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Social Movements

“People Power” An Emergent Political Movement In Uganda

October 25, 2018 Samuel Kasirye, Rosalux.de , ,
An emergent political movement known as “People Power,” led by musician turned politician Robert Kyagulanyi Sentamu, popularly known as Bobi Wine is quickly altering the landscape of Ugandan politics. The young politician and his team are quickly becoming the new political kingmakers with massive appeal across the political divide; rewriting the rules of engagement with their burgeoning influence. Known to political commentators as the “Third Force”, the phenomenon is challenging the longstanding power centres in the country, including the 32-year rule of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) led by President Yoweri Museveni and established political opposition parties.

How South Africa’s Shack Dwellers’ Movement Is Fighting Back—And Growing—Despite Waves Of Repression

October 19, 2018 By Celina della Croce, Ind.media/globetrotter , , ,
In one of few appearances since he was forced to go underground, S’bu Zikode, a founder and leader of the Shack Dwellers Movement of South Africa (Abahlali baseMjondolo), spoke at the People’s Forum in New York this month. This is not his first time in hiding—he has faced threats and attempts on his life throughout the years—and many leaders of his movement have been assassinated. In New York, S’bu spoke of the struggle of his people and how they are moving forward in the face of brutal repression. How, in his words, they are not only living but marching forward “in the shadows of death” despite frequent raids, evictions, and assassinations. Despite what he faces at home—violence, separation from his family and his community, betrayal by his comrades—S’bu is calm, collected and kind.

A Global People’s Bailout For The Coming Crash

October 12, 2018 By Adam Parsons, Sharing.org , ,
A full decade since the great crash of 2008, many progressive thinkers have recently reflected on the consequences of that fateful day when the investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, foreshadowing the worst international financial crisis of the post-war period. What seems obvious to everyone is that lessons have not been learnt, the financial sector is now larger and more dominant than ever, and an even greater crisis is set to happen anytime soon. But the real question is when it strikes, what are the chances of achieving a bailout for ordinary people and the planet this time? In the aftermath of the last global financial meltdown, there was a constant stream of analysis about its proximate causes.

Virginians Show The Real Face Of Poverty

October 12, 2018 By Saurav Sarkar, Otherwords.org , , ,
On a recent night in Richmond, Virginia, speaker after speaker came forward to talk about the multidimensional reality of poverty. The setting was a hearing held by the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. “I’ve been working for years as a professional and I don’t earn a living wage,” said Joyce Barnes, a home health care worker based in Richmond. “It hurts. It hurts so much.” She described how she gets no sick days or vacation days, and can’t take a day off to spend with her grandchildren. She owes a hospital thousands of dollars for medical bills even though she now has insurance. “Don’t be fooled by a false narrative about us,” added Abbie Arevalo-Herrera...

What Explains Success Or Failure In The Arab Spring?

October 12, 2018 Molly Wallace, Wagingnonviolence.org , , ,
Seven years after the blossoming of the so-called Arab Spring, the results of numerous civil resistance movements across the Middle East and North Africa region are mixed. Scholars have studied these cases to discern precisely what might explain success in some cases and failure in others. In an articled titled, “How Civil Resistance Succeeds (or Not): MicroDynamics of Unity, Timing, and Escalatory Actions,” published in Peace & Change, Isabel Bramsen contributes to this emerging body of knowledge on civil resistance in the region by comparing the cases of Tunisia and Bahrain. The former stands out as perhaps the lone case of successful and sustainable regime change and the latter as an uprising that was suppressed before it could come to fruition.

From Protest Movements To Transformative Politics

October 8, 2018 Luciana Castellina, Longreads.tni.org , ,
Movements are important because they move. Political parties, like other so-called ‘intermediate’ bodies (for example, trade unions and even more so the institutions that, taken as a whole, constitute the democratic political context) tend to become sclerotic if not completely immobile pachyderms, weighed down by their organizational obesity. This is why every historical passage is marked by an insurgent movement, and why movements appeal to those who want the world to change and not remain locked in the present. Movements move because they have the antennae to pick up on the social mood, a tool that structured organizations do not, precisely because these structures tend to separate them from the people.

What The Media Gets Wrong About Antifa

September 29, 2018 Kim Kelly, Medium.com , , , , , ,
On August 12, exactly one year after the Unite the Right neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virigina, left over a dozen of people injured and one 32-year-old woman, Heather Heyer, dead, white nationalists, white supremacists and members of the “alt-right” marched on Washington, D.C. To be more specific, about 20 to 25 of them descended upon Lafayette Park, a modest square of greenery that abuts the White House. I was there and could just about see them, huddled in a corner, protected by over a thousandMetropolitan Police officers, SWAT teams, and Secret Service agents. They were transported to a rallying point via a private metro car — an arrangement made against the explicit wishes of the transit workers themselves, and whose union, ATU Local 689, issued a strident statement condemning the public transportation agency for giving special treatment to a hate group.

The Only Bridge We DON’T Need Is The One We’re Building

September 25, 2018 Eleanor Goldfield, Artkillingapathy.com , , ,
When people say that fracked gas and oil are bridge fuels, I can’t help but think that they’re either joking or making some deep, albeit strained, social commentary. Maybe it’s a dig against this country’s atrocious infrastructure – the fact that more than 50,000 of our bridges are known to be structurally deficient or that 4 in 10 are more than 50 years old. I chuckle to myself at the nerdy joke, assuming for those few seconds that they couldn’t possibly mean that fracked oil and gas are somehow logical transitions towards renewable energy sources. Because that’s just ridiculous! How could fracked oil be considered a bridge fuel? It’s still oil. How could fracked gas be considered a bridge fuel when the extraction and transportation of said gas releases methane, a greenhouse gas that is 34 times more potent than CO2?

Priorities Of The Time: Peace

September 25, 2018 Graham Peebles, Grahampeebles.org , ,
For as long as anyone can remember violence and conflict have been part of daily life: humanity appears incapable of living peacefully together. There are the brutal cries of war, the vile acts of terror, homicides, rapes and assaults of all kinds. People everywhere long for an end to such conflicts, and are crying out for peace and understanding, to live in a just world free from fear. Creating a world at peace not only demands putting an end to all forms of armed brutality, it also entails building peace within communities, in the workplace, educational institutions and the home, in the natural environment and, most importantly, it requires the inculcation of harmony within all of us. Each of these areas of living are interconnected, the prevailing condition in each affecting the stability and atmosphere of the other.

Join Our Twitter Campaign To End Corporate Surveillance Of Students

September 21, 2018 By Classroomsnotcomputers.org , ,
We have to EXPOSE THE LIES perpetrated by profit-driven industries that harness technologies to disarm our democratic agency (and our right to know the truth about what is being done to us. The goal is this campaign is to activate the public narrative that corporate-owned technology-driven policies around human services have lied to the public. While our focus is generally k12 education, the tweets can go broader than that. For example, think of how Monsanto’s GMO food lies about consumer health and environmental effects. Or, how the coal industry brags that new technology creates “clean coal.” And the main gist of each tweet will be this: Lies My Technology Told Me (a play on the book Lies my Teacher Told Me by James Loewen.)

Disarm Trident Walk Ends In Georgia

September 21, 2018 Steve Baggarly, Vcnv.org , , ,
Due to the approach of Hurricane Florence, today marked the end of the Disarm Trident Peace Walk. Some 50 people in all took part in the walk from Savannah to Kings Bay, Georgia, in support of the 7 Catholic peace activists of the Kings Bay Plowshares. On April 4th, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the seven entered Naval Station Kings Bay, home to six Trident ballistic missile submarines. Each Trident can carry the explosive power of some 1825 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs—if they are ever used it will mean the end of the world. The activists carried hammers and bottles of their own blood into the base to “beat swords into plowshares,” as the Hebrew Prophets envisioned.

The Culture Of Hate

September 19, 2018 Chris Hedges, Truthdig.com , ,
IT WAS A SWELTERING JULY afternoon when fifty protesters, many dressed in fatigues and wearing shirts that identified them with groups such as Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Bikers for Trump, the Alt Knights, and a militia group called American Patriot the III%, gathered in a gravel parking lot in Deposit, New York. They had come for the “Second Annual Ride for Homeland Security.” Pickup trucks, cars, and motorcycles were adorned with American flags. Deposit, a depressed rural community in upstate New York with a population of 1,577, is located at the confluence of the Oguaga Creek and the West Branch of the Delaware River near the border with Pennsylvania. The protesters, several driving all night, planned to ride past a small community called Islamberg, an enclave of two hundred mostly black Muslims in nearby Hanover, with seventy acres of farmland and woods.

No Justice Without Love

September 5, 2018 Frances Lee, Geo.coop ,
As an intersectional activist who is concerned about the future of our movements, I’m really worried that social justice activism in the West is stuck in a dangerous state of disrepair. Ideological purity has become the norm. Social justice movements, which were originally about freeing marginalized people from oppressive institutions and social structures, have become imbued with their own narrow framework of morality. Our knowledge base is made up of reactionary think-pieces, self-righteous social media posts, romanticized narratives of movement histories and prescriptive checklists of how to stop being problematic.

Building A Rapid-Response Network To Defend Immigrant Workers

August 23, 2018 Pioneer Valley Workers Center Staff, Labornotes.org , , ,
As the Trump administration cracks down on undocumented immigrants, it’s urgent for worker centers and unions to organize to defend immigrant members. In Western Massachusetts, the Pioneer Valley Workers Center has created a rapid-response network it calls “Sanctuary in the Streets” (SiS). The worker center, founded in 2014, organizes restaurant workers and farmworkers in the area. Worker committees set the network's priorities. The rapid-response network consists of a 24-hour emergency hotline, 2,000 members, and 20 religious congregations. Forty bilingual responders are trained to manage the hotline, where they instruct callers in their constitutional rights, connect them to services, and activate the response team if necessary. Since November 2016, members of the network have supported 35 families and individuals facing deportation and workplace abuse, including wage theft and sexual harassment.

BDS: How A Controversial Non-Violent Movement Has Transformed The Israeli-Palestinian Debate

August 15, 2018 By Nathan Thrall, Theguardian.com , , , ,
The movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel – known as BDS – has been driving the world a little bit mad. Since its founding 13 years ago, it has acquired nearly as many enemies as the Israelis and Palestinians combined. It has hindered the efforts of Arab states to fully break their own decades-old boycott in pursuit of increasingly overt cooperation with Israel. It has shamed the Palestinian Authority government in Ramallah by denouncing its security and economic collaboration with Israel’s army and military administration. It has annoyed the Palestine Liberation Organization by encroaching on its position as the internationally recognised advocate and representative of Palestinians worldwide.
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