Above photo by Robert van Waarden of Survival Media Agency.
At the beginning of the year, 2014 was called “the year that everything changed,” and indeed it has been a turning point for a number of resistance movements in the United States. We look back over the past 12 months and discuss some of the highlights and ways that movements made connections and worked together towards building the necessary ‘movement of movements’. We use a roundtable format for the hour. Our guests are Sandy Nurse, an activist in New York City who runs the composting business called BK ROT; Cassidy Regan, an activist in Baltimore who works on a number of fronts including militarism and trade agreements; and Tarak Kauff, an activist from Woodstock, NY who is on the board of Veterans for Peace and is active on environmental issues, militarism, racial justice and incarceration.
Listen live at 11 am Eastern here:
2014: Year of Resistance in Review with Sandy Nurse, Cassidy Regan and Tarak Kauff by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud
Relevant articles and websites:
Popular Resistance Newsletter – 2014 in Review by Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese
A World Where Many Fit: Reflecting on Zapatista Resistance and the TPP by Cassidy Regan
Guests:
Sandy Nurse is a community organizer focused primarily on improving community ecological practices in Bushwick, Brooklyn, but also in movement direct action organizing. She currently runs a youth composting project called BK ROT and is part of the Mayday Space, a new social justice organizing space in Brooklyn. She was very active in the Occupy Wall Street movement, was a core organizer for Flood Wall Street, helped coordinate the Millions March NYC along with other smaller actions here and there.
Cassidy Regan is a Baltimore-based organizer with PopularResistance.org who focuses on international trade and its connections to militarization and immigrant rights. She also serves on the steering committee of the Civilian Soldier Alliance and is active with the Student Farmworker Alliance.
Tarak Kauff – Since the Vietnam War to today’s occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, Tarak has opposed U.S. wars and invasions and the materialist, consumer oriented American way of life which precipitates wars and needs an ever expanding empire to continue.
Tarak served in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper from early 1959 to the middle of 1962. He did not serve in Vietnam or see combat. Having however, experienced the military culture and having many friends who did experience combat, from WW II through Afghanistan, he appreciates and understands the long-lasting trauma those veterans carry.
He currently serves on the Veterans For Peace Board of Directors and is a strong proponent of VFP’s Peace at Home, Peace Abroad orientation and activities.
He has held a lead role in VFP’s Direct Action Team including actions at the National Archives, the White House on December 16, 2010, and March 19, 2011 and at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, he took part in the 2009-10 Gaza Freedom March in Cairo. He was one of the original crew of organizers of the Freedom Plaza Occupy in 2011. In 2013 he went on a 58 day, 300 calorie liquid only hunger strike in solidarity with prisoners in Guantanamo, Palestinians in Israeli prisons, and those 80,000 souls here in long=term solitary confinement the US. He was arrested on the 47th day of that hunger strike in the Hart Senate Office building while chained to a 2nd floor railing, speaking out about torture and Guantanamo.
He has been to Ferguson, MO three times since the murder of MIchael Brown to stand as a veteran in solidarity with those demanding justice. He works with as he is able and is in support of the Native American led Clean Up the MInes Campaign.
Tarak believes that creating and nurturing a culture of sustained resistance and sustainable communities is our only hope for stopping the war machine and saving the planet from destruction by the profit-driven system of corporate control now in power.