Posts from — April 2008

Great video my friend Zack showed me. French students protest cuts to education budget in a very powerful action against an education official.

The following is an article by Clare Bayard posted on Left Turn Magazine’s website, and in the April / May issue of Left Turn Magazine. Its incredibly powerful in illustrating what the war means, or at least should me, to all of us. It brought me to tears. Here it is:
—-

Last night, I stood over a thousand candles on the lawn in front of San Francisco’s City Hall. Veterans for Peace had organized a vigil to mark the official 4,000 U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, which technically happened Sunday, March 24th. As people began reading the last 1,000 names aloud, my whole body suddenly wracked with mourning. My chest was exploding and I knew it wasn’t a coronary or panic attack, but grief saturated me so thoroughly I could barely stand. Loved ones held me up as we mourned together; I could hardly let go of a former Marine friend who chose military jail instead of Iraq, and I had never felt such frantic, choking relief to have him standing alive beside me. I can’t imagine the world without him now.

I say “technical count” because we don’t even have the numbers to do the math, which means the full picture is beyond our grasp.

4,000 official U.S. servicemembers killed

1-6,000 U.S. servicemember suicides- inadmissible as war casualties

over a thousand nonmilitary contractors, civilians, etc.

how many debilitating injuries?

Plus how many deeply affected partners, parents, family members, friends, lovers in the life of each one of these tens of thousands? the children they might have had, and the ones some already did?

…and, echoing in barely broken silence, the deaths of 650,000 to over a million Iraqis.

A Presbyterian minister, who participates a similar annual vigil for the deaths of San Francisco’s homeless people, began the ritual with a nondenominational invocation. She spoke of the tremendous loss of so many humans with all their talents and creativities, everything they might have brought to their communities.

I feel lucky to be alive today, walking in the spring sun and holding the fierce grief of so many deaths. I feel lucky that my father, a Vietnam Vet, is alive instead of a name on the black granite Wall in D.C., lucky that I was born.

But war doesn’t play duck-duck-goose, bypassing most people entirely and just taking a scatter of heads. No one in Iraq lives separate from the war, and in a dramatically different way neither do we in the U.S.

War defines daily reality in occupied lands. Where wars are being fought in the streets and skies, where depleted uranium underfoot rises in plumes of dust and a sudden noise might be the last thing you hear, war is everything from the toxic air to the mined soil. In the U.S. there is a myth that war is just happening “over there” where bombs are vaporizing houses and human bodies. As if war was not already here, and as if the multivariant violence of militarism does not return in the body of every veteran, alive or dead.

My perspective on this is profoundly shaped by being raised by a veteran father; the war on Vietnam lived in my house every day when I was growing up. I was lucky enough to be born. To be housed. 1 in 4 homeless people in my city are veterans. My dad’s class and race privilege and my mom’s waged and unwaged work kept us housed and together, even though war has never let him go. And in a way, I have come to understand myself as lucky to be the child of a war veteran, in the ways that it helps me to keep my heart alive during the crushing numbness of this “endless war.” I cannot see, or feel, myself as disconnected from war—either from those murdered by U.S. occupation, or those within the ranks of our military who are struggling to stay human.

War comes into homefront communities in many ways. It is the wartime economy, where every bomb explodes twice: once shattering lives in Fallujah, Karbala, Basra; then burning up our schools and universities, healthcare, levees, social system. It is the racist dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims that inflames hate crimes of street violence and hate crimes of state legislature. It is where “security” means genocide, and none of us are made at all safer by U.S. empire expanding. And war comes into our families, our neighborhoods, our workplaces and social spaces, cloaked in the silent roar of a taboo topic: how veterans return from war carrying the violence of militarism. Some kill themselves quickly, with a bullet or a rope, and even when these deaths occur on a base they are not part of the official tally. These 4,000 recognized deaths are the tip of the iceberg of U.S. war casualties. Domestic violence murders, almost entirely women, don’t qualify even when under the clearest circumstances. Other vets die slowly, self-medicating with drugs or alcohol, often on the streets. Many strain enough healing through gritted teeth to put their life back together, supported by their loved ones, not by their government, not by the drivers of SUVs decorated with yellow ribbons, and largely not by the peace movement.

I do not mourn these 4000 deaths (and the other invisibilized U.S. deaths) any more than the uncounted Iraqi lives, nor any less. The judgment that some lives are disposable is part of what we are struggling against, in demanding justice and peace. I don’t hold these 4000 accountable for engineering this war, nor do I excuse them for participating. To do so would remove their agency in the situation, and dishonor the choices that many U.S. soldiers are making every day to refuse orders, resist compliance with occupation. I won’t devalue the choices that the majority of young people in this country are making to not enlist at all, despite the outrageous lack of options facing them, especially working-class kids and youth of color. Every day, people act to resist the U.S. military, from around the world, from within its ranks. And how do we know how many of those names read out last night belong to resisters? How many were carrying an unloaded weapon, like Agustin Aguayo did for a year while the Army denied his conscientious objector status? How many were considering going AWOL? How many were pursuing, if they knew the option existed, a conscientious objector status? How many had done something recently to stand up to racism, misogyny, or some random violence within their unit? Mostly we’ll never know because now their mouths are filled with dirt and their stories will be carried only by those surviving them. The singers among them, the writers, the kid who was so good at math, the girl with the fierce will, the boy who protected his best friend from queerbashers, the dreamers, the confused, the 20 year old with a 2 year old daughter, the one who died so homesick, the one who learned Arabic to talk to the neighborhood kids, all the ones you and I will never meet, who died in a country that’s losing millions of its people to death and escape.

We do not stop organizing. We can’t. But as we keep organizing, we do also need to mourn. It keeps us human to mourn, to truly recognize the grievous loss of millions of people, to stand with their loved ones in remembrance and in defiance—to spit in the face of war. We say: no more lives, war, we will not feed you. All of us are needed, and war, we shall starve you.

About the Author:
Clare Bayard heads the Anti-War program of Catalyst Project, organizing to connect work against wars abroad with domestic racial and economic justice struggles, and building the G.I. resistance support movement. Clare serves on the National Committee and Organizing Task Force of the War Resisters League, an organization that seeks to end all wars and the root causes of war.

Resources:

• Catalyst Project: www.collectiveliberation.org
• War Resisters League: www.warresisters.org, www.notyoursoldier.org
• Check out the brand new Iraq Veterans Against the War’s Winter Soldier hearings archive at: www.ivaw.org — Iraq Veterans Against the War
• Servicewomen’s Action Network: www.servicewomen.org
• Courage to Resist: www.couragetoresist.org

Find out at The 3 Trillion Dollar Shopping Spree!

Brought to you by: Brave New Films, US Action, True Majority, Voters for Peace, Progressive Christians Uniting, SEIU, and the Center for Corporate Policy

So what’s going on in Venezuela anyway? Greg Wilpert explains in a new book “Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chavez Government” whats going on there, its history, how it came about, and where it might go. A great read for people on the Left everywhere who are interested in Venezuela and Latin America’s challenge to international capitalism.

When much of the Left trains its ideological sights on the campaign of Barack Obama, it is found wanting:

1. He is not a socialist (or an anarchist).

2. He is not an anti-imperialist.

3. He does not have a plan for immediate withdrawal of US troops and advisors from Iraq.

4. He has said nothing in his campaign in critique of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

5. He is too close to University of Chicago free-market economists.

6. His does not call for a single-payer health insurance plan.

7. His message implies that our biggest political problem is largely one of political communication; he claims that he can unite Democrats and Republicans and transcend political partisanship; he seems to be avoiding and denying the reality of strong differences in American politics

8. He tried for too long to avoid issues of racial justice so he will not be perceived as a “Black” candidate; and when forced to discuss race he marginalized Jeremiah Wright’s legitimate concerns.

9. He has had little criticism of the size of the military budget.

There is truth in these critiques and Obama, like any other leader, should not be exempt from criticism and pressure from the left. All leaders need to be called to account. (I will leave it to others to discern the limitations of American election campaigns and what progressive candidates are limited in saying to avoid political marginalization and retain some chance of electability.)

But if we leave matters here, I believe will be missing the moment. Why then should the Left be open to and supportive of the Obama Presidential candidacy?

First and foremost, Obama has tapped into and publicly articulated that something is deeply wrong with the current state of American politics and that something big has to change. And he is not doing this, as is typical in current American politics, from the mad-dog right. This is the root cause of Obama-mania. He poses an alternative to right wing demagoguery and Clintonian Democratic Leadership Council “Republicans with a human face” politics. He has not only confounded the pundits, but he has opened up room for real discussion of important political issues, such as, in his words, “the mind set” that produced the Iraq war. In his “Toward a More Perfect Union” speech on race relations, whatever its shortcomings, he elevated the discussion of race in American politics to a new level. He allows for and promotes real talk about significant issues, sorely lacking in mainstream political discourse.

Secondly he has energized young people. I have a friend who has been a leading antiwar activist for many years. He told me that he has had more meaningful talks about the war in Iraq in a few weeks of working on the Obama campaign than he had in the years since the Iraq war began. The awakening of the young to political activity is a momentous accomplishment that the Left has reason to envy. Obama doesn’t chastise the young for their apathy and cynicism; he inspires them to participate.

Thirdly, Obama has inspired, not just a campaign, but a significant mass movement that can outlast the campaign season. In his Feb. 19 speech in Houston he called for continuing grass roots activity: “And if we win that election in November, then we are going to need your help and your time, your energy, your enthusiasm, your mobilization, your organization, and your voices to help us change America over the next four years.” When was the last time a candidate called for extra-parliamentary activity that wasn’t anti-abortion or homophobic? The Left in America can profit from an unorthodox Democratic Administration. There will be more openings, less marginalization of the Left, a wider debate, and an atmosphere where ‘politics as usual’ will be suspect. None of this is likely under a continuation of the Clinton dynasty which favors “triangulation” by which it attempts to co-opt Republican issues and disdains social movements in favor of ‘focus groups’.

I must admit, that as a tired old leftist that I am moved by a politics “advocating the audacity of hope” to overcome the cynicism that passes for wisdom in American political commentary. Certainly there is a danger of empty, hollow words, but an energetic Left could take advantage of an opportunity to push for its understanding of necessary change on a wide range of issues: single-payer health insurance, equitable education, affordable housing, humane immigration policy, enforcement and expansion of labor rights, environmental justice, and anti-racist and anti-imperial policy.

If we, as a Left, are content to smugly and dismissively critique the Obama phenomenon, we trade self-fulfilling sectarianism for the chance at political impact. A victory for Obama will not only be a boon for the African-American community and for people of color, it will offer a unique opportunity for the development of an organized and aggressive Left movement that retains its independence at the same time that it is willing to risk everyday involvement in the strange world of American politics. If we just critique, we will miss a moment that may not come again for a while. If our politics are meaningful, effective, and get to the root of problems, we should put them to the test in political work that connects to large numbers of people struggling to find direction in an increasingly dangerous world. Something wonderful is happening. We must be alive to it. I hope we can figure out how to relate to it effectively before we consign ourselves to continued marginalization.

Hey There!

Whether this if the first time you’ve come to my site, or you’ve been here a few times before, I’d love to hear your feedback, see where people are reading my site from, learn from what you’re doing in movements, political organizing, activism, the academy, work and more.

Do you like the site? What could make it better? What would you like to hear more about? What isn’t clear enough? What could I clarify? Do you know of any resources that I might want to read or might help improve the content of my site?

I’d especially love to start communicating with more people (seriously). Post a comment on this page (even if you view if months from when I’m writing this), or send me an e-mail at brian (at) walkingbutterfly (dot) com. Lemme know where you’re from (city/state/country), what you for for a living/school/political organizing, and what you think of the site!

Can’t wait to hear from you!

Brian Kelly

brian (at) walkingbutterfly (dot) com

From: The Pirate Caucus, the Blog of Revolutionary Democracy

by Keith Joseph

I know Jeremiah Wright… Well, I never met him, but I know his ideas, he is a part of the American political left. Nothing he said outraged me, or even upset me. I agreed with a lot of it, and disagreed with some of it. If we were to meet in person I imagine we would get along just fine, and we probably could do some good work together. Obama had to distance himself from his pastor in order to remain a viable candidate — a smart move. Gary Wills, writing in the May 2008 NY Review of Books, pointed out that Abe Lincoln, who Obama invoked when announcing his own candidacy, was associated with John Brown and the “radical” abolitionists. Like Obama, Abe had to distance himself in pubic from the “extremists.” But the abolitionists remained the left wing of Lincoln’s coalition, and although he publicly disavowed them (gently) he was secretly and indirectly connected to them.

About 100 hundred years later, in 1968, Robert Kennedy’s candidacy for president represented a similar coalition. His brother, John Kennedy’s election marked the achievement of full citizenship for Catholic (Irish and Italian) workers (that’s why Kennedy’s picture hangs in all those Irish bars). Bobby Kennedy continued to lead those “white” workers and he was bringing them into an alliance with the Civil Rights Movement (Kennedy was meeting and marching with two of its most prominent leaders, Dr. King and Caesar Chavez). In other words, Kennedy’s campaign was a next phase in the Civil Rights struggle. But the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 and the FBI repression of the left made it difficult for a left wing to get into that coalition and soon King and Kennedy would also be murdered.

These assassinations sent most left wing forces in the United States into a disorientating tailspin that we have yet to recover from. If it were 1968, Hilary would be Hubert Humphrey, McCain would be Nixon, and Obama would be Bobby Kennedy. Some of our friends on the left have asked us to “Recreate ’68.” Yes, but let’s not repeat the blind rage, instead let’s do it over and send Humphrey and Nixon packing. So, we must build a John Brown, Malcolm X, Jeremiah Wright bloc— a left bloc allied to but independent from Obama’s campaign.

Malcolm X drew center-left forces like King closer to himself and led them, but after Malcolm’s assassination left wing forces pushed liberals and center-left forces away and into the hands of the right. Obama’s campaign is the potential rebirth of the Kennedy-King Coalition. And it is time for the radical left to do what Malcolm would have done—get into the coalition as an independent force, consolidate a left wing and build a liberal and left coalition to stomp the war loving right wing in this country while building our own independent left movement.

We have a couple of immediate basic tasks: Obama must be the Democratic Party candidate—By Any Means Necessary. We should plan to camp right outside of Denver during the Democratic Party’s Convention and hold anti-war demonstrations and our own left convention. If right wing Democrats try to force Hilary-Herbert Humphrey-Clinton on us we march on the convention and make sure Obama gets the nomination–By Any Means Necessary. In November, we must make sure Obama defeats the war criminal John McCain. And finally, after the election, we must be prepared to convene anywhere in the country (Florida, Ohio etc.) to make sure that the Supreme Court does not decide the contest.

Some of our fellow leftists have been very critical of Obama. The problem with their criticism is that they want Obama to be a leftist. He is not a leftist, he is a representative of the progressive, democratic wing of the capitalist class and he is making an appeal to workers of all nationalities to support him. Obama is a liberal. He is a center-left candidate. He is a part of the mainstream of the Democratic Party. We are the left! It is time we got back in the game.

“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far,… go together.” - African proverb

Conversations around revolutionary change almost always unearth concerns about issues of violence, repression, police, and imprisonment - and for good reason. Most obviously, these concerns are central in the minds of those who believe that a violent revolution is necessary in the United State. For those who see revolution differently, especially those who believe that a mass, popular, and largely-nonviolent revolution is possible, the questions stem from a different concern. From what I’ve seen so far, revolutionary democrats often ask: “could we really win?”

Its an important question to explore.

The Battle of Seattle

My friend Michael is a staff member at ZNet & Z Communications, which is an independent progressive media and political education organization in Massachusetts. He recently told me about what news coverage in relation to the resistance to the World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings in Seattle in 1999 looked like. First, for anyone that doesn’t know, the protests against the WTO were held in November of 1999, in response to the WTO’s role (along with the IMF and World Bank), in pushing countries in the Global South / Third World, into even greater poverty through “liberalizing international trade” (i.e. giving countries loans they can’t pay back, at high interest, in return for them opening up their markets to multinational corporations, cutting progressive national/regional regulations against pollution, worker/human rights violations, etc…).

What Michael explained to me, is that for the months leading up to the demonstrations, ZNet (and most left media outlets), received increasingly more news reports, calls-to-action, proposals for new organizations, photo/audio/video submissions, analysis articles, visionary proposals for the future, ideas about movement building, and so on, that people wanted to publish on ZNet. These continued to be submitted to ZNet in ever greater numbers as November 30th approached.

People were excited about building popular, democratic power. They were determined to shut down the WTO meeting and all it symbolized. They were talking about hope, change, democracy, feminism, racial justice, solidarity, and the future. Movement building was framed in positive, compassionate, and creative ways.

But when the meetings begun, something very different happened. Almost instantaneously, the talks about “peace, democracy, hope, change, vision, strategy, and a better world,” Michael said, “turned into nonstop submissions what the police were doing.”

The state repression that was brought down upon many of the protesters, caused many to allow their actions, their hopes, their story, and their message, to be silenced. Not only was the state violence harming protesters and leading to arrests, it allowed the greatest uprising against a meeting of world capitalists in history be portrayed as an ineffective mob of unruly, stereotypical leftists/protesters in the corporate media, and allowed revolution to be framed in terms of “opposing the cops” and “stopping repression” (as our main goal), in our own independent media. The Government didn’t just attack the Left, it got us to forget what we really were fighting for, it got us to slip off message, it got us to stop talking about our vision.

Could We Really Win?

Back to the question in the first paragraph I said I hear repeated a lot: “Could we really win?”

Seattle and its aftermath didn’t mark some dramatic break from a visionary, relevant, and strategic progressive movement that existed before November 1999 - that would be an exaggeration. What it did represent is a clear example of how large segments of that movement which are on-message, and talking about relevant things, can be thrown off-message, and made to lose the clarity of their focus.

What is fairly generalizable on the revolutionary left is when we talk about social transformation, we give the State much more credit than its due. That is, we make it seem more powerful than it actually is. While the United States Government is certainly one of the most violent institutions ever created, and American capitalists control some of the most concentrated institutions of wealth imaginable, the progressive movement overestimates how hard it would be to bring them down. What I mean is this: if you see revolution as a pitched (or surprise) , violent, insurrectionary battle between “The State” and “The People”, then of course you think that revolution is some impossible task (or worse, your ideology and dogma blind you from how ridiculous this idea sounds and the fact that no sane person in the U.S. will listen to you - let alone the millions necessary to win).

However if you define a revolution as a fundamental change in the defining institutions and social relations of society. If you think that to achieve that transformation you need to engage in careful, patient, yet urgent, organizing - slow, intentional growth. If you believe that if we are to attain desirable ends, we must use desirable means. If, after looking at revolutions in the past, you see that to avoid undesirable ends, we need to talk about and plan what desirable ends would look like - that is, we must think about, talk about, write about, and experiment with, visions of what a future society could look like. If you think that we need to relate to millions of people, that indeed our revolution will be a popular and widely-waged one. If you think that our revolution needs to be of the mainstream, and not against it. And if your central concern is the number of revolutionaries in the United States (let’s say 100 million people), and not the number of cops and national guard who might oppose you, then your ideas about what a revolution in the United States would look like change significantly.

You begin to see what is plainly obvious: that institutions - including those that make up the United States Government and U.S. corporations - are built consent and cooperation, much more than on than violence or repression. When asked with the question of how could a revolutionary movement possibly defeat the United States Military and urban police forces, the obvious answer surfaces: by organizing them.

I’ll end with a Gene Sharp quote, which I saw in one of his speeches on Google Videos. I’ll take the direct quote from Aaron’s blog post “On The Shaking of Governments” (brilliant post title) since he’s been reading a lot of Sharp’s stuff. Here it is:

“Is shaking a government to the point that they disintegrate and nobody is left to surrender naivete and weakness? … There is nothing weak about a technique of struggle which can take the legitimacy away from a repressive government, which can produce a defiant population uncontrollable by the police and military forces sent to repress them.”

Finally, two great readings on nonviolent revolutions:

Globalize Liberation, George Lakey

From Dictatorship to Democracy, Gene Sharp

Much, much more to come later. Here’s what I have so far…

Organizing

• Comments to New SDS Regional Meeting by Robert Ross
• Organizing vs. Activism in 1968 by Mark Rudd
• Remembering Tomorrow: From SDS to Life After Capitalism by Michael Albert

Communication

• Simple Framing by George Lakoff: An introduction to framing and its uses in politics
• Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff
• Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff

Envisioning the Future

• There Is An Alternative by Michael Albert
• Government in the Future by Noam Chomsky (audio talk)
• Parecon: Life After Capitalism by Michael Albert: A book exploring participatory economics - an equitable economic model. How could we organize economic life in a more just, equitable, and solidaristic manner?
• Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century edited by Chris Spannos
• Realizing Hope: Life Beyond Capitalism by Michael Albert

Nonviolent Action

• Strategy for a Living Revolution by George Lakey
• From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp
• The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part One: Power and Struggle by Gene Sharp
• The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part Two: The Methods of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp
• The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part Three: The Dynamics of Nonviolent Action by Gene Sharp

Social Epidemics / Tipping Points

• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

Strategy

• The Art of Warfare by Sun Tzu
• Start Making Sense: Turning the Lessons of Election 2004 into Winning Progressive Politics edited by Don Hazen and Lakshimi Chaudhryx

Power

• The Matrix

Race

• The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere: Making Resistance to Antisemitism Part of All of Our Movements by April Rosenblum
• White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son by Tim Wise

GI Resistance & Dismantling the Military

• Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War by David Cortright
• Democratizing Defense Resource Archive by Liberty Tree, Foundation for the Democratic Revolution

Environmental Justice

• “Communicating our Vision for National Climate Policy” by Green for All
  • Podcast
  • Talking Points
  • Media Tool Kit: “Using the Media to Frame the Debate”

Education

• Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

U.S. Civil Rights Movement

• I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Summer by Charles M. Payne

Revolutionary Theory

• Unorthodox Marxism: An Essay on Capitalism, Socialism, and Revolution by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel

History

• A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present by Howard Zinn

Publications and Websites

• ZNet
• Z Magazine
• Democracy Now!
• Left Turn
• Liberty Tree
• Monthly Review
• Real News Network
• Rockridge Nation
• Wiretap

Blogs and Sites

• Joshua Kahn Russell
• Michael Albert
• John Cronan
• Madeline Gardner
• Pat Korte
• Meaghan Linick-Loughley
• Aric Miller
• Aaron Petcoff
• Becca Rast
• Mark Rudd
• Matt Smucker

Organizations Promoting: Leadership Development, Political Education, Vision, Strategy, and Capacity Building

An ongoing compilation of Organizations Promoting: Leadership Development, Political Education, Vision, Strategy, and Capacity Building. I will soon add links to their websites and descriptions of what they do. In the mean time, you can find them by googling their name. Want to help build the movement? Donate these groups and support their work - they are the people who build the capacity of the movement’s best organizers and leaders! Enjoy!

Beyond the Choir - Beyond the Choir is an analysis, strategy and training project serving groups and campaigns struggling for social and economic justice, peace and the environment. We are a collective of organizers, trainers and designers who seek to spread tools, skills and strategies to build movements strong enough to realize the change we imagine.

The Brecht Forum - The BRECHT FORUM is a place for people who are working for social justice, equality and a new culture that puts human needs first. Through its programs and events, the Brecht Forum brings people together across social and cultural boundaries and artistic and academic disciplines to promote critical analysis, creative thinking, collaboartive projects and networking in an independent community-level environment.

Campus Camp Wellstone - (a project of Wellstone Action) Campus Camp Wellstone trains students nationwide on how to run energized, community building, winning campaigns. We focus on campus and community organizing and young voter engagement.

The Center for Political Education - The Center for Political Education is a resource for political organizations on the left, progressive movements, the working class and people of color. It is anchored by a collective of individuals active in day-to-day struggles in the Bay Area. Our political approach is non-sectarian, democratic, and committed to a critical analysis of local, regional, national and global politics.

The Change Agency - The Change Agency is a collective of activist educators and researchers. We work with community organisers to help people clarify their purpose and develop plans that will enable them to be heard, focus their energies and achieve social and environmental justice outcomes. We research social change, activism and advocacy. What is successful and what isn’t? How can people organise and work together more effectively? Based on our ongoing research we facilitate workshops for activists and community organisers and also share many of our resources on this site.

Albert Einstein Institution - The mission of the Albert Einstein Institution is to advance the worldwide study and strategic use of nonviolent action in conflict. The Institution is committed to:

• defending democratic freedoms and institutions
• opposing oppression, dictatorship, and genocide, and
• reducing reliance on violence as an instrument of policy.

This mission is pursued in three ways, by:

• encouraging research and policy studies on the methods of nonviolent action and their past use in diverse conflicts
• sharing the results of this research with the public through publications, conferences, and the media, and
• consulting with groups in conflict about the strategic potential of nonviolent action.

Electoral Action Training (EAT) - (a project of the United States Student Association and Campus Camp Wellstone) The United States Student Association and Campus Camp Wellstone have teamed up to offer a comprehensive training to give students the skills to register, educate and mobilize their campuses for the 2008 election and beyond. With a combination of workshops, exercises, and discussions students will be equipped with tried and true electoral organizing skills (plus creative new tactics) and a sophisticated understanding of student power.

Grassroots Organizing Weekend (GROW) - (a project of the United States Student Association and the Midwest Academy) USSAF’s GrassRoots Organizing Weekend (GROW) is a comprehensive three-day training for student organizers. The GROW teaches students how to be more strategic in their fight for justice on campus and in the community. The training is a series of presentations, exercises, and discussions that teach a set of skills and concepts, which will increase the effectiveness of your student organizing. The GROW trainers are seasoned student organizers from around the country who teach by using their own personal organizing experiences. Usually 20-40 participants attend each GROW. As a participant of the GROW you will learn how to:

Highlander Research and Education Center - Highlander serves as a catalyst for grassroots organizing and movement building in Appalachia and the South. We work with people fighting for justice, equality and sustainability, supporting their efforts to take collective action to shape their own destiny. Through popular education, participatory research, and cultural work, we help create spaces — at Highlander and in local communities — where people gain knowledge, hope and courage, expanding their ideas of what is possible. We develop leadership and help create and support strong, democratic organizations that work for justice, equality and sustainability in their own communities and that join with others to build broad movements for social, economic and restorative environmental change.

Hollyhock Leadership Institute: A School for Social Change - The Hollyhock Leadership Institute empowers current and emerging leaders to create high impact social change. We build alliances, catalyze new visions and re-kindle inspiration.

Paul Kivel - Paul Kivel’s work grows out of three decades in community education, engaged parenthood, political writing, and practical activism all focused on one overriding question: How can we live and work together to nurture each individual and create a multicultural society based on love, caring, justice, and interdependence with all living things? Paul believes we each have a responsibility to help create a world worthy of our children. As Rabbi Tarfon wrote many centuries ago: “It is not upon you to finish the work. Neither are you free to desist from it.” This web site offers you Paul’s articles and books, links and exercises, bibliographies and videographies, all to support personal growth, community education, progressive activism, and effective organizing.

Labor/Community Strategy Center - The Labor/Community Strategy Center is a multiracial “think tank/act tank” committed to building democratic, internationalist, Left social movements and challenging the ideological, economic, and political domination of transnational capital. The Strategy Center’s work encompasses all aspects of urban life in the United States: it emphasizes class-conscious labor organizing and fighting for environmental justice and ending climate change, immigrant rights, and first-class transportation, as well as actively confronting the growing criminalization, racialization, and feminization of poverty. The Strategy Center synthesizes grassroots organizing-The Bus Riders Union and Community Rights projects-with education, policy development, and artistic culture production-Strategy Center Publications, The National Center for Transportation Strategies, the National School for Strategic Organizing, Voices from the Frontlines radio show, and AhoraNow periodical-to generate a creative and aggressive response to the growing power of the corporate-led political Right in the United States. The Strategy Center is committed to multilingual organizing, including the development of multilingual publications, productions, and visuals arts.

The Midwest Academy - Midwest Academy is a leading national training institute for the progressive movement. The Academy advances the movements for social change by teaching a strategic, rigorous, results-oriented approach to social action and organization building. The Academy provides training (introductory and advanced level) and consulting, equipping organizers, leaders, and their organizations to think and act strategically to win justice for all.

Movement Strategy Center - The Movement Strategy Center brings a cohesive plan to strengthen these emerging efforts and build the progressive social justice movement. They do this by supporting individuals, organizations, alliances and sectors to be more strategic, collaborative and sustainable.

New Tactics in Human Rights - The New Tactics in Human Rights Project, led by a diverse group of partner international organizations, advisors and practitioners, promotes tactical innovation and strategic thinking within the international human rights community. Strategic and tactical thinking, long used by business and military strategists, is an effective means for the human rights movement to expand options and possibilities of what can be done. Innovative tactics are emerging that may more effectively advance human rights and end persistent human rights problems. Many innovations have been valuable, yet are not well known outside their regions.

The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond - The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB), is a national and international collective of anti-racist, multicultural community organizers and educators dedicated to building an effective movement for social transformation. The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, affectionately known in the community as The People’s Institute, considers racism the primary barrier preventing communities from building effective coalitions and overcoming institutionalized oppression and inequities. Through Undoing Racism™/Community Organizing Workshops, technical assistance and consultations, PISAB helps individuals, communities, organizations and institutions move beyond addressing the symptoms of racism to undoing the causes of racism so as to create a more just and equitable society.

Project South - Project South is a leadership development organization based in the US South creating spaces for movement building. We work with communities pushed forward by the struggle to strengthen leadership and provide popular political & economic education for personal & social transformation. We build relationships with organizations and networks across the US and global South to inform our local work and to engage in bottom-up movement building for social & economic justice.

RANT Collective (Root Activist Network of Trainers) - RANT is a small collective that formed in February of 2001. Our primary purpose is to provide training, education, and information to local, national, and international organizations, groups, and individuals working for global peace and justice. We are consensus based, non-hierarchical and collectively oriented.

Rainforest Action Network - Rainforest Action Network (RAN) is made up of 43 staff members in San Francisco, CA and in Tokyo, Japan, plus thousands of volunteer scientists, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens around the world. We believe that a sustainable world can be created in our lifetime, and that aggressive action must be taken immediately to leave a safe and secure world for our children. Dubbed “some of the most savvy environmental agitators in the business” by the Wall Street Journal, RAN uses hard-hitting markets campaigns to align the policies of multinational corporations with widespread public support for environmental protection. We believe that logging ancient forests for copy paper or destroying an endangered ecosystem for a week’s worth of oil is not just destructive, but outdated and unnecessary.

RESIST Grants - RESIST funds activist organizing and education work within movements for social change. As a foundation, RESIST is unique because we are part of the movements we fund. We do the work individual donors don’t have time to do: reaching out to activist organizations and researching their campaigns and projects. We operate on a national scale and know the big picture, and we challenge grantees to connnect their own issues with the concerns of other activists. Our frequent funding cycle means we can respond to time-sensitive organizing campaigns. RESIST is more than a foundation. We’re also a resource center, providing grassroots organizations with technical assistance and information about other funding sources. Finding Funding: A Beginner’s Guide to Foundation Research gives progressive activists a quick entry-point for grant-writing. Resist also publishes a highly respected Newsletter.

The Rockridge Institute - The Rockridge Institute is committed to the democratization of knowledge about politics. Our mission is to deepen and broaden the public’s understanding of the political world. Rockridge studies the worldviews, values and ideas behind conservative and progressive policies, issues and political discourse. Using the tools of neuroscience and cognitive linguistics — combined with decades of practical political experience — Rockridge promotes the effective articulation of progressive values. We do this by monitoring public debate and suggesting both long-term and short-term options for framing that offer a progressive perspective. We work primarily at the level of values and ideas across specific policy areas. At the level of language, we point out ineffective word choices and suggest argument forms and phrasings that better express progressive values.

Rosenberg Fund for Children - The Rosenberg Fund for Children was established to provide for the educational and emotional needs of children whose parents have suffered because of their progressive activities and who, therefore, are no longer able to provide fully for their children. The RFC also provides grants for the educational and emotional needs of targeted activist youth. Professionals and institutions will be awarded grants to provide services at no or reduced cost.

The Ruckus Society - We are living in a time of extreme challenges: stopping the war in Iraq, thwarting climate change catastrophes, reclaiming the commons from corporations, conquering our addiction to oil, and protecting human rights. In order to effectively meet these challenges, now, more than ever, environmental and social justice organizers must develop winning strategies that are creative, nonviolent, and take their lead from impacted communities. By building on the traditions of leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., we, at The Ruckus Society, provide our partner organizations and activists with the tools, training, and support necessary to tackle these problems and achieve their goals.

School of Unity and Liberation - SOUL is working to lay the groundwork for a powerful liberation movement by supporting the development of a new generation of young organizers - especially young women, young people of color, queer youth and working-class young people. We believe that – in order for young organizers to build an effective movement for fundamental social change – they need support to develop the nuts-and-bolts organizing skills they need to mobilize their communities and to deepen their political analysis and their visions for fundamental social change. SOUL is a training center designed to support the growing youth sector of the social justice movement. We run political education and organizing skills training programs, designed specifically to meet the particular needs of our generation of emerging movement leaders.

smartMeme - The smartMeme collective is a group of skilled, creative and dedicated change agents who work to support grassroots movements with strategy and training resources, values based communications tools, and meme campaigning. We work to build a culture of strategy, vision, and change, connecting struggles for democracy, peace, justice, and ecological sanity.

Tools for Change - Tools for Change has been providing consulting, training, mediation and facilitation services nationwide for over 15 years. Founder Margo Adair formed Tools for Change to promote the integration of spiritual and political perspectives to promote personal, spiritual and political transformation to help bring about a just society. She and other associates around the country, have forged multi-cultural and multigenerational alliances in many different settings.

Training for Change - Since 1992 Training for Change has been committed to increasing capacity around the world for activist training. When we say activist training, we mean training that helps groups stand up more effectively for justice, peace and the environment. We deliver skills directly that people working for social change can use in their daily work.

War Resisters League - The War Resisters League has been resisting war at home and war abroad since 1923. Our work for nonviolent revolution has spanned decades and been shaped by the new visions and strategies of each generation’s peacemakers.

Z Education Online - ZEO stands for Z Education Online. It is an offshoot of the Z Media Institute that operates entirely online - and it is a component of Z Communications and ZSpace that includes (or will include in the future):

• do it at your own speed instructionals with associated forums for discussion…
• text and audio lectures
• special presentations and chat sessions
• and extensive faculty-taught courses in ZSchool with associated forums, etc.

Z Media Institute - Z Media Institute was started in 1994 by the cofounders of Z Magazine (1988) and South End Press (1977) to teach radical politics, media and organizing skills, the principles and practice of creating non-hierarchical institutions and projects, activism, and vision and strategy for social change. Classes are held around Eel Pond in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

My friend Noah from Columbia University directed me to an article in today’s Los Angels Times:

“WASHINGTON — New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, campaigning for president in a neighborhood of Philadelphia so rough the mayor said, “Osama bin Laden wouldn’t last here,” pitched a $4-billion-a-year anti-crime package today that would put 100,000 new police officers on the streets and help stem the tide of repeat offenders back into the country’s prisons.”

A Surge didn’t work in Iraq. It won’t work in American cities.

Here’s what will: start addressing the roots of the problem, instead of putting band-aids on them. In his new slideshow presentation given at TED on the climate crisis and necessary urgency of addressing it (which is great by the way), Al Gore pointed out that when an addict’s veins collapse in their arms and other parts of their body, they finally start injecting themselves in their toes. The American economy and government, he posited, are at the point where we’re injecting ourselves in the toes - we are clinging to old ideas, old norms, and old frameworks. We’ve reached the end of the era where our innovation can actually lead to progress within existing frameworks of social organization.

We need new forms of social organization. The veins of society’s current institutions are collapsing - like the veins of a dying addict. The era of capitalism and its poverty, authoritarian government and its tyranny, and racial, sexism, and homophobia and their vast inequalities - economic, political, and social - are coming to an end.

Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, is well-known for infamous quote about global capitalism: “There is no alternative.”

If that were indeed true, I would have to admit that revolutionaries would do well in enjoying the rest of their lives, and doing something a little less stressful than trying to dismantle the dominant institutions of oppression.

But Thatcher’s claim doesn’t hold to more than a few minutes of careful and creative scrutiny.

We’ve seen that there are alternatives to market capitalism. The problem is that we just haven’t yet seen many good alternatives to it. So Thatcher’s claim that “there is no alternative” (TINA), was actually a claim of “there is no better alternative” (TINBA). While this seems small, it isn’t.

I re-posted Michael Albert’s essay “There Is An Alternative” a few days ago. If you want to see a (very) brief description of an alternative, just, democratic economy, I’d encourage you to read the post and explore more (it has links to where you can read more about participatory and democratic economics)s.

In term of poverty (and the “crime” poverty causes), the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and many environmental justice groups propose, some variant of “green path ways from poverty to prosperity” (green pathways out of poverty, green pathways to prosperity, green collar-jobs, solar cells not jail cells, etc…). Here’s the idea: global climate destabilization and environmental crisis are a planetary problem that require planetary solutions. We need to embark on a generational quest to save humanity and the planet. As Al Gore said, “we need another hero generation.” So what can we do about it? Well, we need a green economic revolution. We need an Apollo Project or Manhattan Project scale program, and a Civil Rights Movement scale struggle to bring it about.

And we can learn from the past too. We can wage our struggles for a clean, green economy in such a way that it uplifts those currently under-served by our society. Green Pathways From Poverty to Prosperity can be the defining attitude of a new movement which is fighting for a new social contract, on our way to an entirely new society.

Finally, I should add one more point, that I haven’t said explicitly enough, often enough.

An environmentally-sustainable, participatory, democratic, just, and poverty-free economy, is a democratically-planned economy. Market competition discouraged the type and level of innovation (I’ll be elaborating on this more soon, but copyrights, patents, and trade-secrets are some of the most common “innovation spreads rapidly in a market economy” myth-debunkers) we need to bring about a sustainable society. And the drive to accumulate and make profit/power is directly at ends with the drive to protect humanity and the world we live in. A democratic economy is a planned economy.

Ken Robinson explores the question of how schools kill creativity - and what education that would cater to multiple forms of learning and intelligence - abstract, artistic, movement-based, hearing, musical, etc… - would look like. The talk was given at the TED conference this year.

Of extreme use for progressive organizers - especially in relation to burnout and maximizing our potentials in organizing and movement building. You can find his 3-hour workshop that he did on Oprah here.

Two SDS members - Beth Slutzky and Christa Hendrickson - were interviewed on The Joy of Resistance: Multicultural Feminist Radio on WBAI (an independent radio station in NYC) this morning at 11am. You can listen to it online here! When listening, you can find their interview (its 19 minutes out of the 1 hour show) by going to minute 13:20. It ends at minute 32:32.