activism
Over the Rainbow
Gay Argentinians’ views on marriage, legal or not, are still shaped by forces beyond their control.
OWS Library Update
Back in November of 2011, an epic act of state occurred in New York City—the seizure and destruction of the OWS library. More seizures ensued. The library reappeared on the Brooklyn Bridge. Readers and writers all over the world spoke out against the so-called Bloomberg Bibliocide. What’s been happening with our favorite library? KtB recently…
Some Great Cause, God’s New Messiah
Early this past summer, I came across a certain quotation opening an essay by Mary Elizabeth King—now a columnist for Waging Nonviolence and a friend. This was right about the time I first got the idea in my head that I needed to learn how to tell the stories of how great resistance movements are…
Killing Celebrity Buddhas at Occupied Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street’s Liberty Plaza has become pretty much the place for self-styled progressive celebrities and politicians to appear. On the one hand, these visits are greatly appreciated by the occupiers and have helped strengthen the movement. However, they also raise tricky questions for a movement determined to be non-hierarchical and egalitarian. In a roundtable on…
Repent, Ye Wall Street
I do not normally look forward to Yom Kippur. It has always been, for me, a somewhat dutiful holiday, whereby the moral struggles of everyday life, as if they didn’t weigh heavily enough on us already, are magnified by lumping them into a year’s worth of sinful action and, by the magic of the ritual,…
Tahrir on Wall Street
Revolutionaries young and old plan to bring the spirit of 2011 back to the U.S.
Egypt For Everybody
Immediately following the Egyptian revolution, my friend Greg Berger, a filmmaker, and journalist Al Giordano, of Narco News, went to Cairo to make a series of short videos with the activists who made it happen, “A Video Manual on How a Civil Resistance Was Built to Win.” Some of you are probably ready to click…
Q Reports Live from Madison
Our very own Senior Editor Quince Mountain is, as we blog-speak, in the occupied Capitol building of Madison, Wisconsin. Over the course of yesterday, he and I had an extended text-message exchange, which tells the dramatic story of a rumored crackdown, a victory, celebrations, and preparations for the next crisis. The full account of yesterday…
Revolution Is What You Do
It’s a happy day when good ideas—and the people who create them—get their due. Today was one of those days. Thanks in large part to The New York Times‘s feature on the backdrop of the revolution in Egypt, and then a profile devoted to him (which as I write is still #1 on the most-emailed…
Killing the Buddha in Cairo
Anthony Shadid, in The New York Times: Tens of thousands of protesters who have reimagined the very notion of citizenship in a tumultuous week of defiance proclaimed with sticks, home-made bombs and a shower of rocks that they would not surrender their revolution to the full brunt of an authoritarian government that answered their calls for…