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Revolution

Globalize Liberation: 5 Stages For Social Movements

January 21, 2014 George Lakey, www.trainingforchange.org ,
Late '90s Serbia was different in many ways from the situation facing activists in the U.S. or other countries. For one thing, the U.S. led a NATO bombing against Milosevic, which failed to unseat him, and in its frustration Washington decided to bet on the young rebels and help fund Otpur's leaflets and computers. Even so, Otpur's experience can stimulate our thinking. Given how many activists are tired of an endless round of protests that don't seem to add up to anything, Otpur activists' biggest gift to us might be their choice to unite around a strategy, to get creative about tactics, and to let the strategy guide which tactics make sense and which don't.

The Man From The North: The Open Hand

January 19, 2014 Rivera Sun, www.dandelionsalad.wordpress.com
We are poised, my friends, on the brink of rapid evolution or demise. Our socio-political-economic system is stretched as taut as tension wires. The edges are weakened and fraying. Smoldering frustration is sparking innovation and rebellion. The slow arc of evolution has brought humanity full circle in a revolution as deep and profound as the orbiting of the planets around the sun. Once again, we have reached a moment of phase transition, but this time, we will either propel ourselves into much-needed change or our ecosystems, species, and life, as we know it, will vanish from the face of the earth. The mantle of destiny falls on the shoulders that accept it. A billion molecules may have been offered the opportunity to become evolution’s Adam and Eve. How many passed that chance up from fear? Suspicion of one another? Narcissistic self-involvement? How many lost their opportunity because they were tuned out, oblivious to the others all around them?

500 Years of History: Mass Spying Always Aimed At Crushing Dissent

January 17, 2014 Washington's Blog, www.globalresearch.ca , , , ,
No matter which government conducts mass surveillance, they also do it to crush dissent, and then give a false rationale for why they’re doing it. The story of that struggle... the detailed history of the use of general warrants as instruments of oppression from the time of the Tudors, through the Star Chamber, the Long Parliament, the Restoration, and beyond. What is significant to note is that this history is largely a history of conflict between the Crown and the press. . . . the Crown were given roving commissions to search where they pleased in order to suppress and destroy the literature of dissent, both Catholic and Puritan. Today, Yes, we hear echoes to the Cointelpro program of the 60s and 70s … as well as King George’s General Warrants to the Colonies … and the Star Chamber of 15th century England.

When Martin Luther King, Jr. Gave Up His Guns

January 17, 2014 Mark Engler and Paul Engler, wagingnonviolence.org , ,
King’s political genius was in putting the institutional weight of a major national civil rights organization behind an ambitious, escalating deployment of civil resistance tactics. In the case of Birmingham, this meant taking many of the approaches that had been tried before — the economic pressure leveled against merchants during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the dramatic sit-ins of Nashville, the fill-the-jails arrest strategy of Albany — and combining them in a multi-staged assault that sociologist and civil rights historian Aldon Morris would dub “a planned exercise in mass disruption.” In creating an engineered conflict that could capture the national spotlight, King took huge risks. It would have been far easier for an organization of the size and background of the SCLC to turn toward more mainstream lobbying and legal action — much as the NAACP had done. Instead, by following SNCC’s student activists in embracing nonviolent confrontation, SCLC organizers and their local allies created a dramatic clash with segregationists that put the normally hidden injustices of racism on stark public display.

De Blasio’s Election in Historical Perspective

January 17, 2014 Steve Fraser, www.portside.org , , ,
Perhaps more fatal than that is the absence of an enduring mass movement. De Blasio is a plebiscite phenomenon. His election was the atomized, shapeless expression of discontent. The labor movement had little to do with his primary victory. After that the result was a foregone conclusion so the endorsement and even the leg-work of the city's unions were about lubricating their own access to the new administration more than placing that administration in any debt to the movement. And that labor movement today is a frail reed anyway when it comes to mobilizing people. Community and civil rights organizations and non-profits of various sorts also pitched in, but none of this amounts to a robust structure of massively mobilized power existing outside the Democratic Party. Indeed one reason some of the Mayor's appointments have been disappointing is precisely because there is no "shadow government" so to speak from which to choose such functionaries.

The Changing Times: Reflecting On Fugitive Philosopher Katherine Ann Power

January 17, 2014 Rivera Sun, www.PopularResistance.org
Revolution is on the table, once again. It is being discussed with increasing seriousness as our representative republic fails to adequately meet the populace's needs. As poverty and unemployment rise, so do the voices arguing about the most successful strategies for evicting corruption from the seats of power. As corporations spend billions on elections, grooming candidates in a mockery of democracy, the words "direct", "participatory", and "people's" democracies are being kicked around. One significant change has swept our society since the 1960's. Blame it on elementary school explanations of ecosystems, or a planet writhing in climate change before our very eyes, or perhaps even the rise of Wikipedia, a living encyclopedia maintained by people . . . but the world looks different to us now. When my father and Katherine were children, the universe was explained like giant clockworks. Scientists were dissecting it to see what made it ticked. Now, millions of people understand that it is the relationships of a highly interconnected web is what makes this world whirl round. Reductionism will never add up into an explanation for a living system that is constantly changing. We understand that robbing a bank or assassinating a single leader will not catalyze the massive social and political change we know is necessary. Our efforts must be myriad, multi-nodal, legion, and pervasive. We must relinquish guns and reach out our hands to one another. We know there are really no borders to flee across. Our global problems require global struggles. There is nowhere safe to hide. Our own towns and communities are now the front line of the struggle.

Man From The North: Liberty And Strategy For All

January 12, 2014 Rivera Sun, www.dandelionsalad.wordpress.com
You must believe that pockets of resistance exist. As America plunges into darkness, some people burn with resistance like fires in the night, aglow with respect for the civil liberties that define the modern ideal of freedom. The quiet murmur of their impassioned voices will call to you as they discuss nonviolent strategy and struggle, but you will not be asked to join them until you strike the matchstick of your heart, build a fire of your determination, ignite the blaze of your courage, and reach out to others. You must pull out those weathered, dog-eared books – the ones that you saved before the government banned them, the volumes that escaped the bonfires of the increasing authoritarianism of our corporate-controlled society.

The Man From The North: Baking The Bread Of Revolution

January 5, 2014 Rivera Sun, www.dandelionsalad.wordpress.com
There is a formula for revolution. The corporate-political elite are following it to perfection: steal the money, corrupt the power, imprison the people, starve the children, poison the water, pillage the resources, enslave the workers, eviscerate justice, stalk the citizens, stifle dissent, and inject terror in the bloodstream of society. Massive unrest and movements for social change are natural reaction to such conditions. With these ingredients, we’re cooked. Either we’ll revolt like cattle lunging to escape the slaughterhouse, or we will wage struggle for revolution in a process as natural as the alchemy of bread baking. It is unbelievable that the powerful don’t understand: if they mix the living yeast of humans into the flour of our earthly existence, apply pressure and heat . . . poof! We will rise toward life, nourishment, and sustenance of our communities.

Open Letter To OWS: You Were Right All Along

January 4, 2014 Ray Pensador, www.dailykos.com
There has never been a better time in history than today, when we face an Orwellian total information awareness surveillance corporate state, to apply the practices and concepts associated with non-hierarchical social justice movements. The situation does not lend itself for the Movement to rely (only) on top-down leadership, on hierarchical organizations (which have all been targeted for manipulation and co-option), on charismatic individuals. Yes, just like during any other time in history when tyranny and injustice engulfs societies, there will be those who will step forward to challenge the system, unafraid, and many of them will sacrifice their own security and freedom. But they need reinforcement; they need all of us to stand with them as this struggle moves to the next stage.

Major Social Transformation Is Closer Than You May Think

January 3, 2014 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org ,
The current social movement that exploded onto the national scene with the 2011 Occupy Movement is following the path of successful movements so far. The social movement in 2014 is poised to begin an exciting era of broadening and deepening the growing consensus for social and economic justice. This articles focuses on where we stand — in other words, at what stage of the progression of social movements we find ourselves — and broadly outlines the next steps. Next week, we will look more specifically at the tasks ahead for the movement in 2014 and beyond. By understanding the current stage of development we can better define the work that must be done to achieve success and predict how the power structure and public will react to our actions. Stage 6, “Majority Public Support,” which is where we are right now. During the current phase, the movement seeks to create broad and deep consensus over the issues that have been raised in the “Take-Off.” Our job is to win over the hearts and minds of the American people.

What Happens When The US Military Revolts?

January 3, 2014 Kevin Keating, www.polkagris.nu ,
A friend who was in the U.S. military during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War told me that before President G.H.W. Bush visited the troops in Saudi Arabia, enlisted men and women who would be in Bush’s immediate vicinity had their rifle and pistol ammunition taken away from them. This was supposedly done to avoid “accidents.” But it was also clear to people on the scene that Bush and his corporate handlers were somewhat afraid of the enlisted people who Bush would soon be killing in his unsuccessful re-election campaign. The suppressed history of the last big U.S. war before ‘Operation Desert Storm’ shows that the Commander-in-Chief had good reason to fear and distrust his troops. Our rulers want us to forget what happened during the Vietnam war — especially what happened inside the U.S. armed forces during the war. Our rulers remember it all too well. They want us to forget what defeated their war effort, and the importance of resistance to the war by enlisted men and women.

Female Protester Charged With Sexual Assault After Kissing Riot Cop

January 3, 2014 Will Potter, www.greenisthenewred.com , ,
A young woman who kissed a riot cop’s helmet during a protest in Italy has been charged with sexual assault. Nina De Chiffre is a 20-year-old student who was protesting a planned railway expansion in Northern Italy. At the demonstration, she kissed the police officer’s helmet. The police union filed a complaint, and she has been charged with “sexual violence” and causing “offence to a public official.” Protesters have a long history of such “crimes” in response to militarized police, of course. In addition to kisses, they’ve sometimes given flowers.

Stratfor Monitors and Studies Social Movements

December 31, 2013 Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org , ,
The Corporate and Security State Recognizes Movements Are a Threat to the Power Structure Stratfor is a private intelligence agency that works for business interests and government. It tracks and analyzes a lot of issues – the economy, military conflict, politics, energy and security. Recently it has also been monitoring, analyzing and reporting on social movements. Their interests in movements show their concern that revolts have been growing and are having an impact around the world. The involvement of Stratfor in undermining social movements became more evident thanks to important leaks by Jerry Hammond that were published by Wikileaks as The Global Intelligence Files. From these leaks we learned how corporations and the government were attacking Julian Assange and Wikileaks, as well as their infiltration, monitoring and surveillance of protesters on behalf of corporations and the government, especially those involved in the Occupy movement. The Wikileaks documents also showed us how corporations and government attack movements in a divide and conquer strategy that isolates those seeking transformational change (who they define as “radicals”).

Where Will Global Revolt Kick Off Next?

December 30, 2013 Paul Mason, www.theguardian.com , ,
If you read the Economist Intelligence Unit's latest attempt to guess where it will kick off next, it becomes clear how hard this is to do with conventional thinking. For the unit it is places with high inequality, heavy corruption, economic crisis and a collapse in trust. So Nigeria (the biggest economy in Africa), Egypt and Argentina all figure high on the red list of countries where there is a "very high risk" of conflict threatening the political order, with Brazil, South Africa and China merely "high risk". Though an advance on the straight-line thinking that linked revolts simply to the post-2008 economic crisis, I still think this misses something. When people ask me where it is going to kick off next, I say: "In people's heads."

Everyday Rebellion: Interview With Filmmakers Arash And Arman Riahi

December 30, 2013 Yosef Brody, www.truth-out.org ,
Have we entered a golden age of global activism? Uprisings have been sprouting regularly for several years, grabbing headlines and changing political agendas at the highest levels. What, if anything, do these various movements have in common? The inspired new documentary from the Riahi Brothers, Everyday Rebellion, answers this question by focusing on method. The film lovingly examines contemporary global nonviolence in its diversity and creativity, building on recent academic research showing that nonviolent resistance movements have been twice as effective in the past century in achieving their stated goals compared with violent resistance movements. Experts in nonviolence research and philosophy reinforce stories at the grass roots as the film brings us into streets and homes, crisscrossing continents and causes. The Riahi Brothers, who were born in Iran and raised in Austria, paint gracefully with a broad brush. They deal head-on with the harsh realities of human life, but the tone never strays too far from hopeful and optimistic. If one image characterizes Everyday Rebellion, it is probably the extended shot of a balloon dancing amid city traffic, somehow managing to avoid getting crushed.
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