Reader Comments: Response to Occupy; Greece and Debt Forgiveness; Why Bernie Sanders; Confederate Flags, Symbols, and Racism; U.S. Torture Program; Death Penalty; and more...
Announcements: Benefit Concert for Civil Rights; Rally for Eric Garner; NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and The Voting Rights Act at 50; Rosenberg Case Bombshell - Key Witness Lied; Robert Meeropol statement
Advice for the next generation of social movements: “Never protest the same way twice.”
MW: What we learned from Occupy, and also with the Arab Spring, is that revolutions happen when people lose their fear. So I think the main trigger for the next revolutionary movement will be a contagious mood that spreads throughout the world and the human community.
Cities and the federal government have already offered a slew of concessions: civil rights investigations, body cameras, civilian review boards, increased diversity in police departments. These reforms are not likely to fulfill protesters' demand for a transformation of policing in the United States. Where the protests are headed .. 'If we recognize the system doesn't work for us . then you're talking about getting rid of capitalism.'
The recent declaration of "war" by the NYPD police union shows how the police are a political institution who do not simply follow orders from elected leaders. A similar revolt occurred among Oakland police during Occupy Oakland.
Reader Comments - Cecily McMillan Update - Occupy Activist Faces Seven Years in Jail - Trial Postponed to March 3rd; Africa; Latin America; Learning from History; Slavery; UAW Campaign at Volkswagen; Amiri Baraka; Pete Seeger memories;
Announcements - CISPES Delegation to El Salvador; Workers Get a Cut on Powell Books purchases; New Video - The USA's new underclass; Labor Notes conference - April 4 - 6 - Early bird discount
Cecily McMillan, 25, faces up to seven years in jail after being charged with assault in the second degree, a Class D felony in New York. Police allege that McMillan elbowed an officer in the head during a protest in lower Manhattan in March 2012.
Union members in Pennsylvania held a mass demonstration inside the state capital to protest a Republican effort to strip public employee unions of their right to have member dues collected through payroll deduction. The protesters were clear that they see this Republican effort as just the beginning of an attempt to destroy unions and workers' rights in the state.
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