Water Protectors Take Action to Keep Pipeline Out of Black and Indigenous Communities
An encampment of protesters in Louisiana is resisting the crude oil industry, whose environmental disasters disproportionately affect the poor and people of color.
Month: August 2018
How Women in Zimbabwe Overcame a Culture of Fear to Build a Culture of Resistance
Source: Waging Nonviolence
This text is adapted from “The Paradox of Repression and Nonviolent Movements,” edited by Lester R. Kurtz and Lee A. Smithey for Syracuse University Press.
Suffering under the brutal dictatorship of the Robert Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, a group of women rose up courageously as “mothers of the nation” to challenge his elite rule and build grassroots democratic change in their communities. Women of Zimbabwe Arise, or WOZA, mobilized a campaign of “tough love,” using the traditional role and moral authority of mother to scold the repressive and corrupt leaders of the country and call for a new kind of society where equality and social justice prevail. This joining of love, power and justice echoes the vision and experience of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who declared, “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
The American War Machine Is Ramping Up Under the Trump Administration
Source: Alternet
Everything this administration does is geared toward intimidation and war.Last week, on July 26, the United States House of Representatives passed the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which will then go on to the U.S. Senate and finally to the U.S. president. It is worthwhile to note that 139 Democrats, including the entire Democratic Party leadership, voted for this bill. This Act provides the U.S. government with $717 billion for a year’s military spending. This is $100 billion more than was spent last year (which is itself more than half of the annual Chinese military budget). No country spends money on its military like the United States. It’s not long now before the annual U.S. military budget will cross the $1 trillion mark.
Donald Trump, Gunrunner for Hire
American weapons makers have dominated the global arms trade for decades. In any given year, they’ve accounted for somewhere between one-third and more than one-half the value of all international weapons sales. It’s hard to imagine things getting much worse — or better, if you happen to be an arms trader — but they could, and soon, if a new Trump rule on firearms exports goes through.
What Recent Struggles in Gambia and Zambia Teach us About Neo-Colonialism Today
The economic exploitation of Africa which marked centuries of foreign rule has continued past the time of many of the region’s independence struggles. Though foreign rule politically and officially ended with many nations’ independence, primarily in the decades following World War II, economic colonialism has continued throughout much of the continent – particularly where natural resources are concerned.
Oppressed Indigenous People in India are Reclaiming Their Rights One Village At a Time
There are roughly three million Yanadi indigenous people in India today. What is common among them all is the cycle of utter poverty and deprivation that they have been subjected to. Yet the Yanadis are taking steps to claim their rights. “There are so many odds, but for my people, standing together can be the best way to overcome them all,” said Gandala Sriramalu, a Yanadi community elder.