Gunz For Hire - The Resistance 18.05.2013 Trailer

Videoblog on the Nonviolent Resistance Guides by Gene Sharp

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Videoblog on the Nonviolent Resistance Guides by Gene Sharp

Mattie Montgomery - "The Resistance"

The Resistance - An Eye For An Eye

The Resistance- Gettin" It (Official Music Video)

Passive Resistance in South Africa

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Passive Resistance in South Africa

Shut Up & Sit Down: The Resistance Review

Resistance Led by Eliz Warren Knocks Summers Out—Now It"s Yellen"s Turn

Obama can now make history by nominating the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve.

Something to cheer about, people! If you"ve been concerned about the power of big banks, the need for financial reform and the blight of crony capitalism, you can breathe a sigh of relief: Larry Summers will not be your next Fed chair. The man who helped bring you the last financial crisis will not get his hands on one of the country"s two most powerful economic levers.

On Sunday, the former White House economic adviser and Treasury secretary officially withdrew his name as a candidate, according to the Washington Post.

For weeks, despite Obama"s apparent enthusiasm for Summers, progressives have been actively voicing their strong objections for reasons ranging from his preference for Wall Street over Main Street to his blatant sexism (for the full list, see “7 Reasons to Fight Obama on Picking Out-of-Touch Crony Capitalist Larry Summers as Fed Chair“). Most recently, his troubling conflict of interest problem has been highlighted with particular attention to his lucrative consulting gig with megabank Citigroup. In the Senate, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) signaled strong opposition to Summers, and was joined by senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Jeff Merkely (D-Ore). When Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), considered a moderate, joined the “no” group, things began to look very shaky for Summers and the press began to predict an ugly confirmation battle.

In a letter to the President, Summers explained his reasons for stepping aside.

“It has been a privilege to work with you since the beginning of your Administration as you led the nation through a severe recession into a sustained economic recovery,” he wrote. “This is a complex moment in our national life. I have reluctantly concluded that any possible confirmation process for me would be acrimonious and would not serve the interest of the Federal Reserve, the Administration, or ultimately, the interests of the nation’s ongoing economic recovery.

Senator Warren deserves full props for not backing down under White House pressure. She had good reason to remain firm: Not only does Summers represent a bank-centic worldview, he actively lobbied to prevent Warren from heading the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, her brainchild.

President Obama now has the opportunity to make history by nominating Janet Yellen as the first-ever female head of the Federal Reserve. She has always been the most qualified person for the job, known for her attention to the unemployment crisis, her cool head, her collaborative talent, and her foresight on the economy. Unlike Summers, Janet Yellen was not a cheerleader for the deregulation that helped cause the 2007-"08 financial crisis.

Earlier this summer, about a third of Senate Democrats signed a letter to Obama endorsing Janet Yellen for Fed chair over Summers. In recent days, Nobel laureaute Joseph Stiglitz and 400 other economists wrote a letter to President Obama laying out their reasons for supporting Yellen.

In addition to Yellen, the White House has also mentioned the possibility of Donald Kohn, former vice chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Progressives have vowed to keep up the pressures for a Yellen appointment.

 

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AlterNet.org Main RSS Feed

Resistance Led by Eliz Warren Knocks Summers Out—Now It"s Yellen"s Turn

Are the Young People That Shrinks Label as Disruptive Really Anarchists with a Healthy Resistance to Oppressive Authority?

Many young people diagnosed with mental disorders have acted on their beliefs in ways that threaten authorities.

Many young people diagnosed with mental disorders are essentially anarchists who have the bad luck of being misidentified by mental health professionals, who 1) are ignorant of the social philosophy of anarchism; 2) embrace, often without political consciousness, its opposite ideology of hierarchism; and 3) confuse the signs of anarchism with symptoms of mental illness.

The mass media equates anarchism with chaos and violence. However, the social philosophy of anarchism rejects authoritarian government, opposes coercion, strives for greatest freedom, works toward “mutual aid” and voluntary cooperation, and maintains that people organizing themselves without hierarchies creates the most satisfying social arrangement. Many anarchists adhere to the principle of nonviolence (though the question of violence has historically divided anarchists in their battle to eliminate authoritarianism). Nonviolent anarchists have energized the Occupy movement and other struggles for economic justice and freedom.

In practice, anarchism is not a dogmatic system. So for example, “practical anarchist” parents will use their authority to grab their child who has begun to run out into traffic. However, practical anarchists strongly believe that all authorities have the burden of proof to justify control, and that most authorities in modern society cannot bear that burden and are thus illegitimate—and should be eliminated and replaced by noncoercive, freely participating relationships.

My experience as a clinical psychologist for almost three decades is that many young people labeled with psychiatric diagnoses are essentially anarchists in spirit who are pained, anxious, depressed, and angered by coercion, unnecessary rules, and illegitimate authority. An often-used psychiatric diagnosis for children and adolescents is oppositional defiant disorder (ODD); its symptoms include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules” and “often argues with adults.”

Among young people diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), psychologist Russell Barkley, one of mainstream mental health’s leading ADHD authorities, says that they have deficits in “rule-governed behavior,” as they are less responsive to rules of authorities and less sensitive to positive or negative consequences. A frequently used research tool that distinguishes alcohol/drug abuser personalities was developed by Craig MacAndrew, and is commonly called the MAC scale. It reveals that the most significant “addictive personality type” have discipline problems at school, are less tolerant of boredom, are less compliant with authorities and some laws, and engage in more disapproved sexual practices.

I have encountered many people who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other psychoses, and who are now politically conscious anarchists, including Sascha Altman DuBrul, author of Maps to the Other Side: The Adventures of a Bipolar Cartographer. DuBrul, several times diagnosed with bipolar disorder, has lived in rebel communities in Mexico, Central America and Manhattan’s Lower East Side, worked on community farms, participated in Earth First! road blockades and demonstrated on the streets in the Battle for Seattle. He reports that many of his anti-authoritarian friends also have been diagnosed with mental illness.

Teenagers, as evidenced by their musical tastes, often have an affinity for anti-authoritarianism, but most do not act on their beliefs in a manner that would make them vulnerable to violent reprisals by authorities. However, I have found that many young people diagnosed with mental disorders—perhaps owing to some combination of integrity, fearlessness, and naïvity—have acted on their beliefs in ways that threaten authorities. Historically in American society, there is often a steep price paid by those who have this combination of integrity, fearlessness, and naïvity.

While DuBrul and his friends have political consciousness, my experience is that most rebellious young people diagnosed with mental disorders do not, and so they become excited to hear that there is actual political ideology that encompasses their point of view. They immediately become more whole after they discover that answering “yes” to the following questions does not mean that they suffer from a mental disorder, but instead have a certain social philosophy:

• Do you hate coercion and domination?


• Do you love freedom?


• Are you willing to risk punishments to gain freedom?


• Do you instinctively distrust large, impersonal and distant authorities?


• Do you think people should organize themselves rather than submit to authorities?


• Do you dislike being either an employer or an employee?


• Do you smile after reading the Walt Whitman quote “Obey little, resist much”?

Young people who oppose inequality and exploitation, reject a capitalist economy, and aim for a society based on cooperative, mutually owned enterprise are essentially left-anarchists—perhaps calling themselves “anarcho-syndicalists” or “anarcho-communitarians.” When they discover what Noam Chomsky, Peter Kropotkin, Kirkpatrick Sale, or Emma Goldman have to say, they may identify with these thinkers. These young people have a strong moral streak of egalitarianism and a desire for social and economic justice. Not only are they not mentally ill but, from my perspective, they are the hope of society.

There is another group of freedom-loving young people who hate the coercion of parents, schools, and the state but lack an egalitarian moral streak, and are very much into money and capitalism. Some of them may have been dragged into the mental health system after having been caught drug dealing, and are labeled with conduct disorder and/or a personality disorder. While these young people rebel against they themselves being controlled and exploited, many of them are not averse to controlling and exploiting others, and so are not anarchists, but some have spiritual transformations and become so.

An Underground Resistance for Oppressed Young Anarchists

There are at least two ways that mental health professionals can join the resistance: 1) speak out about the political role of mental health institutions in maintaining the status quo in society; and 2) depathologize and repoliticize rebellion in one’s clinical practice, which includes helping young anarchists navigate an authoritarian society without becoming self-destructive or destructive to others, and helping families build respectful, non-coercive relationships.

If a nonviolent anarcho-communitarian (politically conscious or otherwise) is dragged by parents into my office for failing to take school seriously but is otherwise pleasant and excited by learning, I tell parents I do not believe there is anything essentially “disordered” with their child. This sometimes gets me fired, but not all that often. It is my experience that most parents may think that believing a society can function without coercion is naive but they agree it’s not a mental illness, and they’re open to suggestions that will create greater harmony and joy within their family.

I work hard with parents to have them understand that their attempt to coerce their child into taking school seriously not only has failed—that"s why they’re in my office—but will likely continue to fail. And increasingly, the pain of their failed coercion will be compounded by the pain of their child’s resentment, which will destroy their relationship with their child and create even more family pain. Many parents acknowledge that this resentment already exists. I ask liberal parents, for example, if they would try to coerce a homosexual child into being heterosexual or vice versa, and most say, “Of course not!” And so they begin to see that temperamentally anarchist children cannot be similarly coerced without great resentment.

It has been my experience that many rebellious young people labeled with psychiatric disorders and substance abuse don’t reject all authorities, simply those they’ve assessed to be illegitimate ones, which just happens to be a great deal of society’s authorities. Often, these young people are craving a relationship with mutual respect in which they can receive help navigating the authoritarian society around them.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control on May 17, 2013, in “Mental Health Surveillance Among Children—United States, 2005–2011,” reported: “A total of 13%–20% of children living in the United States experience a mental disorder in a given year, and surveillance during 1994–2011 has shown the prevalence of these conditions to be increasing.”

Is there an epidemic of childhood mental illness, or is there a curious revolt? My experience is that many young Americans, feeling helpless, hopeless, bored, scared, misunderstood, and uncared about, ultimately rebel; but given their wherewithal, their rebellion is often disorganized, futile, self-destructive, and appears to mental health professionals as a disorder or illness. Underlying many of psychiatry"s diagnoses is the experience of helplessness, hopelessness, boredom, fear, isolation, and dehumanization. Does society, especially for young people, promote:

• Respectful personal relationships—or manipulative impersonal ones?


• Empowerment—or helplessness?


• Autonomy (self-direction)—or heteronomy (institutional-direction)?


• Participatory democracy—or authoritarian hierarchies?


• Diversity and stimulation—or homogeneity and boredom?

Emotional and behavioral problems are often natural human reactions to a society that cares little about: 1) autonomy—self-direction and the experience of potency; 2) community—strong bonds that provide for economic security and emotional satisfaction; and 3) humanity—the variety of ways of being human, the variety of satisfactions, and the variety of negative reactions to feeling controlled rather than understood. Young anarchists are especially sensitive to American society’s absence of autonomy, community, and humanity—and this can result in overwhelming anxiety and depression.

While giant pharmaceutical corporations promote psychiatry’s authority as a vehicle for increased drug sales, the whole of the corporate state supports psychiatry so as to maintain the status quo. In the old Soviet Union, political dissidents were diagnosed by psychiatrists as mentally ill, then hospitalized and drugged. Even more effective for those at the top of the hierarchy is what now occurs in the United States: diagnosing and treating anti-authoritarians before they have reached political consciousness and before they have created communities of resistance.

One reason that there is so little political activism in the United States is that a potentially huge army of anti-authoritarians are being depoliticized by mental illness diagnoses and by attributions that their inattention, anger, anxiety, and despair are caused by defective biochemistry, not by their alienation from a dehumanizing society. These diagnoses and attributions make them less likely to organize democratic movements to transform society.

In the early 19th century in the United States, a network of secret routes, conductors, and safe houses were used by African Americans to escape from slavery. This network was commonly called the Underground Railroad, organized by runaway slaves, free African-American abolitionists, and white abolitionists. Today, communities of ex-psychiatric patients (see MindFreedom and the Icarus Project) are helping young anti-authoritarians resist their mental illness labeling and coercive treatments. There are also a handful of mental health professional dissident organizations that, while not promoting the social philosophy of anarchism, do oppose dehumanizing diagnoses and coercive treatments (for example, the International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry).

While there are career risks for modern-day mental health professional dissidents, these are small risks compared with those taken by slavery abolitionists. So as a mental health professional, I find it quite embarrassing that there are so few professionals involved in the current resistance. In American history, there have been several shameful periods where groups—including Native Americans, homosexuals and assertive women—have been pathologized, dehumanized and given oppressive treatments by mental health professionals in an attempt to alter their basic being. Today’s psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and counselors would do well to recognize that historians do not look kindly on those professionals who participated in institutional dehumanization and oppression.

 

Related Stories

• A Fascinating New Theory About the Human Mind, Evolution and Mortality


• Investigate Booz Allen Hamilton, not Edward Snowden


• National Security Should Never Be a For-Profit Industry

AlterNet.org Main RSS Feed

Are the Young People That Shrinks Label as Disruptive Really Anarchists with a Healthy Resistance to Oppressive Authority?

Are the Young People That Shrinks Label as Disruptive Really Anarchists with a Healthy Resistance to Oppressive Authority?

Many young people diagnosed with mental disorders have acted on their beliefs in ways that threaten authorities.

Many young people diagnosed with mental disorders are essentially anarchists who have the bad luck of being misidentified by mental health professionals, who 1) are ignorant of the social philosophy of anarchism; 2) embrace, often without political consciousness, its opposite ideology of hierarchism; and 3) confuse the signs of anarchism with symptoms of mental illness.

The mass media equates anarchism with chaos and violence. However, the social philosophy of anarchism rejects authoritarian government, opposes coercion, strives for greatest freedom, works toward “mutual aid” and voluntary cooperation, and maintains that people organizing themselves without hierarchies creates the most satisfying social arrangement. Many anarchists adhere to the principle of nonviolence (though the question of violence has historically divided anarchists in their battle to eliminate authoritarianism). Nonviolent anarchists have energized the Occupy movement and other struggles for economic justice and freedom.

In practice, anarchism is not a dogmatic system. So for example, “practical anarchist” parents will use their authority to grab their child who has begun to run out into traffic. However, practical anarchists strongly believe that all authorities have the burden of proof to justify control, and that most authorities in modern society cannot bear that burden and are thus illegitimate—and should be eliminated and replaced by noncoercive, freely participating relationships.

My experience as a clinical psychologist for almost three decades is that many young people labeled with psychiatric diagnoses are essentially anarchists in spirit who are pained, anxious, depressed, and angered by coercion, unnecessary rules, and illegitimate authority. An often-used psychiatric diagnosis for children and adolescents is oppositional defiant disorder (ODD); its symptoms include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules” and “often argues with adults.”

Among young people diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), psychologist Russell Barkley, one of mainstream mental health’s leading ADHD authorities, says that they have deficits in “rule-governed behavior,” as they are less responsive to rules of authorities and less sensitive to positive or negative consequences. A frequently used research tool that distinguishes alcohol/drug abuser personalities was developed by Craig MacAndrew, and is commonly called the MAC scale. It reveals that the most significant “addictive personality type” have discipline problems at school, are less tolerant of boredom, are less compliant with authorities and some laws, and engage in more disapproved sexual practices.

I have encountered many people who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other psychoses, and who are now politically conscious anarchists, including Sascha Altman DuBrul, author of Maps to the Other Side: The Adventures of a Bipolar Cartographer. DuBrul, several times diagnosed with bipolar disorder, has lived in rebel communities in Mexico, Central America and Manhattan’s Lower East Side, worked on community farms, participated in Earth First! road blockades and demonstrated on the streets in the Battle for Seattle. He reports that many of his anti-authoritarian friends also have been diagnosed with mental illness.

Teenagers, as evidenced by their musical tastes, often have an affinity for anti-authoritarianism, but most do not act on their beliefs in a manner that would make them vulnerable to violent reprisals by authorities. However, I have found that many young people diagnosed with mental disorders—perhaps owing to some combination of integrity, fearlessness, and naïvity—have acted on their beliefs in ways that threaten authorities. Historically in American society, there is often a steep price paid by those who have this combination of integrity, fearlessness, and naïvity.

While DuBrul and his friends have political consciousness, my experience is that most rebellious young people diagnosed with mental disorders do not, and so they become excited to hear that there is actual political ideology that encompasses their point of view. They immediately become more whole after they discover that answering “yes” to the following questions does not mean that they suffer from a mental disorder, but instead have a certain social philosophy:

• Do you hate coercion and domination?


• Do you love freedom?


• Are you willing to risk punishments to gain freedom?


• Do you instinctively distrust large, impersonal and distant authorities?


• Do you think people should organize themselves rather than submit to authorities?


• Do you dislike being either an employer or an employee?


• Do you smile after reading the Walt Whitman quote “Obey little, resist much”?

Young people who oppose inequality and exploitation, reject a capitalist economy, and aim for a society based on cooperative, mutually owned enterprise are essentially left-anarchists—perhaps calling themselves “anarcho-syndicalists” or “anarcho-communitarians.” When they discover what Noam Chomsky, Peter Kropotkin, Kirkpatrick Sale, or Emma Goldman have to say, they may identify with these thinkers. These young people have a strong moral streak of egalitarianism and a desire for social and economic justice. Not only are they not mentally ill but, from my perspective, they are the hope of society.

There is another group of freedom-loving young people who hate the coercion of parents, schools, and the state but lack an egalitarian moral streak, and are very much into money and capitalism. Some of them may have been dragged into the mental health system after having been caught drug dealing, and are labeled with conduct disorder and/or a personality disorder. While these young people rebel against they themselves being controlled and exploited, many of them are not averse to controlling and exploiting others, and so are not anarchists, but some have spiritual transformations and become so.

An Underground Resistance for Oppressed Young Anarchists

There are at least two ways that mental health professionals can join the resistance: 1) speak out about the political role of mental health institutions in maintaining the status quo in society; and 2) depathologize and repoliticize rebellion in one’s clinical practice, which includes helping young anarchists navigate an authoritarian society without becoming self-destructive or destructive to others, and helping families build respectful, non-coercive relationships.

If a nonviolent anarcho-communitarian (politically conscious or otherwise) is dragged by parents into my office for failing to take school seriously but is otherwise pleasant and excited by learning, I tell parents I do not believe there is anything essentially “disordered” with their child. This sometimes gets me fired, but not all that often. It is my experience that most parents may think that believing a society can function without coercion is naive but they agree it’s not a mental illness, and they’re open to suggestions that will create greater harmony and joy within their family.

I work hard with parents to have them understand that their attempt to coerce their child into taking school seriously not only has failed—that"s why they’re in my office—but will likely continue to fail. And increasingly, the pain of their failed coercion will be compounded by the pain of their child’s resentment, which will destroy their relationship with their child and create even more family pain. Many parents acknowledge that this resentment already exists. I ask liberal parents, for example, if they would try to coerce a homosexual child into being heterosexual or vice versa, and most say, “Of course not!” And so they begin to see that temperamentally anarchist children cannot be similarly coerced without great resentment.

It has been my experience that many rebellious young people labeled with psychiatric disorders and substance abuse don’t reject all authorities, simply those they’ve assessed to be illegitimate ones, which just happens to be a great deal of society’s authorities. Often, these young people are craving a relationship with mutual respect in which they can receive help navigating the authoritarian society around them.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control on May 17, 2013, in “Mental Health Surveillance Among Children—United States, 2005–2011,” reported: “A total of 13%–20% of children living in the United States experience a mental disorder in a given year, and surveillance during 1994–2011 has shown the prevalence of these conditions to be increasing.”

Is there an epidemic of childhood mental illness, or is there a curious revolt? My experience is that many young Americans, feeling helpless, hopeless, bored, scared, misunderstood, and uncared about, ultimately rebel; but given their wherewithal, their rebellion is often disorganized, futile, self-destructive, and appears to mental health professionals as a disorder or illness. Underlying many of psychiatry"s diagnoses is the experience of helplessness, hopelessness, boredom, fear, isolation, and dehumanization. Does society, especially for young people, promote:

• Respectful personal relationships—or manipulative impersonal ones?


• Empowerment—or helplessness?


• Autonomy (self-direction)—or heteronomy (institutional-direction)?


• Participatory democracy—or authoritarian hierarchies?


• Diversity and stimulation—or homogeneity and boredom?

Emotional and behavioral problems are often natural human reactions to a society that cares little about: 1) autonomy—self-direction and the experience of potency; 2) community—strong bonds that provide for economic security and emotional satisfaction; and 3) humanity—the variety of ways of being human, the variety of satisfactions, and the variety of negative reactions to feeling controlled rather than understood. Young anarchists are especially sensitive to American society’s absence of autonomy, community, and humanity—and this can result in overwhelming anxiety and depression.

While giant pharmaceutical corporations promote psychiatry’s authority as a vehicle for increased drug sales, the whole of the corporate state supports psychiatry so as to maintain the status quo. In the old Soviet Union, political dissidents were diagnosed by psychiatrists as mentally ill, then hospitalized and drugged. Even more effective for those at the top of the hierarchy is what now occurs in the United States: diagnosing and treating anti-authoritarians before they have reached political consciousness and before they have created communities of resistance.

One reason that there is so little political activism in the United States is that a potentially huge army of anti-authoritarians are being depoliticized by mental illness diagnoses and by attributions that their inattention, anger, anxiety, and despair are caused by defective biochemistry, not by their alienation from a dehumanizing society. These diagnoses and attributions make them less likely to organize democratic movements to transform society.

In the early 19th century in the United States, a network of secret routes, conductors, and safe houses were used by African Americans to escape from slavery. This network was commonly called the Underground Railroad, organized by runaway slaves, free African-American abolitionists, and white abolitionists. Today, communities of ex-psychiatric patients (see MindFreedom and the Icarus Project) are helping young anti-authoritarians resist their mental illness labeling and coercive treatments. There are also a handful of mental health professional dissident organizations that, while not promoting the social philosophy of anarchism, do oppose dehumanizing diagnoses and coercive treatments (for example, the International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry).

While there are career risks for modern-day mental health professional dissidents, these are small risks compared with those taken by slavery abolitionists. So as a mental health professional, I find it quite embarrassing that there are so few professionals involved in the current resistance. In American history, there have been several shameful periods where groups—including Native Americans, homosexuals and assertive women—have been pathologized, dehumanized and given oppressive treatments by mental health professionals in an attempt to alter their basic being. Today’s psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and counselors would do well to recognize that historians do not look kindly on those professionals who participated in institutional dehumanization and oppression.

 

Related Stories

• A Fascinating New Theory About the Human Mind, Evolution and Mortality


• Investigate Booz Allen Hamilton, not Edward Snowden


• National Security Should Never Be a For-Profit Industry

AlterNet.org Main RSS Feed

Are the Young People That Shrinks Label as Disruptive Really Anarchists with a Healthy Resistance to Oppressive Authority?

Popular Resistance Is Percolating Across the Country -- Inspiring Activism That the Corporate Media Always Ignores

The fight against plutocracy, concentrated wealth and corporatism is decentralized, creative and growing.

Every week we are inspired by the many people throughout the country who are doing excellent work to challenge the power structure and put forward a new path for the country. The popular resistance to plutocracy, concentrated wealth and corporatism is decentralized, creative and growing.

One growing series of protests has been the “Moral Monday” demonstrations in North Carolina.  They do not have ‘one demand’ but rather are challenging the systemic corruption, undermining of democracy and misdirection of a state government that puts human needs second to corporate profits – which they have dubbed ‘Robin Hood in Reverse.’  This week 49 of 200 protesters inside the capitol were arrested singing, chanting and echoing many of the same concerns that demonstrators have for the past three Mondays.  Last week there were 30 arrests, the week before 17.  Among those arrested was an 83 year old retired minister, Vernon Tyson, who was merely a spectator, but he gave a great interview cheering on the protests after his release. And, a group of historians were among those arrested who put these protests in the context of US history.

Another courageous protest involved seven undocumented immigrants who blocked the Broadview Detention Center where immigrants are being incarcerated.  They blocked the doors to the detention facility, linking arms together using pipes, chains, and locks. They were protesting the record-high deportations under President Obama, and the lack of leadership from Illinois representatives to call for a suspension of deportations. On the West coast, the always creative Backbone Campaign supported allied faith communities with a giant banner lift over the private for-profit immigration detention center asking “Who Would Jesus Deport?” and an inflatable lady liberty exposing the unjust policies that break up families.

There was a recent victory for Seattle teachers and students that resulted from their citywide protests against standardized testing. The school district announced that testing in the high schools would not occur next year.  The teachers said they will keep protesting until the tests are banned from lower grades as well.

We hope the Chicago teachers, who won a major battle with Mayor Rahm Emanuel earlier this year when they went out on strike, have great success this weekend when three days of marches are held against the mass school closings in Chicago.  The teachers union has developed a great organizing strategy that unites teachers with students, parents and communities.  This battle is one of many across the country to stop the thinly veiled corporatization of education.

In another education protest, the students @FreeCooperUnion continue to occupy the office of the president after one week.  They are painting the walls black until he agrees to step down, and are highlighting his $ 750,000 annual salary.  They are protesting a plan to begin to charge tuition at the university; this plan will not affect these students, but future students who attend Cooper Union.

The heart of the conflict faced in the United States is the inequity of an unfair economy supported by a corrupt two party system.  This week there was a very creative protest in New York City against the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim of Mexico.  He’s made his billions with the help of government allowing a monopoly on phone service resulting in Slim gouging the public.  Now he gives a small percentage of that wealth back in philanthropy and people applaud him.  But, the protesters were very effective, laughing out loud whenever he spoke. They responded when someone asked “Why is everyone laughing?” with “Because Slim’s philanthropy is a joke!” and followed with mocking kazoos.

In contrast to the world’s wealthiest was the Poor People’s Campaign which marched from Baltimore to Washington, DC ending at Freedom Plaza.  The march occurred on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s campaign and raised issues of poverty, police violence, unfair economy and non-responsive government.  Another march was announced in Pennsylvania from Philadelphia to Harrisburg from May 25 to June 3 to stop spending on prison construction and instead invest in building communities.  Also, from Philadelphia the ‘Operation Green Jobs’ March from Philadelphia to Washington, DC will begin on May 18 and is organized by the Poor People’s Economic and Human Rights Campaign.

A campaign that is growing every week is the fast food worker strikes. The largest fast food walk out was held in Detroit last week, even the scabs walked out, and this week the strikes spread to their fifth city, Milwaukee, WI.  It is great to see these workers, who no doubt saw themselves as powerless, standing up and demanding fairness.  If you eat at fast food restaurants, this would be a good time to stop, and let them know why – you support the workers who are demanding a living wage.

US Empire and imperialism continue to cause protest. Obama’s Asia Pivot, moving 60% of the US Navy to the Asian Pacific is causing a lot of distress.  On Jeju Island people are fighting for their survival against a massive Navy base.  Jeju is the “Peace Island” that was harshly abused during the US occupation of South Korea after World War II before the Korean War.  And, South Koreans, who regularly protest against the US military, are protesting the US war games that are practicing dropping nuclear bombs on North Korea and invading it.

Protests are mounting in the United States against the abusive Guantanamo Bay prison where more than 100 of the 166 prisoners at Guantanamo are participating in a hunger strike and two-dozen are being brutally force fed. These prisoners have been held without trial for over 10 years, and even though 88 have been approved to leave, they remain.  The Green Shadow Cabinet came out with a statement describing how Obama could close the prison (and why Congress is not an excuse) and what you can do on the 100th day of the hunger strike this Friday. Show solidarity with these prisoners who are being abused by the US government.

Diane Wilson, a shrimper from the Gulf Coast who works with CODE PINK and Veterans for Peace, is on her 15th day of an open-ended solidarity hunger strike in Washington, DC. She explains why she is taking the extreme step of a hunger strike to support the Guantanamo prisoners. And S. Brian Willson is joining Diane in hunger strike.

Another protest related to US Empire occurred in Oak Ridge, TN where Transform Now Plowshares activists protested nuclear weapons by cutting through four chain-link fences and spray-painting biblical messages of nonviolence on a building that warehouses an estimated 400 tons of highly enriched uranium, the radioactive material used to fuel nuclear weaponry. This week an 83 year old nun, Sister Megan Rice, and two other activists were found guilty of damaging government property.  As the jury left the courtroom the people in the courtroom sang to them “Love, love, love, love. People, we are made for love.”  Sentencing is several months away and they face a potential 30 years in prison.

Environmental protests are boiling up throughout the United States.  When President Obama came to New York for a fundraiser (where he raised $ 3 million), protesters greeted him with signs calling for him to “End the War on Mother Earth” and opposing the KXL pipeline.

Protesters from the Appalachian Mountains came to the EPA in Washington DC to protest polluted water caused by Mountaintop removal for coal.  The protesters displayed the dirty, opaque water in jars in front of the EPA.  And Climate Justice activists from CoalIsStupid.org blocked a freighter delivering coal in Boston with two men on a lobster boat on May 15th.

But more and more Americans are realizing that while we protest the extraction of oil, gas, uranium and coal, the reality is that the root of the problem is in the American Way of Life (AWOL).  One activist from Portland made the point that the Tar Sands starts in our driveways and we need to change the AWOL in order to truly combat it.  We agree that our strategy has two prongs: protest and build i.e. Stop the Machine and Create a New World.

In addition to how much energy we each use, we need to look at where our food comes from. An Occupy group in Berkeley, Occupy the Farm, made that point this week when they took over University of California land to grow farm for the community locally.

Another area where we are seeing continued growth in the movement is in thinking through how we do our work and in developing strategy to achieve our goals.  We published a live streamer “Code of Ethics” developed by people who work in the citizen’s media. Note the high ethics and cooperative approach they take to getting the media out.

Many are thinking about strategy to make the movement more effective.  Gar Alperovitz, a political economist who has been writing about alternatives to big finance capitalism in the United States has a new book out focused on strategy, “What then Must We Do,” and we published a review of the book by Sam Pizzigati of Inequality.org entitled:  A Promising Path for Pummeling Plutocracy.

Upcoming actions:

May 17th, Support the Guantanamo hunger strikers on the 100th Day of their hunger strike with phone calls and tweets to the White House and protests in DC, NY, Chicago and other cities.

May 18th, ‘Operation Green Jobs’ March from Philadelphia to Washington, DC organized by the Poor People’s Economic and Human Rights Campaign.

May 18th to 23rd the Home Defenders League Week of Action against the banks and foreclosures in Washington, DC.

May 18th to 20th there is a weekend of protests against the closure of schools in Chicago.

May 22nd Stop the Frack Attack People’s Forum in Washington, DC.

May 25th Protests against Monsanto everywhere

May 25th to June 3rd   March from Philadelphia to Harrisburg against prison spending.

June 1st,  Get on the Bus For Bradley Court Martial Trial  with buses leaving from Baltimore, MD, Washington DC, New York City and Willimantic, CT.

June 14th to 16th Trade Justice Action Camp in Bellingham, WA by the Backbone Campaign

June 24th to 29th is the beginning of “Fearless Summer” that starts “an epic summer of actions.”

You can order or print OccuCards to bring with you to these actions. There are cards for all of the issues being protested above and new cards are being created.

And watch for the transformation of October2011/Occupy Washington DC into Popular Resistance, daily news and resources for effective activism, coming in June. Sign up here if you want to be notified of the launch.

 

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Popular Resistance Is Percolating Across the Country -- Inspiring Activism That the Corporate Media Always Ignores