Upcoming United States actions:
May 18th: ‘Operation Green Jobs’ March from Philadelphia to Washington, DC organized by the Poor People’s Economic and Human Rights Campaign.
May 18th to 23rd: the Home Defenders League Week of Action against the banks and foreclosures in Washington, DC.
May 18th to 20th: there is a weekend of protests against the closure of schools in Chicago.
May 22nd: Stop the Frack Attack People’s Forum in Washington, DC.
May 25th: Protests against Monsanto everywhere
May 25th to June 3rd: March from Philadelphia to Harrisburg against prison spending.
June 1st: Get on the Bus For Bradley Court Martial Trial with buses leaving from Baltimore, MD, Washington DC, New York City and Willimantic, CT.
June 14th to 16th: Trade Justice Action Camp in Bellingham, WA by the Backbone Campaign
June 24th to 29th: is the beginning of “ Fearless Summer” that starts “ an epic summer of actions.”
Reblog with your own additions to the list.
(via cognitivedissonance)
We are a group concerned about immigration reform and legislators who promote harsh enforcement but forget the rights of immigrants. We wanted to share this with you and your followers.
Student Debt
Hi, I recently saw the photo you posted on student debt (Education should not be a debt sentence”) and was hoping you might be interested in reading a piece I wrote: “man-in-the-street,” a short story that follows a recent college graduate forced to examine the emotions involved when reality falls short of expectations. The story can be read free HERE (www.scribd.com/OscarHughes)! Peace and have a nice day, Oscar
A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse
by DAVID GRAEBER
Print What is a revolution? We used to think we knew. Revolutions were seizures of power by popular forces aiming to transform the very nature of the political, social, and economic system in the country in which the revolution took place, usually according to some visionary dream of a just society. Nowadays, we live in an age when, if rebel armies do come sweeping into a city, or mass uprisings overthrow a dictator, it’s unlikely to have any such implications; when profound social transformation does occur—as with, say, the rise of feminism—it’s likely to take an entirely different form. It’s not that revolutionary dreams aren’t out there. But contemporary revolutionaries rarely think they can bring them into being by some modern-day equivalent of storming the Bastille.
In April, education movements are gaining full steam
April 20, 2013Fighting against austerity measures and racist educational policies, the political pushback led by students and teachers has reached new levels of resistance this April. Global student movements are in full bloom, from Indiana University to the streets of Santiago, Chile, where students are exerting their power against the barriers that stand between them and their future.
Thousands flood Chile for free education
As many as 100,000 protesters filled Santiago, Chile last week demanding fair and free education for all, in what was the first nationwide protest of the year. Police officers responded with water cannons and tear gas as they detained more than 100 protesters.
Under-funded schools have forced poor and working class students into shanty schools after massive privatization efforts. Students who are fortunate enough to attend private universities are fighting against tuition hikes and the poor quality of education they receive. Chile’s education system is known to be one of the best in Latin America, but it is also among the most expensive, making it available to only a select percentage of students.
“Education should be equal for everyone, it should be free — we all have the same rights,” said Valentina Ibañez, a first-year student at Universidad Alberto Hurtado. The two-year struggle for education reform has gained momentum in recent weeks with revitalized protests and even larger turnouts than previous years.
Indiana students and teachers go on strike
Students at Indiana University launched a university-wide strike on April 11. Their demands include eliminating fees, reducing tuition, ending privatization and prioritizing raising enrollment of black students to at least 8 percent. The collective strike began at the Board of Trustees meeting where students presented their demands. The protest has also recently extended into an energy strike as students rally against the university’s dependence on natural gas and fossil fuels.
Students are currently holding weekly assemblies to gather more support and participants, as well as to create an open forum for ideas to further the student movement. Other students from Wisconsin to Michigan have hung banners in solidarity with the Indiana University strike.
Campaign to save ethnic studies takes off in Texas
A resistance movement to preserve Latino and African American studies in Texas is growing in opposition to the legislation SB1128 and twin bill 1938, proposed by State Representative Giovanni Capriglione and Senator Dan Patrick.
The bill is in response to a study on two Texas universities, Texas A&M University and University of Texas at Austin, done by the National Association of Scholars, which concluded “all too often the course readings gave strong emphasis to race, class or gender.” The bill would prevent credits from ethnic studies classes from transferring to other universities and from counting toward advanced credits.
State-wide actions are already planned for the week of April 26, from El Paso, San Antonio, Austin, Houston and the Rio Grande Valley. Librotraficantes, a group of activists that emerged with the ethnic studies ban in Arizona to smuggle Latino history and literature books back into the state, has also planned to travel to Austin to protest the bill.
Mexican educators rally for free public education
Mexican teachers marched throughout Guerrero and Oaxaca on April 4 to oppose educational reforms by President Enrique Pena Nieto. Educators say the new provisions leave no guarantees for free public education and that privatization will soon threaten availability of schools in many areas.
The National Union of Education Workers in Oaxaca blocked entrances to shopping malls as tens of thousands of protesters declared that the reforms were a privatization attack on education, as control over the school system was shifted from teachers’ unions to the federal government. Teachers are currently planning to occupy several public spaces and universities to continue the protest.
The movement is also in an effort to expand higher educational opportunities to students in a country where only 13 percent of students earn a degree and only 2 percent earn their Master’s degree.
Chicago Teachers Union declare political fight against school closures
Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis vowed to begin a “comprehensive and aggressive political action campaign” to defeat Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other city officials who are leading the way to 54 school closures.
One initiative the union will begin working on involves getting more than 100,000 new voters to the polls before the May 22 vote. Union members will go door to door in areas most affected by the school closures, in an attempt to oust officials who are supportive of the plan.
The closure initiative will shut down schools in predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods and most likely overcrowd existing schools where students will transfer. Parents and educators are also worried that if students are forced to travel longer distances to schools in unknown neighborhoods, violence and crime rates could rise.
- Graciela
I just love these photos, too: “Another Chile is possible”, awesome IU strike banners, Librotraficantes (book smugglers) in Austin, masked educators in Chilpancingo, Mexico, & Karen Lewis at a rally for schools last year.
Taking a cue from IU striking students:
Raise hell, not tuition!
(via fuckyeahmarxismleninism)
Slavoj Žižek: Dictatorship of the Proletariat in Gotham City
Although viewers know Wayne is mega-rich, they tend to forget where his wealth comes from: arms manufacturing plus stock-market speculations, which is why Bane’s stock-exchange games can destroy his…
stuckbetweeniraqandahardplace:
Vietnam, Korea, Chile, Argentina, Liberia, Yemen, Congo, Somalia, Bosnia, China, Guatemala, Uruguay, El Salvador, Guam, Puerto Rico, Honduras, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Lebanon, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Pakistan, Oman, Bolivia, Virgin Islands, Sudan, Macedonia…
And you know what, my fingers are just far too tired to even bother continuing.
(via randomactsofchaos)
By Tony Cartalucci
Movies, music, and TV created by huge monopolizing media cartels like Disney, Sony, Warner Brothers, Fox, Paramount, as well as software companies like Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Autodesk, and many others, belong to a consortium of corporate-financier interests driving the the “intellectual property” crusade and many of its unpopular creations, including SOPA, ACTA, and a campaign of jailing grannies and college kids for simply sharing information deemed “property” of these corporations.
The existence of independent movies, music, and of open source software and publications proves that knowledge, entertainment, and everything in between not only can surrive beyond the tired paradigms of copyrights, trademarks, and “intellectual property,” but can thrive.
A new paradigm of giving credit where credit is due, but making all information and the media it is contained within, freely available to all is emerging. Taking a physical CD from another individual is depriving them of a tangible object, and therefore theft. Copying digitally, the information on that CD with the consent of the CDs owner is not theft.Below is a list of media cartels and the corporations that constitute their membership, responsible for the absurd “intellectual property” crusade. Each corporation produces products we are all more than capable of living without - and as is the case with many other corporate-financier monopolies, would probably be better off doing without anyway.
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) Members
National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) Board Members
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Members
Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA) Member Directory
Entertainment Software Association (ESA) Members
Business Software Alliance (BSA) Members
For every movie, song, or piece of software produced by this collection of monopolistic, corporate parasites, there are equivalent or superior open source, creative commons, public domain alternatives. There are myriads of open, free news, information, and entertainment online created by both amateurs and a growing number of professionals. There is also a large (and increasing) selection of open source software available.
Tens of thousands of protesters turned out on the National Mall Sunday to encourage President Obama to make good on his commitment to act on climate change.
In his Inaugural address from outside the U.S. Capitol, the president said: “We will respond to the threat of climate change knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”
Just a few weeks later, next to the Washington Monument, Paul Birkeland was one of a couple dozen people holding a long white tube above their heads.
“It’s a backbone. It’s a spine. The idea is to ask the president to have some spine and stand up to oil companies. And reject the Keystone Pipeline,” Birkeland says.
The activists are focusing on the Keystone XL pipeline because it would carry tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. To make this oil, companies use complex extraction and processing techniques that use a lot of energy. So it has a larger greenhouse gas footprint than conventional crude.
Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island told the crowd that Congress is sleepwalking through the crisis on climate change. But he said protesters have an important ally.
“There’s a man over there in the White House, he has found his voice on climate change. Are we going to have his back,” Whitehouse asked.
Other speakers sounded less sure of the president’s intentions.
Van Jones, a former adviser to President Obama, says that it would be disastrous if the project gets a green light.
“It would be like lighting a fuse on a carbon bomb — that’s what it would be like Mr. President,” Jones says.
The Obama administration already let the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline go ahead. The State Department is expected to decide soon on the part that would cross the border from Canada and stretch to Oklahoma.
Organizers say it was the biggest climate rally ever in the United States. They claim about 35,000 people participated — although there was no independent crowd count.
The crowd did stretch for several blocks as it made its way around the White House. Despite a cold wind and snow flurries, parents brought along young children.
Heather Clark wrapped her two toddlers in a sleeping bag and put them in their stroller.
“Events like Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Katrina and everything that I’ve been reading lately says it’s happening. And if we don’t do something really, really soon we’re all going to be in a state where we don’t recognize the planet where we live,” Clark says.
Buses brought college students from many states to the National Mall.
Will Jones, was one of them, traveling overnight from Eastern Michigan University. He thinks the president is under a lot of pressure from oil companies.
“Now is the time for him to man up a little bit and make a decision. That’s what he’s in office to do,” Jones says.
But some energy experts say environmentalists are focusing too much on Keystone. They argue that even if that pipeline isn’t built, Canadian Tar sands oil will find another way to flow.
Retired Army Col. Dan Nolan represents a group of national security experts called Operation Free. He says there are clear national security benefits to getting more oil from Canada.
“We’re putting America’s sons and daughters at risk by having to protect oil production capability in the Middle East,” Nolan says.
The real challenge he says is to shift the world off oil and other fossil fuels.
