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Revolution

The Man From The North: Impossible Courage

December 29, 2013 Rivera Sun, www.dandelionsalad.wordpress.com
Wishful thinking and random action will not topple the corrupt and powerful collusion of extreme capitalism, the wealthy elite, and military force. For all the courage shown thus far by people across the country in demonstrating, petitioning, even throwing their bodies in the line of danger, I call upon an even greater courage now . . . . . . the courage to act like we stand a chance of winning. Desperate acts of valor in the midst of despair, futile symbolic gestures, spontaneous eruptions of anger and violence . . . none of these require the same courage as sitting down and systematically analyzing how a tiny group of disorganized, overwhelmed, exhausted, contentious, and geographically dispersed people can bring about the downfall of a massive machine of economics, legislations, cultural brainwashing, media domination, law enforcement, surveillance, and military power.

Support Movement Analysis: Real Democracy Requires Independent Media

December 28, 2013 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , ,
We often use the Popular Resistance website to raise money for organizations, campaigns, artists and art collectives and others who are working in the resistance movement. In the article below we are urging support for ROAR Magazine. One of the critical fronts of struggle for developing a mass movement that can challenge the current power structure is media. Independent media, citizens media and social networks are keys to challenging the corporate mass media. Understanding our movement and constantly evaluating where we are going and how we get there are essential. ROAR is consistently strong in its analysis of the resistance movement around the world. They have excellent writers who put forward analysis you do not read anywhere else. We urge you to support their fundraising campaign on indiegogo.

Popular Resistance Newsletter – Real Change Is Closer Than You Think

December 27, 2013 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org , ,
In recent years there has been a global awakening of people understanding that big finance capitalism’s neo-liberal model of privatization and corporatization while defunding public programs and cutting necessary services to people is the cause of economic inequality and the failed economy. At the same time, the collapsing ecology of the planet with mass extinctions, destruction of the oceans and environment as well as the impacts of climate change have become evident to super majorities. The inability of governments to respond appropriately to these crises because they are corrupted by mega-banks and transnational corporate interests has led to mass protests.

Study: In Recent Years, World Shaken By Protests

December 26, 2013 Isabel Ortiz, Sara Burke, Mohamed Berrata and Hernan Cortes, www.policydialogue.org , , ,
In recent years the world has been shaken by protests. From the Arab Spring to the “Indignados” (outraged), from Occupy to food riots. There have been periods in history when large numbers of people rebelled about the way things were, demanding change, such as in 1848, 1917 or 1968; today we are experiencing another period of rising outrage and discontent, and some of the largest protests in world history. Our analysis of 843 protest events reflects a steady increase in the overall number of protests every year, from 2006 (59 protests) to mid-2013 (112 protests events in only half a year). Following the onset of the global financial and economic crisis began to unfold, there is a major increase in protests beginning 2010 with the adoption of austerity measures in all world regions.

Ten Good Things About The Year 2013

December 26, 2013 Medea Benjamin, www.codepink.org
It would be easy to make a list of 10 bad things—wars, government shut-down, drone attacks, lack of progress on immigrant rights, lousy health-care reform. But it’s also been a year of extraordinary activism: whistleblowers, DREAMers, Walmart workers, peacemakers, gay rights advocates, garment workers. As the year ends, let’s pay tribute to the good things their efforts have wrought. 1. A spontaneous uprising by the American people kept President Obama from invading Syria. This Fall’s “peaceful insurrection” was by far my favorite moment of 2013. It was one of those all-too-rare occasions when folks came together across ideological divisions, flooding their congressional reps with calls. Yes, after 12 years, Americans have become “war-wise”, understanding that US intervention is no solution.

The Man From The North: Wisdom – A Force Unstoppable

December 22, 2013 Rivera Sun, www.dandelionsalad.wordpress.com ,
“Look out upon this nation and tell me what you see,” a friend once said to me. I told her I saw anger, hunger, poverty, senselessness, fear, sick and worried people, hatred twisting faces, greed stuffing overfull guts, ignorance regurgitating lies, well-intentioned impotence, self-centered passivity, and, beyond this roiling sea of humanity’s foibles, I saw my opponents lined up to massacre us all. “Until you look out and see yourself as that,” she answered, “your revolution is going to fail.” Nothing irks a young man’s temper than a dose of wisdom flying over his head. I retorted that loving my enemies was a good way to end up dead. “So is hating them,” she countered.

Austerity 2014: Is Europe On Verge Of A Popular Uprising?

December 15, 2013 Agence France-Presse, www.rawstory.com , ,
Is Europe on the verge of a popular uprising? The question was asked by one of Greece’s most respected newspapers as another year of painful austerity drew to a close. If public anger does explode on the streets, wrote Kathimerini, it will not be provoked by politicians or labour unions, but come from ordinary people who “never imagined themselves doing such a thing”. Desperation is weighing not just on Greece, but on countries across Europe facing the same paradox: despite the end of the Great Recession, people continue to struggle with the daily reality of unemployment and poverty.

Driven By ‘State Injustice’, Egypt’s Revolutionaries Rise Up

December 7, 2013 Hatem Maher, www.english.ahram.org.eg , , , ,
But now that the heavy-handed tactics have come to the doorstep of the fundamental rights they earned by revolting in 2011 to unseat autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak, they are back on the streets. “Many people did not go out on the streets because of the absence of a clear demand. But, after a while, things have become clear again. The state is still trying to preserve and renew its oppressive tools,” socialist activist Khaled Abdel-Hamid told Ahram Online. “The interior ministry and all the security apparatuses are doing their utmost to exact revenge on the symbols of the January 2011 revolution,” added Abdel-Hamid, a member of the Way of the Revolution Front, founded in September as a third political force opposed to both the military and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Popular Resistance Celebrates Six Month Anniversary – Grow The Movement

December 1, 2013 Staff, www.popularresistance.org ,
Our goal is to help build a mass movement that can transform this country from one that is ruled by money in which people and the planet are exploited for profit to one in which people work together to build a just, democratic and sustainable society. We seek to show that the work each of us does to build a better world is connected to a larger movement and that there is a vibrant movement growing within the US and around the world. This is a movement of movements on the front lines of struggle and it isn't going to be covered in the mass media. We will have to build this person by person. We will succeed when 3.5 percent of us are engaged in action and we have popular support. Research of hundreds of resistance movements shows that no resistance movement in the last 100 years has failed when 3.5 percent participate. There are many levels of engagement.

The 8 Most Ridiculously Badass Protesters Ever Photographed

November 30, 2013 Robert Brockway, www.cracked.com
Protesters are, by their very nature, badass. Whether or not you agree with whatever it is they're standing for, you have to agree that it takes balls to go up against an entire system of government -- one comprised of thousands of highly trained, expertly equipped police and soldiers -- using whatever you find in the street on the walk down to the battlefield. It's the least we can do to support them, by spreading the word and increasing awareness. Oh no, wait, the least we can do is to look at a bunch of pictures of badass protesters. Let's do that instead: #8. Shield Maiden, #7. Gas Mask Guy, #6. Bee Man, #5. The Kickbomber, #4. Flaming Scarf Guy, #3. Surf Tha Police, #2. Dairy Rioter and #1. Water Cannon Man

All In For the Worldwide Wave of Action #www

November 29, 2013 David DeGraw, www,evolvesociety.org , ,
They delivered a call for a Worldwide Wave of Action (#www). If you’re reading this right now, you most likely already read it. It has been spreading around the internet like a infectious antidote to the virus that is the modern corrupted paradigm. The call blew me away. It struck me as the perfect message, the right plan at the right time. It calls on the critical mass of awake and aware people to rally together worldwide over a sustained three-month cycle, in a crowdsourced nonviolent fashion, beginning on the anniversary of MLK’s death, April 4th, and culminating on July 4th, which appears to be perfect timing for a massive demonstration in Washington DC that is already being organized. The call hit all the sweet spots. Addressing the battle-tested lessons from the Anonymous and Occupy / 99% Movement, and offering a clear path forward, which is not just built around “swarming corrupt targets” but also on “rallying around solutions.” Every part of the call hit the nail on the head in a very concise and meaningful way. It further empowers the hardcore activists, while offering the average citizen viable ways for them to also plug in and make an impact on creating much needed transformation.

Greece: Rise Of The Party, Demise Of The Movement?

November 26, 2013 Leonidas Oikonomakis, roarmag.org , ,
I was at Syntagma Square in Athens during its long summer of 2011. Just like hundreds of thousands of other participants in this incredible horizontal experiment, I was impressed by the ability of everyday people — who were until then outsiders of the political game — to spontaneously get together and organize themselves into the largest Popular Assembly Athens has ever witnessed, seeking to overturn the neoliberal austerity measures the government was soon to vote on, and invent ways in which direct democracy could possibly work as a form of decision-making beyond the limited space of a square. Two-and-a-half years later, on November 10, 2013, another call for the occupation of Syntagma Square was made. Yet this time there was no need to investigate who made the call, neither “who brought the mic”. The whole event was organized by the radical-left party SYRIZA. Many leftists in Europe and North America look to SYRIZA with hope and amazement. But is it really a good sign that a political party has “stolen the show” of the movements and usurped their energy? Should we not be worried that the horizontal and direct democratic experiment of the squares has largely given way to the old hierarchical forms of representation and electoral politics? Should we not be concerned that the Popular Assemblies have been replaced with the speeches of a party leader in Parliament?

World Of Resistance (WOR) Report, Part 1: The Global Awakening

November 21, 2013 Andrew Gavin Marshall, www.occupy.com
Never has humanity – collectively – faced such a monumental challenge: a combination of a massive global economic crisis, growing levels of poverty and hunger, tens of millions dying from poverty-related causes every year, massive global land grabs, high-tech police states and surveillance societies, murder by remote control drone terror campaigns, a more distanced decision-making apparatus than perhaps ever before, and an ecological crisis of such proportions that it threatens the very survival of the human species, let alone all other life forms on Earth. The World of Resistance (WOR) Report is a new Occupy.com series that aims to provide greater context and understanding about the causes, and the consequences, of social unrest, protests, riots, resistance, uprisings, rebellions and revolutions spreading across the globe. What form is the "global political awakening" taking in different regions, under different conditions, and with what differing degrees of success and failure? This series aims to explore the evolution of the long road to world revolution so that we may better understand, and support, the causes of human and biological survival to ensure that people's “central challenge” to elites – that is, the quest for “human dignity” – is made all the more impossible for 1% institutions and ideologies to undermine or repress.

#www Reform Is Dead, The Tipping Point Is Near

November 21, 2013 Staff, www.youtube.com , ,
Reform is the light that never comes. Tyranny reigns. Revolution is all we have left... This video was created in support of the Anonymous call for a Worldwide Wave of Action ~ #www. There has been an anonymous call for a “crowd sources worldwide wave of action #www” this spring. #www has been put out and is gaining traction. #www challenges “the corporate controlled state and its paradigm that now preys on the resources and spirits of people.” We see that the “tipping point is near” for the “decentralized movement” that is “raging across the world.” The call is for a “Worldwide Wave of Transformation” over a three-month “massive spring offense.” Here are several sites that have reposted the original call to action: EvolveSociety http://evolvesociety.org/feature/a-ca... TruthOut http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/ite... InterOcuppy http://interoccupy.net/blog/a-call-fo... US Day of Rage http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1rrmtgk Popular Resistance http://www.popularresistance.org/a-ca... AnonInsiders http://anoninsiders.net/anonymous-cal...

Moyers: Two Paths To Positive Resistance

November 13, 2013 Staff, www.billmoyers.com , , ,
Between them, doctors Jill Stein and Margaret Flowers have been arrested nine times. In the face of injustice and government by the one percent, rather than look the other way and stick to practicing medicine they chose a different approach. At first they took separate paths. Margaret Flowers fought for single payer health insurance. She works for the organization Physicians for a National Health Program and is a contributor to PopularResistance.org, a website advocating nonviolent direct action against injustice. Jill Stein advocated for campaign finance reform in her home state of Massachusetts, working in 1998 with others in her community to pass the Clean Election Law. She co-founded the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities in 2003 and represented the Green-Rainbow Party for governor in 2002, for State Representative in 2004 and for Secretary of State in 2006. She was the Green Party candidate for president in 2012. Now Stein and Flowers are both members of the Green Shadow Cabinet, a group of 100 prominent men and women offering alternative policy and speaking out in an organized voice against a dysfunctional government. Stein serves as president and Flowers as secretary of health.
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