Comparative Resilience: 8 Principles for Post-COVID Reconstruction

This past weekend, a bright Georgetown undergraduate asked me how I squared my passion for localization with the theory of comparative advantage. For economics newbies, he was referring to David Ricardo’s argument that every community should find one product to specialize in...

Michael Shuman

The Decade of Transformation Is Here: Remaking the Economy for the People

The pandemic, economic collapse and the government’s response to them are going to not only determine the 2020 election but define the future for this decade and beyond. People are seeing the failure of the US healthcare nonsystem and the economy. The government was able to...

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

NOTES FROM QUARANTINE

Josh Liveright

Building the New America

I: The American Reality America was founded on a dream. It was a dream that all people, from all the war-torn and disease-ridden corners of the earth, could come to this new-age Promised Land and build a common future side-by-side. It was half history, and half mythology...

Matthew R. Bishop

The Coronation: Charles Eisenstein's 9000 Word Epic on Covid-19

“Covid-19 is like a rehab intervention that breaks the addictive hold of normality. To interrupt a habit is to make it visible; it is to turn it from a compulsion to a choice. When the crisis subsides, we might have occasion to ask whether we want to return to normal, or...

Charles Eisenstein

"We" Are Not Humanity: A Refutation of the "Humanity is a Virus" Thesis

As awareness spreads of the ecocidal consequences of our civilisation, I increasingly hear opinions to the effect that humanity is nothing but a plague, a parasite. A virus with shoes…

Shaun Chamberlin

30 Day Poetry Challenge

to Babalu Aye

Tai Amri Spann-Ryan

Workers Are More Valuable Than CEOs

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed a simple fact: it’s low-wage workers that make our society run — not bankers, landlords, or CEOs.

Mindy Isser

Liberal Elite More Deadly Than Coronavirus

As the coronavirus pandemic spreads, millionaires and billionaires, who have been key to oppressing the working class, are trying to position themselves as everyday Americans. We need to understand them for what they are: beneficiaries and key supporters of the capitalist...

Mike Pappas

Reimagine, Don’t Seize, the Means of Production

A promising commons-based approach for the digital age.

Stacco Troncoso and Ann Marie Utratel

Five Habits to Heal the Heart of Democracy

The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions? And do we have enough resolve in our...

Parker Palmer

The Highest Act of Love In a Criminally Insane Society is Disobedience

Our consumer culture is collective insanity and it's driving us to destruction, says clinical psychologist John F Schumaker.

John Schumaker

No New Normal

“May you live in interesting times." A curse once assigned Chinese origin, now thought to be apocryphal, is deceptively mild until you realize you have no resistance to a novel, viral load of interestingness. We feel like we can’t blink, yet our eyelids are getting very...

Stacco Troncoso

The Senate Corporate Bailout Package Is a 'Robbery in Progress' Warn Critics

"We can call it a bailout. But this is so big it is more like Congress is creating a new government for our economy, replacing our old government. And this one doesn't have any meaningful democratic protections. A pandemic coup." —Zephyr Teachout, Fordham Law

Jake Johnson

Healthcare Workers Are at War, but Trump Isn't on Our Side

An NYC physician on the war against the coronavirus and the ongoing war against for-profit health care, Trump and capitalism itself. The coronavirus pandemic is magnifying capitalism’s complete inability to foster overall health and well being. We don’t just need a new...

Mike Pappas

The Coronavirus Crisis Is Political

In 2008, they told us not to “politicize” the crash. We ended up with a decade of austerity. The coronavirus crisis will reshape the economy in profound ways — now is the time to make socialist arguments about how to respond.

Grace Blakeley

Noam Chomsky: We Can't Let COVID-19 Drive Us Into Authoritarianism

As the COVID-19 pandemic turns the global political and economic order on its head, two vastly different futures appear possible.

Noam Chomsky

Bernie Sanders Would Be Crazy to Drop Out Now. It Would Also Be Bad for Biden.

Since Super Tuesday, one after the other, the arms of the corporate media and Democratic establishment have been calling for Bernie Sanders to drop out. While it is true that his path to victory has greatly narrowed (there’s no sugarcoating it), right now is not the time for...

Saib Bilaval

From Mutual Aid to Dual Power in the State of Emergency

The COVID-19 public health crisis is rapidly devolving into a vast, multi-faceted crisis of social reproduction with no end in sight. How can we seize this moment to build dual power?

Woodbine

No Return to Normal: For a Post-Pandemic Liberation

Today, new forms of solidarity, mutual aid, and common struggle are emerging in the pandemic. How will they shape tomorrow’s struggles for a post-capitalist world?

Max Haiven

HOLY SH*T! 7 Things to Do Instead of Hoarding Toilet Paper

Beautiful Trouble’s irreverent guide to activism in the time of pandemic

Rae Abileah and Nadine Bloch

A Debt Jubilee Is the Only Way to Avoid a Depression

Even before the novel coronavirus appeared, many American families were falling behind on student loans, auto loans, credit cards and other payments. America’s debt overhead was pricing its labor and industry out of world markets. A debt crisis was inevitable eventually, but...

Michael Hudson

What If You Thought of It as the Jews Consider the Sabbath— The Most Sacred of Times?

What if you thought of it as the Jews consider the Sabbath— the most sacred of times? Cease from travel. Cease from buying and selling. Give up, just for now, on trying to make the world different than it is. Sing. Pray. Touch only those to whom you commit your life. Center...

Lynn Ungar

Brother Richard Hendrick Wrote a Poem About the Coronavirus. It's Beautiful.

Yes there is fear.

Richard Hendrick

Humans Are Not a Virus - the Virus Is a Cultural Ideology

This bears repeating: Humans are not inherently toxic, sinfl or destructive. Humanity is not a cancer.

Tim Hjersted

The Coronavirus Rehearsal: Can Capitalism Survive The Coronavirus?

The coronavirus shutdown as a dress rehearsal for the reformation of late-capitalism to allow climate repair.

Eamonn Kelly

A Vote Against Bernie Sanders Is a Vote for the End of Human Civilization

Frightening commentary has emerged among liberals committing to a protest-vote against both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. Proponents argue that, in some undescribed way, their protest-vote will send to these front-runners the “signal” that they are not entitled to our...

Ariän El-Taher

To Stop the Cult of Trump We Need to Satisfy the Human Need for Meaning

Like all cult leaders, Trump fills a certain void for his followers. Stopping him means providing pathways to sustainable forms of spiritual fulfillment.

Michael Nagler

Joe Biden Isn't the Safe Bet to Beat Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders Is.

Joe Biden is a weak candidate who is more likely to lose to Donald Trump than Bernie Sanders. The best chance we have at ousting Trump is voting for Sanders in the rest of the primaries.

Will Meyer and Ashwin Ravikumar

Agenda 21: the UN, Sustainability and Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory

Virtually none of the outlandish claims about Agenda 21 are true. Yet, as with all such baseless propaganda, the hysteria over it has had the effect of poisoning any kind of rational discussion of the very real challenges we face — challenges that are essential to tackle...

Heidi Beirich

The One-Choice Election

There is only one choice in this election. The consolidation of oligarchic power under Donald Trump or the consolidation of oligarchic power under Joe Biden.

Chris Hedges

Rising for a Global Feminist Future With the Movement to Elect Bernie Sanders.

We are a coalition of feminists contending with both our differences and our commonality in age, race, class, religion, labor, and sexual orientation. We meet at the intersection of our fluid identities. Though our experiences are different, we share a vision of a feminist...

A Feminist Future

Trump's Real Base Is the Ruling Class

Trump has shown that he understands who his real and most powerful base is—the billionaire class—ever since his election.

Paul Street

Joe Biden Would Be Donald Trump's Dream Opponent

Donald Trump had the perfect opponent in the 2016 election. Running as a populist billionaire taking on the Washington elite, he couldn’t have asked for a better rival in Hillary Clinton, who carried heavy political baggage and who, for many, personified the so-called...

Conor Lynch

The Real Global Threat to 21st Century Freedom Is Authoritarian Capitalism Not Democratic Socialism

The fascists and plutocrats are not just coming... they are already here.

Peter Bloom

'Progress Comes From Changing How Humans Think' — a Conversation With 'Soldier of Peace' Paul K. Chappell

"What makes nonviolence so different from violence, is the way that nonviolence seeks to address and confront root causes of problems: violence addresses the symptoms and nonviolence goes at root cause of the problem."

Paul K. Chappell

We Are All One

Love, Peace and the Interconnection of All Life

Ebrajm

It's Medicare or Coronavirus-For-All

A healthy populace with regular access to affordable health care is the best defense against an epidemic like we now face.

Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan

Corporations Are Human Creations. We Can't Let Them Threaten Our Survival

The concentration of corporate power is driving us toward catastrophe. We need new organizational models that serve the common good.

David Korten

Trump Vs. Sanders: a Concise Comparison for Voters (And Why Bernie Wins Hands Down)

When there is a conflict between big business and the public good, on labor rights, consumer rights, small taxpayer respect, and environmental protections, Bernie has stood with the people.

Ralph Nader

Why We Need to Move Closer to King's Understanding of Nonviolence

Nonviolence is not simply the absence of violence, but about taking a proactive stand against violence and injustice, and working to repair the harm.

Kazu Haga

Six Rules for Organizing a Grassroots Regeneration Revolution

We must think, act and organize locally, while simultaneously cultivating a global vision and global solidarity.

Ronnie Cummins

Class: The Little Word the Elites Want You to Forget

The culture wars give the oligarchs, both Democrats and Republicans, the cover to continue the pillage.

Chris Hedges

Beware the Bipartisan Legion of Doom: Corporate Democrats and Trump's GOP

There is no more daunting and dangerous duo in U.S. politics than the profits-over-people corporate wing of the Democratic Party and the belligerent, bigoted, and brutal Republican Party of Donald Trump.

Roy Eidelson

Matriarchies Are Not Just a Reversal of Patriarchies: A Structural Analysis

Matriarchies are not just a reversal of patriarchies, with women ruling over men – as the usual misinterpretation would have it. Matriarchies are mother-centered societies. They are based on maternal values: care-taking, nurturing, mothering. This holds for everybody: for...

Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth

We’ve Got a Better World in Mind - 8 Principles for a Beautiful Future

How to get from here to there in the next 10 years

Christine Hanna and Berit Anderson

We Need Electoral Reform — and a Whole Lot More

The United States would be much better off with a multiparty, proportional representation system. But we shouldn't delude ourselves that this “one quick fix” would root out the rot that pervades America's political economy.

Chris Maisano

The New Story Revolution: Over 75 Films & Articles About the Movement With Many Names

"It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we are in between stories. The Old Story—the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it—sustained us for a long time. It shaped our emotional attitudes, provided us with life purpose, energized...

Tim Hjersted

Feminism and the Social Solidarity Economy: a Short Call to Action

The following text is a translation of Marian Díez‘s impassioned closing speech at the recent convergence meeting of the World Social Forum for Transformative Economies.

Marian Díez and Guerrilla Translation

Internationalism or Extinction

Capital is coordinated and globalized. Our struggles against injustice and oppression must be the same.

Noam Chomsky, Paul Shannon, Charles Derber and Suren Moodliar

'Toward a Brighter More Just Future': 100+ Black Writers and Scholars Endorse Bernie Sanders

"When so much is at stake, not only for Black people but for all people, and all life on the planet, we feel it imperative that we step outside of our classrooms and go beyond our campuses, to speak out on the current presidential election."

Jon Queally

Bernie Sanders Is the Unity Candidate

Despite the desperate smears from center-right opponents claiming he is "divisive," the reality is that Bernie Sanders’ policies are all about unity: common needs, mutual care, and a shared future.

Christopher D. Cook

Why the Russian Petro-State Is Actually Terrified of a Bernie Sanders Presidency: the Green New Deal

If millions of Americans started driving electric cars with Federal tax breaks and an end to gasoline subsidies, American petroleum demand would plummet.

Juan Cole

Every Challenge Can Be Overcome: 6 Ideas for Getting Started

There is no time for hopelessness. Here are some ideas for what we can do – now – to fight back against the attacks we know are coming.

Ed Goddard

The Important Word in ‘Democratic Socialism’ Is ‘Democratic’

Sen. Bernie Sanders isn’t talking about making America into Cuba or Venezuela. He’s talking about extending social guarantees like those offered in other advanced countries, such as Denmark and Sweden.

Jesse Jackson

Shut Down Canada Until It Solves Its War, Oil, and Genocide Problem

Indigenous people in Canada are giving the world a demonstration of the power of nonviolent action. The justness of their cause — defending the land from those who would destroy it for short term profit and the elimination of a habitable climate on earth — combined with their...

David Swanson

On February 6th Antarctica Was Warmer Than Orlando, or Why I Support Only Sanders

Even if we elect a better-than-Trump, half-measures candidate, we're still not better off. Our grandchildren will curse us all the same.

Thomas Neuburger

“Economics Is Not Just About Money; It's About Our Holistic Well-Being as a Planet”

Nonty Charity Sabic is cofounder of the international Rise Ubuntu Network, based on “ubuntu”, an indigenous South African philosophy that aims to teach and collectively remember the connection shared between humans and nature. Based in Barcelona, Sabic is involved in...

MarÍa Sanz DomÍnguez and Timothy McKeon

How to Turn Your Brain From Anger to Compassion

Attention is like a spotlight—whatever it shines on becomes brighter in the mind. This knowledge can help us build compassion, says Paul Gilbert.

Paul Gilbert

The End of the Corporation?

It’s time to make the profit-maximising, shareholder-controlled corporation obsolete.

Marjorie Kelly

Conversing with Nature: The Linguistic Roots of Environmental Consciousness

A CEMETERY SEEMED AN ODD PLACE to contemplate the boundaries of being. Sandwiched between the campus and the interstate, this old burial ground is our cherished slice of nearby nature where the long dead are silent companions to college students wandering the hilly paths...

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Towards a Regenerative Cosmology: Re-Inhabitation, Re-Enchantment, Re-Indigenisation

The ‘design’ brief to redesign the human impact on Earth from predominantly exploitative and destructive to by and large regenerative and health-generating invites us to ask fundamental questions that define the story we tell about the world and our role in it. Innovating...

Daniel Christian Wahl

It's Not Thanks to Capitalism That We're Living Longer, but Progressive Politics

Ignore the usual fairytale. Democracy, unions, healthcare and education: these are the forces that matter

Jason Hickel

Corporations Would Literally Kill You to Turn a Profit

Coca-Cola killed trade unionists in Latin America. General Motors built vehicles known to catch fire. Tobacco companies suppressed cancer research. And Boeing knew that its planes were dangerous. Corporations don't care if they kill people — as long as it's profitable.

Nicole M. Aschoff

Bernie Sanders Faces a Media Rigged Against Him

CNN and CBS do it. NPR and PBS do it. They all do it.

Jeff Cohen

What Do We Want? Unbiased Reporting! When Do We Want It? During Protests!

The new decade is just days old, but in one respect it is already shaping up like the last one: with mass protests around the world. Rallies for democracy overseas and

Danielle K. Kilgo

Ten Steps That Transform Anger Into Compassionate Connection

Practicing Nonviolent Communication guides us to reframe the way we listen to others and express ourselves by focusing our consciousness on four areas: what we are observing, feeling, needing and what we are requesting to enrich our lives. In this context the word need...

Center for Nonviolent Communication

The Invisible Ideology Trashing Our Planet

If you get into debt buying your child branded trainers, if you fear redundancy, if you suffer anxiety about the future of the planet and you blame yourself for all of these things then you are showing symptoms of drowning in the “insidious” and “sinister” ideology...

Brendan Montague

Regenerative Cultures, Regenerative Economics & Bioregional Regeneration

Some people are starting to talk about regenerative cultures as possible pathways towards a thriving future of people unfolding their unique potential within the context of the communities and regions they help to regenerate — cultures that are healthy, resilient and...

Daniel Christian Wahl

All I Ask Is That You See My Humanity, Which Means Seeing the Humanity in All People

With this foundation, I think we can have healthy disagreements.

Tim Hjersted

“Shit-Life Syndrome,” Trump Voters, and Clueless Dems

Getting rid of Trump means taking seriously “shit-life syndrome”—and its resulting misery, which includes suicide, drug overdose death, and trauma for surviving communities.

Bruce E. Levine

Bernie Sanders Isn't a Radical — He's a Pragmatist Who Fights to Un-Rig the System

Sanders would use both markets and government to reverse the upward redistribution of income to the already rich

Mark Weisbrot

Wall Street Invading Wet’suwet’en Territory

The uprising across Canada in support of Wet’suwet’en First Nation land defenders shows no sign of stopping. As of February 11, ports, bridges, rail lines, highways and roads have been blockaded across much of the country by solidarity protesters, who have also occupied the...

Joyce Nelson

Democrats Team up With Trump to Maintain Disastrous Healthcare System

Both Republicans and Democrats have blocked all attempts to build a rational, universal health care policy for the U.S. This is because capitalism prioritizes profit over the health and well-being of the working class. Creating a truly just health care system will require...

Mike Pappas

The Problem of Living Inside Echo Chambers

Pick any of the big topics of the day – Brexit, climate change or

C. Thi Nguyen

Think Twice Before Shouting Your Virtues Online – Moral Grandstanding Is Unhealthy

In an era of bitter partisanship, political infighting and ostracization of those with unpopular views, Americans actually agree on one thing: 85% say political discourse has gotten worse over the last several years, according to Pew Research.

Joshua B. Grubbs

America's Real Divide Isn't Left Vs. Right. It's Democracy Vs. Oligarchy

Divide-and-conquer allows the oligarchy free rein. It makes the rest of us puppets, fighting each other on a made-up stage.

Robert Reich

The New Year: Molding a New Reality

If you can dream it, you can do it,” is a famous quote attributed to Walt Disney or one of his staff.

John Perkins

The Candidate Who Best Represents Me Is The Only One Saying It's About Us

When Bernie says it's not about him, I see my values and fears and hopes represented in a way I never have before.

Cari Hernandez

The Vision of Wellbeing Economies

The concept of Wellbeing Economies (WE) does not attempt to explain the world through a central foundational economic model, nor does it recommend a particular path for achieving its goals. Rather, it is essentially a very pragmatic approach that begins not with a “system”...

Martin Oetting

Why Climate Action Is the Antithesis of White Supremacy

Behind the urgency of climate action is the understanding that everything is connected; behind white supremacy is an ideology of separation

Rebecca Solnit

The Transformative Power of Trustbuilding: Towards a Culture of Shared Responsibility

"The challenge of building trust across divides is universal and inescapable. Can we move from a culture of blame and avoidance to an acceptance of shared responsibility for a new future?" - Initiatives of Change International

Rob Corcoran

Noam Chomsky: You Don't Stop with the Lesser Evil. You Begin with It, to Prevent the Worst. Then You Deal with the Root Causes

“There’s another word for lesser evilism. It’s called rationality. Lesser evilism is not an illusion, it’s a rational position. But you don’t stop with lesser evilism. You begin with it, to prevent the worst, and then you go on to deal with the fundamental roots of what’s...

Noam Chomsky and Robert Scheer and Natasha Hakimi Zapata

Not All Politics Is Identity Politics

In the often polarizing and intense debates on identity politics you often encounter three talking points from those who oppose those who criticise identity politics. First, that all politics is identity politics. Second, critics of so called “identity politics” ignore the...

Ralph Leonard

The Confederation as the Commune of Communes

Confederalism as a revolutionary strategy provides us with the means to build and organize a radically democratic and egalitarian society at scale.

Debbie Bookchin, Sixtine van Outryve

Films For Action's Patreon Rewards

Films For Action's $5/mo+ supporters can watch all of the films below for free. Visit our Patreon page for details.

Films For Action

"Positive Vibes Only" Is Toxic: the Danger of New Age Spiritualism

“Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; choosing what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy; and choosing to practice our values rather than simply professing them.” ~ Brené Brown

Justice Bartlett

Here's Exactly How to Respond When Someone You Love Says Climate Change Isn't Real

There's overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change; 97 percent of scientists agree that humans have created conditions that are drastically reshaping the planet's climate, with disastrous results, and one scientist noted in September 2018 that the scientific community is

JR Thorpe

Voting Is a Chess Move, Not the Whole Game

"Voting is a chess move, not a valentine. And here's the joy of being politically engaged all year round every year; you get to work with a whole lot of chess pieces and players and strategies and longterm visions, so you don't agonize over whether this little hop with a pawn...

Tim Hjersted

Hope Is an Imperative: Sparking an Ecological Design Revolution

While society prepares for the future of a world ravaged by climate change, environmental educator David Orr has spent years writing about how to reverse it. Orr advocates for an ecological design revolution to change how we build homes, grow food and model society, so that...

David Orr, Bioneers

The Realism of Bernie Sanders' Climate Policy

Sanders believes that as our economy rapidly shifts to renewable energy, power companies should be publicly owned and controlled, and the biggest polluters should help underwrite the costs.

Naomi Klein, Sivan Kartha

The New 'Black Codes'

The elites are acutely aware that without police terror and the U.S. prison system, which holds 25% of the world’s prison population, there would be intense social unrest.

Chris Hedges

Before the White Race Was Invented

Theodore W. Allen The Invention of the White Race Volume One: Racial Oppression and Social Control Volume Two: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America (London and New York: Verso, 1994 and 1997). THERE ARE FOUR main theses advanced by Theodore Allen in his...

Jonathan Scott

Introduction To The Invention of the White Race, Volume 2: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America by Theodore W. Allen

Theodore W. Allen’s The Invention of the White Race, with its focus on racial oppression and social control, is one of the twentieth-century’s major contributions to historical understanding. This two-volume classic, first published in 1994 and 1997, presents a full-scale...

Jeffrey B. Perry

Anti-Fascist Activism & the Value of Nonviolence

This collection of articles from the Films For Action library looks at the tensions, disagreements and varying strategies within the anti-fascist movement from a variety of authors.

Films For Action

I Study Collapsed Civilizations. Here’s My Advice for a Climate Change Apocalypse.

I am an archaeologist and a wilderness survival instructor. Because I study societies that have collapsed, and since I teach basic outdoor skills, people ask me about what to do in a natural disaster, social upheaval, or some apocalyptic event. Right now, much of that concern...

Chris Begley

Black Worker, White Worker (1972)

In one department of a giant steel mill in northwest Indiana a foreman assigned a white worker to the job of operating a crane. The Black workers in the department felt that on the basis of seniority and job experience, one of them should have been given the job, which...

Noel Ignatin

A Decolonial Critique of Intersectionality

"Intersectionality calls for the recognition of multiple forms of oppression and exploitation and the need for solidarity. These are ideas that should be supported by everybody. So where does the need come from to criticize the concept of intersectionality from a decolonial...

Sandew Hira

How an Ad Man Became a Post-Growth Advocate

I made my way from the dark side to the light. And I hope it wasn’t too late.

Martin Oetting

How Faux-Feelings Are Sabotaging Your Communication Efforts

Getting in touch with our feelings and sharing "I-statements" is a known strategy for communicating nonviolently and bettering our chances of being heard.

Teri Lynn

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