activism
With a growing awareness of mounting ecological, economic, political, and social problems, there exists many growing currents of response.
While many people are waking up and getting involved, many more are burning out. They've taken in too much depressing information about how the world is out of control, and they're just shutting down. How can we turn the tide? What's the secret to transforming apathy into resolve?
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Monday April 26. 7pm. Liberty Hall. 644 Mass St. $3. 95 min.
Watch the Trailer.
We hope you can make it out for our first film screening of the year. If you'd like to help out invite all your Lawrence friends. We're looking forward to this!
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Successful political movements do not spring fully formed. They require long-term, nuts-and-bolts organizing.
Since the summer of 2003, I've crisscrossed the country speaking at colleges and theaters and bookstores, first with The Weather Underground documentary and, starting in March of this year, with my book, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen (William Morrow, 2009). In discussions with young people, they often tell me, “Nothing anyone does can ever make a difference.”
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Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not “set them free” but instead further demoralize them? Has such a demoralization happened in the United States? Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further? What forces have created a demoralized, passive, disCouraged U.S. population? Can anything be done to turn this around?
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In anticipation of Labor Day, a coalition of labor, environmental and community groups has called on Wal-Mart - the country's largest retailer - to "join them in supporting the core American values of worker rights, quality jobs, equal opportunity, corporate responsibility and a healthy environment."
"Labor Day is an important time to reflect on the state of the American workplace and worker. As the world's largest retailer, and America's No. 1 private employer, Wal-Mart has the largest, most profound impact on jobs and on our economy," said United Food and Commercial Workers Vice President Pat O'Neill, a leader of the coalition. "Nobody wants an economy where workers earn wages that can't support a family. Nobody wants an economy where people who go to work everyday and work hard have to turn to public assistance for basic needs."
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Deep in a recession and with scary ecological scenarios looming, now may be the ripest moment we’ll ever have to power-shift global capitalism onto a new path. Adbusters #85 asks economics students around the world to join the fight to revamp Econ 101 curriculums and challenge the endemic myopia of their tenured neoclassical profs. Go to KICKITOVER.ORG, read a few texts, download the Kick it Over Manifesto (and other posters) and whack them up in the corridors of your campus. Make sure your university is at the forefront of the paradigm shift from neoclassical to ecological economics now underway. If you’re an economics student, email kevin@adbusters.org to receive a free copy of Adbusters #85.
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Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?
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We've been busy the last few days developing a widget that makes it easy to add Films For Action videos to your own blog or website in minutes. Our first widget displays the six most recent videos being watched on the FFA site, continually updating to provide a fresh stream of indy-media content. By clicking on the Grab and Share link at the bottom of the widget you can copy the paste the widget code directly into your site.
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In general, Earth Day is still being used primarily to sell crap that won't make a difference. Our inboxes were still flooded with press announcements touting Earth Day solar bikinis; Earth Day buy-this-thing-and-we'll-plant-a-tree promotions; Earth Day specials on a greener SUV.
There are no simple steps worth caring about. We'll only head off disaster by taking steps -- together -- that are massive, societal and thorough. Most of what needs to be done involves political engagement, systems redesign, and cultural change. It can't be done in an afternoon and then forgotten about.
So screw the little things. Here are 10 big, difficult, world-changing concepts we can get behind.
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All is not well in Obamafanland. It's not clear exactly what accounts for the change of mood. Maybe it was the rancid smell emanating from Treasury's latest bank bailout. Or the news that the president's chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, earned millions from the very Wall Street banks and hedge funds he is protecting from reregulation now. Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard. This is a good thing.
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The local City Commission election that was held last week for Lawrence, KS brought out a dismally low-turnout, just shy of 14%. No doubt similarly low turnouts are common across the U.S. Why does America just not seem to give a damn?
As Tim Hjersted writes, “For most kids today, being politically involved is just another option in the vast sea of options. Just another ‘something’ that we can choose to identify with and use to construct our personal brand of ME, much like our choices of music and movies and hobbies and clothes all so perfectly define us.”
Covering the influence of media, to the decline of newspaper readership, to the mind poison of TV news, the article runs of the gamut of apathy-inducing feedback loops. Some lively feedback has sprung up in the comments section. Leave yours.
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Obama's populist rhetoric conceals the true nature of macro-economic policy. Acting on behalf of Wall Street, the administration's economic package, which includes close to a trillion dollar "aid" package for the financial services industry, coupled with massive austerity measures, contributes to precipitating America into a bottomless crisis.
When people across America, whose lives have been shattered and destroyed, come to realize the true face of the global "free market" system, the legitimacy of Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the US administration will be challenged. A latent protest movement directed against the seat of economic and political power is unfolding.
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It's not a new trend: A wave of upheaval is spreading from the poorer countries on the periphery of the global economy to the prosperous core. Over the past few years, a series of riots spread across what is patronizingly known as the Third World. Furious mobs have raged against skyrocketing food and energy prices, stagnating wages and unemployment in India, Senegal, Yemen, Indonesia, Morocco, Cameroon, Brazil, Panama, the Philippines, Egypt, Mexico and elsewhere. For the most part, those living in wealthier countries took little notice. But now, with the global economy crashing down around us, people in even the wealthiest nations are mad as hell and reacting violently to what they view as an inadequate response to their tumbling economies.
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November 5. 2008 from Tarek Milleron on Vimeo.
The election is over and we must begin turning our country around now, or the opportunity may not come again. By quickly organizing ourselves in each of the 435 congressional districts, over the next 100 days, we can make single-payer healthcare, a living wage, and a less militaristic society our long-term reality. We must do this because the founders of these United States gave us the power to do it. Please watch the video and sign up today.
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Please visit Worldchanging's Inaugurate Change campaign to add your name to this letter that will urge Obama's administration to deliver a vital message about climate change in his very first speech as President.
On January 20th, 2009, President-Elect Obama will deliver his inaugural address. His words will set the tone for how we as a nation will rise to meet the crises we face, and how our allies abroad will respond.
We at Worldchanging believe the inaugural address must call on all Americans to prepare for a national transformation: to turn America into a climate-neutral nation by 2030. This is a monumental challenge, but it is an even better opportunity. The things we must create to fight climate change are also the things we need to generate a strong economic recovery: livable cities, clean energy, green jobs, new technologies, better transportation, healthy forests and thriving family farms.
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When Green For All founder and green jobs advocate Van Jones started writing The Green Collar Economy, it was a book about how to get green solutions to poor people. But by the time he was done and the book was released this fall, its scope had grown: Global warming had become common parlance, and the economy was on everyone's mind, regardless of class. His new book looks at how we can fix our environmental and economic crisis with a program that will create jobs, lower pollution and return some dignity to working Americans. It sounds great, but what's in the fine print? AlterNet's staff writer Joshua Holland and managing editor Tara Lohan sat down with Jones and talked about whether green jobs are actually legal under our international free trade agreements, what happens if we get an Obama White House, and how the progressive movement must go from "opposition to proposition, from protest to governance" in order to lead our country out of crisis.
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