Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK, discusses her personal journey; how corporate and militarist forces keep the U.S. in a state of perpetual war; and how social movements can develop a genuine alternative.
Editors Clifton Ross and Marcy Rein offer a host of interviews with today's social change activists from Latin America. Staughton Lynd offers a review of this kaleidoscopic survey.
Die Linke's Oskar Lafontaine on "anti-systemic" parties and how to forge a democratic Europe. His views on solidarity with Greece and Syriza, as well as developments in Spain, Italy, France, and Germany. His insight on a future socialism - recognizing that past socialist endeavors have failed because they were undemocratic and centralized. In this sense, another path has to be chosen. In my opinion, it is the path of employee-managed enterprises in which democracy flows
Reader Comments - Vietnam - What Really Happened?; Chapel Hill Murders - Honor Their Memory; Chocolate, Mayan civilization; Ukraine; How Radical Change Occurs; Adjunct Profs; Teacher Unions; West Virginia Coal and Blood; Public Pensions; Water Privatization; Save the Postal Service; Timbuktu; UMass Backs Down on Iranian Student Ban; Artistic Expression; Support the Greek People;
Announcements; Today in History - FDR Signs Order for Internment of Japanese Americans
One lesson to draw from the GDR's history is that if socialist societies are to be run by, of and for the people, then the people have to be in charge and that includes within the economy. Democracies (both capitalist and socialist) will remain merely formal when the economy continues to be run by small self-selecting minorities. Those minorities will dominate until they are overthrown.
Naomi Klein argues the urgency of climate crisis could form the basis of a powerful mass movement weaving all the seemingly disparate issues into a coherent narrative to protect humanity from the ravages of a savagely unjust economic system and a destabilized climate system. Climate activist Ted Glick responds, is it realistic to think, by 2018 or 2019, a mass social movement with an essentially revolutionary agenda is going to bring about the change in power relations?
In ten days, world leaders are coming to New York City for a UN summit on the climate crisis. UN Secretary- General Ban Ki--moon is urging governments to support an ambitious global agreement to dramatically reduce global warming pollution.
With our future on the line and the whole world watching, we'll take a stand to bend the course of history. We'll take to the streets to demand the world we know is within our reach.
Reader Comments - Fast Food Workers; Ralph Fasanella; US-Africa Leaders Summit; School's Back and Growing Inequality; Twin Plagues of ISIS and Ebola; Diablo Canyon Nuke Plant; Brazil's Elections; Argentina; Victory for Market Basket Workers and Consumers; Fed-Ex Workers Can Organize; New Culture on the Left;
Call for papers on Harry Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital;
Today in History - Paul Robeson Returns to Peekskill; Jewish Woman Among the Interned Japanese
Rubble Bucket Challenge; Kids' artist hits profiling; White Ferguson betrays itself; Race/class in Silicon Valley; Cooper Union - Cooper vs. $; Klein's latest
Developing a democratically oriented alternative to capitalism can’t be done overnight. This work requires a different sense of time and a deep sense of commitment—the bargaining chips are decades of our lives. But the shifts are already happening in places like Cleveland and Boulder. What we’re seeing is the prehistory, possibly, of the next great change, in which a movement is built from the grassroots that becomes the foundation of a new era.
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