Movement

How Movements Can Win More Victories Like Gay Marriage

July 10, 2014 Mark Engler and Paul Engler, www.wagingnonviolence.org Strategize! culture, Gay Marriage, Law, LGBTQ, Movement

Not long ago, same-sex marriage in America was not merely an unpopular cause; it was a politically fatal one — a third-rail issue that could end the career of any politician foolish enough to touch it. The idea that gay and lesbian couples would be able to legally exchange vows in states throughout the United States was regarded, at best, as a far-off fantasy and, at worst, as a danger to the republic. It can be difficult to remember how hostile the terrain was for LGBT advocates in even recent decades. As of 1990, three-quarters of Americans saw homosexual sex as immoral. Less than a third condoned same-sex marriage — something no country in the world permitted. In 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman and denied federal benefits to same-sex couples, passed by an overwhelming 85-14 margin in the U.S. Senate. Figures including Democratic Sen. Joe Biden voted for it, and Democratic President Bill Clinton signed the act, affirming, “I have long opposed governmental recognition of same-gender marriages.”

Winning With Each Other: Organizing The South

June 26, 2014 Ngoc Loan Tran, www.wagingnonviolence.org Strategize! Movement, Organizing, Solidarity, South

I have spent most of my life growing up in the U.S. South. I was raised in North Carolina and growing up here meant receiving perplexed looks, condescending questions and upsetting dismissals from non-Southerners because of the many stereotypes that comes with being from the South. Needless to say, I have learned a lot about how other people perceive this region. While most of these conversations have been between friends, comrades and allies, most of these perspectives — whether well-intentioned or not — are misguided. Oftentimes, it has been heartbreaking to find out what non-Southern organizers think they know about organizing in this region. Many have told me that organizing in the South isn’t worth it or assume that there actually isn’t any organizing happening in the South at all. And perhaps the one perspective that has been the most infuriating to me is the idea that Southern organizers need to be rescued from the supposedly most backward region in the country. What I want to speak to is how we start moving towards actually building relationships with each other across political, geographical and cultural lines.

New Party Arises In Spain: Podemos

June 17, 2014 Vera Gutiérrez Calvo / Carmen Pérez-Lanzac, www.elpais.com Create! Democracy, Movement, Spain

On the afternoon of May 15, 2011, thousands of citizens suddenly began filling the streets and occupying the squares of more than 50 Spanish cities. Some of them camped out there for months. They had been summoned to a protest march by a group called Democracia Real Ya (Real Democracy Now) through the social networks. With local and regional elections scheduled for May 22, very few media outlets saw the 15-M movement coming. And Spain’s political parties certainly did not. Three years later, Podemos (We Can), a party that rose out of the ashes of that movement, became the fourth-most-voted political force in Spain at the European elections on Sunday. Nobody saw that coming, either. Podemos was registered as a party just three months ago, after heated debate among neighborhood assemblies.

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