Randy Shaw: Instead of becoming a vital training incubator for young teachers committed to improving schools, TFA is just as likely to demoralize young people and turn them away from schools and activism.
The Occupy Movement and Revitalizing Democracy
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Randy Shaw: Graeber sees MoveOn.org, Rebuild the Dream, and other groups associated with the “left wing of the Democratic Party” as betraying the Occupy movement by not opposing police closures of Occupy camps.
My Five Minutes with Bill O’Reilly
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Peter Dreier: It was clear from the get-go last night that Bill didn’t want to talk about Pete Seeger. He wanted to talk about why I called him a “right-wing buffoon”
Imagining the Post-Occupy Social Movement
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Shamus Cooke: Occupy could demand that the federal government create millions of jobs, as was done in the 1930s, and pay for the program by taxing Wall Street as many in the Labor Movement have advocated.
Controlling Women’s Bodies
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Ruth Rosen: What neither side wants to say is that this is a counter-reformation, an attempt to return women to the early 1960s, before birth control pill existed and the Supreme Court established the right of contraception in the United States.
Dead Under the “Custody and Care” of…
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Bruce Reilly: Christian Gomez was one of thousands in California struggling for things such as food, sunlight, and changes to the segregation policies — the everyday torture in America’s prisons.
Occupy Birmingham
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Jim Rhodes: The mainstream press has been critical of Occupy’s “failure” to provide alternative solutions, but I assure you they are being developed in spite of the built in mechanisms that guarantee failure.
The Making of an Activist
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Vivan Rothstein: In my first act of civil disobedience, I mixed up all the index card files of clients and contracts so no one could figure out who had received which threatening letter, effectively destroying the company’s system of harassment.
Occupy Movement Recharges for 2012
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Randy Shaw: The Occupy movement could greatly benefit from choosing a similar big target that could engage activists across the world.
Medical Self Defense and the Black Panther Party
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In her new book, Columbia professor Alondra Nelson documents the multifaceted (and under-reported) health activism of the Panthers.
We Are the People of the Year
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Tom Degan: This week the spokespersons for the plutocracy have been predicting the end of the movement which is now engulfing the world. The joke’s on them.
What Ron Paul, Occupy Wall Street, Lech Walesa, Tahrir Square, Tiananmen Square and Many Tea Partiers Have in Common
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Brent Budowsky: One reason Ron Paul has been on an upward and steady curve is that he speaks, with integrity and honor, for one segment (though far from all) of this unrest in an age of protest and demand for change.
25 Million Unemployed: Why So Little Protest?
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Sherwood Ross: Although America’s 25 million unemployed and underemployed could be a powerful force for social change, they aren’t combining in any effective way to protest, an eminent business authority writes.
Two Ways to Destroy “Occupy Wall Street”
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Bruce Reilly: The classic method of the powerful to distract the masses is to get them to fight amongst themselves. The easiest one is via racism, and the other is class warfare pitting the Middle Class vs. Lower Class.
Shutting Cities Down: Now and Then
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Lee Fang: The American political and economic system is falling apart. No matter who wins an election, in many cases, the outcomes are the same: well-heeled corporate interests dictate policy.
The Troops and Occupy Wall Street
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Tina Dupuy: Meet the new face of Occupy Wall Street: Scott Olsen, a 24-year-old Marine and Iraq War vet who was shot in the head with a “non-lethal round” during a raid on Occupy Oakland last week.
Occupy Wall Street: “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”
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Joseph Palermo: Out in the real world people are showing a spirit that hasn’t been around since the 1930s; a genuine feeling of solidarity like we’re all in it together and to hell with the elites that stand in our way. The illegitimacy of a rigged economic system is beginning to sink in.
50 Million Will March
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Brent Budowsky: I believe that the first big winner of the 2012 campaign is the Occupy Wall Street movement, whether or not it participates in electoral politics.
Occupy Movement Must Resist Pressure for Specific Demands
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Randy Shaw: You know that Occupy Wall Street and its local, national and international progeny have reached a level of success when everyone is offering advice. Unfortunately, the most commonly offered view – that activists must get specific about their demands – is entirely wrong.
Civil Disobedience as a Strategy for the Occupy Movement
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Tom Hayden: If there’s enough people and they all sit down and say “We want to appeal to a jury of our peers, which is our Constitutional right,” that’s something that should make the decision makers take pause because I don’t think juries are going to convict these people.
Why Nonviolent Resistance Beats Armed Struggles for Regime Change
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Randy Shaw: But as much as the Left has romanticized Castro’s armed overthrow of the Bautista regime, and Ho Chi Minh’s military defeat of the United States to unite Vietnam, in most cases violence is less likely to achieve revolutionary change than nonviolent strategies.
What History Can Teach the Occupy Forces
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Tomiko Brown-Nagin: History shows that American political activism has never been limited to the form that it conventionally takes today—electoral politics. Citizens have historically employed an array of tools to influence public policy
Support the Occupy Movement and a New American Spring
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Brent Budowsky: I believe this new surge of all-American protest could be the beginning of a new American Spring that could rejuvenate the progressive and populist movements and win majority support throughout the nation.
Lynching Alive and Well in America
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Jessie Daniels: When I see the cheering from a crowd over people dying – dying by state-sponsored lethal injection or the slower death by neoliberalism from a lack of health care – it frankly makes me question how strong our collective political will might be for ending the death penalty.
Born on the Fourth of July Once More
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Dick Price: You see the depth of Kovic’s anger–or perhaps it’s his love–that has propelled him through 40 long years of activism, making him a leading antiwar speaker, leading to Saturday’s award, and making him such a valuable voice in stopping this generation’s senseless wars.
Volunteering: The Challenge of Making a Difference
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Randy Shaw: The rise of community service (abetted by high school students desiring to boost their college applications) over the past two decades has not stopped dramatically increasing social and economic inequality and an increasing disbelief in once universally accepted scientific theories such as evolution.
Scott Adams: Can We Talk About This?
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Nikki Junker: Perhaps Scott Adams is fighting for something he sees as the greater good. Perhaps he thinks that the freedom of expression on the Internet is more important than feelings.
How the Netroots Evolved
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Paul Hogarth: Everyone from Howard Dean to Van Jones had the same message – that this political movement cannot be reliant on a charismatic leader, but instead on a charismatic network of activists.
Dangerous Distortions: Anti-Abortion Fascists and Third World Allies
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Sikivu Hutchinson and Diane Arellano: As with the abortion-as-black-genocide billboards unleashed by the far right Radiance Foundation, the Latino billboards evoke reductive hyper-religious narratives of sinning promiscuous bad women and “breeder” good women.
Netroots at Crossroads in Minneapolis This Weekend
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Paul Hogarth: I look forward to this Conference as a way of re-engaging in the national struggle, and harnessing the energy everyone with a Wi-Fi connection can take to fight for progressive change.
PCL offers monthly Open House Events on the 2nd Saturday at 2pm and 3rd Thursday at 6pm. Click here to learn more.
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