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Latin America: Solidarity and Accompaniment

Source: TeleSUR English   From recuperated workplaces to defense of the land.

I dropped out of my first year of college to work in a garment factory. I did this because I believed that workers were the agent of change in society, so the best way I could contribute to changing society was to become a worker. I am still dedicated to changing society, though I now believe that this generally should be done from where you are (the place the person is situated), especially if one has access to resources that people in movements or groups that one (is in) supports could use, (so, for example,) things like access to media, information or international networks, legal and medical skills, etc. read more

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Thank You Pete Seeger

Source: Open Democracy

“We are not afraid…we shall all be free.” Pete Seeger died last night, but the power of his music lives on. One activist pays tribute to another.

My being a radical activist is in no small part due to Pete Seeger who died last night – and my parents.

My mother was a civil rights and anti-war activist and my father was a GI who organized against the Vietnam War from inside the military. They met while organizing an anti-war Coffee House in Washington DC in 1969. I arrived on the scene two years later. read more

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Postcards From a Horizontal World

Source: Open Democracy

New social movements are different. Instead of asking for alternatives, they are bringing them to life.

The greatest problem we have is that we can’t imagine any alternative. And that is the challenge: to invent, create and think as if we were living just after the collapse, if there is a collapse of capitalism, and how we will organize.” Ana, Observatorio Metropolitano and 15M, Madrid.

For the past ten years I have been travelling the world and talking with people like Ana, who are creating new social movements that challenge our conceptions of collective action. I lived in Argentina after the 2001 economic crisis and recorded an oral history of the rebellion that followed. I spent time with self-organized water users’ groups in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and with Occupy throughout the USA. And I worked with neighborhood assemblies in Greece and Spain, as well as with housing defense groups in the USA and Germany. read more