Activism

Civil disobedience vs the tar sands – Aug 22

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-Tar Sands and the Carbon Numbers
-A Debate: Should the U.S. Approve TransCanada’s Massive Keystone XL Tar Sands Oil Pipeline?
-Interview: James Hansen on the Tar Sands Pipeline Protest, the Obama Administration and Intergenerational Justice
-Dozens Arrested in Pipeline Protest
-Tar Sands Pipeline Protests Continue

How to build a people’s movement

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The United States is entering the fourth year of its deepest downturn since the Great Depression. The official unemployment rate is rising again, and labor force participation among many groups has plummeted to historic lows. A stillborn economic “recovery” has distributed 88 percent of its benefits to corporate profits and one percent to wages and salaries….If ever there was a time to challenge economic orthodoxy, this would be it. Yet there has been no effective movement in the United States to ease the suffering of millions, shift patterns of growth and investment, and make job creation a priority.

Our fears are unwarranted. America is in fact well-governed.

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America is in better shape than Europe and Japan. We have good demographics, sound fundamentals, relatively easily solved problems, and no powerful enemies. Why the constant sense of crisis? QE2, hyperinflation, climate armageddon, Obama the socialist, AIDS, alar on apples, jihadists, debt, swine flu – a constant drumroll of doom. Answer: elites govern a weak people by exploiting their fears. For example, look at the “government is broke” panic.

The pain in spain

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The Spanish uprising was born largely online in the wake of the Arab Spring, when hundreds of small-scale grassroots groups joined together to form Democracia Real YA — Real Democracy Now — to unify their efforts in demanding social change. Taking their slogans from Stephane Hessel’s internationally famous manifesto Indignez-Vous (translated Time for Outrage in English, Indignaos in Spanish), the group helped to move massive demonstrations on May 15 as public outrage against the Spanish government austerity measures and bank bailouts reached the boiling point.

An economy turned upside down

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While mainstream America is hoping for federal economic reform, some social justice organizations have a radically different idea, and are organizing low-income communities to build a new economy from the grassroots up. Tired of asking for change from the top down, they are taking their economy into their own hands. Social justice organizations, having a strong membership base rooted in community, are ideal spaces to cultivate alternative economic projects, as relationships of trust and solidarity have been nurtured over time through education and a history of taking action for justice. Here are some exciting examples of grassroots alternative economy projects for social justice.

The twilight of meaning

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For those of us who have been thinking and talking about peak oil for more than a few years, one of the most common sources of frustration tends to be the vacant looks generated in so many faces by what are, after all, straightforward and reasonable concepts. Maybe it’s time we talk about the cultural forces that foster, at all levels of American society, the almost trancelike conviction that everything will somehow come out fine.

Disorder in world cities: comparing Britain and France

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Irresponsible acquiescence to budget deficits and mounting debt by numerous countries has translated into austere fiscal policies and drastic cuts in social services. These choices have generated public protests in Latin America, Israel, Spain and Greece. I recently analyzed thirty years of disorder in French and British cities, the only European countries experiencing recurrent urban outbreaks.

UK riots’ resource and cultural roots: an in-the-trenches report

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Youngsters are running riot around the country. Some of us, who work in education and on the ‘street’, predicted and warned of this possible eventuality. It has happened. Our kids have been trained to consume; have been thwarted by lack of progression and aspiration. …. The middle classes didn’t bother about the ‘ghettos’ of housing estates where such behaviours have been going for years, and, us, working in these areas, just knew that eventually something would kick off. Well, it has.

ODAC Newsletter – Aug 12

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This week saw riots on Britain’s streets and in world markets. The IEA monthly oil report referred to the oil market as a ‘big dipper ride’ as Brent oil dropped below $100 for the first time since early February, before regaining some of the losses later in the week. Pundits compared the turmoil with 2008, but in some ways it looks far worse…