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How the World is Proving Martin Luther King Right About Nonviolence

Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan The Washington Post
"I left India more convinced than ever before that nonviolent resistance was the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom." - "The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.," edited by Clayborne Carson. In this decade - in which more people are using nonviolent resistance than ever before - scholars and practitioners alike would do well to consult the pragmatic and principled wisdom of Gandhi and King in building a way forward.

Tidbits - February 4, 2016 - The Bernie Generation, Bernie and After, and Hillary; Clinton's Attack on Reconstruction; Flint; Syria; Books on Black Liberation; and more...

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Reader Comments: The Bernie Generation, and Bernie and After, and Hillary; Clinton's Attack on Reconstruction; Backlash to Corbyn and Sanders; Flint, Racism, African Americans and the Criminal Governor Snyder; The Syrian Peace Talks; Announcements: Building on Bernie: What Comes Next; Migrant Labor in China: A Post-Socialist Transformation; #BlackLivesMatter - Books on Black Liberation

Red Rosa: Beyond the Biopic

John W. W. Zeiser Los Angeles Review of Books
Hardly a comic book and without the obesseive psychologizing common to many biographies and biopics, the work under review portrays the subject, the martyred German revolutionary marxist Rosa Luxemburg, with a vividness and drama that engrosses the reader even as it explains and elucidates a cogent political worldview that was for too long relatively foreign to the American left.

The case for radical modernity

Jeremy Gilbert Red Pepper (UK)
Socialism has only been able to develop a successful political programme when it has understood itself as a modernising project, working with the grain of technological and organisational progress

The Second Tunisian Revolution

Giuliana Sgrena il manifesto
Protests expanded across the country this week in reminiscence of the Arab Spring. Unemployment is high, and citizens are unhappy with the pace and direction of reform.

Auschwitz, Hedy Epstein and Her Search for Justice

Pablo Vivanco teleSUR
Shortly after turning 90, Hedy was arrested in a demonstration over the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson. She has also visited the Israeli-Occupied West Bank five times, and been turned away from visiting Gaza the same amount of times by Israeli authorities. “It’s part and parcel of my entire political philosophy, when there is something wrong being done I can’t stand idly by … I have to be out there.”

Europe's Colonial Amnesia and its Repercussions for the Migrant and Refugee Crisis

Henriette Johansen Middle East Monitor
The people stuck in Calais are caught between two major colonial powers which must bear responsibility for much of the violence and destruction which has driven refugees from their homes in the Middle East and beyond. Their awful situation is relevant in trying to understand the colonial legacy and Europe's obsession with borders and fear of the immense efforts by civil society to help, even as they are curbed by Europe's governments. Why is Europe so scared these days?

Uber Drivers in New York City Protest Fare Cuts

Marc Santora and John Surico The New York Times
Tsering Sherpa, a Queens resident who said he drove for Uber six days a week, eight hours a day, predicted the fare cuts would force him to work 10 to 14 hours a day to make his rent and car payments. “New York City just keeps getting more and more expensive,” Mr. Sherpa said at the rally. “How are we supposed to survive with less money?” “They call us partners,” he added. “But they’re treating us like slaves.”