Among the films shortlisted for an Academy Award next month is the powerful documentary If a Tree Falls. It chronicles the house arrest of Daniel McGowan, an environmental activist facing life in prison for the arson of an Oregon lumber company, and the movement to which he belonged, the Earth Liberation Front.
Far from taking sides, the film explores the middle and complex ground between martyrdom and terrorism–the latter being how the United States government saw McGowan’s actions. No matter how one feels about such volatile property destruction, it would be difficult, however, to leave the film without feeling some sympathy for McGowan. Perhaps it’s his own self-reflection and ultimate remorse that does it. But credit the filmmakers for creating an atmosphere conducive to humanization.
As director Marshall Curry noted in a recent interview, “It took a lot of time just explaining to people we were honestly interested in their point of view, and the film wasn’t going to be their point of view but it would reflect their point of view. That we were interested in having the best arguments from different sides bang against each other, rather than setting up straw men to knock down.”
Poised on the threshold of a new year, I’m again drawn to a metaphor for the challenges and opportunities we face in this urgent time of ours: the crossroads.
Two roads intersect, and now we confront an unavoidable choice. Do we carry on as we always have—or do we, with courage and imagination and verve, make a dramatic course correction?
While it may be too early to definitively rank 2011 as the year of the Great Nonviolent Turning (even greater things may be coming in the new year or in the years that will follow it; or, on the contrary, the passage of time may reframe this period entirely), the events of the past twelve months—from Tunisia to Egypt, from Greece to Spain, from Chile to Jeju Island, from China and Russia to a more or less Occupied America—have signaled a growing determination for a qualitative shift.
As it moves into a new year, and an election year no less, the Occupy movement will likely be claimed by more and more hopefuls in the mainstream trying to benefit from it, and to sanitize it in the process. I guess that’s why I’ve found myself writing a lot lately about the movement’s radical roots, radical ambitions, and radical tactics—to remind us that if it had played by the rules some now want it to play by, it wouldn’t have gotten where it is in the first place.
For the occasion of a recent panel discussion at Columbia Law School on Occupy Wall Street and the First Amendment, I wrote this essay, subsequently published on the website of Harper’s Magazine. It argues that one should not take the movement’s appeals to the Bill of Rights too literally in legal terms, and that its tactics and aims have always been infused with an impulse more revolutionary than the law could ever accommodate. The whole discussion at Columbia, which also included WNV contributor and legal scholar Jeremy Kessler, can now be watched here:
Following that, The Nation published my essay “Thank You, Anarchists,” which explores some of what anarchist thought has contributed to the movement and why it deserves to be taken more seriously than it often is by those on the outside:
As assemblies enter our own politics through the Occupy movement, we should take care to recognize what they’re not and will never be. Even more important, though, is what they’ve already done. They’ve reminded us that politics is not a matter of choosing among what we’re offered but of fighting for what we and others actually need, not to mention what we hope for. For this, in large part, we have the anarchists to thank.
If 2011 was the year of the protester, 2012 may prove to be the year of nonviolence. What’s the difference? It’s as great as between yes and no. A crucial awakening that envelopes humanity’s collective struggle for justice, peace and democracy is happening; it is an awakening that clarifies the circumstances we embrace with a yes and those by which we respond with a vehement no. Like many I know, I often teeter between despair and hope–stuck in a kind of uncomfortable tension resembling Wendell Berry’s poetic instruction to “be joyful though you have considered all the facts” –grasping for some measure of sanity to make sense of all that is happening.
It is tempting to succumb to despair, what with the onslaught of major media coverage telling us all the bad news, dismissing the promising news, and ignoring the good news. Consider the challenges: the unraveling violence of the Egyptian revolution, the 5,000 killed in Syria, climate change and the instability and disasters brought by extreme weather patterns and an ill-equipped global populace with inadequate leadership, the threat of random violence and terrorist activity–Norway, Belgium, India, the US, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq–and state and cultural violence against immigrants, women, refugees, the poor, GLBTQ persons, and people of color. So where is the hope? Well, in 2011, the fires of our hope were stoked by the global protest movements–the Arab Spring, the Indignados, Occupy Wall Street–of millions of people rising up to say: كفاية …Basta…Enough! Read the rest of this article »
After a year of ongoing work, Spain’s premier anti-foreclosure organization, the Platform of People Affected by Mortgage (PAH), has been compelling both the government and the banks in the country to react, pushing them to make some small but positive steps toward securing the right to housing.
The PAH started in February of 2009 from a small group of citizens in Barcelona in order to demand that the Mortgage Law include dación en pago, a measure that would make possible tohand back the keys and the property to the bank, discharging all mortgage debt if the holder fails to pay the mortgage. But as more and more families were evicted from their homes, PAH took to the streets in November, 2010 with the Stop Evictions campaign, which gained even more momentum during this year’s May 15 movement mobilizations. PAH became a meeting point for people in danger of losing their homes, organized locally by citizens and activists to provide legal advice and promote civil resistance actions.
Only three days after celebrating the Son of Man’s birth, the Christian church elects to expose the greedy underbelly of Roman rule by commemorating a group of young martyrs who have come to be called the “Holy Innocents.” According to Matthew’s gospel, King Herod of Judea became “greatly troubled” when three wise men, traveling through his kingdom from the east, inquired as to the birthplace of “the newborn king of the Jews.” Fearful of the impact of this event on his own ability to govern, Herod implored the three to seek out the new king so that he might “worship” him. Since Jewish scripture pointed to Bethlehem as the site of the Savior’s birth, the king ordered all males in the region under the age of two be slaughtered, thus insuring the child would never take his place on Herod’s throne. Many Christians feel these children gave their lives for the newborn infant.
The Holy Innocents described by Matthew have many siblings in today’s Afghanistan. United Nations figures place the number of street children in Kabul alone at close to 60,000. In the neighborhood where I’m living, they can be seen on the sidewalks selling candy or balloons to passersby. At congested roundabouts, they wander among stalled traffic, filthy rags in dirty hands, wiping the sides of cars and buses, hopeful that someone will condescend to drop them a few Afghanis. Some of these kids have homes to return to; many don’t. They receive no schooling, little medical aid, and scrounge for food wherever they can find it, often in the city’s ever-present, overflowing dumpsters, where they fight for scraps with the small herds of goats and sheep.
Huffington Post has never been known for having a very discerning eye when it comes to content choices. The site publishes about 100 original pieces a day in its politics section–about half of which are unpaid blog posts that get very little attention. But as the New York Times‘ Nate Silver explained in a numbers-heavy analysis earlier this year, even a post that garners just several hundred page views earns HuffPo a few bucks in ad revenue. That means it literally pays to have content of questionable quality constantly flowing onto the site.
Could this numbers game explain why HuffPo published a piece by the head of Fiji’s military junta and self-appointed Prime Minister, Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama? Perhaps it was snookered by the subject matter. After all, Bainimarama was using the HuffPo platform to announce a “win for the 99 percent” by way of tax cuts on the poor and middle classes, as well as a temporary “Social Responsibility Levy” on the top one percent. What could be bad about that? Well, it turns out, quite a bit. In a response post, published by HuffPo last week, investigative reporter (and WNV contributor) Anna Lenzer explained what’s really going on in Fiji.
It’s early evening near Pole Sorkh (po-lay sork) Square in western Kabul. Although it’s barely 6:00, winter’s cold bare feet have already started their walk across our apartment. Ali, Abdulai, Roz Mohammend, and Faiz have joined Maya and me on the floor of a small room that later will double as a bedroom for a quiet evening of reading and studying. Like most of the others, I’ve cocooned myself in a thick quilt and I’ve begun reading Ha Jin’s novel of the Korean War, War Trash.
Not five minutes into the Prologue, I sensed Faiz edging his way over to me. His voice quiet, almost a whisper, slips out into the room; “Will you study with me?” Over the next fifteen minutes, we worked our way through three short lessons in a workbook written for first graders. Each consists of a simple, one page story followed by a series of questions based on the text. They are extraordinarily simple; they seem almost humiliating for a twenty year old young man. As we study, nineteen-year-old Roz Mohammed shyly carried his blanket and English language dictionary to our corner and settled in. Every so often, he’d shyly interrupt Faiz as he read and say, “Teacher, what does this word mean?”
I am trying to get excited about Christmas—which is right around the corner (as though anyone needs a reminder), but I can get a bit “bah humbug.” Christmas music drives me nuts, I think most decorations are tacky, and all the manic shopping and false cheer turns my stomach.
I blame my parents, who never once took me to the mall to visit Santa Claus when I was young. I also never wrote the old man a “wish list.” So here I am, at 37, sitting down to write my very first letter to Santa Claus.
Dear Mr. Claus,
I hope this letter finds you and the missus well. I know you are known by many names—Kris Kringle, old Saint Nicholas, but I will call you by your American commercial name for the purpose of this letter.
The message written on this protester's hands reads: "Our demand is the trial."
Thousands of Yemenis marched toward the capital on Thursday to demand President Ali Abdullah Saleh face trial for killing protesters during 11 months of demonstrations against him and to denounce a new government that would spare him prosecution.
Several thousand Eyptian activists gathered in Cairo after Friday prayers today for a mass protest against the ruling military and its handling of a series of clashes between security forces and demonstrators that killed 17 people and drew international criticism.
In Somalia, residents of Sool’s provincial capital of Las Anod took to the streets and went on strike on Thursday, bringing the city to a standstill, to show solidarity with prisoners staging a hunger strike at the city’s main prison.
In Sudan, dozens of students held a protest assembly at Jackson Square on Tuesday in the heart of Khartoum to show solidarity with the month-long Manasir protest against the the Merowe Hydropower Project.
A group of asylum seekers who survived last weekend’s boat disaster off the Indonesian island of Java have begun a hunger strike after being moved to a detention centre where as many as 12 people are sharing each cell.
In Kuwait, police used tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons, and smoke bombs to disperse a large protest on Monday by the country’s stateless people in Taimaa. Around 30 men who entered a hunger strike were arrested.
After a year of ongoing work, Spain’s premier anti-foreclosure organization, the Platform of People Affected by Mortgage (PAH), has been compelling both the government and the banks in the country to react, pushing them to make some small but positive steps toward securing the right to housing.
I am trying to get excited about Christmas—which is right around the corner (as though anyone needs a reminder), but I can get a bit “bah humbug.” Christmas music drives me nuts, I think most decorations are tacky, and all the manic shopping and false cheer turns my stomach.