Some Occupiers just want the banks to act more reasonably; others want to abolish capitalism. Most cruise to meetings on two wheels; others hate bike lanes. In Minneapolis, as in places across the United States, Occupy Our Homes has brought union members, anarchists, lawyers, grassroots organizers, democrats and veterans all under the same roof, united by a common goal of saving homeowners from eviction and full neighborhoods from displacement. They might not all share the same vision of utopia, but housing justice work is demonstrating that, for today’s era of activism, humanity can trump ideology.
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The past couple of weeks have been something of a roller-coaster for National Nurses United and it all culminates this Friday morning with the first major march and rally in what is expected to be a weekend of protest in Chicago. But it was a fight to get even there. Last Tuesday, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his administration announced that the National Nurses United (NNU) protest against austerity measures that benefit NATO, the G8, and other elites would not be allowed to end its May 18 rally in Daley Plaza. The anti-NATO-G8 protest—billed as “a rally to tax Wall Street and heal America” — will likely draw thousands into the Loop on a workday afternoon and, as such, was threatened to be marginalized to Grant Park’s Butler field, according to NNU organizers.
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Walter Wink, via Wikipedia.
Fifteen years ago I attended a talk by Walter Wink. Like a growing number of people who knew his work on nonviolence I was a fan, and told him so. He demurred, saying he was just a writer. “It’s the activists who are doing all the real work,” he said.
It was my turn to demure.
Walter Wink died this week. The world has lost a gifted diagnostician of the dilemmas and potential of the human condition. Though the terrain he mined for decades was Christian theology, his work offered insights potentially applicable to all of us. Why? Because his research and imagination relentlessly bore down on the mechanics of systemic violence and nonviolent transformation. While this was assiduously framed in a Christian key, his work offers clues broadly pertinent to understanding the cloying functionality of domination — and the ways we can resist it.
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Original headline about Operation Spectrum.
On May 21, 1987, 16 Singaporeans were arrested and detained in a crackdown called Operation Spectrum. About a month later, four of the original 16 were released, and another six arrested. They were branded as Marxist conspirators out to “subvert Singapore’s political and social order using communist united front tactics” and detained without trial. Most of the detainees were lawyers, community workers or entrepreneurs. As the 25th anniversary of the crackdown approaches, activists are using the opportunity to raise questions anew about the repression of dissent in the country.
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Do a Google image search for protest symbols and your first page will show a range of raised fists, Guy Fawkes masks and possibly even a few giant inflatable rats. But by far the single most represented image you’ll see is the peace sign. It is probably the most famous protest symbol in the world and has its origins in the British anti-nuclear movement of the 1950s. The sign represents the semaphore signals for two letters: ‘N’ (the two diagonals pointing down) and ‘D’ (the vertical line that divides the circle), which together represent nuclear disarmament. It has become the symbol of anti-war and social justice movements across the globe.
The aim of a symbol is to communicate as immediately and directly as possible the core of what you represent. It is the shorthand for your values, your aspirations and sometimes your political agenda, if you’ve managed to put one together. Which brings us to an important question: Is it time to consider a new symbol for a new era?
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London student protest, via Bowalley Road.
For the better part of a century, some visionaries have been trying to break out of the dominant belief that there are only two means of forcing change: reform through elections and revolution through violence. The rigidity of that binary choice still strangles thinking today.
A Norwegian, for instance, once wrote to me that there simply wasn’t enough direct conflict in the country to use the word “revolution”; as I have described in detail before, the Labor Party got enough votes in the 1930s so it could finally create a coalition government. An election seems to have made the change. But that view focuses on politicians and electoral forms and overlooks the main scene of the conflict, which was mass direct action in the economic arena. To say that the change happened through elections is to mistake the effect for the cause.
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Catholic Workers outside Chicago's Prudential Building, via Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune.
Catholic Workers and friends gathered yesterday morning at the Prudential Building in Chicago — home to President Obama’s campaign headquarters — to say “No to NATO; Yes to Community.”
“We are here today,” said Chantal de Alacuaz from Chicago, “to boldly proclaim our desire to live in a world where we say no to NATO and yes to community. As Catholic Workers, we serve the poor by practicing the works of mercy by feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and taking care of the sick. The works of war are directly opposed to that.”
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Image from "Advice for avoiding Stop and Frisk" blog post at Raid My Words.
On Saturday, May 12, several hundred people rallied in front of the New York City Police Department headquarters to protest the NYPD’s “Stop and Frisk” program, considered by many to be a prime example of modern-day, institutional racism. But with approximately 40,000 officers and a nearly $5 billion annual budget, the NYPD is the largest police force in the U.S. and, some say, the most powerful on earth. So how does one try to change an ongoing policy enforced by such an entrenched institution? According to some activists at the rally, the way to begin is twofold: by educating people about their rights during police searches and by mounting a community effort to do surveillance on the NYPD.
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Protesters in Malaga, Spain, on May 12. By Jon Nazca, via Reuters AlertNet.
Last June, after leaving the encampment in the center of Madrid, people in the 15M movement would say, “We moved from Sol square, but we know the way back.” The day of action on May 12 this year exceeded the expectations of many people who thought the 15M movement was dead, who didn’t recognize that it had only moved to neighborhood assemblies. The one-year anniversary of the movement brought hundreds of thousands people to the streets again in nearly 80 Spanish cities. There were 50,000 in Madrid, 44,000 in Barcelona, 11,000 in Vigo (a northern city with a population of less than 300,000) and many more.
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