Members of the Grand Rapids League of Women Voters organized a city get-out-the-vote parade in 1924. Grand Rapids Herald, Sept. 9, 1924. Image courtesy of the Grand Rapids Public Library By Dr. Liette Gidlow / 01.26.2018 Associate Professor of U.S. Political and Women’s/Gender History Wayne State University The first year of Donald Trump’s presidency has inspired[…]
By Charles Eisenstein / 12.12.2017 Understanding the Power of Our Actions Sometimes when I encounter pioneers in a certain domain of alternative culture, I get the feeling that even if they are doing their work on a small scale–perhaps within a small eco village, an isolated prison, a single community in a war zone or[…]
What exactly is outrage? Philip Pilosian/Shutterstock By Dr. Justin Tosi and Dr. Brandon Warmke / 06.19.2017 Tosi: Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer, University of Michigan Warmke: Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University Many Americans are morally outraged that U.S. President Donald Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey, who had been investigating possible links between[…]
Sister Maura Clarke, 1959-1980 / Wikimedia Commons By Anna Brown / 02.03.2017 Eileen Markey’s stunningly beautiful book, “A Radical Faith: The Assassination of Sister Maura,” comes not a moment too soon. Her rendering of the life and death of Sister Maura Clarke at the brutal hands of a U.S.-financed Salvadoran military, clarifies how we are[…]
Universites Not Out of the Safe Space Yet / www.spiked-online.com By Dr. Walter M. Brasch / 08.06.2016 Professor Emeritus of Mass Communications/Journalism Bloomsburg University Like most Jews, Benjamin Aaron Shapiro, a respected journalist, is an advocate for social justice, following the Jewish concept of Tikun Olam, literally translated as “repair of the world.” Unlike most[…]
French-Tunisian artist eL Seed blends the historic art of Arabic calligraphy with graffti to portray messages of beauty, poetry and peace across all continents. eL Seed fuses Arabic calligraphy with graffiti to paint colorful, swirling messages of hope and peace on buildings from Tunisia to Paris. The artist and TED Fellow shares the story of[…]
Police in riot gear stand behind a group of protesters at the 2008 RNC in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Photo: Brendan Scherer/flickr/cc) ‘The restrictions on speech put in place by the city of Cleveland are arbitrary, unnecessary, and unjustifiable.’ By Andrea Germanos / 06.15.2016 The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio on Tuesday filed a lawsuit[…]
Woman and child, Lesbos, 2015. Santi Palacios/AP/Press Association Images. A new book documents Europe’s loss of humanity as refugees struggle to seek a haven away from wars and degradation. By Hsiao-Hung Pai / 06.01.2016 Escaping wars, destruction and poverty is simply human. The unequal world in which we live has always created conditions for desiring[…]
Is Our World Changing Form? Renowned Cellular Biologist and author, Bruce Lipton, says the tremendous changes happening in the world today are like a late stage caterpillar. The creature has eaten its full and is now ready for its old self to die and be born anew. The crumbling of capitalism we are seeing is[…]
Why do campuses have “free speech zones”? John By David L. Hudson, Jr. / 05.31.2016 First Amendment Expert, Adjunct Professor of Law Vanderbilt University Colleges and universities are supposed to be places where freedom of expression flourishes. Sadly, that is not the case. At a recent debate on the Yale University campus, 66 percent of[…]
An anti-Trump protest in April. (Photo: A. Jones/flickr/cc) Cleveland’s “extreme limitations” on protests, laid out on Wednesday, decried as “vague and unacceptable.” By Deirdre Fulton / 05.26.2016 The city of Cleveland’s rules for the Republican National Convention (RNC), released Wednesday, are “unacceptable and far too restrictive,” according to advocacy groups and protest organizers. The convention,[…]
Hedy Epstein, who died at her home on Thursday at the age of 91, often shared her philosophy of service with these words: “If we don’t try to make a difference, if we don’t speak up, if we don’t try to right the wrong that we see, we become complicit. I don’t want to be[…]
Some independent journalists in China call themselves grassroots historians and publish their writing on social media platforms. They also participate in historical gatherings such as the Shenzhen History Carnival in 2014, seen here. Photo from Jiang Xue’s Weibo. This article was written by Ip Iam Chong and originally published in Chinese on citizen media platform[…]
Peter Sheik on Flickr / Creative Commons By Brian Martin / 05.23.2016 Think how useful it would be to make accurate forecasts of political events. Will there be a ceasefire in the Yemen war in the next six months? Will the Chinese government allow uncensored access to the Internet in the next year? Will there[…]
Occupy Wall Street on September 30, 2011. (Wikimedia Commons/David Shankbone) By Mark Engler and Paul Engler Why are some protests ignored and forgotten while others explode, dominating the news cycle for weeks and becoming touchstones in political life? For all of those seeking to promote change, this is a critical question. And it was a[…]
Strategy for a Living Revolution – George Lakey How Strategy for a Living Revolution came to life By George Lakey / 05.04.2016 In Prague during the height of the Cold War, I met an African freedom fighter who changed my life. He and I were there as resource people for a 1967 international youth conference[…]
Rev. Daniel Berrigan in 1995. (Getty/Chris Felver) By Rev. John Dear / 05.02.2016 Rev. Daniel Berrigan, the renowned anti-war activist, award-winning poet, author and Jesuit priest, who inspired religious opposition to the Vietnam War and later the U.S. nuclear weapons industry, died at age 94, just a week shy of his 95th birthday. He died[…]
By Shovelling Son, on Flickr Creative Commons From Maya Lowenstein at The Collegian / 04.28.2016 Who remembers the good old days when Facebook existed purely as a platform to share spring break vacation pictures and wish your uncle a happy birthday? Now, when I inevitably succumb to procrastination and check my social media accounts, Facebook[…]
Wikimedia Commons By George Lakey First, let’s agree that safety is a human need. Studies find that children who grow up amidst threats, violence and insecurity are less likely to thrive as grown-ups. The defensiveness induced by trauma gets in the way of creativity and the learning curve needed for achievement. The anti-oppression movement long[…]
By Nadine Bloch A hundred years ago on November 19, 1915, the song writin’, cartoon scribblin’, parody pushin’ Industrial Workers of the World organizer Joe Hill was unceremoniously executed by firing squad in Utah. Ah, but you might say, the only thing I know about him is that “Joe Hill ain’t never died,” quoting the[…]
Photo by Annette Bernhardt, Flickr Creative Commons. By Tristan Husby / 04.18.2016 A friend of mine who is an organizer and nonviolent trainer has a favorite exercise called “10-10,” which she uses when introducing nonviolence to new activists. She divides the students into groups and tells them to write down, as quickly as possible, 10[…]