Skip to content

Revolution

DoD Preparing For Social Movements Since 2008

June 12, 2014 Nafeez Ahmed, www.theguardian.com , , ,
Social science is being militarised to develop 'operational tools' to target peaceful activists and protest movements: A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term "warfighter-relevant insights" for senior officials and decision makers in "the defense policy community," and to inform policy implemented by "combatant commands." Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis – the DoD 'Minerva Research Initiative' partners with universities "to improve DoD's basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US."

The Rules Of Revolt

June 9, 2014 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com ,
There are some essential lessons we can learn from the student occupation of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, which took place 25 years ago. The 1989 protests began as a demonstration by university students to mourn the death of Hu Yaobang, the reformist Communist Party chief who had been forced out by Deng Xiaoping. The protests swiftly expanded to include demands for an end to corruption, for press freedom and for democracy. At their height, perhaps a million people were in the square. The protests were crushed on the night of June 3-4 when some 200,000 soldiers, backed by tanks and armored personnel carriers, attacked. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unarmed demonstrators were killed.

Roadmap To Personal Empowerment From Metta Center

June 5, 2014 Staff, www.mettacenter.org , ,
While creating a nonviolent future is a serious undertaking, one thing remains encouraging: we are not alone. There are countless organizations, groups and individuals already doing the great work, all striving for a shared goal. If you are reading this issue of Emergence, it is very likely that you are one of them. And it is precisely because it is not an easy task, we must join our hands together. The “Roadmap” is Metta Center’s attempt to offer three things to help create an unstoppable movement of movements: unity, strategy, and nonviolent power. One very appealing aspect of the Roadmap is that we all can identify ourselves with it - we all belong here. Roadmap illustrates the interconnectedness of our work, and many issues that are often seen as separate. It also shows the trajectory of “peace from within,” starting from our “Person Power” at the center.

Change From Below In Dominican Republic

May 25, 2014 Beverly Bell, www.otherworldsarepossible , ,
Previous theories of social transformation could be constructed based on the American Far West movies, where the stagecoach came through the desert with those who stole, guarded, and transported the gold. The revolutionaries waited to raid the coach. Revolutions – the October Revolution, all of them - were based on that image of the assault on power. This is an anti-Zapatista image, which instead is of building power from the community, from below. This image requires a new vision. Our problem nowadays is how to build power and a new economy from below. There are many factors to take into account in doing this, but first and foremost: human beings. There had been some social movements in the city: traditional movements as well as the union movements and so-called “housewife” movements; cultural and youth clubs that worked on popular art, popular education and sports; the literary movement… During times of dictatorship, the youth movement and the teachers’ movement were those that had the most staying-power.

Movements Need To Realize: Transformation Is Complicated

May 25, 2014 Dave Pollard, www.howtosavetheworld.ca , , ,
The movement for social, economic and environmental justice is undertaking complex transformations. Moving an economy dominated by oil, coal, gas and nuclear energy to a carbon-free, nuclear-free energy economy is incredibly complex; moving from a big finance dominated capitalist system to economic democracy, an economy where people control their own economic destiny, communities unite to determine their future and people all have input into the national direction of the economy is equally complex. One of the simpler transformations would be to expanding and improving Medicare to apply to everyone in the United States away from the for-profit, insurance dominated system of today -- but even that is complicated as it is a transformation of 18% of the nation's GDP. These are just a few examples of many transformations we need to make (add to that poverty, loss of jobs due to robotics, ending war, ecological collapse among others) as the nation and world are facing many crisis situations that demand change. While we work for these complicated changes reality is also asserting itself and forcing change upon us. We are facing "complexity," lots of issues, lots of moving parts, systemic change of a modern, complicated society. There are people who have studied "complexity theory," one of those who have translated the research in this area into language that most of us can understand is Dave Pollard. The essay below is an introductory discussion of complexity in relation to social movement change written on October 10, 2010.

Officials Cast Wide Net in Monitoring Occupy Protests

May 23, 2014 Colin Moynihan, www.nytimes.com ,
When the Occupy protests spread across the country three years ago, state and local law enforcement officials went on alert. In Milwaukee, officials reported that a group intended to sing holiday carols at “an undisclosed location of ‘high visibility.’ ” In Tennessee, an intelligence analyst sought information about whether groups concerned with animals, war, abortion or the Earth had been involved in protests. And in Washington, as officials braced for a tent encampment on the National Mall, their counterparts elsewhere sent along warnings: alink to a video of Kansas City activists who talked of occupying congressional offices and a tip that 15 to 20 protesters from Boston were en route. “None of the people are known to be troublemakers,”one official wrote in an email. The communications, distributed by people working with counterterrorism and intelligence-sharing offices known as fusion centers, were among about 4,000 pages of unclassified emails and reports obtained through freedom of information requests by lawyers who represented Occupy participants and provided the documents to The New York Times.

Was the American-Revolution Really A Counter-Revolution?

May 20, 2014 Herbert Calhoun, www.opednews.com ,
Between Charles Beard's "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States," and Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States of America," there has been a long gap and a dearth of credible books about the true intentions that led to the American Revolution of 1776. I have read and reviewed many of the books that have tried to fill the gap between the myths about the founding fathers and those that have tried to give a more accurate rendition of the founding era, a rash of new books have hit the streets. The list is simply too long to include here without using up too much space, so I have them simply appended some of them at the end as a short bibliographic appendix. Led by Professor Gerald Horne, with the current volume, what these new books have done is nothing less than revolutionary itself: For they have generally re-contextualized the global events surrounding the "founding generation of the American Nation itself." And then, more importantly, and more particularly, have also re-contextualized the critical events leading up to the "so-called" American Revolution of 1776. And although there is still much work left to be done, what a magnificent start on that project this book is.

Remembering Malcolm X On His 89th Birthday

May 19, 2014 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org , ,
Malcolm X was born on May 19, 1925 and February 21, 1965. He was a human rights activist who was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans. In February 1965, shortly after repudiating the Nation of Islam, he was assassinated by three of its members. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published shortly after his death, is considered one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century. "In my opinion, the young generation of whites, blacks, browns, whatever else there is, you're living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution, a time when there's got to be a change. People in power have misused it and now there has to be a change and a better world has to be built and the only way it's going to be built is with extreme methods. And I, for one, will join in with anyone, I don't care what color you are, as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth."

Radical Art Is An Act Of Uncompromising Passionate Resistance

May 18, 2014 Mark Karlin, truth-out.org ,
Marxian playwright Bertolt Brecht declared of revolutionary art: "Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it." Brecht's work - whose artistic career in Germany (except for his exile during the Nazi era, after which he returned to found the Berliner Ensemble Theater company in East Berlin) spanned from the Russian Revolution to his death in 1966 - illustrated, during his career, that revolutionary art must avoid the pitfalls of becoming co-opted by propaganda or commercialization. Brecht believed that to be a radical and revolutionary artist is to be defiant of any imposition of form or content by any economic system, artistic academy or political status quo. "Mother Courage and Her Children," considered by some as the theatrical masterpiece of the 20th Century, combines a radical aesthetic with an anti-fascist theme: The masses suffer from wars fought to enrich profiteers. But Brecht also kept his distance from the Soviet-mandated art that glorified Stalin and communism.

Building Movements That Can Move Beyond Reform

May 4, 2014 Eviction Free Zone, www.libcom.org ,
In an effort to solve the false problem of the national debt, and in response to the first-world depression that was inflicted on the people by the banking class, austerity measures are being implemented in the U.S. from the blueprint established in the European Union. Austerity, cleanly put, is how a welfare state attempts to respond to the internal debt it has accumulated. To do this it begins to sever social spending, which affects both public sector jobs and the services it provides to those who have fallen through the growing cracks in capitalism. This inevitably both increases rates of unemployment by eliminating entire sectors of jobs as well as shoving those in need into dire situations where basic material needs are no longer guaranteed by society. If we intend to really fight back against this growing austerity, a “new normal” of precarious work and gripping debt, then we have to think of the social safety net not as a grouping of different services, but rather individual areas of social life. We must develop a strategy that is able to see each of these areas facing cuts as specific parts of society, yet when spoken of together make a whole.

Solidarity, Occupation, Action: Creating Jobs For The Quiet Revolution

May 3, 2014 Joel Serino, www.occupy.com , ,
This is not for historians to fact check or to reexamine through a historical lens. This is simply about what is happening right now, in this moment, around the globe, in just a small number of movements. It is a partial response to the question: Is another world really possible? How do you argue with a network? The movements organized within them do not proceed by oppositions. One of the basic characteristics of the network is that no two nodes face each other in contradiction: rather, they are always triangulated by a third, and then a fourth, and then by an indefinite number of others in the web. The movements displace contradictions and operate instead in a kind of alchemy, or sea-change. The flow of the movements transform traditional fixed positions; networks impose their force through a kind of irresistible undertow. An Open Letter to 3.5% of You If you are reading this, or in the case of the author here, writing this, we are all inclusively participating 100% in society. We have a lot in common, you and I, and yet we are all as unique as we are individual. Research of hundreds of resistance movements shows that no resistance movement in the last 100 years has failed when 3.5 percent of the population participates.

Living The Most Revolutionary Times In History

April 19, 2014 Bernando Gutierrez, www.occupy.com , ,
If Karl Marx raised his head, he would be absolutely baffled: Revolts are shaking the world, bursting in the most unexpected places, but they rarely take power. The conditions for rebellion are as sharp today as in the nineteenth century, but few protests lead to the literal meaning of revolution, that "violent change in political, economic or social institutions of a nation." In addition, working people, whom Marx called the proletariat, seem not to have found control of the worldwide riots they are sparking – nor is class struggle the leitmotif of the wave of social unrest that has been repeating since the Arab Spring. Instead, a new political subject – more diffuse, more heterogeneous, more unclassifiable – is blurring the boundaries and formal definitions of revolution. Measuring the period between 2006 and 2013, we live in the most agitated era in modern history – more intense than 1848, 1917 or 1968 – according to the World Protests report released last fall by the Initiative for Policy Dialogue and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in New York.

The Quiet Revolution Is Here, Help Map It.

April 3, 2014 Sara Horowitz, www.freelancersunion.org
We’re at the start of a Quiet Revolution -- and independent workers are leading the way. We’re lifting our collective middle fingers to an economy that’s no longer in line with our values. From coworking spaces to food co-ops to credit unions, we’re driving big change by making small choices about how we work, shop, and bank. Now workers can put the money we earn toward institutions that are sustainable, have a social-purpose and are connected to their communities. But how do you find the Quiet Revolution’s shops and organizations? That’s why we made the “How to be a Quiet Revolutionary” Map. Our new interactive map is your guide to living a life that matches your values. Hungry? Search for a great local food co-op. Itching for a concert? Find a cooperative music venue. Stressed out by a tough client? Breathe deep at a yoga collective. We need your help to map the Quiet Revolutionaries in your community.

Riding The Wave Of Action

April 3, 2014 Rivera Sun, www.popularresistance.org
Surfing is an art. Life today sweeps us up in the swells of tremendous change. Terrifying undertows and riptides are brewing beneath the surface of our socio-political situation. The rise and fall of waves of change palpably upheave beneath us. And like dedicated surfers, we are all waiting to catch the perfect wave. On April 4th, the worldwide Wave of Action launches, rolling out sequences of nonviolent actions, gatherings, and events for three months until the final crescendo on July 4th. With over 600 organizations around the world participating, it seems likely that the swell of activity will demonstrate how much the Movement of Movements for social, economic, political and environmental justice has grown. On Occupy Radio, my co-host David Geitgey Sierralupe and I interviewed Dave Degraw, one of the co-collaborators who built the platform for the truly crowdsourced endeavor.

Waves of Nationwide Actions Planned at Key Historic Moment

March 30, 2014 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.alternet.org , , , , ,
A wave is an apt metaphor for a popular movement as movements do not grow in a consistent upward line, but grow and recede in waves of action. We certainly saw this with the current social movement that has roots which run more than a decade deep and had a nationwide “Take Off” with the wave of occupy encampments that rose up, coast-to-coast together. Popular Resistance grew out of many conversations and meetings with people in the Occupy movement from across the country as well as people involved in other social justice campaigns. We seek to provide the movement for social, economic and environmental justice with daily news and resources, as well as to help us see that we are a movement of movements. We support decentralized, bottom-up approaches to movement development as we see in the #WaveOfAction and the Global Climate Convergence. As the popular movement intentionally escalates its actions, we will be in position to highlight these crises and to quickly escalate further if events occur that create an opportunity for rapid growth. These are times that demand each of us to step up and do more. The opportunities for rapid growth of the social movement created by the dysfunction of the rule- by-money-government are increasing in ways we can only imagine.
«12345678910»