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Activism

Activist: From A Calling To A Career

January 31, 2015 Robbie Harris, www.wvtf.org ,
The Mountain Valley Natural Gas Pipeline that’s being proposed to run through South Western Virginia made a U-Turn when it came to Floyd County. Last fall, the gas companies changed the original route, bypassing the rural county. Company officials have said the protest movement that sprang up in Floyd had nothing to do with their decision, but others believe it made a difference. One of them is Mara Robbins, who founded the Preserve Floyd Movement last summer to fight the pipeline. Now, she’s been hired by an Environmental group to continue that work throughout the region. Robbins talked with WVTF/Radio IQ’s Robbie Harris about what motivates her to keep going.

Penokee Mine Activist Sentenced To 9 Months Jail

January 23, 2015 Revolution News, www.revolution-news.com , , ,
Katie Kloth, aka Krow, is an activist, artist, forager, sustainable farmer, and biologist who has been committed to struggles to protect the environment and liberate all life for many years, and has spent the last several years organizing against the proposed Penokee mine in the north woods of Wisconsin, USA. On June 11th, 2013, she was cited by the Iron County Sheriff for theft due to her alleged involvement in a rowdy protest earlier that day that disrupted bore hole drilling on the Penokee Range. Since it was considered such a minor crime, she was neither arrested nor detained that day. On June 21st, it was announced that the Iron County District Attorney increased the charges to robbery with use of force (a class E felony), two counts of criminal damage to property and one charge of theft of movable property (<=$2500).

Becoming And Being An Activist

January 21, 2015 Sam Smith, www.samsmitharchives.wordpress.com , , ,
I knew a civil rights leader named Julius Hobson. He used to say that he could start a revolution with six men and telephone booth. He seldom had more than ten at one of his demonstrations. Once in a church with about 30 parishioners, he commented, “If I had that many people behind me, I’d be president.” But between 1960 and 1964, Julius Hobson ran more than 80 picket lines on approximately 120 retail stores in downtown DC, resulting in employment for some 5,000 blacks. He initiated a campaign that resulted in the first hiring of black bus drivers by DC Transit. Hobson forced the hiring of the first black auto salesmen and dairy employees and started a campaign to combat job discrimination by the public utilities.

Do Demonstrations Matter? Amir Amirani & Phyllis Bennis

January 16, 2015 GRITtv, www.youtube.com , , ,
On February 15, 2003, millions of people in over 800 cities on seven continents marched against the impending invasion of Iraq. It was the largest mobilization of people in human history and yet it remains a little-known story. As we approach Martin Luther King Day and think about his legacy of civic resistance, this episode looks at the recent history of the global antiwar movement, and its relevance to today. A new documentary by this week's guest, Amir Amirani, tells the story of the mass protests against the Iraq war. From Iraq to Egypt to Syria to today's protests, the film looks at the legacy of that protest movement and asks, what do mass mobilizations accomplish? Amir Amirani a long time filmmaker for the BBC, tells about his process making the film.

Breaking The Cycle: Non-Cooperation

November 18, 2014 Jerry Maynard, www.reflections4thejourney.blogspot.com , ,
Americans tend to only act upon their convictions when it gets to a point of extreme necessity. We tend to live in a culture that runs on the notion of "as long as it does not affect me or my friends/family, then it does not concern me". Yet, when tragedy hits us, and our bubble is busted, we cry out in outrage. As long as we are "comfortable" and have a feeling that we are "secure", we are willing to let others go on with what they are doing/saying even if it is unjust or immoral. This is why after 911 Americans were more than willing to let the Federal Government invade privacy and violate civil liberties. Most Americans felt uncomfortable due to the sense that they lost the false security that this culture thrived on. But there seems to be a shift in the wind....The cycle is beginning to break......

BREAKING: Net Neutrality Activists Blockade FCC Chairman’s House

November 10, 2014 Staff, target="_blank" >www.popularresistance.org , , , , ,
Advocates for net neutrality who oppose the tiered Internet proposed by FCC Chairman, Tom Wheeler, blockaded his driveway this morning, Monday, November 10, 2014, just as the Chairman was getting into his car. Six people participated in the blockade with a large banner that read “Save the Internet.” They also held signs demanding that Wheeler listen to the people. They chanted “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Tom Wheeler has got to go” and sang “Which side are you on Tom? Are you with the people or with the Telecoms?” The protest, which kicked off at 6:55am, is organized by PopularResistance.org, the same group that Occupied the FCC from May 7 to May 15. They are demanding that Wheeler drop plans to advance so-called “hybrid” rules that fail to protect free speech, and fully reclassify the Internet as a common carrier under Title II.

Why We Need Empathy Now More Than Ever

November 9, 2014 Roman Krznaric, www.salon.com ,
The latest neuroscience research shows that 98 percent of us have the capacity to empathize wired into our brains and, like riding a bike, it’s a skill we can learn and develop. No wonder Google searches for the E word have more than doubled in the past decade. The art of imaginatively stepping into another person’s shoes and seeing the world from their perspective is, it would seem, a most valuable and valued twenty-first century asset. Not so, says Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, leading the counter-charge against empathy’s popularity surge. It is, he claims, a poor moral guide, lacking the power to inspire us to act on, say, child poverty or humanitarian disasters. “Our public decisions will be fairer and more moral once we put empathy aside,” says Bloom, insisting we should instead, “draw on a reasoned, even counter-empathetic, analysis of moral obligation.” But in doing so, Bloom creates a false – and dangerous – dichotomy

4 Ways To Hit High Notes Of Resistance

October 31, 2014 Nadine Bloch, www.wagingnonviolence.org ,
Every now and then there is an action that hits all the right notes — the message is clear, the messengers are appropriate, the setting and tone are impeccable, and the ripples carry on far into the future. One such action took place earlier this month in the midst of protests in Ferguson, Mo., against the killing of teenager Michael Brown and police use of excessive force. Seemingly far from the streets of Ferguson at the Powell Symphony Hall in St. Louis, concert goers returned to their seats after intermission. One by one, a diverse group of protesters interspersed in the audience rose to solemnly sing out a tailored protest song: “Which side are you on friend? Which side are you on? Justice for Mike Brown is justice for us all.”

Mexican Activist Killed On Air During Radio Show In Mazatlan

October 20, 2014 Associated Press in Mexico, www.theguardian.com , , , ,
Two gunmen walked into a radio station and killed a local activist while he was presenting his weekly radio programme, prosecutors in the northern Mexico state of Sinaloa said. It was the first on-air killing in recent memory in Mexico. The victim, Atilano Román Tirado, headed a group of about 800 farm families whose lands were flooded by dam construction several years ago. His group, the Displaced Persons of Picachos – named after the dam – has been demanding compensation for the land. Román Tirado had a weekly variety programme on Fiesta Mexicana,a local radio station in the Pacific port of Mazatlan. In past years the Picachos movement had staged blockades and protest marches, which had resulted in arrests. Sinaloa state prosecutors said two men walked into the station on Saturday and asked for Román Tirado. The station is in a building that also houses the newspaper El Sol de Mazatlan.

St. Louis University Responds To Occupation

October 19, 2014 Fred P. Pestello, www.slu.edu , , ,
This week has been a challenge for many of us, including me. Unlike some with whom I spoke, I have never been followed by security throughout a department store, had taxicab drivers refuse to pick me up, or been seated by the bathrooms of a half-empty restaurant. But those indignities — and far worse — are not uncommon to people of color, including our students, faculty and staff. Many of their life experiences, described to me in stark and painful terms, have weighed on me as peaceful demonstrations and teach-ins have played out this week. Also weighing on me has been the concern expressed by some students and parents who were worried about a non-peaceful outcome to this demonstration.

Can Climate Change Unite The Left?

October 19, 2014 Naomi Klein, www.inthesetimes.com ,
Standing at the front of the conference room, the University of California, San Diego professor took the crowd through the advanced computer model he was using to answer that rather direct question. He talked about a whole bunch of other stuff largely incomprehensible to those of us uninitiated in complex systems theory. But the bottom line was clear enough: Global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient and barrier-free that “earth-human systems” are becoming dangerously unstable in response. When a journalist pressed Werner for a clear answer on the “Is earth fucked?” question, he set the jargon aside and replied, “More or less.” There was one dynamic in the model, however, that offered some hope. Werner described it as “resistance”—movements of “people or groups of people” who “adopt a certain set of dynamics that does not fit within the capitalist culture.”

Lifetime Activist, David Hartsough, Shares Wisdom and Vision for a Just World

October 15, 2014 , , ,
David Hartsough has dedicated his life to working for peace and justice and continues now with one of his greatest

Nurturing Black Youth Activism

October 8, 2014 Katherine Mirani, www.chicagoreporter.com , ,
If we look as far back, or even earlier, than the civil rights movement, we’re looking at movements that are led by young people. So it’s nothing new. However, there are some key flashpoints that contributed to the growth of BYP 100 -- the killing of Trayvon Martin, the killing of Renisha McBride, Marissa Alexander’s case, Mike Brown in Ferguson. There are these cases where young black people have been murdered and black people have been incarcerated -- and I don’t want to use the word “unjustly,” because I don’t think incarceration is just, in general -- but in a way that does not actually improve our communities or make us any safer. We have our moments of this generation agitating people into political (action) and people are seeing once again the need for black liberation organizing.

Put People Power At Center Of Movement; Avoid Co-option

October 8, 2014 Danny Sriskandarajah, www.ipsnews.net ,
This issue of civil society “co-option” matters so much because we are losing the war – the war against poverty, climate change and social injustice. Many courageous, inspirational people and organisations are fighting the good fight. But too many of us – myself included – have become detached from the people and movements that drive real social and political change. “Our work has begun to reinforce the social, economic and political systems that we once set out to transform; we have become too institutionalised, too professionalised, co-opted into systems and networks in which we are being outwitted and out-manoeuvred” The corporatisation of civil society has tamed our ambition; too often it has made us agents rather than agitators of the system.

This Crusty Activist Gave Up On Playing By The Rules

October 4, 2014 Heather Smith, www.grist.org , , ,
It’s been over a year since Alec Johnson was arrested for locking himself to an excavator sitting on a pipeline easement in Atoka, Oklahoma. He’s still waiting to go to trial. Rural Oklahoma communities only hold jury trials once or twice a year, and every time a new court date comes up, Johnson gets bumped – priority goes to anyone charged with a felony or presently cooling their heels in jail, which Johnson is not. A lot has changed in that year. The protest around U.S. energy policy and climate change has shifted fronts – coal terminals, oil-by-rail, divestment, solar, and a massive climate rally planned for this September. Keystone XL South (now renamed the Gulf Coast pipeline) is up and running and being monitored by an ad hoc group of volunteers.
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