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Social Movements

Think #MeToo Didn’t Make A Real Difference? Think Again

December 2, 2023 Mark Engler and Paul Engler, Waging Nonviolence. , , , , ,
What difference did #MeToo actually make? In 2017 and 2018, the viral hashtag became a global sensation that motivated millions to speak out about sexual assault and harassment. But more recently, critics have questioned whether the flurry of activity ended up leaving much of a legacy. This questioning is hardly surprising. If there is one thing that is most consistent when it comes to mass protest movements, it is that these mobilizations will be dismissed by mainstream political observers as being fleeting and inconsequential. Time and again, they are labeled as fads, scolded for being too “confrontational and divisive,” and written off as flash-in-the-pan eruptions with little lasting significance.

The Rise Of The New McCarthyism In The United States

November 14, 2023 the US Peace Council, Popular Resistance. , , ,
A new era of McCarthyism is rising in the United States and impacting journalists and media outlets around the world. Fabricated charges and economic sanctions being used to target free speech and press freedom are creating a hostile environment for those who challenge and expose people in power. This is a critical time to understand the attacks on our right to know and what tools are available for both media and advocates to fight back. To provide a greater understanding of what is happening, the US Peace Council hosted a webinar on Sunday, November 12 called "The Rise of the New McCarthyism in the United States." Speakers included experts in law, history and social movements.

To Subdue Haiti’s Resistance, USAID Will Assemble ‘Civil Society’ Puppets

November 2, 2023 Travis Ross, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
While USAID claims that it provides international assistance to “strengthen democratic governance” in “support of American foreign policy,” the historical record reveals that it has been used to finance opposition groups and regime-change attempts in countries that challenge Washington’s foreign policy interest. Researcher Peter Hallward documented how USAID funds were used to fund anti-government civil society fronts in Haiti after Aristide’s landslide election in 2000. This followed a cut in funding to Haiti immediately following Aristide’s victory. The understanding that the NED and USAID serve as tools for U.S. imperialism is more widely accepted these days.

Socialism Is Not Just A Possibility, It Is The Only Possibility

October 16, 2023 Zoe Alexandra, People's Dispatch. , , , ,
What does socialism and building socialism mean to the leaders of mass movements and left political parties from across the world? This question is at the center of the debates for the next several days at the III International Dilemmas of Humanity Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. Around 500 movement leaders, trade unionists, and members of left parties from more than 70 countries are partaking in the conference which will culminate on October 18, 2023. The conference is organized by the International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA) and hosted by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), Abahlali base Mjondolo, and the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party of South Africa.

Mobilizations Continue In Guatemala Against Impending ‘Coup’

October 15, 2023 People's Dispatch. , , , ,
Thousands of Guatemalans have been on an indefinite national strike to reject the moves by the Attorney General’s office and the Courts to undermine the results of the August presidential elections and prevent president-elect Bernardo Arévalo from taking office in January. The mostly Indigenous protesters have been blocking highways and mobilizing in cities across the country. Some delegations marched from the rural regions of the country to the capital city to hold a sit-in outside the Attorney General’s office where they have been joined by students, street and market vendors, and other progressive organizations.

Any Antidote To Climate Anxiety Involves Organizing

October 9, 2023 Paul Messersmith-Glavin, Waging Nonviolence. , , , ,
I first realized the ameliorative power of organizing when, as a teenager, awareness of the threat of nuclear war gave me overwhelming anxiety. In the 1980s people in the Reagan administration where talking about “fighting and winning” a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. A massive direct action movement rose up in opposition to this in Europe, where the U.S. hoped to station a new generation of “first strike” nuclear weapons, and it eventually rose in the U.S. as well. I threw myself into this movement, marching with 70,000 people in downtown Chicago and over a million in New York City; attending and organizing speak-ins, die-ins and teach-ins; and going to predawn blockades of weapons manufacturers.

Why Our Popular Mass Movements Fail

October 2, 2023 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , ,
There was a decade of popular uprisings from 2010 until the global pandemic in 2020. These uprisings shook the foundations of the global order. They denounced corporate domination, austerity cuts and demanded economic justice and civil rights. There were nationwide protests in the United States centered around the 59-day Occupy encampments. There were popular eruptions in Greece, Spain, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Turkey, Brazil, Ukraine, Hong Kong, Chile and during South Korea’s Candlelight Light Revolution. Discredited politicians were driven from office in Greece, Spain, Ukraine, South Korea, Egypt, Chile and Tunisia. Reform, or at least the promise of it, dominated public discourse. It seemed to herald a new era.

What We Must Ask About Surveillance State Failures

September 25, 2023 Chip Gibbons, The Dissenter. , , , ,
Americans have repeatedly been told to keep the United States safe they must surrender their core civil liberties to a vast national security apparatus. Yet when this apparatus fails at this supposed objective, the response is to further expand its surveillance powers. Rarely is the exercise of these powers seriously explored. Instead, the national discussion centers on a baseless notion that a shortage of surveillance powers is the root cause of intelligence failures. Last week, in a post for The Dissenter’s paid subscribers, I discussed FBI counterterrorism files I obtained from a still ongoing lawsuit against the FBI.

Civil Society Reactions To United Nations Climate Ambition Summit

September 22, 2023 Climate Action Network international. , , , ,
Several leaders made compelling statements at the UN Climate Ambition Summit today in New York. Leaders from Chile, Colombia and the Governor of California called out fossil fuels as the main cause of the climate crisis but some of the worst polluters- and among the richest countries – were conspicuous by their absence. They did not make the cut to speak at the Summit which was set by the Secretary General last year reserving the mic for those who had ambitious new commitments and were on track with their climate targets. The USA, the UK, Australia, Norway and Japan were absent as were many other G20 countries.

The Far Right Has Hijacked Chile’s New Constitutional Process

September 20, 2023 Nick MacWilliam, The Real News Network. , , , , ,
In 2019 the nation of Chile was shaken by a mass protest movement that has come to be known as the Social Explosion. A central demand of the Social Explosion was the abolition of the current constitution drafted in 1980 under US-backed fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet. In 2020, Chileans overwhelmingly voted for a new constitutional process in a referendum. However, just two years later, a plebiscite overwhelmingly rejected a new proposed constitution. Since then, the far right has hijacked the process by stacking the constituents to create another constitutional draft with their own representatives.

Learning From Chile: Navigating Complexities Of Political Crises

September 11, 2023 Pauline Lipman and Rico Gutstein, Convergence. , , ,
Twenty years of grassroots organizing by Black and Latinx community organizations, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), and the broad Left propelled CTU organizer Brandon Johnson to victory in the April 2023 Chicago mayoral race. Similarly, across the country, progressive and left organizations are focusing on electoral politics as a central arena of struggle. These campaigns are part of a larger motion—a new generation of social movements, union organizing, and Black-led uprisings against racist state violence—provoked by intertwined political, economic, social, and ecological crises in the US and globally. Yet our movements and campaigns lack political cohesion.

Imperialism Has Nothing To Offer Us, Only Threats

September 5, 2023 Zoe Alexandra, People's Dispatch. , , ,
The event, which has brought together over 230 representatives of social movements, trade unions, and left parties from 23 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, takes place amid tectonic geopolitical shifts. In the last year, tensions between imperialist powers of the Global North and emerging Global South economies have intensified significantly. This was evident in the context of the recent BRICS Summit, which was met with significant skepticism and alarm from Washington and the European Union, which continue their campaign of aggression and encirclement against Russia and China, and all those that work with them.

Dilemmas Of Humanity Conference In The US Outlines Principle Task

September 4, 2023 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , ,
“We know this system is in crisis,” said Manolo De Los Santos, co-executive director of the People’s Forum and lifelong communist, opening the Dilemmas of Humanity: A Socialist Horizon conference in Atlanta, Georgia. This conference was organized by the International People’s Assembly-North America as part of the IPA’s international conference series, “Dilemmas of Humanity,” which will conclude with an international conference in Johannesburg in October. The US-based conference was held in Atlanta’s Neighborhood Church on September 2, and supported by organizations such as Community Movement Builders, Faith Coalition to Stop Cop City, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Peoples Forum, Unión de Vecinos, and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.

You Can’t Be A Socialist Alone

September 2, 2023 Astra Taylor and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, In These Times. , , ,
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Astra Taylor — no relation, except their friendship — are two of the Gen X socialist intellectuals and movement leaders bridging the ​“Boomer” activists, radicalized in the 1960s, with the millennials and zoomers politically educated in the internet age. The two comrades held a freewheeling hour-long conversation about the complexities of organizing through the death throes of neoliberalism, a flailing Democratic establishment and a rising authoritarian Right. They shared their journeys to socialism, took on tough questions from reform and revolution to identity politics and electoral politics, and spoke candidly about organizing fatigue and their personal visions of human liberation under socialism.

Hondurans Mobilize In Support Of Xiomara Castro’s Government

August 30, 2023 Peoples Dispatch. , , , ,
Thousands of people took to the streets of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa on the afternoon of Tuesday August 29 to express their support for the government of President Xiomara Castro. The head of state had called for the mobilization in response to the attempt by right-wing opposition deputies to impede the election of a new Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General. Xiomara and others from the Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre) have warned that the moves by the National Party, which ruled for 12 years following the coup against Manuel Zelaya in 2009, and its allies from the Patriotic Alliance and Salvador Honduras parties, are part of a broader campaign of destabilization with the objective to carry out a coup against her.
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