Nathan Schneider, from Waging NonViolence makes an excellent point here in his coverage of the mass arrests of Occupy Wallstreet on the Brooklyn Bridge about what are we trying to “demonstrate” in our demonstrations: “One might wonder, however, whether causing such an obstruction is really the proper mode of civil disobedience given the purposes …
Continue reading “Is This What Civil Disobedience Looks Like? — Nathan Schneider”
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg raised the specter of shutting down a two-week long demonstration on Wall Street, telling protesters who are speaking out against greed and corruption that the banks deserve support. Asked directly on his weekly radio show Friday whether he will allow the protesters to stay indefinitely, Bloomberg replied, “We’ll see.” …
Continue reading “Will Bloomberg End Protesters’ Stay on Wall Street?”
Anjali Mullany/News A crowd of protesters and police officers swarmed the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday. Thousands of Occupy Wall Street protesters swarmed the Brooklyn Bride Saturday, shutting down car lanes and setting up yet another tense showdown with the NYPD. Roughly 700 people were arrested after standing in the roadway, blocking the Brooklyn-bound lanes. Traffic …
More than 2,000 “Moving Planet” clean-energy demonstrations took place on Saturday, September 24th – at UN Headquarters in New York, in all 50 U.S. states and in 175 countries. “The planet has been stuck for too long with governments doing nothing about the biggest problem we’ve ever faced,” said Bill McKibben, founder of the nonprofit …
Continue reading “Moving Planet Rallies Prompt Global Climate Action”
On September 16th, fifty women wearing mini skirts and tank tops stood in the middle of a major roundabout in Jakarta, the capital city of the world’s most populous muslim country. The women were protesting comments by the city’s mayor, who called on women to stop wearing revealing clothing on public transportation after insinuating that …
Alessio Rastani, who claimed on BBC News ‘I dream of another recession’, is not a ‘Yes Man’ – but he could be an honest trader. He caused outrage with his comments on the global economic meltdown claiming “governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world”. But is independent stock market trader Alessio Rastani, …
Continue reading “Trader’s Goldman Sachs comments spark BBC hoax claims”
Letter from prison: Tim DeChristopher speaks The following text appeared in a handwritten letter from Tim DeChristopher addressed to Grist’s Jennifer Prediger. If I had ever doubted the power of words, Judge Benson made their importance all too clear at my sentencing last month. When he sentenced me to two years in prison plus three …
Here is an interesting article from Waging Nonviolence about Occupy Wall Street. A bit after 10 p.m. on Saturday night in occupied Liberty Plaza, there was a celebration around the media tables. Photocopied facsimiles of Sunday’s New York Daily News were being passed around and photographed. After having held the plaza with hundreds of protesters at any …
The Post Carbon Institute published a thought provoking piece by Kurt Cobb on “apocalypse narratives.” We hear these narratives every day in the news and popular culture. Cobb points out they’ve done a great job to “improve ratings and book sales” and then goes one to say “Peak oil, climate change, an impending food crisis, …
Tens of thousands of Chilean students resumed marches last week in Santiago, demanding a systemic overhaul of the country’s education system. President Sebation Pinera has promised limited reforms and $4 billion in extra funding, but student leaders claim that the offer does not go far enough. The movement returned to the streets after talks broke …
Beautiful Trouble will be a book & web toolbox that puts the best ideas and tactics of creative action in the hands of the next generation of change-makers, connecting the accumulated wisdom of decades of creative protest to the popular outrage of the current political moment. From prank websites to militant carnivals, flash mobs to …
Continue reading “The Center for Artistic Activism supports Beautiful Trouble. Will you?”
The jailed Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei is part of a new cultural movement that’s using people power to challenge society’s vested interests If this is a new avant-garde then it’s operating on a different set of aesthetic rules to previous generations of political art. Typically, artists have wanted us to be as outraged as …
Continue reading “People power: It’s the taking part that counts – The Independent”
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 …
Continue reading “8 Reasons Young Americans Don’t Fight Back”
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 …
Continue reading “The greatest victory comes from culture, not weapons”
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 …
Continue reading “Get Loud, Move Quickly, and Shifting Focus”
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 …
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 …
Continue reading “Laughter Against The Machine – Tour Documentary”
YouTube – Shocking!! Man explains to WFTV News why he loves the Orlando Police Department – Hilarious!!.
Without using the word per se. Brilliant.
“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 …
Continue reading “Can Conservative Political Humor Be Funny?”
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