A New Movement
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Daily Kos: Untellable Truths
Materialist Perspectives The differences between Democratic progressives and the president over the tax deal the president has made with Republicans is being argued from a materialist perspective. That perspective is real. It matters who gets how much money and how our money is spent. But what is being ignored is that the answer to material policy questions depends on how Americans understand the issues, that is, on how the issues are realized in the brains of our citizens.
Progressive Blue
Good luck and congrats to Cenk Uygur and The Young Turks on their debut tonight on Current TV. Cenk really paid his dues during a lot of lean years to build a significant audience and he is rightly reaping the rewards now. Regardless of whether you love Cenk or not, we should all celebrate the fact that a non-conservative source of commentary and news has percolated up from the blogosphere into broadcast television and a mass audience. It does beg the question though, in a media environment where liberals and progressives have created so many wonderful communities at places like Dailykos.com, talkingpointsmemo.com, firedoglake.com and drudgeretort.com to name just a few, why have there been so few successes at daily, live internet TV from a progressive perspective?
How about, "See you around"? I don't know where, exactly, though I do have some good ideas. More on that at the end. While that may suffice for us individually, though, it certainly can't for us as a community.
Open Left
We the People, Not We the Corporations | Move to Amend
We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights. Sign the Petition
Look to the left. Look to the right. - Ken Honeywell - Open Salon
A little over three years ago, I found out what was really important to my neighbors. After almost 50 years on the planet, I finally understood what it was that would get them out in the streets, mad as hell, carrying, literally, torches and pitchforks and placards, shutting down traffic as they marched toward the Governor’s Mansion. It was not the sorry state of our public schools. It was not a recent escalation in crime that was creeping into the city’s tonier neighborhoods. It was not the rising levels of poverty and homelessness and hunger , the growing problem of childhood obesity , or the fact that Forbes had ranked Indiana 49th of 50 states in environmental quality .
T he release of the Vatican’s new declaration on reform of the world financial system, long in preparation, happened to be published as media interest in the Occupy Wall Street movement was in crescendo. Headlines naturally drew a connection. While Catholic social teaching has often been at its most effective when social movements—labor unions, human rights movements, peace and environmental activists—have been its carriers, the still amorphous Occupy Wall Street movement and the Vatican report are not directly connected. Rather, they are parallel events responding to the suffering and loss of hope inflicted on so many by the current economic crisis. Unlike many protesters, however, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace offers an analysis of the problems underlying the sputtering world economy.
America Magazine - For the 99 Percent
The Vatican and Wall Street T he editors look at the Vatican's new document on financial reform in the November 14 issue of America . Here is some additional commenary on the document, which was released last month. Facebook Twitter YouTube
America Magazine - The Vatican and Wall Street
We the faculty of the City University of New York (CUNY) express our solidarity with the May Day General Strike and the efforts to create a Free University in Madison Square Park on May 1, 2012. We further support a CUNY-Wide Day of Action on May 2, 2012 to build further momentum for social equality, show the collective power of CUNY faculty, students, and staff, and demonstrate our ability to transform the City University of New York into a university that is accessible, accountable, democratic, and free for all. We are proud of CUNY's heritage as the successor to the Free Academy of the City of New York and the historic legacy of CUNY educators committed to building a truly public university free of cost for all New Yorkers. Therefore, we stand against anything that makes CUNY less accessible, less public, less safe, and less affordable. We oppose the continuously increasing burden of tuitions and fees.
Occupy Wall Street | NYC Protest for American Revolution
Alec Baldwin: What Occupy Wall Street Has Taught Me
Have you seen Hard Times: Lost on Long Island ? The film won the Audience Award/Best Documentary at the Hamptons International Film Festival in October. The documentary follows a group of unemployed men and women, ranging in age from their late thirties into their sixties, who are looking for work while living in certain middle class suburbs on Long Island. I had not seen the film during the festival itself, but when I screened it the other day, I realized the true meaning, for me, of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Hard Times is a disturbing film that puts a face to the unemployment crisis in America in a rather effective way. At times, talk radio broadcasts play over footage of the principals as they trundle off to another day of staring down their own obsolescence.
In the 1970s, the CIA appointed a "Team B" to challenge prevailing assumptions about national security. Since then, there have been other Team B exercises to question prevailing views. This is a smart move. An in-group of experts often becomes an echo-chamber, reinforcing their own prejudices and excluding people with different views. If you are inside, you demonstrate your own loyalty by not frontally challenging the top people, no matter how disastrous. This, of course, is the road to foreign policy debacles like Iraq and Vietnam.