Establishment pundits love to cite Martin Luther King as a way to delegitimize militant protests and shame unruly protesters. But to him nonviolent action could coerce ruling elites into conceding to demands for justice.
Talk About Direct Action Getting Results': Bankrupt Blackjewel Agrees to Pay Over $5 Million to Laid Off Coal Miners Who Blocked Train Tracks
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Miners and their families have occupied a railroad track, blocking a train that’s loaded up with coal that these workers dug out of the earth and never got paid for.
Within the last 10 days, 30,000 Arizona teachers have flooded into their own Facebook group, Arizona Educators United, and begun a series of highly visible actions, sporting their “Red for Ed” T-shirts wherever they go.
What follows is a different manual from the one we put out over 50 years ago. Then, movements operated in a robust empire that was used to winning its wars. The government was fairly stable and held great legitimacy in the eyes of the majority.
This is more than a book. It is a life. L.A. Kauffman is a battle-scarred veteran of the Movement, early 1980s to the present, and in particular one sector, for want of a better term, the "direct actionists."
The call to Break Free from Fossil Fuels envisioned "tens of thousands of people around the world rising up" to take back control of their own destiny; "sitting down" to "block the business of government and industry that threaten our future"; conducting "peaceful defense of our right to clean energy." That's just what happened.
City puts human rights under threat with water privatization scheme.
With the traditional union model and its emphasis on bargaining by representatives exiting the stage, working people are urgently searching for a new way to challenge corporate power and win a better life for their families. One hundred years later, the road not taken—represented by Local 8—represents one model.
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