Broadcaster Tavis Smiley and Princeton professor Cornel West just wrapped up their 18-city “Poverty Tour”. The aim of the trip that traversed through Wisconsin, Detroit, Washington DC, and the Deep South was to “highlight the plight of the poor people of all races, colors, and creeds so they will not be forgotten, ignored, or rendered invisible.” Although the trip has been met with a fair amount of criticism, the issue of poverty’s invisibility in American media and politics is unmistakable. The community organizations working tirelessly to help America’s poor deserve a great deal more attention than what is being given.

The main attack against the Poverty Tour is Smiley and West’s criticism of Obama’s weak efforts to tackle poverty. For me though, what I would have liked to see more is the collection of stories and experiences from the people West and Smiley met along their trip. The act of collective storytelling in and of itself can be an act of resistance.

American media is mostly fatigued of poverty and recession coverage, which is one reason that Republicans have been able to pass laws that damage needed social programs. Even with the increasing racial diversity in America, there is minimal neighborhood integration for African Americans. Hispanics and Asians remain as segregated now as twenty years ago.  Americans do not know each other, and especially middle to high income white communities have a dearth of comprehension of what life is like for those in low-income communities.

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This country is famous for one of the most organized and inspiring nonviolent movements in modern history. It unfolded sixty years ago in the aftermath of the Holocaust in Europe and focused on the racism that was an unresolved legacy of the Civil War. It was brilliant, but sadly, not enough.

Last week in Mississippi, Deryl Dedmon, Jr. and John Aaron Rice, along with a group of ‘psyched up’ white teens, left a party with the intention of finding an African American to ‘mess with.’ Driving sixteen miles to the other side of town they set upon the first man they saw—James Craig Anderson—and beat him viciously. Eighteen-year-old Dedmon, now charged with murder, stayed behind long enough to run Anderson over with his truck and leave him for dead. To top it off, his lawyer went beyond human decency to protect his client, insisting that it was not a racially motivated crime.

Maybe, on some level, it’s a positive sign that we do not want to admit that there is still racism in this country, despite the experience of people living in James Craig Anderson’s community, immigrant families in Arizona, farmworkers in California, or sleeping children in Afghanistan. But denial isn’t going to make the problem go away. What will make it finally go away is a recognition that racially motivated crimes have a cause and that we can get to it by shifting our awareness from hate crimes to just simply hate.

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For the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, there is going to be a massive art exhibit and event in downtown Los Angeles, called LA Vs. War, featuring art that challenges the path we have taken as a nation in response to that tragedy and points another way forward. As the organizers explain on their Kickstarter campaign:

LA Vs. WAR presents some of today’s most prolific, pro-peace/anti-war, political artists in a multi-media exhibition chronicling the creative responses to the current military conflicts in the Middle East/North Africa/Central Asia, The Global War on Terror, the Drug Wars, and other wars on marginalized peoples. After the September 2011 show, we plan to travel the exhibition as “Vs. WAR”to other cities in the U.S. and abroad in the spirit of peace and creative collaboration.

LA Vs. WAR is part exhibition, part experience. The art show will be curated by Yo! Peace, Center for the Study of Political Graphics, Political Gridlock and Ad Hoc Art and will feature a large selection of fine art and limited edition prints and posters. Live art demonstrations and workshops will engage the audience in creative activities ranging from graffiti, t-shirt printing, stenciling, and more. Teach-ins with our grassroots partners will inform and inspire attendees to transform their own lives and communities.

Right now, LA Vs. War is trying to raise $5,000 on Kickstarter to make this great project a reality. At the moment, they are less than $600 away from reaching their goal. However, as you may know, if you aren’t able to raise your goal on Kickstarter, you don’t get any of the money, and there are only 70 hours left for this campaign before time runs out. So if you feel the urge, donate now to help pull off this worthwhile event. And as a bonus, depending on how much you pledge, they are offering a range of great gifts—including t-shirts, books and prints of artwork—for your support.

In St. Petersburg yesterday, former deputy prime minister Boris Y. Nemtsov engaged in a creative nonviolent action by himself that exposed the sorry state of Russia’s so-called democracy.

In an effort to challenge a ridiculous Russian law that prohibits anyone from campaigning for a candidate for office without a permit, Nemstov handed out fliers that said, “Vote against everybody.” As the New York Times reports:

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It has been a year since I came back to Bogotá after two years living in Egypt, where I got to know some of the young people leading nonviolent protests and cultural activities. If I had been part of the Mubarak government, I couldn’t have planned it better; I left Cairo just five months before the revolution began. As I followed the news of what was happening there in February and March, I was here in Colombia, but a part of me was over there, hoping to see change, waiting to be part of it.

Cairo was a tough place to be—so hot, so brown, and hard for a woman, especially a woman who comes from green mountains, from a country with uncountable rivers, lagoons, and lakes. But what I missed the most while living there was my bike. I never saw a woman cycling, nor a businessman. Bread deliverers were on bikes, along with the very badly-paid workers risking their lives on a daily basis by crossing the 23-kilometer-long bridges that go through Giza and Zamalek to Heliopolis. Besides them, it was just a few foreigners living in wealthy neighborhoods dared to use a “steel horse” to go around on weekends.

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In what’s believed to be a first for any United States government agency, San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit forestalled a planned protest on Thursday against the latest police shooting of an unarmed man by cutting cellphone service. The action has raised all sorts of questions regarding free speech and the right to assemble peaceably. As Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University told the Christian Science Monitor:

“I think you can on the one hand argue it was a momentary discomfort for somebody who has other means of communication,” says Professor Policinski. “On the other hand, it’s a very disquieting development. Here you have a government agency indiscriminately closing down all kinds of speech in order to prevent a perceived possibility of violence.”

The hacktivist group Anonymous has certainly sided with the latter opinion. On Sunday they broke into a BART’s website and posted company contact information for more than 2,000 customers. The group also urged its members and followers to bombard BART with emails and faxes, as well as file complaints with the FCC. A physical protest is also being planned for later this afternoon at the Civic Center BART station.

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• Thousands of residents of the Northeastern Chinese port city Dalian took to the streets on Sunday to demand the relocation of a petrochemical plant that threatened to spill toxins into the city last week when a typhoon breached a nearby dike. Chinese authorities have complied and ordered the closure of the plant.

• Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis poured into the streets of major cities and towns across the country on Friday, keeping the pressure on the nation’s embattled president to step down.

• About 100 people participated in a two-mile march in Santa Cruz, California on Sunday to demand a halt to construction of 32 homes on what is believed to be a 6,000-year-old Native American burial site.

• More than 1,000 people led by the poet turned activist Javier Sicilia have joined a march in Mexico City to protest the government’s strategy in the fight against drug gangs.

• Tunisian security forces used tear gas and truncheons Monday to disperse several hundred protesters in the capital demanding that the government step down for failing to prosecute supporters of the ousted president.

• Thousands of people turned out at rallies across Australia on Sunday to call on federal MPs to support a ban on live animal exports.

• Thousands of people took to the streets of Dublin yesterday to demand civil marriage equality.

• Tens of thousands of people gathered across Israel on Saturday to call for lower living costs in an effort to show the government their protest movement has countrywide support.

Erdoğan shows a general to the door.

Furious over the arrests of senior Turkish military officers, and unable to find common ground with the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Chief of Turkish Armed Forces Isik Kosaner handed in his resignation, together with the heads of the navy, army, and air force on July 29th. Some have been calling it a “silent revolution”; for the first time in its modern history, Turkey’s military appears to be coming under civilian control, after decades as the government’s watchful overseer and the orchestrator of sudden coups. But at what cost?

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#occupywallstreet poster by Adbusters.

It’s an eerie feeling when you know something should be happening, and it isn’t—yet. In The Washington Post, sociologist David Meyer has an incisive essay asking why, if Americans are so angry about their political system, are they not protesting? He notes the low approval ratings of President Obama and the Congress, as well as the economic dire straits we’re in, with no end in sight. He mentions the riots in England—to say nothing of those camping out in Israel, or the patient, courageous people being beaten down in the streets of Syrian cities. Or Spain. Or Bahrain. Or China. 2011 is primed to join 1789, 1848, and 1968 as a year of historic, bottom-up transformation. But, aside from a few weeks in Madison, the United States seems to have mostly been sitting it out.

Meyer provides part of an answer: organizing—or lack thereof. The labor movement is nearly crippled. Clicktivism only sort of translates into true collectivism. The best we seem capable of is a rally for apathy.

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• In New Jersey, protesters with the environmentalist group Greenpeace flew a hot-air aircraft around the Portland Generating Station to protest the coal-burning power plant's emissions yesterday morning.

• Tens of thousands of Syrians surged onto the streets to stage anti-government protests in defiance of an escalating military crackdown Friday, amid signs that the international community is still unwilling to call directly for President Bashar al-Assad’s departure.

• A few hundred protesters gathered Friday in Cairo's Tahrir Square, calling for a civil state and an end to military rule.

• A few dozen opposition activists gathered outside a subway station near the Kremlin on Friday to protest the arrest of Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov for taking part in an unsanctioned rally July 31.

• Weeping parents have been demonstrating in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, asking what has become of close family members who have disappeared.

• More than 60 waiters, busboys and other workers at the Loeb Boathouse in Central  Park went on strike Tuesday, vowing to picket outside the tourist attraction and  city landmark until they're allowed to form a union.

• On Monday, about 50 opponents of the abolition of free access to the Internet in Czech libraries, which the Interior Ministry is pondering as an austerity measure, held a protest meeting in front of the ministry.