All Out vs. Anti-Semitism & White Nationalism!

On the one year anniversary of the Tree of Life Massacre, we are mobilizing for a day of unity against anti-Semitism and white nationalism in Union Square Park at 3pm. This action will be centering communities currently facing racial and colonial violence from New York City to Kurdistan to Kashmir. It will be a space to mourn and to organize: for rage, for grief, and for growth. Join us for music, a memorial, storytelling, a speak-out, and more.

A Sign Of The Times

The Future We Want

Socialism could have a future in America, argue Bhaskar Sunkara and Sarah Leonard, if we just think about it differently. Sunkara and Leonard, co-editors of of the essay collection The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century say that people aren’t scared of socialism taking their money, they’re scared of Wall Street taking their money. In fact, in a socialist future, money might actually go where it’s supposed to: back to the people. Taking on intersections of class and race, class and gender, they explain the logistics of moving towards a socialist future.

Sarah Leonard is a senior editor at The Nation, contributor to famous left-wing publication Dissent, and lecturer at NYU Gallatin. Bhaskar Sunkara is the editor and publisher of Jacobin magazine, a left-wing quarterly magazine recognized for offering socialist perspectives on contemporary issues.

The Whole World Is Watching

"If it’s possible in this oversaturated age for a mass-protest movement to fly under the radar, the battle over the building of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline certainly qualifies. Just this past weekend in Morton County, North Dakota, 127 people were arrested during protests over renewed construction, which follows what protesters believed was relief from the federal government, in the form of a multi-agency letter to the pipeline builders, Energy Transfer Partners, asking them to halt building for tribal consultation and the preparation of environmental-impact statements... The protesters, 270 or so who have been arrested since the standoff began in August, are a coalition of native people supporting the local Standing Rock Sioux, and they claim that the pipeline, which will carry sweet crude oil fracked from North Dakota’s Bakken oil patch through South Dakota and Iowa into Illinois, will endanger the region’s water supply, and that its construction is destroying their sacred lands. If you’ve got even the barest knowledge of the 150-odd-year history of native protests against the desecration and development of their land, you could be forgiven for assuming that things are unlikely to unfold in their favor. But in sheer scale, this resistance is bigger and more organized than any protests native people have undertaken in decades — thousands of supporters from more than 200 tribes have set up camp in Cannon Ball, North Dakota. Their protests have been frequently met with security forces armed with attack dogs and mace."

To donate to the official Sacred Stone Legal Defense Fund, click here.

Photograph via the Standing Rock Rising Facebook page
 Quote excerpted from Why the North Dakota Pipeline Standoff Is Only Getting Worse, New York Magazine

Avoid The Unimaginable

Tom Hayden

December 11th, 1939 - October 23rd, 2016

"Our work is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation in the experiment with living. But we are a minority -- the vast majority of our people regard the temporary equilibriums of our society and world as eternally-functional parts. In this is perhaps the outstanding paradox: we ourselves are imbued with urgency, yet the message of our society is that there is no viable alternative to the present. Beneath the reassuring tones of the politicians, beneath the common opinion that America will "muddle through", beneath the stagnation of those who have closed their minds to the future, is the pervading feeling that there simply are no alternatives, that our times have witnessed the exhaustion not only of Utopias, but of any new departures as well. Feeling the press of complexity upon the emptiness of life, people are fearful of the thought that at any moment things might thrust out of control. They fear change itself, since change might smash whatever invisible framework seems to hold back chaos for them now. For most Americans, all crusades are suspect, threatening. The fact that each individual sees apathy in his fellows perpetuates the common reluctance to organize for change. The dominant institutions are complex enough to blunt the minds of their potential critics, and entrenched enough to swiftly dissipate or entirely repel the energies of protest and reform, thus limiting human expectancies. Then, too, we are a materially improved society, and by our own improvements we seem to have weakened the case for further change... Some would have us believe that Americans feel contentment amidst prosperity -- but might it not better be called a glaze above deeplyfelt anxieties about their role in the new world? And if these anxieties produce a developed indifference to human affairs, do they not as well produce a yearning to believe there is an alternative to the present, that something can be done to change circumstances in the school, the workplaces, the bureaucracies, the government? It is to this latter yearning, at once the spark and engine of change, that we direct our present appeal. The search for truly democratic alternatives to the present, and a commitment to social experimentation with them, is a worthy and fulfilling human enterprise, one which moves us and, we hope, others today."

Quote excerpted from The Port Huron Statement, 1962

We Can Do Better!

Are you tired of business as usual? Want to help millions of Americans learn about the real alternatives that already exist and how to be a part of them?

We know the current system does exactly what it was designed to do: line corporate pockets at the expense of real people’s health and livelihoods, destroying the environment and fueling the war machine at the same time. But we also know that another world is possible. Many models for more economically and ecologically sustainable societies exist and as the ills of the current system become more apparent to the country at large, people are hungry to know what viable alternatives exist. The Next System Teach-Ins aim to help communities and campuses across the country engage in that debate and start exploring the alternatives that work best for them.

The teach-ins can be a powerful component to a growing national debate about what this country really needs and how we get there. In a time of political stalemate, we have to take responsibility for the important conversations and build the community needed to transform this country.

Host a teach-in at your school or attend one near you to find out more. We'll provide sample curricula, agendas and workshop ideas based on existing alternatives, burgeoning initiatives and cutting edge research in order to help you create an engaging and effective teach-in that brings your community's work to the next level.

Democracy Spring

"We need to get out money of politics so we can get people back in."

NYC Stands Against Trump

Don't Turn The Other Cheek!

By And For The People

In April 2016, more than one hundred organizations representing a diverse array of movements and hundreds of thousands of people are coming together to demand a democracy that works for all of us – a nation where our votes are not denied and money doesn’t buy access and power. Join us as we converge upon Washington, D.C. for an array of actions, including demonstrations, teach-ins, direct action trainings, music, a Rally For Democracy, and pressing for a Congress Of Conscience through non-violent direct action and advocacy.

Always Fight With Love

"There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. Call it what you may, call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country."

Quote excepted from a speech to the Negro American Labor Council, May 1965.

We Want Freedom

In The Spirit Of Crazy Horse

John Trudell

February 15, 1946 – December 8, 2015

"We have power... Our power isn’t in a political system, or a religious system, or in an economic system, or in a military system; these are authoritarian systems... they have power... but it’s not reality. The power of our intelligence, individually or collectively IS the power; this is the power that any industrial ruling class truly fears: clear coherent human beings."

Lest We Forget

July 17th, 2015 marks the one-year anniversary of Eric Garner’s death after an NYPD chokehold. As of now, not a single person has been held responsible. On Saturday, July 18th, join the NYCLU and other civil rights groups to demand accountability and justice for Eric Garner’s family and all the other New Yorkers who have suffered from police abuse.

Independence is my happiness

“When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and government."

From Rights Of Man, 1791

Embrace The Alternative

"We must convince people that we need an alternative and we must convince them about what that alternative is. We need to stand up for the hundreds of millions of lives devastated by global capitalism. The abuses we saw in 2008 will happen over and over again as long as capitalism survives. And it is our job to break the cycle of capitalist exploitation of people and the ecosystem and save ourselves. This will only come about if we organize mass movements, if we build a radical political party and if we refuse to accept a system designed to subject the immense majority to misery so that a minority can pile up untold wealth." -Kshama Sawant

From The Most Dangerous Woman In America (TruthDig, March 2015)

Brooklyn Stand Up!

Photograph by Jason DeCrow

You Are Not Alone

You have the First Amendment right to:

Peacefully assemble • Photograph or videotape police

Protest in public spaces • Protest without a permit

Freie Arbeiter Stimme

"The Free Voice of Labor: The Jewish Anarchists traces the history of a Yiddish anarchist newspaper publishing its final issue after 87 years. Narrated by anarchist historian Paul Avrich, the story is mostly told by the newspaper's now elderly, but decidedly unbowed staff. It's the story of one of the largest radical movements among Jewish immigrant workers in the 19th and 20th centuries, the conditions that led them to band together, their fight to build trade unions, their huge differences with the communists, their attitudes towards violence, Yiddish culture, and their loyalty to one another."

We Are All Ayotzinapa!

"On October 22nd, Mexico took to the streets to demand the return of the 43 missing normalistas, as well as answers about the identity of the bodies discovered in the mass graves, and how they ended up there. 'We are not all here — 43 are missing' and 'Alive they were taken, alive we want them back' were the main slogans that shook Mexico’s squares from North to South. Several universities went on a 48-hour strike and some of them — including the UNAM and the UAM — declared an indefinite strike until the government provides some answers regarding the fate of the 43 normalistas."

October 22nd march photograph by Yuri Cortez

Text excerpted from Reflections On A Revolution