Tag Archives | Activism

Anarchists Commemorated Inauguration By Smashing Bank Windows And ATM

By on January 25, 2013 in News 8

The proper way to ring in Barack Obama’s second term. Via Politico:

About 60 anarchists smashed windows and damaged an ATM machine overnight just blocks from the National Mall, police [said] Monday.

At about midnight Sunday night, a group moving through the Gallery Place/Chinatown/Mt. Vernon Square area of Washington, D.C., broke a window and splashed yellow paint on a TD Bank branch, smashed a window at a Hooters restaurant and broke the screen of an ATM machine belonging to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs Credit Union.

The damage took place at sites about 7 to 9 blocks from the mall, where hundreds of thousands of people gathered later Monday for the re-inauguration of President Barack Obama. The group dropped flyers saying, “Against Every Cop. Against Every Boss. Against Every President,” the report said.

… Read the rest

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Martin Luther King Jr. On Being Awake For The Revolution

By on January 21, 2013 in News 1

Via the New Inquiry, from the Oberlin College Commencement Address in 1965:

I’m sure that you have read that arresting little story from the pen of Washington Irving entitled Rip Van Winkle. The thing that we usually remember is that Rip Van Winkle slept 20 years. But there is another point in that story that is almost always completely overlooked: he slept through a revolution. When Rip [awoke and] looked up at the picture of George Washington, he was completely lost; he knew not who he was.

There are all too many people who, in some great period of social change, fail to achieve the new mental outlooks that the new situation demands. There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that a great revolution is taking place in our world today. It is a social revolution, sweeping away the old order of colonialism.

… Read the rest

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A Box For Manipulating The News On Other People’s Computer Screens

By on January 18, 2013 in News 3

The artistic creation of Julian Oliver and Daniil Vasiliev, the Newstweek device allows for “altering reality on a per-network basis” by literally changing the headlines on people’s screens:

Newstweek is a device for manipulating news read by other people on wireless hotspots. Built into a small and innocuous wall plug, the Newstweek device allows writers to remotely edit news read on wireless devices without the awareness of their users.

While news is increasingly read digitally, it still follows a top-down distribution model and thus often falls victim to the same political and corporate interests that have always sought to manipulate public opinion. Newstweek intervenes upon this model, providing opportunity for citizens to have their turn to manipulate the press; generating propaganda or simply ‘fixing facts’ as they pass across a wireless network.

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A Look At Oath Keepers Preparing For Revolution

By on January 16, 2013 in News 31

A fair look at those who believe that societal collapse may be immanent? This VICE piece features perspective on conspiracy theorism and the breakdown of the American Dream from several angles, including Alex Jones and Chris Hedges:

Traveling from Texas to Massachusetts, VICE investigates whether the country is actually on the verge of the 2nd Revolutionary War.

The Department of Homeland Security classifies them as potential “domestic terrorists”; they prefer to be called patriots. As the economic crisis deepens, a growing movement of Americans is rejecting the two-party system and the mainstream media. They believe a violent revolution is imminent, and they’re getting ready for it now. We meet Sgt. Charles Dyer, a U.S. Marine who has taken an oath to disobey unconstitutional orders and take up arms against the government if it becomes tyrannical — and is training a citizen militia to do the same.

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Stitching Together Solidarity, Creating A Community

By on January 11, 2013 in News 1

Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:

There’s an emptiness we can all feel that’s just out of reach. It’s something we can’t touch or taste, something that sits on the tips of our tongues and on the edge of our lips. Religious people might define it as a lack of spirituality or sickness of the soul. Folks who aren’t can find any number of disorders or emotional and mental states to try to explain it. But the truth is, it’s something a little more.

And we try to fill that hole, that emptiness, with things every day. Some people do it with money and material goods, some do it with booze or pills, others with work, or a quest for power and authority, and some shut down and spend their days in the dark watching hours of television. Whatever it is though, however we choose to try to fill that void it’s never enough.… Read the rest

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Don’t Feed the Hungry

By on December 28, 2012 in News 5

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” — Archbishop Hélder Câmara

Suzanne Lindgren writes at Utne Blogs:

When it comes to feeding the world, most of us support the idea. We are taught from a young age that if someone is hungry it’s our moral duty to feed them, whether they live down the street or in another country. For decades, agriculture companies have used the noble goal of “feeding the world” to increase yields by any means possible, from genetic modification to the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. This logic has justified ecological destruction from prairies to rainforests. It has wreaked havoc on indigenous and small-farming communities. And with 870 million chronically undernourished people on earth right now, it has failed to get food to the people who need it most.

Instead of a fed planet, we have monoculture farms, poisons on food, and toxic runoff in our land and water. Into our air, the global agriculture industry emits about 14 percent of total greenhouse gases, according to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). If we include agricultural deforestation, that number jumps to 27.5 percent. “[I]t’s impossible,” writes CGIAR, “to address climate issues without including agriculture—and vice versa.”

Fortunately, real solutions aren’t difficult to imagine. Raj Patel interviewed one Wisconsin farmer, Jim Goodman, who seems to have a lot of this figured out.

Read more here.

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Guerrilla Urban Planners Redo Mexico City By Painting Bike Lanes, Sidewalks, And Crosswalks

By on December 12, 2012 in News 1

This Big City talks to Camina, Haz Ciudad, a group which extralegally redesigns public space to benefit ordinary residents:

Camina, Haz Ciudad started as a project to recover space for pedestrians. It was inspired by a modern development that happened here in Mexico City in an area called El Puente de los Poetas. Amazingly, there was no pedestrian infrastructure at all, the whole place seemed to be designed for cars. A group of citizens decided that couldn’t be, so they painted a sidewalk in an area where lots of people walked but had no safety. But the sidewalk was erased, and the people who painted it were really mad.

With our first painted bike lane [which is 5km and ends at Congress in Mexico City] we were trying to make a political point. We didn’t have any expectation of how long it would last. But the bike lane is still in place.

… Read the rest

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Blocking Prison Construction With A Makeshift Schoolhouse

By on December 7, 2012 in News 2

Decarcerate PA creates a surreal scene in its effort to impede the construction of a new state correctional facility:

Early morning November 19, seven members of Decarcerate PA set up school desks, banners, and a little red schoolhouse to block the entrance to the prison construction site in Montgomery County. They then sat at the desks, linking arms and refusing to move or allow construction vehicles onto the sight. Construction was delayed for over an hour before all seven protesters were arrested and taken away.

The new prisons are being built on the grounds of SCI Graterford in Montgomery County. If completed, they will cost $400 million and house 4,100 people. We believe these prisons must be stopped, and that the money should be reinvested in our schools and communities.

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Police Detective Wants More Cop Watch

By on December 5, 2012 in News 1

Retired NYPD Detective Carlton Berkeley talked to Luke Rudkowski at a recent Police Reform Organizing Project (PROP) event. Carlton Berkeley is President of Brothers and Sisters Who Care as well as an outspoken whistle blower on many of the NYPD’s most controversial policies. Luke and Carlton exchange in a dialog about holding the police accountable through video cameras and standing up against police intimidation.

Via WeAreChange

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