On Tuesday, WNV editor Nathan Schneider was a guest on Al Jazeera’s Inside Story, where he discussed his recent article on the question of co-optation and Occupy.

I don’t have a TV. But I am always being exhorted to watch The Rachel Maddow Show.

One of the reasons I don’t have a TV is that if I had one, I wouldn’t be watching high-minded, informative news shows like hers. I would be completely hypnotized by the worst of the worst; eye candy dregs like CSI: Miami, The Mentalist, the new Hawaii Five-0 and Two Broke Girls (which I have yet to see).

Let my fixation be a cautionary tale to all the well-meaning parents out there wanting to shield their children from the corrosive effects of overexposure to TV: outlaw TV, and they will be forever in its sway. Let them watch it, and it will make them discerning consumers.

I can still read, though. For my birthday a friend gave me Maddow’s new book: Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power. My eighth celebration of year 30 was only a few weeks ago, but I have already chewed through this hard-hitting, spirited and lucid book.

Maddow is already a household name, with a trademarked wit, a loyal following and a large bully-pulpit. She is also endowed with the intellectual fortitude and homespun wisdom to pull out a new take on one of our most important and least interesting topics — militarism. And it seems to be working. This week, Drift is number 12 of Amazon’s Top 100 — right above the newest Stephen King fantasy and below Marlene Koch’s cook book urging obese Americans to Eat More of What You Love (in low sugar, fat, calorie form). That juxtaposition is worth its own blog post, but I digress.

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We had a big birthday bash for my step-daughter a few weeks ago. It was great: a big gaggle of kids, music, pancakes, a rainbow cake and lots of balloons. I appointed myself balloon maven and—armed with a how-to guide from the Klutz series and a hand pump—handed out wonderful balloon hats to the youngsters.

They were a hit. But I had not studied my guide very carefully, and once they started clamoring for dog and cat and dragon balloon animals, I was deeply out of my element.

“A wand, what about a magic wand?” I improvised with the first little boy who asked for a dog balloon. I whipped it up quick and handed it to him with a Harry Potteresque flourish. “There, now you can do magic.”

“Cool,” he replied, “a sword!” and he dashed off to engage his little brother.

Soon all the kids were crowded around my knees demanding (politely) swords in all the colors of the rainbows. “I will make you a magic wand,” I insisted to each, manipulating the top of the long balloons into fanciful wand like shapes. “Okay, but I am going to turn it into a sword,” they said again and again, undoing my handiwork at the top of the wands and swashbuckling their ways across the church hall. It went on like this all morning. The only child I could get to request a magic wand was my very own Rosena, and even she used it like a sword the minute it was in her little hands.

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It’s that TIME of the year again—ha!—when TIME magazine announces the Person of the Year, a tradition generally meant to remind us which depressing white men in suits happen to rule the world. (U.S. presidents tend to receive it when elected. George W. Bush, for instance, won the distinction in both 2000 and 2004.) TIME’s editors made a slightly more whimsical choice this year, following in the pattern of non-election years like 2006 (“You”), 2003 (“The American Soldier”), 1998 (“The Endangered Earth”). While those might seem pretty depressing too, this year’s choice represents something that, for millions of people around the world, is a source of enormous hope. That’s because it is them—though not so much in the narcissistic style of 2006. It’s official, at least according to this particular dinosaur-like, mega-corporate newsmagazine: the 2011 Person of the Year is “The Protester.”

As I first saw this announcement percolating on Twitter, being spread around proudly every which way by Occupy Wall Street-allied accounts, all I could think was: what took you so long? Where were you?

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In Colombia, when the mainstream media and the government are promoting a wave of protests, expect to find a lot of television cameras using close-up shots. That’swhat happened on December 6, when people took to the streets in several Colombian towns with a common purpose: to march against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC-EP. Now the oldest guerrilla organization in Latin America, dating to the 1950s, is essentially a terrorist group that recalls Marxist ideology when convenient. The “EP” in its name stands for “people’s army”—Ejército del Pueblo—but in reality most Colombians think of it as the people’s enemy.

Close-ups at the protests were necessary, of course, because of the size of the crowds. The mainstream Colombian media attempted to portray the protests as a success, but in comparison with earlier protests against guerrilla violence in 2008, few took part this time.

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Political scientist Erica Chenoweth, at her blog Rational Insurgent, has a list of 13 ways that one can contribute to the popular movement in Syria that is standing up against a brutal ruler willing to crush it by any means necessary. Chenoweth, whose name we drop a lot on this site, is co-author of the important new book Why Civil Resistance Works. She introduces her post this way:

In light of the dire news out of Syria, international action is ever more urgent. In my judgment, Syria reflects one of the paradoxes of international politics: its strategic importance in the region renders international military action nearly impossible–or at least extremely unlikely. Regional and global powers are not willing to risk the potential regional  or global conflagration that would result from foreign military intervention in such a key state, even if inaction means that they will be witnesses to the senseless slaughter of thousands of civilians.

But when governments and international governmental organizations are unwilling or unable to act, civilians across the globe can still play a vital role. It’s time to demonstrate the power of “civilian diplomacy”—a concept that Hillary Clinton has been touting for a couple of years, and which has some real potential to change the course of the Syrian revolution.

This means you.

What follows are ideas of things that people both inside and outside Syria can do to help. Read more to find your inner civilian diplomat.

The First Thanksgiving by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris

This Thursday, the United States and its citizens around the world will celebrate our day of thanks, known as Thanksgiving. The tradition’s origins are often disputed. Some say it was a European harvest cycle tradition that immigrated to the “New World” with the explorers. Others dispute whether the tradition began in Plymouth, Massachusetts or in Florida or Virginia. Of course, the image of Native Americans sitting together with European colonists – actually, occupiers – is disputed as well.

Fast forward to today, and most dictionaries describe Thanksgiving as:

1) the act of giving thanks

2) a prayer expressing gratitude

3) a public acknowledgement of celebration of divine goodness

I am aware that the way we Thanksgiving is celebrated today runs contrary to the historic origins of the New World. There are so many Thanksgiving myths, and any actual story or history has been white washed. To make the holiday even more discouraging, the focus of Thanksgiving for so many Americans is on Black Friday, football, and holiday shopping. None of the dictionary definitions of Thanksgiving fit with contemporary consumerist and indulgent activities.

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Among those part of and concerned with the Occupy Wall Street movement, it’s very common to hear complaints about the lack of mainstream media coverage. There’s even a sign at the occupation’s media center that says, “Welcome to the media blackout.” To a large extent, the blackout is real. The New York Times and other local papers didn’t give the movement headlines until almost a week in, with the exception of a cover story in Metro that first Wednesday. And, while several local TV stations were at Liberty Plaza during the first week, their reports weren’t being picked up by national affiliates. Only recently has this begun to change.

Online, there have been accusations of outright censorship. Yahoo has admitted to “not intentional” blocking of emails with links to occupywallst.org, blaming their spam filter. (This excuse is not widely believed, but plausible—I’ve seen the site trigger non-Yahoo spam filters as well.) Twitter has similarly blocked #occupywallstreet from being listed as a trending topic. (This may be because it keeps being throttled by Anonymous bots—or, more conspiratorially, because a considerable stake in the company is owned by JPMorgan Chase, which has also donated $4.5 million to the NYPD.)

Really, though, what do you expect? Resistance movements should not count on coverage by establishment news outlets, much less favorable coverage. Mainstream media are usually a part of a movement’s opponent, and they certainly are in this case. The movement’s job, then, is to make its actions so irresistible that the media have to cover it, despite themselves. In an instructive essay about her experience doing media relations during the fight for civil rights in the 1960s, Mary King writes:

[A]ttentive news coverage can never be taken for granted or assumed. It must be won. Gaining the attention of the news industry is one of the central functions that must be planned by a nonviolent movement that hopes to succeed.

In this respect, Occupy Wall Street is already succeeding.

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On his radio show earlier this week, Glenn Beck read a vow of nonviolence, which he said he’d been working on for about a year, and pleaded his followers to take it as well. The pledge itself is actually quite good, and even Gandhian, at parts. Here is an excerpt:

Today, quarters of the Earth are endangered by tyranny, discrimination, barbarism, and subjugation by fellow man. With an understanding of basic rights and equal justice, we must remain loyal to God and deliver the rights which His benevolence has bestowed upon us to those who have been denied the blessings of liberty, justice, and equality. More importantly, we must protect them from being robbed in the future, so that forever the world may be safe, and her people free from malevolence. Together, we must be prepared to do our duty no matter the cost and we must do so inexorably. We must march forth steadfast and unconquerable and defeat the forces of evil not by sword, but through our love for mankind and his creator.

Martin Luther King stood before the Lincoln Memorial over four decades ago and proclaimed during his most famous speech: “We must not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”  Therefore, let us carry forth Dr. King’s mission to future generations so that our children and our grandchildren may defend it in the years to come. Let us persistently oppose evil just as much as the person who uses violence, but let our methods always be nonaggressive. We must always be passive in body but active in spirit and we must always be peaceful in our fight for justice.

Let us aim our attack against the forces of evil, not against the individuals propelling those forces. Let us do our utmost to carry out His eternal will and pledge ourselves—in person and in body— to these nonviolent principles.

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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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