Rallying on International Workers’ Day in Vermont: A Photo Essay
A photo essay from the May 1st March for Health and Dignity in Montpelier, Vermont.
Month: May 2014
The Brecht Forum, 1975–2014
Source: The Indypendent
Faced with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and finding itself in the legal crosshairs of its former landlord, the Brecht Forum announced April 12 that it will close after 39 years. The decision marks the end of an era for the Marxist education and community center, which will hold its final public forum on May 8 and will cease all business operations as of May 30. After that, it will move to dissolve itself as a non-profit corporation.
“It has become clear,” Brecht’s board of directors wrote in a public statement, “that in a rapidly gentrifying city, we have been living on borrowed time, and that despite the strong support of our community, this configuration of our project is unsustainable.”
Nigeria: Africa’s Number One Economy, For Wealth Evaporation
Nigeria’s ‘rebased’ GDP now beats South Africa’s in theory – but how does this measure up against the country’s actual wealth?
How the U.S. Created the Afghan War — and Then Lost It
Source: Tom Dispatch
It was a typical Kabul morning. Malik Ashgar Square was already bumper-to-bumper with Corolla taxis, green police jeeps, honking minivans, and angry motorcyclists. There were boys selling phone cards and men waving wads of cash for exchange, all weaving their way around the vehicles amid exhaust fumes. At the gate of the Lycée Esteqial, one of the country’s most prestigious schools, students were kicking around a soccer ball. At the Ministry of Education, a weathered old Soviet-style building opposite the school, a line of employees spilled out onto the street. I was crossing the square, heading for the ministry, when I saw the suicide attacker.
Why I’m Still In The Climate Fight
Source: Yes Magazine
It is good to mourn for what’s being lost. But giving up just gives the fossil fuel industry what it wants.
My English friend Paul Kingsnorth was the subject of a long article two weeks ago in The New York Times magazine, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It … and He Feels Fine.”
A former editor of The Ecologist, Paul has gained new attention of late for his passionate and public despair over “an age of ecocide” and his proclamations that we are now powerless to do anything about it. That expression of despair coincides with an equally public withdrawal from the battlefield of big-scale climate and environmental activism. He warns, “What all these movements are doing is selling a false premise. They’re saying, ‘If we take these actions, we will be able to achieve this goal.’ And if you can’t and you know that you are lying to people.”
The Neo-Zapatistas: Twenty Years After
On January 1, 2014, the Ejército Zapatista de Libéración Nacional (EZLN) celebrated the twentieth anniversary of its uprising in Chiapas. This year, they are engaging in a self-appraisal.