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Revolution

Rojava’s Democratic, Feminist Revolution A Source Of Hope

November 23, 2015 Tony Iltis and Stuart Munckton, www.telesurtv.net , ,
By Tony Iltis and Stuart Munckton for Tele SUR - Syria can seem an endless black hole of misery, but in the northern, largely Kurdish region of Rojava, it is also the scene of a profoundly democratic and humanist revolution, which places the rights of ethnic minorities and women's liberation at its centre. Ironically, given the horror that surrounds it, Rojava is the site of the most profound experiments on grassroots, participatory democracy outside of the revolutionary projects in Latin America. Like in Venezuela, the ideal of "the commune" is at the heart of Rojava's burgeoning democracy.

War, Propaganda And The Enemy Within

September 27, 2015 AbMartin, www.therealnews.com , ,
Abby Martin interviews Chris Hedges on American myths, war and revolt. Hedges explains the 'folly of Empire,' the dangers posed by right-wing extremism and the urgent need for a new system. Chris Hedges is a former New York Times journalist and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of several books including his most recent, "Wages of Rebellion: the Moral Imperative of Revolt." He publishes a weekly column on Truthdig.com and is the host of Days of Revolt, airing every Monday night on teleSUR english.

What It Means To Be A Socialist

September 23, 2015 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com ,
By Chris Hedges in Truth Dig - We live in a revolutionary moment. The disastrous economic and political experiment that attempted to organize human behavior around the dictates of the global marketplace has failed. The promised prosperity that was to have raised the living standards of workers through trickle-down economics has been exposed as a lie. A tiny global oligarchy has amassed obscene wealth, while the engine of unfettered corporate capitalism plunders resources, exploits cheap, unorganized labor and creates pliable, corrupt governments that abandon the common good to serve corporate profit. The relentless drive by the fossil fuel industry for profits is destroying the ecosystem, threatening the viability of the human species. And no mechanisms to institute genuine reform or halt the corporate assault are left within the structures of power, which have surrendered to corporate control. The citizen has become irrelevant. He or she can participate in heavily choreographed elections, but the demands of corporations and banks are paramount.

Energy Revolution 2015

September 23, 2015 Green Peace, www.greenpeace.org ,
This is the year when the fight against climate change could take a dramatic turn. The conference in Paris in December presents political and business leaders with the opportunity to take the critical decisions needed if we are to keep average temperature rises to no more than 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius. According to the IPCC, humankind cannot emit more than 1,000 giga-tonnes of CO2 from now, if we are to stay within this limit. At the current and projected rate of consumption, this entire carbon budget will be used by 2040. Dynamic change is happening in energy supply, but the change needs to happen faster. this Energy [R]evolution scenario proposes a pathway to a 100% sustainable energy supply, ending CO2 emissions and phasing out nuclear energy, and making redundant new oil exploration in the arctic and deep sea waters such as off the coast of Brazil.

Where Are Pitchforks Billionaires Are So Scared Of?

September 10, 2015 Fast Company, www.fastcoexist.com , , ,
By Fast Company - In the wake of the crisis and recession, despite the fact that nearly all the gains of the recovery have gone straight into the bank accounts of the wealthy, America's billionaires keep doing things like comparing themselves to persecuted Jews in Nazi Germany and talking about the ever-popular pitchforks. Many aggressively denounce policies designed to redistribute wealth as "class warfare." It's been noted extensively that if there is any class warfare happening, it's the wealthy waging it against the lower classes. Yet the idea of a popular worker uprising that results in loss of property or violence against America's rich is a bogeyman to which we keep returning. Even those in favor of addressing growing inequality use "avoiding class warfare" as the argument that putting in a fix is urgent. In a recent New York Times article, William Cohan, a former Wall Street banker, lays out the stakes of continued inequality: "That’s the real danger...This little thing called the French Revolution."

Rapper-Poet Akala: ‘Slavery Was Foundation Of European Capitalism’

August 15, 2015 Dan Glazebrook, www.rt.com , ,
By Dan Glazebrook - Hip-hop, and the entertainment industry in general, is known more for encouraging artists to become one-dimensional caricatures of themselves than for nurturing a culture of political engagement, revolutionary love and serious historical research. But then Akala is not your typical entertainer. Kingslee James Daley, whose stage name is Akala, is a genuine polymath. Since the start of his music career in 2003, the English rapper, poet and writer has remained fiercely independent, releasing material solely through his own label and refusing to kowtow to the mainstream. A MOBO award-winning rapper, Akala is also a campaigning journalist, lecturer and founder of a company that teaches Shakespeare to schoolchildren.

Radicalized: A Revolutionary Documentary Film

July 26, 2015 Patti Beers, theantimedia.org , , ,
By Patti Beers in The AntiMedia. Los Angeles, CA - On October 1, 2011 I showed up for the revolution. That summer, I had been watching the Young Turks on Youtube and had come to the conclusion that Obama was not the great savior that was sold to us. It was clear to me— with Congress completely sold out to corporate interests and the Supreme Court’s-then recent, shady ruling regarding corporate personhood—that if Obama was not for the people, then revolution—peaceful if possible—was the only way to make things right. Looking back, I see myself as having a naive, reformist perspective. In college, I got an “A+” in Political Science without any effort. I had no idea how much education on politics, specifically on the subject of anarchy, that I was about to get from the Occupy experience and the events that happened after.

What Is Revolutionary Media? 3 Key Ideas

July 24, 2015 Kit O'Connell, www.mintpressnews.com , , ,
By Kit O'Connell in Mint Press News - I wanted to talk today about the challenges of being a new media journalist today, and I’ve got three major points and a couple challenges we face that I plan to touch on. We all agree that old media is dying, that’s part of why we’re here. It’s also oppressing people on the way out by throwing a temper tantrum as it dies, and it’s hurting everybody — especially those of us who want to be journalists in a sustainable career, and for anyone who wants to reach people. But new media kind of looks like a sweat shop! On July 1, Digiday published a study on the volume of publishing in modern online media. According to their figures, Huffington Post has 532 full time staff churning out 1,200 articles per day, with an additional 400 unpaid blog posts generated daily. So here’s three major points to focus on when we imagine revolutionary media. 1) Revolutionary media is decentralized and diverse. 2) Revolutionary media is not neutral or balanced. 3) Revolutionary media is sustainable.

Egypt Will Be Worse Than Pre-2011 With New Terrorism Law

July 7, 2015 Sarah El-Deeb, www.AP.org , , , , , ,
By Sarah El-Deeb in Business Insider - After a series of stunning militant attacks, Egypt's government is pushing through a controversial new anti-terrorism draft bill that would set up special terrorism courts, shorten the appeals process, give police greater powers of arrest and imprison journalists who report information on attacks that differs from the official government line. The draft raised concerns that officials are taking advantage of heightened public shock at last week's audacious attacks to effectively enshrine into law the notorious special emergency laws which were in place for decades until they were lifted following the 2011 ouster of autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Rather than reviewing security policies since the attacks, officials have largely been focusing blame on the media for allegedly demoralizing troops and on the slowness of the courts.

Hidden Treasures Now Online: Archive Of Radical Posters

July 4, 2015 Staff, www.popularresistance.org , ,
By the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. We are excited to share with everyone these Labadie Collection posters. Acquired over the past 100 years, they range in topics from anarchism (our strongest collecting area) to civil liberties, anti-colonialism, anti-war/pacifism, feminism, labor, youth and student protest, ecology, Occupy, and more. Due to their format, until now, we have only been able to provide very limited access. Our hope is that they will get more use now that everyone can view them. This was a joint effort which included highly qualified staff from several units in the Library: Conservation, Copyright Office, Digital Library Production Service (DLPS) and Special Collections.

Bree Newsome: ‘Now Is The Time For True Courage’

June 30, 2015 Bree Newsome, www.bluenationreview.com , , , , ,
By Bree Newsome in Blue Nation Review - As you are admiring my courage in that moment, please remember that this is not, never has been and never should be just about one woman. This action required collective courage just as this movement requires collective courage. Not everyone who participated in the strategizing for this non-violent direct action volunteered to have their names in the news so I will respect their privacy. Nonetheless, I’m honored to be counted among the many freedom fighters, both living and dead. I see no greater moral cause than liberation, equality and justice f­­or all God’s people. What better reason to risk your own freedom than to fight for the freedom of others? That’s the moral courage demonstrated yesterday by James Ian Tyson who helped me across the fence and stood guard as I climbed. History will rightly remember him alongside the many white allies who, over the centuries, have risked their own safety in defense of black life and in the name of racial equality.

Shattering The Myth Of The Leaderless Movement

June 17, 2015 Barbara Ransby, www.colorlines.com , , , ,
By Barbara Ransby in Color Lines - Who gets to tell the story? This is a question implicit in the work I do as a historian. But the question I have been wrestling with lately is more immediate: Who gets to shape the narrative, define the history-makers, and capture the words and images of the current black-led, anti-state violence movement evolving in the United States right now? Even the act of naming a movement like this has its power. Last month The New York Times Magazine bestowed part of the defining privilege on a young former sports writer, Jay Caspian Kang. Kang reduced the growing movement to the personal story lines of two young, earnest and committed social media activists, DeRay Mckesson and Johnetta "Netta" Elzie. While their work has made a critical contribution, Kang frames that work in a way that misrepresents the larger movement.

Ecuador’s Citizens’ Revolution: Retaking Power From The Old Elites

June 15, 2015 TeleSur, www.facebook.com , , ,
By TeleSur - After five years in office, the government has significantly boosted economic growth to the extent that it is one of the best in the region, at an average of 4.2 percent over the past seven years. That success was achieved in spite of the fact Correa came to office on the eve of the global financial crisis, and Ecuador is hampered by not having its own currency. Central to stronger growth was the tripling of social investment, which now accounts for 15 percent of the country's GDP, along with safeguards to ensure the wealth is being successfully redistributed to benefit all Ecuadoreans. As a result, the poverty index has fallen by one-third, with over 1.1 million lifted out of poverty since 2007.

Hedges: We Are In A Revolutionary Moment

June 6, 2015 Elias Isquith, www.salon.com , ,
By Elias Isquith in Salon - It’s with us already, but with this caveat: it is what Gramsci calls interregnum, this period where the ideas that buttress the old ruling elite no longer hold sway, but we haven’t articulated something to take its place. That’s what that essay I quote by Alexander Berkman, “The Invisible Revolution,” talks about. He likens it to a pot that’s beginning to boil. So it’s already taking place, although it’s subterranean. And the facade of power — both the physical facade of power and the ideological facade of power — appears to remain intact. But it has less and less credibility. There are all sorts of neutral indicators that show that. Low voter turnout, the fact that Congress has an approval rating of 7 percent, that polls continually reflect a kind of pessimism about where we are going, that many of the major systems that have been set in place — especially in terms of internal security — have no popularity at all.

The Change Makers: The Other 1 Percent

May 25, 2015 Ralph Nader, www.blog.nader.org ,
Over the years, I have been astonished at how less than one percent of the citizenry, backed by the “public sentiment,” have changed our country for the better by enacting reforms to protect the people from abuses of power, discrimination and deep neglect. Specifically, if – one percent or less – were to dedicate a modest amount of their time and money working together for much-needed changes that are overwhelmingly supported by public opinion in each congressional or state legislative district, they would prevail against the government and corporate power structures. There are obstacles, such as a corporate influence over City Hall and wavering politicians who insincerely pledge support, but defer and delay action. But, if people work together, almost any problem can be solved. History shows that it only takes a dedicated few to gain the momentum from many more to enact change.
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