KERRY SMITH – Ahead of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Summit on September 18–19, thousands of people in 16 cities across 8 countries gathered to call on the UN and governments to stop Japan’s discharge of nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean.
Category: What’s Happening In the Movement
Fridays for Future: Greta’s school strikes led a third of Swiss citizens to change their habits
ANGELA SYMONS – ‘Collective action can have a direct effect on society’, study on climate strikes shows.
New York University will divest from fossil fuels in win for student activists
DHARNA NOOR – New York University plans to divest from fossil fuels, the Guardian has learned, following years of pressure from student activists.
From Montana to the Amazon, Let’s Remember to Celebrate Climate Victories
KWOLANNE FELIX – Climate advocacy is arduous, thankless work. But recent wins in the courtroom and at the ballot box give Kwolanne Felix hope.
One Day for Labor Is Not Enough
ANDREW MOSS – The state of labor this year is so fraught, so weighted with issues and problems, that a single day of homage and reflection doesn’t seem enough. It’s as if a year or more is needed to engage the issues, challenges, and possibilities facing American workers today.
Activists Now Have 104,000 Signatures to Put “Stop Cop City” on the Ballot
MIKE LUDWIG – Worried that city officials will reject large numbers of signatures, organizers have collected far more than required.
New 4% Tax on Wealthiest Residents Will Fund Free School Meals in Massachusetts
ZANE MCNEILL – Public school students in Massachusetts are set to get a free breakfast and lunch after the state implemented a new 4 percent tax on the state’s wealthiest residents. Massachusetts is the eighth U.S. state to make free school meals permanent.
Coast to Coast Peace Walk Being Planned
VETERANS FOR PEACE – The goal of promoting VFP or any organization is secondary. That is why we welcome anyone or any left antiwar organization of good will to get on board. The primary and basic foundation organizing will be done by VFP. However, we want your input, involvement and suggestions. If we can all come together on this walk across the heart of America, we can do anything, maybe even begin to actually stop the war machine and find peace.
Survivors of Oppenheimer’s Trinity test are still fighting for justice and recognition
ALESSANDRA BERGAMIN – Nearly 80 years after the first atomic test in New Mexico, a consortium of “downwinders” are documenting the bomb’s impact on their community and organizing for restitution.
‘This Is Huge’: Judge Sides With Montana Youths in Historic Climate Ruling
JULIA CONLEY – “As fires rage in the West, fueled by fossil fuel pollution, today’s ruling in Montana is a game-changer that marks a turning point in this generation’s efforts to save the planet,” said one attorney representing 16 young plaintiffs.
The climate movement has a recruiting and retention problem – here’s how we fix it
CHARLIE WOOD – Bringing more people into the climate struggle starts with transforming movement culture and opening diverse paths to entry.
How America Undervalues Working People, and How Workers are Fighting Back
ANDREW MOSS – America is one of the wealthiest nations in the world. Yet when compared to other advanced industrialized countries, it fares dismally in national laws and policies affecting workers. This is a major claim of a recent cross-national study sponsored by the humanitarian organization Oxfam America, a report that offers a powerful lens for understanding the major strike activity now underway in the U.S.
Oppenheimer Film Offers Great Organizing Opportunity
ROBERT DODGE – I attended this weekend’s Los Angeles opening of Christopher Nolan’s epic film, Oppenheimer. This must-see film provides a critical opening for an essential conversation about nuclear weapons and their role in our security and the fate of the planet.
Four Big Banks refuse to renew loans to Whitehaven Coal
JIM MCLLROY – Environment groups said the refusal by [Australia’s] Big Four banks to renew a $1 billion loan to Whitehaven Coal — the country’s biggest coal-only mining company — is a win for people power.
How Daniel Ellsberg Helped End the Vietnam War
RUSSELL VANDENBROUCKE – Daniel Ellsberg, sent to Saigon in 1965 to evaluate civilian pacification programs, would spend 18 months with patrols into towns and villages. His skeptical reports about death and destruction and potential victory by North Vietnam went nowhere. Ellsberg struggled with his knowledge. He was a family man with a brilliant career, all of which would be at risk if he blew the whistle, and he knew it.
Wanted: More Fathers on the Front Lines of Social Change
ROB OKUN – Why are so many fathers and father figures standing mute on the sidelines of change?
Why the Jan. 6 Convictions Set Dangerous New Legal Precedents
SHANE BURLEY – Many are celebrating the recent convictions against the Proud Boys, but they will only strengthen the state’s ability to target the left.
How protests that double as trainings are growing this fossil fuel divestment campaign
RAY BAILEY – By melding theory and practice, Philadelphia’s Vanguard S.O.S. are building skills and collective power.
The Move Toward a Four-Day Workweek Obscures Low Pay
SONALI KOLHATKAR – Of course Americans deserve to work fewer hours. But unless the move to a four-day workweek is accompanied by a massive pay raise, it merely frees up time to work more.
The Power of Humor in Indigenous Activism
CATY BORUM – Humor in Native culture has never been simply about entertainment. Comedy is also used to fight cultural invisibility and structural oppression.
Banning Books to be Banned in Illinois
JUDD LEGUM – Across the country, right-wing activists are seeking to ban thousands of books from schools and other public libraries. Those promoting the bans often claim they are acting to protect children from pornography. But the bans frequently target books “by and about people of color and LGBTQ individuals.” Many of the books deemed pornography by activities are actually highly acclaimed novels. Now, one state is fighting back.
Oregon Nonprofit Returns Wallowa Land to Nez Perce Tribe
LAUREN PATERSON – Kathleen Ackley is the executive director of the Wallowa Land Trust. As more Northwest lake communities are being developed with vacation homes and Airbnbs, she says her organization’s focus is protecting natural areas, open spaces and farms in Northeast Oregon. The nonprofit recently gifted 30 acres of undeveloped land near the lake to the Nez Perce Tribe.
How Workers in the South Are Defying History
TOM CONWAY – Workers at Blue Bird Corporation in Fort Valley, Georgia, launched a union drive to secure better wages, work-life balance, and a voice on the job. The company resisted them. History defied them. Geography worked against them. But they stood together, believed in themselves, and achieved a historic victory that’s reverberating throughout the South.
Tell the Three Presidents to Stop the War
PETER BERGEL – A coalition of dozens of peace and justice organizations (https://bit.ly/StopWarOrgs) is collecting signers on a statement to Presidents Biden, Zelensky and Putin telling them that the time has come to end the war in Ukraine.
How a Tribal Rights Lawyer Is Winning Back the Rights of Nature
ARIC SLEEPER – Attorney Frank Bibeau found a way to legally protect nature by suing the state of Minnesota in the name of manoomin, or wild rice, sacred to the Ojibwe people.
Dan Ellsberg – A Profound Voice Against the Doomsday Machine
DANIEL ELLSBERG – Can we simply ignore the reality of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals on hair-trigger alert — amid escalation of a new cold war with heightened nuclear dangers? We ignore this impending disaster and its impassioned opponent, Daniel Ellsberg, at our own peril.Indeed, the U.S. just enacted its biggest military budget in history, with unprecedented investment in weapons of mass destruction and their deployment.
How Union Workers Are Fighting to Save Veterans
TOM CONWAY – New York enacted its version of the workplace poster law, written with USW members’ input, on January 1, 2023. Union members continue working to advance similar legislation in Iowa, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas, and other states.
The Nord Stream-Andromeda Cover Up
SCOTT RITTER – The German government’s crude effort to manufacture an alternative narrative regarding who attacked the Nord Stream pipeline fails the smell test — in short, it stinks. The holes in this story are such that even the most gifted screenwriters could not turn this Andromeda tale of changing history into something remotely believable. In short, Gene Roddenberry would not be impressed.
Agrivoltaics: The Farm-to-Solar Trend That Can Help Accelerate the Renewable Energy Transition
TINA CASEY – Using the same land for the production of both agriculture and solar energy is a win-win for the climate and farmers.
How Indigenous Land Management Practices Are a Blueprint for Climate-Resilient Agriculture
DANIEL ROSS – If aggressive commercial agriculture exacerbates the climate crisis, are there key lessons to be learned from Indigenous land management practices that can help to restore environmental balance?
How to build a progressive movement in a polarized country
GEORGE LAKEY – Many assume that polarization is a barrier to making change, but history shows otherwise. By learning what worked in previous periods of polarization, we can observe a clear roadmap to transformation.
Trouble in town? Send in the Maroon People Instead of the Police
MELINDA BURRELL – The Mediation Response Unit (MRU) of Dayton, Ohio, is helping people understand, among other benefits, that they don’t need to use violence in a dispute, or call the police, or threaten attorneys. Another way is frequently a far better response. Often police are called for a disturbance but cannot do anything because it is a civil, rather than criminal, complaint.
Unions Buoyant as 1.27 Million French Protest Pension Reform
ELAINE GANLEY, JADE LE DELEY and JOHN LEICESTER – An estimated 1.27 million people took to the streets of French cities, towns and villages on January 31, according to the Interior Ministry, in new massive protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to raise the retirement age by two years.
A Victory for Abolitionists: ICE-Run Immigration Prison Shuts Down Today
ADRIANNA TORRES-GARCIA and JASMINE RIVERA – It took nearly a decade of exposing the patterns of abuse and neglect at the facility in Berks County, Pennsylvania.
What Determines the Success of Movements Today?
CATHY ROGERS – Building on the recommendations of other movement strategists, new research from the Social Change Lab offers key insights into the factors that lead to protest wins.
Movement to stop Atlanta’s ‘Cop City’ calls for support after police kill forest defender
ZANE MCNEILL – “The struggle that is playing out in Atlanta is a contest for the future. It will determine whether those who come after us inherit an inhabitable Earth or a police state nightmare … The forest defenders are trying to create a better world for all of us. We owe it to the people of Atlanta and to future generations everywhere to support them.”
Celebrate the 2nd Anniversary of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
KARY LOVE – We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Such a time is now. Become part of human progress. Call, write, use this time creatively to end the threat to creation.
Become a “Vehicle” for the Shift to Nonviolence
SUSAN BEAVER THOMPSON – Let us each become a “vehicle” for a monumental shift toward a more evolved way to manage our conflicts. Though a challenging endeavor, Peace on Earth is possible… and it’s coming. Since Susan Thompson’s first peace journalism trek in 2013, much has changed. People are waking up, becoming engaged and taking action for what they believe. The soil is ripe for pioneering peace activists and peace journalists to rock the world.
Why I’m Going to Jail In Germany Instead of Paying Fines
JOHN LAFORGE – Refusing to pay fines for nonviolent resistance to nuclear war preparations is, from John LaForge’s position of privilege, also an act of solidarity with the poor, the undocumented, and the outcasts who often don’t have resources or connections enough to purchase their way out of pre-trial detention or incarceration for minor offenses.
As we confront the climate crisis, is bigger and faster always better?
CHARLIE WOOD – By prioritizing large-scale climate responses we might be missing out on the kind of bottom-up solutions most aligned with bringing the world back within its limits.
Unity in the community, or, how I learned to get along with my enemies
TOM H. HASTINGS – Hate only feeds more hate, more destruction, more violence, more useless continuation of wreckage. Unless some people simply stop, however unilaterally that might be, the hate will never vanish. It may go under some rock when social norms force it there, but it is like a peat bog fire just waiting under the surface, for years sometimes, before conditions allow it to erupt into a raging wildfire. How? How to drop the hate?
Bike Libraries Are Boosting Access To Bikes Across The US
CINNAMON JANZER – Campuses And Libraries Across The Country Are Increasingly Adding Bikes To Their Inventory, Increasing Access To Cycling Along The Way.
CODEPINK’s Statement on Congress Passing $858 Billion Military Budget
MELISSA GARRIGA – Budgets like the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) are moral documents. What this $858 billion “defense” budget (includes $50 billion for nuclear weapons; $25 billion for missile defense) is saying to every person in this country is that the people in power do not care about us. Bought by the war industry, they ONLY care about their own profits. They would rather give almost a trillion dollars to death, destruction, and war profiteers than meet the needs of the people.
These Cities’ Car-Free Streets Are Here to Stay
MAYLIN TU – Cars? In this economy? Here’s how four cities kept miles of pavement traffic-free, turning a popular pandemic solution into a permanent fixture.
In Barcelona, Kids Bike to School in Large, Choreographed Herds
CINNAMON JANZER – “The boys and girls who use bicibús establish new relationships with [other kids] from their neighborhood and of different ages … creating new opportunities to share space in the same neighborhood where they live,” Vilardell says. “If, in Catalonia, there are already more than a thousand people pedaling to school, [others] can do it too. [They can] fill their schools with bicycles for our health, the health of the children, and that of the earth.”
‘Powerful Victory’ as Judge Dismisses Charges Against Line 3 Water Protectors
JESSICA CORBETT – Opponents of Line 3 on Tuesday welcomed a Minnesota judge’s dismissal of all charges against five water protectors arrested last year for protesting plans to have the tar sands pipeline cross the Shell River in several places.
Why grassroots activists are turning to the wonky world of monetary policy to fight for economic justice
PAMELA HAINES – Determined to challenge the all-encompassing threat of private banks, a small group in Ohio is leading a campaign to put monetary reform on the national agenda
Your Brain on Elections: Democracy Means Listening to the Other Side
BELINDA BURRELL – I’m afraid what Thanksgiving will be like, no matter how the election turns out,” a friend commented. She’s not wrong to be worried. Elections bring up all sorts of emotions and behaviors that create division. Understanding our “brains on elections” can help.
Gun Store Closes to Avoid Assault Rifle Controversy in Portland, Oregon — Activists Claim Minor Victory
PETER BERGEL – “They didn’t sell any assault rifles today. That’s a start.”
The Fossil Free Research Movement is Taking Universities by Storm
NICK ENGELFRIED – A student-led effort to get fossil fuel money out of university research is building on the divestment movement’s biggest successes.