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The Transformative Power of Democratic Uprisings - In Praise of Impractical Movements

Mark Engler and Paul Engler TomDispatch
Can disruptive social movements change the world or are we better served by take-it-slow, wait-a-year-or-more-to-speak-up, incremental change? Mark and Paul Engler make a case for the former, arguing in their new book, This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century, that supposed pragmatism often stands in the way of genuine progress. The grand slogan of Paris, 1968 -- "Be realistic, demand the impossible" -- is sage and sober advice.

Why Bernie Sanders's Win in Michigan Is Huge

D.D. Guttenplan The Nation
The results prove it's far too early to declare the nomination contest over. As FiveThirtyEight's Harry Enten admits, to find an upset on the same scale as what Sanders achieved in Michigan you'd have to go back over 30 years. Those polls that put Illinois and Ohio out of Sanders's reach look a lot less reliable today. And if Sanders wins in those states, it won't be his viability as a candidate that is in question.

Dreaming of a (Feminist) Revolution

Zillah Eisenstein The Feminist Wire
There has been much said about younger women who do not support Hillary having not suffered the difficulties of the workplace yet. Once they do they will be on board, like their mothers, supporting a woman for president. But although this may sometimes be the case, I think something else is going on. It is called complex, multiple, feminist initiatives/alternatives.

Bernie Sanders, Foreign Policy Realist

Katrina vanden Heuvel The Washington Post
After she left office, Clinton criticized Obama’s quip that a central principle of his foreign policy was “don’t do stupid s---,” saying that “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.” Maybe so, but it reflects a common sense that Sanders and Obama exhibit, and Clinton consistently does not.

Dispatches From the Culture Wars

Portside
SCOTUS’s Feminist Half; Obama Busts Abstinence; The Incredible Trump; God’s Own Führer; Mad, Gifted and Jewish

'We wasted 40 years talking about nothing, doing nothing' : Pappe demolishes the peace process

Philip Weiss Mondoweiss
The ethnic cleansing of some 500 villages in 1948 was followed by the ethnic cleansing of 36 Palestinian villages inside Israel between ‘48 and ‘56 and the creation of the Gaza Strip as a refugee camp for expelled Palestinians. From the early ’60s on an Israeli “lobby” of generals and politicians demanded that Israel also colonize the West Bank. David Ben-Gurion stood in the way but in 1964 he was expelled from the government and the lobby gained power.