Skip to content

Democracy

Why I Never Say ‘Compromise’ When Facilitating

January 14, 2024 Laird Schaub, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , , ,
As a consensus facilitator, I am constantly trying to make it easier for everyone to contribute what they have that's relevant to the conversation. Then I do what I can to establish how those contributions are rooted in a reasonable interpretation of group values (and therefore worthy of taking into account), as distinct from personal preferences. About this time, I generally point out that the right to offer one's views and have them be taken seriously is tied at the hip to the responsibility to treat respectfully the views that differ from theirs and have been similarly vetted. Absent this framing, it's relatively common for groups to get bogged down with people who are inspired to defend their viewpoints because they are tied to common values—accusing those with disparate views of being selfish and not thinking of what's best for the group.

Israel Cannot Be A Colonial Power And A Democracy

January 6, 2024 Chris Hedges, The Real News Network. , , , , , ,
Israel’s status as a bona fide democracy is often taken to be a self-evident truth, but a more critical look at the history and reality of Zionism calls this into question. After all, how can a democracy exist in a country constitutionally defined as an ethnostate that can only exist through the suppression and gradual elimination of its Others? Israeli historian Ilan Pappé joins The Chris Hedges Report for a discussion on Israel as an inherently colonial, and therefore anti-democratic, project. Ilan Pappé is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK, where he directs the European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-directs the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies.

Union Democracy Stands Up

January 5, 2024 Barry Eidlin, Dollars & Sense. , , , ,
The First Weekend of November, 2023, Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) held its annual convention at a hotel near O’Hare Airport outside of Chicago. It was the 48th convention since the rank-and-file union reform movement’s founding in 1976. The mood was confident and upbeat, with organizers announcing an attendance of 500 Teamster members from across the country. It was the largest TDU convention since 1997. The Friday dinner banquet speaker was Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien, who took stock of what his administration had accomplished since taking office in March 2022.

Lessons From One Unequal Society To Another

December 19, 2023 Liam Crisan, Inequality.org. , , , ,
This past Sunday, Chileans voted once again on a new constitution, opting to reject — for the second time in two years — an attempt at constitutional revision. Rejecting a highly conservative text, voters chose to keep the dictatorship-era constitution for the time being. A political saga that began amid immense hope has now devolved into a dismal disarray that’s left countless Chileans tired and frustrated. Here in the United States, we face an equally bleak political outlook. According to a recent Pew Research Center report, 25 percent of U.S. adults feel that neither of the nation’s two major parties represents them adequately enough. Some 63 percent of Americans express little to no confidence in the future of our political system.

Direct Democracy And The Need For Physical Space

December 16, 2023 Yavor Tarinski, Resilience. , , ,
Nowadays there is a lot of talk about digital, or e-democracy – focusing on online participation. There is even talk of a so-called Appocracy – civic participation being channeled through smartphone apps. Many see in such means an exit from the deepening crisis of representative “democracy”. Often the reason people give when engaging with such proposals, is valid – people globally are indeed mistrustful towards professional politicians and tend to increasingly absent from the rituals of political representation (such as elections). The problem comes with what they propose as an alternative. The logic behind the supposed digitalization of democracy is based on the misunderstanding of political participation as passive activity, such as consumerism.

San Jose Residents Pack City Council Meeting, Demand Palestine Resolution

December 10, 2023 Fight Back News!. , , , ,
San Jose, CA – On Tuesday, December 5, hundreds of Palestine supporters attended the San Jose City Council meeting in person and online to demand that the council pass a resolution in support of Palestine. Community members waved Palestinian flags, wore keffiyehs, and brought signs with messages such as “End the genocide.” City staff intentionally blocked off half of the available public seats in the council chambers and diverted community members to overflow rooms. Many attendees were taken aback by this blatant restriction on their right to civic engagement.

The Community-Driven Climate Solutions Making A Difference

November 30, 2023 Hollie Russon Gilman and Amy Eisenstein, Next City. , , ,
To many of us, thinking about climate change brings about existential dread, panic, or even climate anxiety. The largest ever U.N. climate change conference of the parties, COP 28, will occur this week — and many of us are hoping against hope that the world’s leaders come up with a solution for us all. Climate change, though, is hyperlocal. So, too, are many of the solutions. And cities are tackling climate change with an inspiring vigor that, alongside global leadership, could help to reduce emissions and foster a healthier planet. Ordinary people have been at the heart of these local movements. Among these solutions are citizens’ assemblies, which bring together a randomly selected group of people in a community to deliberate on a societal challenge and identify policy solutions.

West Votes Against Democracy, Human Rights, Cultural Diversity At UN

November 26, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , ,
Western governments frequently claim that their foreign and domestic policies are motivated by “human rights” and “democracy”. They often even lecture their adversaries for purportedly failing to respect these concerns. But on the international stage, Western capitals have shown their commitments to be merely rhetorical, as they have consistently voted against these noble causes and refused to support measures that would tangibly protect them, in flagrant violation of the will of the vast majority of the international community. These stark double standards were on display on November 7 in the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly’s Third Committee, which is devoted to social, humanitarian, and cultural issues.

Gaza War Crimes Make A Mockery Of Western ‘Democracy’

November 13, 2023 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The term “free world” was a mainstay of the cold war lexicon for decades. Although the United States and its NATO allies still portray themselves as paragons of free thought and action and declare anyone they don’t like as laggards in regard to human rights. They make quite a show of bragging about being democracies but their actions prove otherwise.  The U.S. and Israel continue their killing spree in Gaza which now totals 11,000 fatalities of men, women, and children. While the President of the United States claimed to have seen confirmation that Hamas beheaded children, Palestinians in their sorrow display the broken bodies of their children, some of them headless or limbless as Israel bombs homes, hospitals, and ambulances.

We Are Spartacus

November 12, 2023 John Pilger, Consortium News. , , , ,
Spartacus was a 1960 Hollywood film based on a book written secretly by the blacklisted novelist Howard Fast, and adapted by the screenplay writer Dalton Trumbo, one of the ‘Hollywood 10’ who were banned for their ‘un-American’ politics. It is a parable of resistance and heroism that speaks unreservedly to our own times. Both writers were Communists and victims of Senator Joseph McCarthy, chairman of the Government Operations Committee and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate, which, during the Cold War, destroyed the careers and often the lives of those principled and courageous enough to stand up to a homegrown fascism in America.

Panama Explodes With Protests Against Canadian Copper Mine

October 30, 2023 Michael Fox, The Real News. , , ,
Panama is on fire. Massive protests are rippling across the country. Road blocks. Unions on strike. School classes cancelled. Workers, teachers and indigenous groups are in the streets. They’re protesting the government’s approval of a renegotiated contract with a Canadian mining firm for the operation of Central America’s largest open-pit copper mine. They say it’s a threat to the environment and an attack on Panama’s sovereignty. Political analysts say the issue is having such an impact, because of the country’s long history of foreign intervention in the country, and particularly the US control over the Panama Canal, which lasted throughout the 20th Century.

The Arab World’s Democratic Transition Has Kicked Off In Sarajevo

October 12, 2023 Muhammad Hussein, Middle East Monitor. , , ,
It is ironic that a conference on democracy in the Arab world could not be held in the capital of any Arab country, and was instead held in the capital of a politically-unstable Balkan state that itself remains vulnerable to separatist and ethnic intrigues. According to the Arab Council, its landmark conference “Democratic Transition in the Arab World: Roadmap” was held in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo because they “couldn’t locate any Arab capital willing to host a conference on the future of democracy in the region” and were unable to find “a single Arab city where advocates for democracy from various Arab countries and the Arab diaspora could gather without concerns about visas, entry denials or government pressure.”

Paradoxes Of Democracy In Ukraine

September 30, 2023 Dmitri Kovalevich, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , , , ,
On September 10, elections to regional and municipal assemblies were held across the Russian Federation. For the first time, they were held under Russian law in the two Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk which formally became part of the Russian Federation in February 2022. Elections also took place in the two ‘new territories’, as they are called in Russia, of the Russian-controlled parts of Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions (that is, the areas of those two regions lying south and east of the Dnieper River). The governing regime in Ukraine as well as the Western countries allied with it condemned and refused to recognize the elections in the Donbass republics and new territories

The Undiscovered Country

September 29, 2023 Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post. , , ,
When I travel abroad, which is infrequently these days, I find myself more than occasionally expressing gratitude to those I meet. “We Americans are fortunate,” I explain, “in that others are usually able to distinguish between the American people and the American government.” I made a remark such as this most recently to a couple of distinguished Serbians I met at a conference this past summer. Our topic was the American-led NATO bombing campaign in what was then Yugoslavia during the spring of 1999. People in Belgrade and elsewhere still suffer the consequences of the depleted uranium U.S. bombers dropped—premature deaths, very high cancer rates, the whole nine.

The Israeli ‘Coup’ And The Death Of False Democracy

September 24, 2023 Ramzy Baroud, Mintpress News. , , , ,
From its very onset, Israel has constructed a brand for itself, a powerful gimmick that was predicated on two main pillars: democracy and stability. The main target audience for this brand has been powerful Western states that wielded disproportionate political, economic and military powers. These Western governments, along with their influential mainstream corporate media, did their part, by polishing Israel’s image – as most democratic and most stable – while tarnishing that of their Arab and Palestinian enemies – or anyone else who dared criticize Israel. It mattered little whether Israel was truly a beacon of democracy and stability, because these terms are often conjured up and used to conveniently fit the interest of those in power.
«12345678910»
assetto corsa mods

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.