOUR HELP MORE NEEDED! PLEASE GIVE AS GENEROUSLY AS YOU CAN TO HELP KEEP US ALIVE!
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