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  • Monthly Review Essays
  • Malcolm X / Africa

    Malcolm X’s revolutionary trip to Africa

    Originally published: Toward Freedom on May 22, 2023 by African Stream (more by Toward Freedom)  | (Posted May 24, 2023)

    African Stream tells the story of Malcolm X’s political transformation that led to his assassination a few months after his return.

  • Hundreds of activists took to the streets on March 4, uplifting the anti-imperialist women’s movement / credit: Hannah Ballesteros

    International Women’s Alliance uplifts militant grassroots struggles in first U.S.-based conference

    Originally published: Toward Freedom on March 14, 2023 by Julie Varughese (more by Toward Freedom)  | (Posted Mar 16, 2023)

    Hundreds of mostly women gathered at Catholic University’s Maloney Hall during the first weekend of March to convene the first U.S.-based conference of a worldwide grassroots women’s network called the International Women’s Alliance, as well as help strengthen its fledgling U.S. chapter.

  • Before Crips: Fussin’, Cussin’, and Discussin’ Among South Los Angeles Juvenile Gangs by John C. Quicker and Akil S. Batani-Khalfani (Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 2022)

    Book Review: ‘Before Crips’ dismantles dominant narrative on gangs

    Originally published: Toward Freedom on November 29, 2022 by Danny Shaw (more by Toward Freedom)  | (Posted Nov 30, 2022)

    For the past several decades, the media has severely manipulated the question of gangs and their socio-economic origins. John C. Quicker and Akil S. Batani-Khalfani’s new book, “Before Crips: Fussin’, Cussin’, and Discussin’” among South Los Angeles Juvenile Gangs, exposes the mainstream stigmas and half-truths surrounding gangs.

  • Black political organizations and other anti-imperialist groups condemned the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) raiding early Friday morning the properties of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) and its solidarity organization in Saint Louis, Missouri, and in Saint Petersburg, Florida. Based on the description, APSP appears to be one of several unidentified groups and people implicated in a 25-page indictment of a Russian national, Aleksandr Ionov. The Moscow-based founder of the nonprofit Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR) has been accused of attempting to influence U.S.-based groups to turn against the United States and work in favor of Russia. “Anyone who opposes U.S. imperialism or who has made common cause internationally is endangered,” Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Margaret Kimberley wrote on Facebook. “Not surprising that a Black organization is the first on their hit list.” The raid began at 5 a.m. July 29 at the Saint Louis home of APSP Chairman Omali Yeshitela and his wife and APSP Deputy Chair, Ona Zené Yeshitela. Yeshitela said in a Facebook livestream later that day that the APSP was targeted for its support of Russia during the military operation the country has been undertaking in Ukraine since February 24. Among several allegations, the FBI accused Ionov’s group of paying U.S. activists to attend two conferences in Russia. It also said Ionov helped a group conduct a tour in the United States to drum up support for a petition charging the U.S. government with committing genocide against African descendants. Yeshitela admitted meeting with Ionov twice in Russia. “Suddenly, we’re supposed to become tools, like Black people don’t have minds of our own to find out what our reality is and who’s responsible for it,” Yeshitela said in the livestream. “It’s white people doing self-criticism and uniting to give money. That’s where the money is coming from, Uncle Sam.” ‘Crisis’ of U.S. Imperialism Yeshitela said while the United States was targeting Black activists, it has failed diplomatically. “They’re doing this, in part, because not a single African country—not even neocolonial sycophants—want to unite with the United States and the United Nations in terms of how they are targeting Russia in this Ukraine-Russia question,” he said, referring to the economic sanctions slapped on Russia after it entered Ukraine in February. When Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky recently held a virtual meeting with African countries, 93 percent of heads of state did not attend, despite Western pressure. “This exposes the crisis the United States, that U.S. imperialism, is in,” said APSP Director of Agitation and Propaganda Akilé Anai in a livestreamed press conference in Saint Petersburg. Anai said FBI agents lured her outside her home early Friday morning, saying her car had been broken into. Upon opening her car, they forced her to hand over her devices, she said. Yeshitela, 80, said he and Ona were awoken Friday morning to the sound of a voice blaring through a megaphone outside their home, asking them to come outside with their hands up. Flashbang grenades were set off throughout the working-class Saint Louis neighborhood, Yeshitela added. He also said a drone almost hit Ona’s face after she opened the home’s front door. Law enforcement agents lately have deployed drones into buildings to conduct a visual search before agents enter. Yeshitela said FBI agents handcuffed the couple and forced them to sit on the street curb while agents scoured their home. “They indicated they had a search warrant related to the indictment,” he said. The FBI freed the couple after several hours, but not without confiscating from their home all of their devices, such as computers and phones, according to Yeshitela’s livestreamed account. The FBI was unavailable as of press time. Black Scare, Red Scare Black activists have long denounced the U.S. government’s anti-communist rhetoric going back to the early 20th century, saying such calls to take down communists really have translated into attempts to dismantle Black liberation movements and other liberation movements in the United States. “In reality, what anti-communism/anti-Marxism does is to transform anything counter-hegemonic or non-conforming into subversion, foreignness, or disloyalty by punishing it as communist, communist inspired, or communist infiltrated and therefore illegal, illicit or criminal,” said Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly in a recent talk. Burden-Stelly, an associate professor of African-American Studies at Wayne State University, has written a soon-to-be-released book, Black Scare, Red Scare (2023). It attempts to document how the U.S. government’s anti-communist policies repress Black and other oppressed people for organizing for their liberation. This, she has said, helps to protect what she calls “racial capitalism,” in which the most degrading labor is forced upon increasingly exploited racialized groups. U.S. Government’s ‘Hysterical Response’ Black political groups denounced large segments of the U.S. political left for believing Black activists are stooges of Russia, or the former Soviet Union. “We agree that APSP doesn’t have to apologize for fighting for justice for all oppressed and particularly African People like our ancestors Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and the Black Panther Party who were spied on, jailed and assassinated for standing up for the freedom and justice for African People worldwide,” said the central committee of Pan-Africanist organization All-African People’s Revolutionary Party in a statement issued Saturday. Activists like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., who were called communists, were assassinated. Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey, who advocated for the unification of Africa under Pan-Africanism and the end of European colonialism in Africa, was briefly imprisoned in Atlanta for what some consider the politically motivated charge of mail fraud. Trinidad and Tobago-born U.S.-based communist Claudia Jones—after whom Toward Freedom‘s summer editorial internship was named—was deported to the United Kingdom for her activism. “We believe this repression to be a hysterical response to the United States’ loss of legitimacy in the context of the deepening crisis of capitalism and U.S. global hegemony,” said the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP)’s Coordinating Committee in a statement released Saturday. “The unleashing of policing and counterintelligence forces domestically and increased militarism and warmongering abroad in the name of national security are the only avenues left to the U.S. ruling class that is engulfed in an irreversible economic crisis. They represent the hallmarks of a naked fascism that the U.S. ruling class appears to be increasingly committed to in order to maintain the rule of capital.” Then BAP added a warning in its statement. “While it is APSP today, it will ultimately be the rest of us tomorrow. Resistance is our only option.” Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom. AFRICAN PEOPLES REVOLUTIONARY PARTY ALEKSANDR IONOV ANTI-GLOBALIZATION MOVEMENT OF RUSSIA BLACK LIBERATION MOVEMENT BLACK LIVES MATTER BLACK PEOPLE CAPITALISM FBI IMPERIALISM INDICTMENT RUSSIA UKRAINE Related Articles Filipinos Call Out Marcos-Duterte Government in War-Torn Philippines Book Review: The Late Glen Ford’s ‘The Black Agenda’ Lays Out Blueprint for Honest Journalism 9 Arrested in Police Crackdown on Protests in Tunisia Ahead of Constitutional Referendum Struggle for Justice Continues in Panama Real Debt Trap: Sri Lanka Owes Vast Majority to West, Not to China Haitians Looked to China & Russia to End UN Mandate, Renewed for 1 More Year RELATED ARTICLES Truck containing group of Afro-Colombians during strike Racism, Exclusion and State Violence: The Brutal Repression of Peaceful Protest in Colombia Belarusian regime-change activist Roman Protasevich armed with an assault rifle in a neo-Nazi Azov Battalion uniform in Ukraine / credit: The GrayZone Media Coverage of Belarusian Airplane Arrest Fits Pattern of New Cold War Village of Karaglukh in the Hadrut Province of Nagorno-Karabakh / credit by Maxim atayants is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 Armenia, Hostage of Russia and Turkey Amid Power Play SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER TRENDING 9 Arrested in Police Crackdown on Protests in Tunisia Ahead of Constitutional Referendum Struggle for Justice Continues in Panama Real Debt Trap: Sri Lanka Owes Vast Majority to West, Not to China Haitians Looked to China & Russia to End UN Mandate, Renewed for 1 More Year

    ‘Tools of Russia’: FBI raid on Black Political Party seen as part of ‘Black Scare/Red Scare’ in United States

    Originally published: Toward Freedom on July 31, 2022 by Julie Varughese (more by Toward Freedom)  | (Posted Aug 02, 2022)

    Black political organizations and other anti-imperialist groups condemned the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) raiding early Friday morning the properties of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) and its solidarity organization in Saint Louis, Missouri, and in Saint Petersburg, Florida.

  • A residential block in the Petrovsky District in the west end of the city of Donetsk was recently hit by alleged Ukrainian military shelling.

    ‘God will sort them out’: Ukrainians of Donbass beg NATO to end war

    Originally published: Toward Freedom on May 25, 2022 by Fergie Chambers (more by Toward Freedom)  | (Posted May 28, 2022)

    The Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine reached its 90th day and the Western press continues to be inundated with unverified claims of war crimes Russian forces allegedly have committed. Accusations have been lodged against the Russian military for mass graves in Bucha, a narrative which has been widely accepted in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries.

  • The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock and the Washington Post (Simon & Schuster: New York, 2021)

    ‘The Afghanistan Papers’ leaves a critical question unanswered

    Originally published: Toward Freedom on May 13, 2022 by Patterson Deppen (more by Toward Freedom)  | (Posted May 16, 2022)

    While Afghanistan may finally be free of outside military occupation, Afghans are still suffering the deadly consequences of 40 years of U.S.-led subversion and war.

  • Protesters on February 10 holding signs that read, “No war with Russia”

    Ukrainian Refuseniks on why many won’t fight for Ukraine

    Originally published: Toward Freedom on April 12, 2022 by Fergie Chambers (more by Toward Freedom)  | (Posted Apr 18, 2022)

    Aside from reports of civilians volunteering in a variety of non-military support roles, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky and other state officials have urged civilians to take up arms. Then, on March 9, Zelensky approved a law that allows Ukrainians to use weapons during wartime and negates legal responsibility for any attack on people perceived to be acting in aggression against Ukraine. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense even posted a graphic online with instructions on how to launch Molotov cocktails at tanks.

  • In Bogotá during Colombia’s national strike, two women hold placards that say, “We didn’t give birth to children of war” and “They got firearms, we got fire in our soul” / credit: Antonio Cascio

    After decades of oppression, Colombian women lead front lines of National Strike

    Originally published: Toward Freedom on May 28, 2021 by Natalia Torres Garzon (more by Toward Freedom)  | (Posted Jun 09, 2021)

    “Far too many women are fighting—not only for their rights, but for the rights of all,” says Yomali Torres, an Afro-Colombian activist. The 26-year-old joined throngs of women in the streets of Colombia over the past month to demand an end to patriarchal oppression at the hands of a U.S.-backed neoliberal state.

  • Ramiro Sebastián Fúnez

    Q&A: Filmmaker Ramiro Sebastián Fúnez on “Nicaragua Against Empire” & Getting the story right

    Originally published: Toward Freedom on May 24, 2021 by Julie Varughese interviewing Ramiro Sebastián Fúnez (more by Toward Freedom)  | (Posted Jun 08, 2021)

    The delegation I was on was called, “No to Sanctions in Nicaragua.” The ATC is Nicaragua’s oldest and strongest peasant workers union that played a central role in the Sandinista Revolution and was the organization that facilitated the land redistribution of over 4 million acres to peasants from the landlords, owned by the Somoza family dynasty. – Ramiro Sebastián Fúnez

  • ‘Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture’

    Book Review: ‘Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture’

    Originally published: Toward Freedom on May 21, 2021 by Danny Shaw (more by Toward Freedom)  | (Posted Jun 07, 2021)

    Surrounded by assasination plots and having been deceived from all sides, Louverture “was extremely reluctant to communicate his intentions even to his leading military officers, or to share power with them in any meaningful way.”

  • A shantytown in São Paulo, Brazil, borders the much more affluent Morumbi district. Credit: Tuca Vieira / Oxfam

    The Billionaire boom: 82% of global wealth produced last year went to richest 1%

    Originally published: Toward Freedom on January 22, 2018 (more by Toward Freedom)  |

    Forida is a 22-year-old sewing machine operator in a clothing factory in Dahka, Bangladesh. She often works 12-hour days producing clothes for brands such as H&M and Target. Sometimes, during busy production cycles, the hours are even longer.

  • Protesters march at the G20 Summit in London, 2009.

    Dilemmas of the radical left in a dying capitalist system

    Originally published: Toward Freedom on August 15, 2017 (more by Toward Freedom)  |

    In what I call the pan-European world (North America; western, northern, and southern Europe; and Australasia), the basic electoral choice for the last century or so has been between two centrist parties, center-right versus center-left. There have been other parties further left and further right but they were essentially marginal.

  • Fascist torch march in Charlottesville (8/11/2017)

    Mobilizing against the fascist creep

    Originally published: Toward Freedom on August 17, 2017 by E.Z. Kay (more by Toward Freedom)  | (Posted Aug 18, 2017)

    When economic crisis grips a nation, when contradictions within the ruling class and the state create instability and social upheaval, fascists act as the foot soldiers of capitalism. Their function is to disrupt and destroy efforts on the part of the working-class and oppressed masses to organize against their miserable conditions.

Monthly Review Essays

  • Parallel Universes
    Andy Merrifield

    Anybody who’s ever leafed through Finnegans Wake will quickly recognize that we’re not dealing here with a standard novel, just as anybody leafing through Marx’s Capital will know we’re not dealing with standard economics.

Lost & Found

  • The Rise and Fall of the United Farm Workers
    Michael D. Yates Cesar Chavez (center) marches with United Farm Workers members in Redondo Beach, California, July 9, 1975.

    Chavez could not abide the idea, much less the reality, that the farm workers themselves could and should run the union.

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