Articles by Medea Benjamin
Drone Strikes in Pakistan Result in Non-Violence Resistance Movement
The 10-year drone-war killing spree has unleashed the seeds of its own destruction: a nonviolent resistance movement.
Challenges of Arab Uprisings Reflected at World Social Forum in Tunisia
“This was like a dream come true,” said a radiant Sossi Mohamed Sadek, a Tunisian second year engineering student who was one of the hundreds of local volunteers at the World Social Forum in Tunis. “To see our university overflowing with over 50,000 people from Africa, Europe, Latin America, the United States, the Middle East—it was extraordinary. I came away with new ideas and new friends that will surely have a great impact on my life.”
Many Tunisians were thrilled to have hosted the eleventh World Social Forum, held from March 26-30, 2013. It marked the first time that the world’s largest global gathering of progressives—a gathering born in Brazil in 2001 out of the protests against corporate-dominated globalization—took place in an Arab nation. It came at a time when the world has been rocked by grassroots uprisings in the Arab world, but also increasing mobilizations to counter the climate crisis, and massive economic protests from southern Europe to “Occupy” groups in the United States to student movements from Quebec to Chile.
Ground the Drones
The peace movement, which lost steam during Obama’s first term because so many people were unwilling to criticize the president, has a challenge today to reactivate itself and increase its effectiveness by forming coalitions within the progressive movement.
