Jessie Daniels: Kony 2012 is, then, an endorsement of the moral superiority of white values of reason, order, and now social media against the supposed chaos and violence of Africa.
Livestreaming: Telling the Truth About Occupy in Real Time
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Tina Dupuy: Livestreamers now feel they’re holding the torch for truth but also nonviolence as a way to build a broad coalition movement. This means they get attacked online and threatened as part of their vocation. You know, just like real journalists.
Why #OWS Needs to Denounce Violent Tactics on Display at Occupy Oakland
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Tina Dupuy: Nonviolent struggle has nothing to do with how the cops react. In actual nonviolent movements they welcome police overreaction because it helps the cause they’re fighting for.
All I Want for Christmas Is My Civil Liberties!
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Coleen Rowley: Obama’s expected signature will not only de-link the “war on terror” from its original justification, the 9-11 attacks of more than a decade ago, to ensure the “long war” does not end.
Resisting Gender Violence Without Cops or Prisons
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Victoria Law builds upon her earlier prison abolitionist critique by discussing practical alternatives for effectively confronting gender violence without using the prison system.
Violence Goes to College
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Vijay Prashad: The priorities of the campus are clear. An Assistant Professor earns an annual salary in the low $60,000 range; a Lieutenant in the campus safety department (the man who fired the pepper gas, for instance) brings home $110,000.
Occupy Needs to Just Say No to the Super Committee
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Andy Love: The Occupy Movement will need to evolve if it is going to continue to have broad appeal and an effect on what happens in this country. The fact that this is on the mainstream media radar is, I think, a good sign and I think that Occupy can and will continue to be a force.
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.
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.
Teenaged Nightmare: Violent Masculinity and Young Women of Color
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Sikivu Hutchinson: Anti-feminist messages that a girl or woman is “nothing” without a man still pervade mainstream American culture with particularly insidious effect on teen girls of color.
Ten Years After 9/11, Is the U.S. Deporting Those Who Threaten to Do Us Harm?
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Michele Waslin: Confirming what advocates had reported, while the overall number of deportations has increased, the actual numbers of deportations of terrorists, national security threats, and criminals have declined.
Do We Care About Civilian Casualties in Our Wars?
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John Tirman: The initial enthusiasm of engaging in savage wars often turns sour as the war goes badly, and then the hard reality of innocent suffering is all the more difficult to acknowledge.
Rape Is Not Natural
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Nikki Junker: Scott Adams, the creator of the popular comic “Dilbert” made insensitive hurtful statements. Speaking as a rape victim I ask what message is he sending to impressionable young men? Go ahead and rape that girl you want to sleep with… it’s natural
I Was Born On Mother’s Day
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was my mother’s first Mother’s Day gift. She spent her first Mother’s Day in labor and delivery. I was born at 1:40 p.m. on Mother’s Day many years ago. In some ways, my being born on Mother’s Day — her first born and the first grandchild — made Mother’s Day all the more special in [...]
Aristide in Haiti: Demand Justice not Gestures
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Ezili Danto: Keep vigilant for the carnival of violence will be blamed on Lavalas and Aristide. No doubt about this, the chessboard is set. The perpetrators will be seen as the peacemakers
Sexual Assault Coverage by Media Shows Double Standard
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Walter Brasch: For the news media to continue to adhere to some puritanical belief that they are protecting womanhood by not reporting names and details perpetuates the myth that rape is purely a sexual intrusion, and not the brutal attack it truly is.
Author Spotlight: Jerry Drucker
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Dick Price: “I was a child of the Great Depression. It never occurred to me our strong and vital nation could fall and fail as it has today,” he says. “I was brought up to have a sense of justice and truth as a basis of our country’s governance. That belief has been shattered, particularly in the past decade.”
Bradley Manning’s Torture Commonplace in U.S. Prisons
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Sherwood Ross: Those supporting Manning need to recognize he is an icon for the bizarre, systemic destruction of tens of thousands of other human beings locked away in perpetual silence by their tormentors, often for mere infractions of prison rules, without the review of any judge or jury.
So, Did Anything Unusual Happen Over Last Weekend?
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Robert Letcher: With all the violence and contempt that seemed “in the air”, it was starting to feel like some “Tucson” was bound to happen, but there wasn’t enough actionable information: no “when”, no “where”. Nor were resources available to “look into the situation”, as they had been to President Bush.
The Politics of Hate—and Hate Speech
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Walter Brasch: While most Tea Partiers are White, middle-aged or senior citizens who are angry but not violent, whenever there is violence, whenever there is racism, discrimination, or homophobia, there are Tea Party sympathizers present.
American Terror
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Sikivu Hutchinson: Bullying is vicious, unconscionable and life-threatening. Yet reactive public condemnations of bullying often foreclose real analysis of the systemic mechanisms that institutionalize violence and terror against gay, lesbian and gender non-conforming children.
Church of Misfits Harbors American War Resister
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Tom Hayden: Next week the Canadian parliament is expected to hear a bill proposing humanitarian grounds for granting asylum in the country. Watson’s application for permanent resident status is on hold. About 40 other American war resisters are seeking asylum in Canada, where nearly 80,000 were given protection during the Vietnam War.
Peace Crimes
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Diane Lefer: “Nightwind”–the play we created in 2004 about his experience and his brother’s abduction, torture, and murder by a death squad–has toured the US and the world, including Afghanistan, to raise global opposition to the practice of torture. Performing it for the first time in Medellín, the city where the atrocities took place, Hector was nervous.
Boy’s Suicide: Avoidable Tragedy?
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Ron Wolff: Los Angeles County Supervisors have been aware for years that several of their largest departments — Juvenile Probation and Children and Family Services among them — are dysfunctional. They claim to care — but the problems persist. There is one thing a leader does in urgent times — take urgent action!
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More Torture, Please
Steve Hendricks: I derive immense comfort, for example, from the similarity between the pro-torture 70 percent and the 68 percent of Americans who believe “angels and demons are active in the world.” Surely many of my pro-torture countrymen just need a little more education about torture. Well, a lot more.