For equality, against bigotry

Anti-fascism, anti-racism, fighting anti-semitism, lesbian/gay/bisexual rights, immigration and asylum, travellers, women's rights and feminism, ...

Secularism is a women's issue: an interview with Marieme Helie-Lucas

Marieme Helie Lucas is an Algerian sociologist and the founder and former International Coordinator of the “Women Living Under Muslim Laws” international solidarity organization. Helie Lucas also is the founder of “Secularism is a Women’s Issue.” Helie Lucas has long been a critic of Western human rights organizations’ sole focus on the crimes of the state as opposed to the crimes of non-state actors. She is a fierce champion of secularism in governance and a harsh critic of all forms of religious fundamentalism. She was previously interviewed by Workers’ Liberty here . This interview was...

2018 day schools: Marxism, national questions, and nationalisms

Marxism, national questions, and nationalisms Selected reading (fuller list below): http://www.workersliberty.org/files/180217nationalquestion.pdf Agenda: 1. Basics from our tradition: the Marxist debates on the national question before 1914 2. How Orthodox Trotskyism skewed the tradition 4. Ireland 5. Israel-Palestine 6. Catalonia and the "Norwegian way" Reading: Trotsky's summary of the Bolsheviks and pre-1914 socialist debates on the national question - http://www.workersliberty.org/node/30022 Lenin - The Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1913: his longest summing-up text on the issue...

Workers' Control, Not Immigration Controls

A 2006 pamphlet from the No-One Is Illegal Campaign, setting out the labour-movement case against immigration controls. Click here to download the PDF.

Algerian feminists comment on France's "Hijab Day"

We republish commentaries from three Algerian feminists on the recent "Hijab Day" in Paris. Introduction By Marieme Helie-Lucas On Wednesday, April 20 2016 , some students at the prestigious Paris Institute of Political Sciences which prides itself with educating France’s elite, organized a "Hijab Day", a replica of the worldwide event that was initiated in 2013. It is supposed to help non-veiled non-Muslim students realize how discrimination affects veiled women. This will no doubt come as a surprise to many English-speaking readers who still believe that veiling is legally banned in France...

The 13 November attacks in Paris: the terror of the Islamic State, the state of emergency in France, our responsibilities

Pierre Rousset and François Sabado are prominent members of the Nouvel Parti Anticapitaliste (New Anticapitalist Party, NPA), France's largest far-left party. They are both veterans of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (Revolutionary Communist League, LCR), the Trotskyist group which founded the NPA and then dissolved into it. This article was originally written for the Spanish-language site Viento Sur, and is online here . It was also reproduced on the Secularism Is A Women's Issue site, here . Workers' Liberty also republished Rousset's comments after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo...

Challenging fundamentalism: Workers' Liberty in further conversation with Marieme Helie-Lucas

In March 2015, Algerian sociologist and revolutionary socialist-feminist Marieme Helie Lucas spoke to Solidarity , the newspaper of Workers' Liberty, about the Muslim far-right, and the struggle for secularism, women's rights, and socialism (click here ). Here, we continue the conversation. Workers' Liberty: You argued that the "religious"/"Islamic" character of Islamism is dubious. You pointed out that often, Islamists twist religious doctrines to suit political ends, and that Islamism should be understood politically as a far-right, populist phenomenon, similar to fascism. This all makes...

Rights for migrants! Workers' unity!

As we go to press on 17 March, up to 300 detainees at the Harmondsworth immigrant removal centre near London are reported on hunger strike. And detainees at up to seven other centres, out of Britain’s eleven holding about 3,000 people at any one time, have joined the protest for shorter or longer spans of time. Because of the conditions in the centres, it is hard to know exactly what the detainees’ demands are, but reports include calls for: •cancellation of a deportation flight to Pakistan •a 28-day limit on detention •immediate release of disabled, elderly, pregnant, or mentally unwell...

After the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher Jewish supermarket: thinking through the new and rethinking the old

Pierre Rousset is a long-standing member of the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), and its predecessor organisation the Revolutionary Communist League (Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, LCR) in France. This article, discussing the political implications of the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and at shoppers at a kosher supermarket, was first published on the Europe Solidaire website here , and was translated into English by Nathan Rao, and published on the Secularism Is A Women's Issue (SIAWI) network website here . We should start with a worrying observation. Heads of state understood the importance...

Stop the "anti-prostitute" vigilantes! (1994)

LEAVE ASIDE for the moment the question of whether or not they should do such a thing. What hap- pens when you set a gang of men - any men - to roam the streets as vigilantes, harassing, bullying, and intimidating prostitute women? They will soon be harassing, bullying, and intimidating women who are not prostitutes - women who by their gait, clothes, make-up, or behaviour, or where they happen to be on a street or in a neighbourhood, look to the gang of men "like prostitutes". Already here we have crossed the line from facts — women known for certain to be prostitutes — to the judgement of...

The Catholic Church:1. From Hollywood To Rome

Taking advantage of what is left of my rights, I hereby serve notice of intention to join in the public discussions stirred up by President Truman's decision to send a United States ambassador to the Vatican. And if you expect me to be calm and politely restrained in my utterances, you're in for a disappointment. I was burned up about the encroachments of authoritarian clericalism long before the President's decision was announced. His latest stroke of statesmanship just added a little fuel to the flames which have been scaring my tender flesh. This is not a debate, properly speaking. From the...

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