Inauguration 2017 Special Coverage w/ Angela Davis, Naomi Klein, Ralph Nader & More
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Special coverage in the Trump Era
From Public Citizen's Corporate Presidency site: "44 Trump administration officials have close ties to the Koch brothers and their network of political groups, particularly Vice President Mike Pence, White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney."
Dark Money author Jane Mayer on The Dangers of President Pence, New Yorker, Oct. 23 issue on-line
Can Time Inc. Survive the Kochs? November 28, 2017 By Jane Mayer
..."This year, among the Kochs’ aims is to spend a projected four hundred million dollars in contributions from themselves and a small group of allied conservative donors they have assembled, to insure Republican victories in the 2018 midterm elections. Ordinarily, political reporters for Time magazine would chronicle this blatant attempt by the Kochs and their allies to buy political influence in the coming election cycle. Will they feel as free to do so now?"...
"Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America" see: our site, and George Monbiot's essay on this key book by historian Nancy MacLean.
Full interview with The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer March 29, 2017, Democracy Now! about her article, "The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency: How Robert Mercer Exploited America’s Populist Insurgency."
Democracy Now! Special Broadcast from the Women's March on Washington
The Economics of Happiness -- shorter version
Local Futures offers a free 19-minute abridged version of its award-winning documentary film The Economics of Happiness. It "brings us voices of hope of in a time of crisis." www.localfutures.org.
What's New?
January 30, 2015
"This is What Leadership looks Like"
#BlackLivesMatter: Lessons from a Leader-ful Movement
By Jodie Tonita, in the Social Transformation Project, also published on the Popular Resistance website and and newsletter. Don't miss the excellent links in this piece:
Excerpt:
"In the 15 years that I have been supporting social change leaders to become more powerful, effective and collaborative I have never been as hopeful as I am today. A new civil rights movement with bold new leadership is emerging, and there is already a lot to be learned from these efforts, and much to celebrate...
"I was saddened but not surprised when Oprah Winfrey recently said she was looking for “some kind of leadership” from this movement. Saddened that she could not yet see the incredibly courageous, strategic, and talented leadership at the heart of this “leader-ful” movement. Not surprised given the generational gap between boomers and millennials and the tendency for traditional media to seek a single charismatic leader to deliver the message.
Oprah notwithstanding, I’m hopeful that as this movement grows, more and more people will recognize the bold, innovative and radical new leadership behind it. #BlackLivesMatter founders Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors-Brignac, two of whom are queer women and one who is a Nigerian-American, recently wrote:
There are important implications for the possibilities that this new layer of leadership can offer the movement as a whole. We create much more room for collaboration, for expansion, for building power when we nurture movements that are full of leaders, and allow for all of our identities to inform our work and how we organize. This then allows for leadership to emerge from our intersecting identities, rather than to be organized around one notion of Blackness. Because of this, we resist the urge to consolidate our power and efforts behind one charismatic leader.
When we center the leadership of the many who exist at the margins, we learn new things about the ways in which state sanctioned violence impacts us all.
Dr. King once said, “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.” And what we have learned from Dr. King’s words and our current practice is that when a movement full of leaders from the margins gets underway, it makes the connections between social ills, it rejects the compromise and respectability politics of the past, and it opens up new political space for radical visions of what this nation can truly become.
It‘s been incredibly humbling and inspiring to witness the courageous youth of Ferguson, NYC and people across the country declare and demand that #BlackLivesMatter. Black organizers heard the call, saw the possibilities, stepped into capacity gaps, and are organizing their communities and allies to meet the moment."...http://www.stproject.org/from-the-field/blacklivesmatter-lessons/