Skip to content

Democracy

Climate Democracy For Rural Communities

May 15, 2016 Anna Claussen, www.iatp.org , ,
By Anna Claussen for Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. There is a common misconception that you can’t talk about climate change in rural communities because the issue is considered too polarizing. Many would likely wage a bet that a climate discussion would paralyze Winona residents, divide them, and lead to more finger pointing than hand holding. But not here. Despite their differing viewpoints, the 18 participants in the Winona County Climate Dialogue produced a collective statement and action plan, crafted solely using participant input, based on six topical presentations from local experts on weather trends, energy use, water, insurance, public health and agriculture in Winona County. The Winona plan acknowledged that climate change “will have a real measurable impact on our overall economy, our environment, fish and wildlife habitat, health, insurance rates and more. Individually and as Winona County” they deemed that “they needed to take action by working together to prepare for the future.”

Newsletter: Living In A Post-2011 World

May 7, 2016 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org , , , , , , , , , , ,
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers. The 2016 election has deepened the understanding of how out of step the establishment political parties are with the people of the United States. The parties have reinforced the rationale for the Occupy uprising, and the uprisings on racism, inequality, poverty wages, mistreatment of students and more that have occurred since 2011; and they have increased national consensus on the dysfunction and corruption of government, the unfairness and inequity of the economy and the lack of concern for the environment and climate change.Don't Represent US In order to understand the election's relationship to the movement for economic, racial and environmental justice, we need to understand that the roots of this election come from the uprising of 2011. As Paolo Gerbaudo wrote in ROAR Magazine: "The 2011 protest wave will forever be associated with the slogan 'they don’t represent us' — a clear indictment of the present form of representative politics and the existing political class."

Breaking Through Power: A Historic Civic Mobilization

May 4, 2016 BreakingThrough.org, www.PopularResistance.org , , ,
Note: Breaking Through Power: four days of civic mobilization at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. on May 23, 24, 25 and 26, 2016. The theme of this citizen mobilization will be elaborating ways to break through power to secure long-overdue democratic solutions made possible by a new muscular civic nexus between local communities and Washington, D.C. Breaking Through Conference graphicOn these four days, speakers will present innovative ideas and strategies designed to take existing civic groups to higher levels of effectiveness. The participants will be asked to support the creation of several new organizations. One such group will work to open up the commercial media, which use the public airwaves free of charge, to serious content. Another will facilitate action by retired military, national security and diplomatic officials who want to deter unconstitutional and unlawful plunges into wars that lead to calamitous and costly blowbacks.

Why The HB2 Boycott Of North Carolina Is Working

May 1, 2016 Chris Kromm, www.southernstudies.org , , ,
By Chris Kromm for the Institute for Southern Studies. It's been over a month since North Carolina lawmakers rushed to pass House Bill 2, sweeping legislation that, while targeting a Charlotte city ordinance for gender-neutral public bathrooms, also nullified local anti-discrimination and wage laws. Since HB2 passed, headlines have been filled with near-daily reports of top companies, sports associations like the NBA and NCAA, and big-ticket performers from Bruce Springsteen to Cirque du Soleil not only condemning the law but saying they would rethink doing business in North Carolina or would boycott the state entirely. State officials have tried to downplay the impact of the HB2 backlash. In early April, N.C. Commerce Secretary John Skvarla blithely said "it's business as usual" in the state.

Rev. Pinkney Was Right: It’s Coming To Your City Next

May 1, 2016 Polly Hughes, www.counterpunch.org , ,
By Polly Hughes for Counter Punch. Michigan - Little bitty Benton Harbor was the testing ground. It was the testing ground to see what they can get away with....It’s comin’ to your city next, whether you like it or not. (Rev.Edward Pinkney) What do Michigan emergency managers, water rights, illegal corporate land acquisitions, and gentrification have to do with political prisoner Rev. Edward Pinkney? Rev. Pinkney has been fighting against injustice for decades in the small town of Benton Harbor, Michigan. But, his activism has reached far beyond Benton Harbor, the first city in Michigan to fall under the control of an emergency financial manager (EFM) in 2010. In July 2014, Pinkney joined many (estimated 5,000-10,000 activists) in a defiant protest, organized by Nurses United, and in walking through Detroit turning the water back on at residences.

Iraq: Popular Protests Escalate, ‘Green Zone’ Invaded

May 1, 2016 Ismaeel Dawood and Terry Kay Rockefeller, www.iraqicivilsociety.org ,
By Ismaeel Dawood and Terry Kay Rockefeller for Iraq Civil Society. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens fill Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, demanding “An End to Sectarianism” and the establishment of a new, technocratic government. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi takes no responsibility for delays in installing new leaders. He blames Parliament, which failed to vote on his “white envelope government” and then bitterly split into opposing factions over the prospect of change. Baghdad went to sleep one night and woke the next day to two parliaments and three “governments”! Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurdistan falters along with a one-man government and no parliament! Since June 31st, 2015, protests to force Iraqi politics in the direction of reform have taken place weekly. The Iraqis are denouncing the lack of vital services (electricity and water), high-level government corruption, and rampant sectarianism.

Politics Of The New Abnormal

May 1, 2016 Editors of Solidarity, www.solidarity-us.org , ,
By Editors of Solidarity, Right here and now, the urgent necessity for the army of Sanders supporters must be not to give up the fight. The results of the primaries and the delegate count are important, but not decisive in shaping the future. Don’t take the dead-end corporate politics of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party as “the best we can do.” Mass action can get results, whether it’s at home in the progress of the Fight for $15 campaign — or abroad, where street protests forced out the prime minister of Iceland over the Panama Papers revelations of offshore accounts and monstrous tax evasion by the global one-tenth of one percent. And could there be any clearer demonstration of the rigged system that Bernie Sanders is talking about? The “normal” pattern of the U.S. political cycle is that election years derail social movements, draining their energies into whatever looks like the lesser evil. Perhaps this most abnormal of elections will prove to be an exception.

Expanding Democracy Through The Commons

April 25, 2016 Danijela Dolenec, www.opendemocracy.net ,
By Danijela Dolenec for Open Democracy - Even though I am a political scientist, I don't expect that the kind of political change that we need today will come from parliaments, governments or parties. Instead, I look to the streets. This is why when we talk about the future of democracy I put my hopes in the recent cycle of protests and new social movements emerging around the world since 2008. They are usually interpreted as being motivated by austerity, assuming that people protest worsening standards of living, unemployment, and economic insecurity.

American Democracy Is Rigged

April 25, 2016 Hamid Dabashi, www.aljazeera.com , ,
By Hamid Dabashi for Aljazeera - In the United States presidential elections, there are two towering political parties - the Democratic and the Republican - that during the course of their "primary" elections get to choose who will be their respective candidates in the course of a national election. Although any US citizen can join these two parties - or any other political party - millions of eligible voters have not, and consider themselves "independent".

Newsletter: Ending The Political Charade

April 23, 2016 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. This week, on Earth Day, representatives from 130 countries gathered at the United Nations in New York City to sign the climate treaty agreed upon in Paris last December. As they smiled for the camera and promised to do their best to hold the temperature down, climate activists posted an open letter stating that it is too late, the climate emergency is already here. Leading up to the signing of the Paris Treaty this week were actions to stop the advance of fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Many events to mark the one year anniversary are taking place this week and the next in Baltimore to remember the uprising. Erica Chenoweth, the author of "How Civil Resistance Works", writes that elections both locally and globally are being shaped by nonviolent resistance. In the US, no matter who is elected president in the November election, it will be critical for those who have been activated to continue to organize and visibly protest.

Ash Carter’s Asian Folly

April 22, 2016 Peter Lee, www.counterpunch.org , , ,
By Peter Lee for Counter Punch - Ash Carter is on a mission: to convince Asia’s democracies that Asian security is synonymous with American leadership. Unfortunately for him, the two concepts are not theoretically or even empirically identical, as is revealed by a major clanger Secretary Carter dropped at the Council for Foreign Relations on April 8, 2016. During the Q&A, Carter stated that the PRC was screwing things up in the South China Sea, thereby promoting militarization and insecurity in “a region that has had it good for 70 years”…

BREAKING: Criminal Charges For 3 Over Flint Water Crisis Is “Only the Beginning”

April 22, 2016 Alexandra Jacobo, www.nationofchange.org , ,
By Alexandra Jacobo for Nation of Change - The three being charged are Mike Glasgow, Flint’s laboratory and water quality supervisor; Michael Prysby, an employee with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality; and Stephen Busch, former Michigan Department of Environmental Quality Lansing district coordinator at the Office of Drinking Water and Municipal Assistance. Mike Glasgow is being charged with a felony count of tampering with evidence on account of him signing a document stating tested houses all had lead service lines when they did not.

Democracy Sleepwalking

April 20, 2016 Arun Gupta, www.counterpunch.org ,
By Arun Gupta for Counterpunch - On Sunday afternoon, as the Democracy Awakening march wound around the U.S. Capitol, I caught up with a well-known activist in the procession and asked, “What are the strategic goals of this?” She laughed and said, “Get more momentum for these bills that aren’t going anywhere.” She was referring to a series of bills in Congress intended to strengthen and expand voting rights, create a system of publicly subsidized election financing, and pass a constitutional amendment to end the dominance of big money in politics and overturn Citizens United.

The Movement Will Continue No Matter How The Election Turns Out

April 19, 2016 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org , , , ,
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. Below is an announcement of a partnership between Popular Resistance and Resistance Against Plutocracy which created the 'Bernie or Bust Campaign.' This is not an electoral alliance but a movement building alliance. We recognize the incredible work the Bernie Sanders campaign has done to build national consensus around the issue of the unfair Wall Street dominated economy and the corruption of the US electoral system by big money interests. We also recognize that despite the national consensus on these issues an independent mass movement is essential for creating the trasnsformational change need. We hope other supporters of Sanders 'political revolution' recognize that a revolution does not coincide with an election but is much bigger than an election. The people need to build a movement that is able to impact whoever is elected president, as well as congress, state legislatures and local governments. We need to unite Sanders supporters with the popular movement.

300+ Arrests As Pro-Democracy Forces Converge For Final Day

April 19, 2016 Deirdre Fulton, www.commondreams.org , , ,
By Deirdre Fulton for Common Dreams - More than 300 people were arrested Monday as part of Democracy Awakening, marking the final day of a record-setting week of civil disobedience at the U.S. Capitol. Among those taken into custody were approximately 60 organization and movement leaders, including NAACP president and CEO Cornell William Brooks, Public Citizen president Robert Weissman, Greenpeace executive director Annie Leonard, radio commentator Jim Hightower, and Ben & Jerry's co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield.
«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.