Mass Movement

Resistance In The Age Of Trump

March 5, 2017 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Donald Trump, Mass Movement, oligarchy

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers. This article summarizes the history of the Trump era and the response by the popular resistance movement. It links to a series of articles written over the last six weeks, reporting on the movement, what challenges we face, our task and next steps. In addition, to the articles, we include an interview by Chris Hedges of Popular Resistance co-director, Kevin Zeese. By combining all of this into one document we can see the growth and impact of the movement. We see that people are growing their power, getting organized and mobilizing in effective ways. While there are challenges, the movement is off to a strong start during the Trump era but must keep growing, push for positive change as well as challenging the worst policies of our era. When we do so, the people will realize their power like they have not done in recent generations and the movement will have a greater and longer term impact than Trump and the bi-partisans that run the US government for the wealthiest, and not for the people.

What Kind of Movement Moment Are We In?

February 26, 2017 Mike MIller, www.counterpunch.org Resist! Free Speech Movement, Labor, Mass Movement, Organizing, Unions

By Mike MIller for Counterpunch. We need to build it. That will require talking with people who now don’t think the way present movement activists do; it will mean listening to them, and gaining their trust; developing relationships with them; engaging them in not only protesting but in becoming co-creators of the movement and organizations required to turn around the ship of empire that the U.S. has become. To imagine what this might look like, add a “0” to the numbers of people participating in what are now considered “mass actions”. And imagine them being sustained over a long period of time. And imagine already existing civic organizations (unions, congregations and others) growing in membership because of their involvement in the cause. And imagine new organizations being formed by people who now don’t have a continuing voice in civic affairs. And stretch your mind a little further to imagine permanent organizations being built that unite all these forces. That’s what “big organizing” would look like.

Marta Harnecker: Ideas For The Struggle

February 19, 2017 The Old and New Project, www.oldandnewproject.net Strategize! Democracy, Latin America, Left Politics, Mass Movement

By The Old and New Project. July 2016— When we asked Marta Harnecker whether it would be OK to post her “Ideas for the Struggle” (12 short articles about the left and the challenges it faces) on the Old and New website, with an invitation to revolutionary activists in the USA to discuss it, she said she would be delighted. But she also urged that we write an introduction explaining why a piece that was originally composed in 2004 is being reprinted today, with only a few modifications. That question, however, seems relatively easy: not much has changed on the revolutionary left since 2004 concerning the issues Harnecker is addressing in these notes. They have not been adequately discussed or resolved, far from it. Another question also seems significant: Why do we think a text inspired by and considering the practices of the Latin American left will be helpful to revolutionaries in the USA? This should also be obvious to readers who take even a quick look at the topics Harnecker considers.

Alt-Majority: How Social Networks Empowered Mass Protests Against Trump

January 31, 2017 Farhad Manjoo, www.nytimes.com Resist! Donald Trump, Mass Movement, Protests

By Farhad Manjoo for The New York Times - In his first week in office, as the president’s aides won’t tire of reminding us, Mr. Trump has already put in motion plans to do much of what he promised to do while campaigning. But it’s not just the politician who is moving fast. It’s the population, too. In a matter of hours on Saturday, thousands rushed to the nation’s airports, beckoned by tweets. The flash protests in response to Mr. Trump’s immigration ban, which continued to grow in many cities on Sunday, were as organized as they were instantaneous. Dispatched online, the protesters knew where to go, and they knew what to do once they arrived: to command the story by making a scene.

After Election, Can Support For Bernie Spur Social Change?

March 27, 2016 Arun Gupta, www.telesurtv.net Strategize! 2016 Elections, Bernie Sanders, Mass Movement

By Arun Gupta for TeleSur. Some call it a movement because Sanders volunteers are self-organizing to phone bank, canvas, leaflet, rally, and fundraise. That is not independent organizing, however; it’s mobilizing voters to advance Sanders in a process controlled by Democrats. Once that ends the groups will unravel because they’ve lost their common bond (unless the members have a pre-existing political relationship). It’s similar to how Occupy Wall Street disintegrated after groups were evicted from the physical camps that glued them together. If the Sanders campaign were a movement, leaders would be emerging with their own strategies, networks of support, and organizations as they have in movements from immigrant Dreamers and climate justice to Occupy and Black Lives Matter.

Popular Resistance Newsletter: Glimpses Of Our Power

November 28, 2014 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org Newsletter Ferguson, Mass Movement, Racism, Social Movements, Solidarity

The nationwide reaction to the grand jury decision in Ferguson and police killings across the country taught the social justice movement an important lesson: The people have the power to shut down the nation. This is an important reality to consider. The reaction to the grand jury in 170 cities included people blocking major roadways, highways, bridges and tunnels. The police were unable to stop mobilized people working together to stop traffic. Those involved in the protest were still a small number, perhaps 200,000 people, but even this small percentage of the population had the power to #ShutItDown. In most instances protests were met with support even by people who were inconvenienced by traffic. Now that we know that even a small percentage of Americans, well under .1%, have this power, how do we grow this capacity? How do we use it to our advantage in the case of racially unfair policing? How do we use this power for other issues?

An Aussie’s Reflections On Occupy NATGAT 2014

August 9, 2014 Katharine Dawn, www.interoccupy.net Organize! Australia, Mass Movement, Occupy, usa

NATGAT 2014 was my first Direct Experience of the movement and the Heroes and Sheroes that are dedicatedly keeping this highly significant socio-political evolutionary process ALIVE. My dear #Occupiers : you are a testimony to the indestructibility of the human spirit. You have not relinquished your authentic humanity to the dominant paradigm of greed and selfishness. Rather, as abundantly clear at NATGAT 2014, the outstanding and unifying quality of this movement is that its champions CARE : we actually CARE – about everyone and everything. #Occupiers CARE about the world and the Quality of Life that we will bequeath to future generations. Echoing the words of Leonard Peltier, ’I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart to the top of my soul’ (The Nuclear Resister, No. 174). The best I can do here is to offer some flashing glimpses of the bright lights of creativity, exciting projects and initiatives, common-sense visioning and awareness-raising endeavors that filled and over-filled the 4 days of NATGAT 2014. Deep breath, and here we go! From the Indigenous Nations Network, Lakota man William Underbaggage set the tone for the Gathering opening the event with his impassioned words of fire and truth, calling forth our humanity to act now with integrity and dedication so as to effectively address the many very real issues of our times.

World Bankers Expect Protests Are Coming

July 19, 2014 Andrew Gavin Marshall, www.occupy.com Resist! Bank, Mass Movement, Resistance

These two groups – financial institutions and the consultants that advise them – play key roles in the spread of institutionalized corporate and financial power, and as such, warnings from these groups about the threat posed by “social unrest” carry particular weight as they are geared toward a particular audience: the global oligarchy itself. Organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank were responsible for forcing neoliberal economic “restructuring” on much of the developing world from the 1980s onwards, as the IMF and E.U. are currently imposing on Greece and large parts of Europe. The results have been and continue to be devastating for populations, while corporations and banks accumulate unprecedented wealth and power. As IMF austerity programs spread across the globe, poverty followed, and so too did protests and rebellion. Between 1976 and 1992, there were 146 protests against IMF-sponsored programs in 39 different countries around the world, often resulting in violent state repression of the domestic populations (cited explicitly by Firoze Manji and Carl O’Coill in “The Missionary Position: NGOs and Development in Africa,” International Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 3, 2002).

The Ebb And Flow Of Social Movements

July 9, 2014 David Rovics, www.songwritersnotebook.blogspot.com Educate! Arts, Mass Movement, Music, Occupy

I'm at the annual conference of the northwest branch of the Fellowship of Reconciliation as I write. I've done a few songs so far, and have been very well-received. It's an easy audience for leftwing sentiment combined with acoustic music. These are mostly people a bit older than I, who came of age during the times of the movements against the war in Vietnam, and for civil rights. These movements had lasting effects not only on the politics of those in attendance, but on their taste in music. Also, they're members of an organization that has a culture of its own, to some extent, which has somewhat insulated it from the ebb and flow of social movements (though it has also undoubtedly drawn so much from those movements, too). Groups like FOR in places like western Washington feel slightly insulated from how things are in what you might call Middle America. A nice little bastion of sanity amid what often feels like the alienated drones in the “real world.” But what of the times when those drones come to life, and beyond the walls of the artificially-produced fortresses of progressivism, the regular people get motivated to think outside the box? Movements large and small can happen, and have broad and lasting ripple effects. Like the 60's -- the repercussions of which we'll still be feeling for many decades I'm sure.

Spanish Social Movement Releases “A Charter For Democracy”

July 5, 2014 Movimiento Democracia, www.occupy.com Educate! Democracy, Mass Movement, Politics, Spain

Whatever happened to the 15-M Movement? Where did Occupy go? Three years after the groundbreaking revolutionary ruptures of 2011, violent repression and media invisibility have relegated these thriving movements to a grey area. The perception seems to shift between mainstream derision and niche-group interest. Occupy’s roots have spread out and sprouted a multitude of initiatives, though perhaps the source inspiration is not always publicly recognized. But in Spain, the popular experience of austerity – the murderous palliative prescribed as a cure for the crisis – and the resulting political movements in reaction have been giving the lie to the mainstream narrative that 15-M is a “has been.” The movement undeniably lives. Its form has been mutated, re-imagined, distributed, and coalesced into a multitude of initiatives and hacks to the system. We live here, we see it every day. These initiatives are not as easily seen, defined – or, for that matter, targeted – as a physical occupation may be; yet they permeate the hegemony, creating new possibilities and spaces. You need only look at the recent EU Parliamentary election results to see how Spanish voters have reacted to austerity and debt – and how that reaction contrasted strongly with that of some other European nations. One of the most important evolutions of 15-M is undoubtedly the “Movimiento por la Democracia” (Movement for Democracy).

World’s Wealthiest Worries About Global Unrest

July 5, 2014 Andrew Gavin Marshall, www.occupy.com Resist! Davos, Inequality, Mass Movement

As an annual gathering of thousands of leading financial, corporate, political and social oligarchs in Davos, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has taken a keen interest in recent years discussing the potential for social upheaval as a result of mass inequality and poverty. A WEF report released in November of 2013 warned that a “lost generation” of unemployed youth in Europe could potentially pull the Eurozone apart. One of the report's authors, the CEO of Infosys, commented that “unless we address chronic joblessness we will see an escalation in social unrest,” noting that youth especially “need to be productively employed, or we will witness rising crime rates, stagnating economies and the deterioration of our social fabric.” The report added: “A generation that starts its career in complete hopelessness will be more prone to populist politics and will lack the fundamental skills that one develops early on in their career.” In short, if the global ruling class – known affectionately as the Davos Class – doesn't quickly find ways to accommodate the continent's increasingly unemployed and “lost” youth, those people will potentially turn to “populist politics” of resistance that directly challenge the global political and economic order. For the individuals and interests represented at the World Social Forum, this poses a monumental and, increasingly, an existential threat.

Movements Of 2011: From Occupation To Reconstruction

July 1, 2014 Nathan Schneider, www.america.aljazeera.com Create! Commons, Cooperatives, Mass Movement, Occupy, Organizing, Politics

Ever since I wrote a book about Occupy Wall Street, I’ve often found myself being asked, “What happened to Occupy, anyway?” Now, more than two years since the movement faded from the headlines and in the wake of French economist Thomas Piketty’s best-selling diagnosis of economic inequality, the urgency of the question is mounting, not diminishing. The answer is also becoming clearer: The networks of activists that formed in the midst of 2011’s worldwide wave of protest are developing into efforts to create durable economic and political experiments. Rather than focusing on opposing an unjust system, they’re testing ways to replace it with something new. The 2011 movements were always prefigurative in some respects. From Tahrir Square in Cairo to Zuccotti Park in New York, protesters eschewed formal leadership in order to practice direct democracy, a means of revealing just how false our societies’ claims to being democratic have become. They built little utopias that provided free food, libraries, music, religious services and classes, trying to put on display what they thought a good society should look like. The 2011 movements also reflected the emergence of a global community that spans borders as protesters in different countries borrowed strategies and slogans from one another.

Chris Hedges Interviews Noam Chomsky (2/3)

June 20, 2014 The Real News, www.therealnews.com Educate! Capitalism, Chris Hedges, Interview, Labor, Manufacturing, Mass Movement, Noam Chomsky

The idea still should be that of the Knights of Labor: those who work in the mills should own them. And there's plenty of manufacturing going on in the country, and probably there will be more, for unpleasant reasons. One thing that's happening right now which is quite interesting is that energy prices are going down in the United States because of the massive exploitation of fossil fuels, which is going to destroy our grandchildren, but under the, you know, capitalist morality, the calculus is that profits tomorrow outweigh the existence of your grandchildren. It's institutionally-based, so, yes, we're getting lower energy prices. And if you look at the business press, they're, you know, very enthusiastic about the fact that we can undercut manufacturing in Europe because we'll have lower energy prices, and therefore manufacturing will come back here, and we can even undermine European efforts at developing sustainable energy because we'll have this advantage. Britain is saying the same thing. I was just in England recently. As I left the airport, I read The Daily Telegraph, you know, I mean, newspaper. Big headline: England is going to begin fracking all of the country, even fracking under people's homes without their permission. And that'll allow us to destroy the environment even more quickly and will bring manufacturing back here.

Transnational Social Movements And Power

June 20, 2014 Nation Of Change, www.nationofchange.org Organize! Brazil, Mass Movement, Organizing

Q: Why is it important to build transnational social movements? Of course, there are specific issues and power structures in each country, but it's important to overcome borders and make a transnational movement because the root causes of injustices, of exclusion, of the violence and discrimination we face are the same. They are systemic issues. They are global issues. As social organizations and movements, we need to move forward beyond merely the national level and see the big picture. And to understand how the specific reality we live in is related to the reality of other countries and other communities. Inasmuch as we're able to realize that, we'll also be able to raise peoples' hopes, to strengthen the struggles of each other and bring about transformation, on a much bigger scale than anything we could do at a merely national level. It would do no good or very little good to bring about some great transformation in just one country if things remain exactly the same in other countries.

Worldwide Wave Of Action Progress Report

June 5, 2014 WaveofAction, www.feature.waveofaction.org Strategize! Mass Movement, New Economy, Worldwide Wave of Action

When the crowdsourced #WaveOfAction campaign was being planned for April 4th – July 4th, we were confident that it was going to be a pivotal strategic timeframe based on the amount of activists and organizations planning actions. As the campaign hits the 60-day mark, we are excited to report that it has exceeded our expectations. It has quickly evolved from a three-month long campaign into a global movement of movements, with hundreds of groups and tens of thousands of activists joining in. Crowdsourced Wave of Action videos and graphics have received millions of views. Many Wave of Action social media accounts have been created. #WaveOfAction has become a unifying hashtag that movements are using to show solidarity with each other, to show that all of our issues are connected. This is the first part in a collaborative series that we will be releasing summing up actions taken throughout the Wave. We highlighted over 150 actions occurring during the first 45 days; based upon a collection of information compiled from the WaveOfAction.org online organizing network and social media posts using the #WaveOfAction hashtag. While this is an extensive recap, it is not an all-inclusive report covering every action. With so many actions happening worldwide, it exceeded our capacity to track all of them. Here is a research spreadsheet listing many of the actions that we are using for this report. In the true collaborative and crowdsourced nature of this campaign, we invite you to add actions that we have not included and create your own reports. (See the end of this article for further information.)

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