Global News and Analysis Archives - Page 215 of 294

Around the country, Occupy activists moved to block ports, halting shipping and making their power felt among the 1%.

On Monday morning, about 500 activists with Occupy Oakland braved a predawn chill to blockade the Port of Oakland, the fifth busiest container port in the United States. The protesters broke up into 3 which which blocked the entrances to several shipyards in the sprawling complex, leaving dozens of trucks idling in line. Police eventually moved in to force open the gates; Oakland Police interim Chief Howard Jordan said that two occupiers were arrested. read more

The 1% Election: Their Bread, Our Circus

Tom Engelhardt December 13, 2011 Tom Engelhardt

Source: Tom Dispatch

Sometimes words outlive their usefulness. Sometimes the gap between changing reality and the names we’ve given it grows so wide that they empty of all meaning or retain older meanings that only confuse us. “Election,” “presidential election campaign,” and “democracy” all seem like obvious candidates for name-change.

I thought about this recently as President Obama hustled around my hometown, snarling New York traffic in the name of Campaign 2012. He was, it turned out, “hosting” three back-to-back fundraising events: one at the tony Gotham Bar and Grill for 45 supporters at $35,800 a head (the menu: roasted beet salad, steak and onion rings, with apple strudel, chocolate pecan pie, and cinnamon ice cream — a meal meant to “shine a little light” on American farms); one for 30 Jewish supporters at the home of Jack Rosen, chairman of the American Jewish Congress, for at least $10,000 a pop; and one at the Sheraton Hotel, evidently for the plebes of the contribution world, that cost a mere $1,000 a head. (Maybe the menu there was rubber chicken.) read more

Vermont Event – Greg Palast: Why We Occupy: How Wall Street Picks the Bones of America

Toward Freedom December 12, 2011 Toward Freedom

Greg Palast, the BBC investigative reporter who busted open the theft of the election in Florida, is back with a new book, Vultures' Picnic. He will be speaking in Burlington, Vermont on December 12, 2011.

How to Start Participatory Budgeting in Your City

Maria Hadden and Josh Lerner December 8, 2011 Maria Hadden and Josh Lerner

Source: Shareable.net

Have you noticed all the cuts being made to your city budget? To schools and libraries, fire fighters and social services, and other public spending? Think you could do a better job managing the budget? Soon, you may have that chance.

Through a process called “participatory budgeting”, residents of over 1,000 cities around the world are deciding how to spend taxpayer dollars. In October, four districts in New York City launched the second such process in the US. This article offers some initial tips for how you could start participatory budgeting in your city. read more

The Second Wind of the Worldwide Social Justice Movement

Immanuel Wallerstein December 6, 2011 Immanuel Wallerstein

Source: Iwallerstein.com

During the protests in Tahrir Square in November 2011, Mohamed Ali, age 20, responded to a journalist’s query as to why he was there: “We want social justice. Nothing more. That’s the least that we deserve.”

The first round of the movements took multiple forms across the world – the so-called Arab Spring, the Occupy movements beginning in the United States and then spreading to a large number of countries, Oxi in Greece and the indignados in Spain, the student protests in Chile, and many others. read more

Seattle WTO Shutdown 1999 to Occupy: Organizing to Win 12 Years Later

David Solnit December 5, 2011 David Solnit

Source: Indypendent

It’s 3 a.m. on Nov. 30 in San Francisco. Riot cops just raided Occupy Philly and Occupy Los Angeles tonight and the live streams are running on my laptop. We are preparing for a possible raid of Occupy San Francisco tonight or tomorrow. I’m talking back and forth with other occupiers and labor, community and faith allies, deciding whether to call for a mass mobilization tonight and to prepare for mass civil disobedience.

On the same date twelve years earlier thousands of us got up before dawn to blockade and shut down the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. As dusk fell the city declared a “state of emergency” in the downtown section of the city and drove people out with volleys of teargas and charges of riot cops. The next day, Dec. 1, thousands of us defied their martial law and took to the streets and hundreds were arrested and attacked. People stayed in the streets all week until Dec. 3, when the WTO talks collapsed as representatives from poor countries, bolstered by public rebellion in the streets and pressure from movements in their home countries, refused to buckle under. It feels like a similar moment now with political space and possibility breaking wide open — a time of public and global uprising — only bigger. read more