Nuclear safety experts warn that sweeping cuts to oversight rules could undermine environmental safeguards as the White House races to bring new reactors online by 2026, says CHAUNCEY K ROBINSON
Latest editorial
Bell Hooks changed how we think about black femininity, class and capitalism
bell hooks
Engels’ call for a structured, systematic, critique of capitalism and for a strategy for securing something better remains as relevant today as it did a century and a half ago, declares the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
As the Stop the War Coalition holds its annual conference, ANDREW MURRAY warns that Britain’s alignment with US foreign policy is fuelling global instability and diverting billions from welfare, wages and public services
ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the tension between treating children as vulnerable dependants and recognising them as citizens with rights
The tightening of protest rights reflects a broader shift toward repression in Britain’s strained liberal democracy. Socialists and trade unionists must be ready to resist further attacks on our freedoms, warns JOHN McINALLY
Until ministers stop deferring to the market and start drawing hard lines, the public will remain at the mercy of private power, says MATT KERR
“I choose to re-appropriate the term ‘feminism’, to focus on the fact that to be ‘feminist’ in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.”
– bell hooks in “Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism,” 1981
THE world lost a trailblazing thinker and feminist last week. Professor and social activist Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen-name bell hooks, passed away at the age of 69. She leaves behind a legacy of work that challenged status quo thinking on gender roles, black femininity, class, and capitalism.
Her family issued a statement that hooks died Wednesday in Berea, Kentucky. The iconic educator was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky to a working-class African-American family. She was one of six children born to Rosa Bell and Veodis Watkins.
Her father worked as a janitor while her mother was as a maid in the homes of white families. hooks would go onto complete her doctorate in English at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1987 with a dissertation on another prolific black woman author, Toni Morrison.
Similar stories
The pioneering activist understood that freedom could only be won through solidarity across communities. Her legacy offers vital lessons at a time when progressive politics risks losing that shared purpose
The Morning Star republishes PRAGNA PATEL’s speech at the annual commemoration of Claudia Jones on February 22 2026
Professor MARY DAVIS argues that feminism has been hollowed out by liberal co-option – and only a revival of socialist, class-based politics can restore International Working Women’s Day’s original, radical purpose
Held at a last-minute undisclosed venue amid fear of disruption, a Women’s Rights Network event brought together authors and activists, offering a day of debate on feminism’s past, present and future. JADE MIDDLETON reports
Sisters came together last weekend for the landmark launch of a new women’s group. ROS SITWELL reports