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Social Movements

Gilets Jaunes Gather For Third “Assembly Of Assemblies”

August 2, 2019 By Mathilde Goanec, Mediapart.fr , ,
Last month some 650 Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) gathered for a meeting in Montceau-les-Mines, in the heartland of France. Although the movement has struggled to unify and has fewer participants than before, the strength of its local mobilizations and its slow progression toward municipalism were on display. In the streets of Montceau-les-Mines, dozens of cars with license plates from out of town were parked bumper to bumper and spilling onto the sidewalks: Gilets Jaunes from all over France had come to the department of Saône-et-Loire to participate in their third “Assembly of Assemblies” on June 29-30...

How Movements Can Use Drama To Seize The Public Imagination

July 12, 2019 George Lakey, Wagingnonviolence.org , ,
Drama is useful in getting attention for our issues. The Sunrise Movement is only one of the recent movements that grew by seizing the public imagination through drama. How do activists come up with direct action tactics that reach, in author Jonathan Smucker’s useful phrase, “beyond the choir”? Here we’re entering the realm of creativity. Television shows relying on drama create writers’ rooms where a group of creative people swap ideas and generate options. Activists who expect wonderful ideas to emerge during a large meeting in a dreary church basement after a long workday may not be setting themselves up for success.

The Problem With Saying Movements Must Be ‘Totally Nonviolent’ To Succeed

July 11, 2019 Steve Chase, Wagingnonviolence.org , ,
It is misleading and disempowering to say that any violence ends a movement’s chance of success. To truly be effective, we need to stay in the game even when violence occurs. It can be hard to criticize a movement elder who has been a friend and mentor to you, whether you do it in private or in public. Yet, I need to make a public criticism of the late nonviolent organizer and strategist Bill Moyer. His classic 2001 book “Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements” continues to reach new audiences — thanks, in part, to an educational initiative by my organization, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

Before Occupy, There Was People’s Park

July 1, 2019 Paul Von Blum, Truthdig.com ,
There is nostalgia for Ronald Reagan in 2019. He is widely viewed in the media and elsewhere as a sensible Republican, a mainstream conservative, a reasonable man—the polar opposite of Donald Trump, the dangerous buffoon now occupying the presidency. Many pundits pine for the “Gipper,” the genial, affable president who chatted with reporters and sipped drinks with some of his political adversaries.

Lessons From 10 Years Of Building The Cooperative Movement

June 26, 2019 Staff, Toolboxfored.org , ,
When TESA first launched roughly ten years ago, it was hard to see a week into the future, let alone a decade. It’s incredible to reflect on so many years spent working with so many people on cultivating the cooperative movement. In this time, we have been committed to building a more just and democratic economy, on both the local and national levels, with a powerful collection of partners. We take significant pride in the programs, tools, and games we have developed for the co-op movement, as well as the fact that we have been involved in dozens of programs and projects across the US to support worker-ownership and the creation of a new economy.

The Antiwar Movement No One Can See

June 24, 2019 By Allegra Harpootlian, Tomdispatch.com ,
When Donald Trump entered the Oval Office in January 2017, Americans took to the streets all across the country to protest their instantly endangered rights. Conspicuously absent from the newfound civic engagement, despite more than a decade and a half of this country’s fruitless, destructive wars across the Greater Middle East and northern Africa, was antiwar sentiment, much less an actual movement. Those like me working against America’s seemingly endless wars wondered why the subject merited so little discussion, attention, or protest.

Sudan’s Protesters Find New Tactics For Civil Disobedience

June 16, 2019 Kaamil Ahmed, Middle East Eye. , ,
Build the barricades, then run. The message from protest leaders to the young Sudanese on the streets of the capital has been consistent ahead of Sunday's call to began a comprehensive campaign of civil disobedience. Initially used to guard the sit-in outside Sudan's military headquarters - where protesters demanded the ruling Transitional Military Council (TMC) step aside - barricades built from bricks and metal scavenged from the very roads they block have been a symbol of Sudan's protest movement. But after Sudanese forces forcibly dispersed the sit-in on 3 June, those protesters have now spread their opposition through the country. "The barricades are your guards," according to one of the many rallying calls released by the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), the group that spearheaded protests against former president Omar al-Bashir since December.

Black Lives Matter Founder Launches Huge Project To Shrink Black Lives

June 7, 2019 Glen Ford, Blackagendareport.com ,
Alicia Garza, of Black Lives Matter fame, last week introduced her latest project in the pages of the New York Times: a survey of “more than 31,000 black people from all 50 states” to determine, as the headline announced, “What Black People Want .” The Black Census Project “is the largest independent survey of black people ever conducted in the United States,” wrote Garza.  A collaboration of Garza’s Black Futures Lab , Color of Change , Dēmos , and Socioanalítica Research , the project “trained more than 100 black organizers and worked with some 30 grass-roots organizations” to elicit Black people’s views on a range of domestic subjects...

How Can Movements Effectively Counter Co-Optation?

June 5, 2019 By Farai Maguwu and Gabriel Dayley, Nonviolent-conflict.org , ,
In June 2018, residents of Marange—a region in Zimbabwe known for one of the world’s largest diamond deposits—planned a major demonstration at the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC) site of operations to demand justice for gross human rights violations perpetrated by the company and government since mining began in 2009. Over the past several years, private and state security forces acting on ZCDC’s behalf have beaten, tortured, and killed artisanal miners and community members.

Undocumented Immigrants Fight For The Right To Drive

May 29, 2019 Hana Sarfan, Inequality.org , ,
If you’re one of the 78 percent of workers in Massachusetts who drives to your job each day, at some point you’re bound to have a broken tail light or forget to use your turn signal. If a police officer pulls you over, it might mean a warning or a ticket. But if you’re one of the state’s thousands of undocumented immigrants, it could become far more dangerous — and potentially even lead to detention and deportation. Andrea Schmid, an organizer with the Pioneer Valley Workers’ Center in Western Massachusetts, says she saw a case like this last month.

May Day 2012: The Call For A General Strike

May 23, 2019 Scott Tucker, Truthdig.com , , ,
In the winter of 2011, discussion about calling a general strike had already begun within Occupy Los Angeles. At the end of January 2012, in the wake of police raids against Occupy encampments (and with many friends and comrades then still in jail), Occupy Los Angeles issued a call for a May Day general strike, which was quickly endorsed by Occupy Oakland. Even those who are already active and well informed may find some of the links and articles at the end of this piece useful. I do not pretend to give a full historical overview of mass strikes and general strikes, nor even to cover all the ongoing debates inside and outside the Occupy movement on what a general strike might mean.

Defend Your Clinics

May 23, 2019 Christine Pardue, Jacobinmag.com , , ,
It’s time for an abortion rights movement that’s not directed from the top-down by the Democratic Party and big nonprofits. Clinic defense is a crucial part of that mass, democratic, and militant movement. Here at the close of a very bad decade for abortion access, it’s hard to overstate how much worse it’s going to get, and how quickly. In Texas, a bill that would have made women subject to the death penalty for having an abortion got a committee hearing. In Georgia, which recently passed a six-week abortion ban...

It’s Never Really About The Bread

May 22, 2019 Eleanor Goldfield, Roarmag.org , ,
Corporate media often depicts major social upheavals as single-issue affairs — to see how movements and struggles connect we need to look beyond the headlines. The tip of the iceberg is not what sank the Titanic. The US is not an empire in decline just because of Trump’s presidency. Our environment is not collapsing because of one particular megafarm or one particular oil company. The tea tax was not what the American Revolution was about, just as the rise in the cost of bread after a long, harsh winter was not the cornerstone of the impending French Revolution.

Sharon Adetoro: How To Make The Movement More Inclusive? Do The Work!

April 23, 2019 Staff, Resilience.org , ,
Who am I? That’s always a difficult question. So, I’m an Ex Teacher and now a Childminder and Tutor and mother to 3 very different and unique individuals. I live on the border of Oldham and Manchester. I was born and raised in Manchester and I am Manc to my soul. As far as the environment is concerned, when you grow up in poverty, issues about the environment get pushed from the fore as parents are more concerned about putting food on the table and see “those issues” as belonging to someone else, so as a child I suppose that my interests were not nurtured although the concerns I had never went away.

Extinctions Rebellion: IR Rebellion Day 2

April 17, 2019 Douglas, Rebellion.earth , ,
The sun may not have been shining quite so brightly in London today – it may have even rained a little – but by golly does the rebel soul still burn bright in the capital tonight! 48 hours into the mother of all protests and Oxford Circus is still banging to the baselines of a pink boat, the DIY garden party on Waterloo Bridge is still buzzing, speakers are still serving out truth beside the mother of all Parliaments, and there’s still a beautiful village of tents, table tennis, and theatre at Marble Arch.
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