8 Reasons Young Americans Don’t Fight Back

Steve sent me this article in response to a question we were batting about around why there is seemingly no public outrage surrounding the burn the public or boil the public “debate” on the debt limit, especially in comparison to what has happened or is happening in Egypt, Spain, Israel and elsewhere. I think the …

The greatest victory comes from culture, not weapons

I’ve been reading Paul Provenza and Dan Dion’s ¡SATIRISTAS! Comedians, Contrarians, Raconteurs & Vulgarians and it’s filled with wonderful moments like the one above. The book is a series of 3-5 page interviews with comedians and satirists from Paul Krassner to Rosanne Barr. Every single one has surprised me with some kind of insight. It’s …

Get Loud, Move Quickly, and Shifting Focus

I love stuff like this because of the metaphors it supplies. I’m not a fighter. I haven’t been in anything close to a fight in 15 years. I’m resistant to the idea of fighting, and fear fantasies where I would need this (knock on wood) though being prepared… blah blah blah. But I like how …

Pie-ing Murdoch: Activism or Egoism?

An “activist” just tried to pie Rupert Murdoch and The New York Times Blog put it very simply: Unless the activist who charged at Mr. Murdoch wanted to help distract attention from his testimony — and that of Rebekah Brooks, who is now giving evidence to the Commons select committee — he seems to have …

Laughter Against The Machine – Tour Documentary

First, you have to know about W. Kamau Bell. W. KAMAU BELL is one of the fastest-rising socio-political comics in the United States, best known for his critically acclaimed solo show “The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour.” Praised by Punchline Magazine as “one of our nation’s most adept racial commentators …

Can Conservative Political Humor Be Funny?

“An Examination of The 1/2 Hour News Hour and An American Carol” on Splitsider today looks at why conservative political humor has failed. The crux of the argument is here: So where Surnow was wrong was in presuming that effective comedy tilts right or left, because the tilt of truly effective comedy, comedy that affects …

Beyond The Choir:: Climate scientists reaching beyond the choir & dropping the F-bomb VIDEO

reposted from BeyondTheChior A while back Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, offered some sound advice to climate scientists about “good climate communication”. Basically, if you’re a climate scientist who wants society to take your data seriously, you have to be something of a political scientist too. Mooney spotlights the Evangelical Climate …

The Importance of Stephen Colbert’s Bold and Subversive PAC

Stephen Hoban has written a great summary and the full story is on Splitsider. Here’s the beginning: On Wednesday night Stephen Colbert took on Comedy Central’s parent company Viacom, calling out their lawyers for trying to block his attempts to form a political action committee for the 2012 election. For the second time this year, …

Poor Immigrant as Muse

The following is an article about the artist Tania Bruguera and and her year-long project of living with and “as” an immigrant in NYC. This raises the question of: How does this art address and/or effect poor immigrants’ lives? The most charitable reading is that the artist intends to use her position of power and …

200 years ago The Luddites used humor, spectacle, narrative, and myth

From The Right To Be Lazy. Ned Ludd was a fictitious leader. Costumes, jokes, and more. Here’s an excerpt: “The Luddites, as they soon became known, were dead serious about their protests. … But they were also making fun, dispatching officious-sounding letters that began, ‘Whereas by the Charter’…and ended ‘Ned Lud’s Office, Sherwood Forest.’ Invoking …

Overcoming political polarization… but not through facts

Ethan Zuckerman has posted a beautiful piece that stitches together many of the ideas we deal with in How To Win and the Center for Artistic Activism. I can’t recommend it enough: Overcoming political polarization… but not through facts It ties together polarization, confirmation bias, the media, David Simon and The Wire, and the need …

Diggers: If you can act it out, it’s real.

We thought: culture is much more important than politics. Let’s just start getting people living the way they wanna live. You wanna live in a world where you don’t have to work? Let’s make it. You wanna live in a world where you can get food for free? Let’s make it. You wanna live in …

New ‘Tactical Urbanism’ guide for aspiring guerrilla urbanists | Grist

The Next Generation of New Urbanists yes, these are young New Urbanists, because New Urbanism has been around long enough that it’s getting a little … old and the Street Plans Collaborative want to help. They’ve put together a “Tactical Urbanism” guide that you can download for use when you need some ideas about how …

Culture Gap – New York Bike Lanes

Duncombe and I have said more than once “you can change the laws, but it won’t matter if the culture doesn’t change with it.” For lack of a better term, I’m going to call this – for now – a Culture Gap. A change may be “the right thing,” environmentally, economically, socially, for justice, but …

Design with Intent Toolkit

Design with Intent:101 Patterns for Influencing Behaviour Through Design All design influences our behaviour, but as designers we don’t always consciously consider the power this gives us to help people, (and, sometimes, to manipulate them). There’s a huge opportunity for design for behaviour change to address social and environmental issues where people’s behaviour is important, …

Creative militancy meets militant creativity

By Sarah Amsler Lecturer in Sociology at Aston University (Birmingham, UK) via the Huffington Post Under what might now need to be termed comparatively normal circumstances, I have often agonised over helping my students understand the practical significance of critical theory. They ask, but what can one actually do with Herbert Marcuse today? In a …

In Kansas, Climate Skeptics Embrace Green Energy – NYTimes.com

Attempts by the Obama administration to regulate greenhouse gases are highly unpopular here because of opposition to large-scale government intervention. Some are skeptical that humans might fundamentally alter a world that was created by God. If the heartland is to seriously reduce its dependence on coal and oil, Ms. Jackson and others decided, the issues …

Arnold Schwarzenegger knows environmental leadership

“I think that I have the talent of speaking the language in such a way so that the world understands it rather than making it complicated,” he said. But don’t expect to see Schwarzenegger touring an Al Gore-style scientific slideshow. The governator’s version of environmental leadership hinges on avoiding mention of the words climate change …