Rethinking the Economy

After hearing a talk by civil rights veteran Robert Moses about the possibility of transforming the DC school system using a similar style of community organizing to the one he and other SNCC members used in the Mississippi Delta, I’ve been reading a book he cowrote, Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the [...]

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Over the holiday break, I ended up watching two very interesting videos from the March founding conference of the Southern Grassroots Economy Project. According to their website:
SGEP sees its work centered in working with the communities most affected by the economic crisis—women, African Americans, immigrants, youth and poor whites. We are working on [...]

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Organizing guru and President of the Applied Research Center Rinke Sen has an interesting take on the differences and relationship between long-term progressive organizations and a movement like Occupy Wall Street:
I have spent hours, weeks, months in discussions about how to recognize a movement—and whether anything we’ve done on all the issues you’ve [...]

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Another good sign for Occupy Wall Street’s future: a new group called “Occupy the Hood.”

Founded by Malik Rhasaan, 39 of Queens, N.Y., and Ife Johari Uhuru, 35, based in Detroit, @OccupyTheHood has close to 3,500 followers on Twitter, the growing support of notable figures and a cadre of volunteers devoted to getting the word [...]

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When Occupy Wall Street started, my first reaction was an uncharitable “meh.” Not publicly – I don’t publicly criticize fledgling organizing unless I think it’s actively doing harm. But the whole scene felt like the bad old days, when I was involved in in the dysfunctional, ultimately self-destructive parts of [...]

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(warning: inside blogosphere baseball)
Amanda Marcotte is frustrated with a lot of folks on our side:
So, I posted earlier today about what jackass crazy fuckwits run the Republican party and that’s why we’re in this current crisis, I suppose the inevitable thing happened in comments: I got scolded about my priorities. Apparently, I’m supposed [...]

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There was a lot of great material in Van Jones’ speech at the Rebuilding the Dream kickoff — so much so that I decided I want to write up some of it to experiment with later. Here are some of my favorites:
On the myth that we are broke:
We’re not broke, we were robbed.
Saying “we [...]

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On Thursday, activist Van Jones kicked off a new movement called Rebuild the Dream. The speech he gave his one of the best he’s given in quite a while. It’s definitely worth checking out.
I may be wildly optimistic, but I think Rebuilding the Dream – which has backing from Moveon.org, SEIU, the AFL-CIO, [...]

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Now this is how to do a protest! Having Robin Hoods breach a marsh/”moat” using a portable bridge and demanding justice at JP Morgan Chase’s Shareholder Meeting — you gotta admire their style.
To understand what these protests are targeting, here’s the story of one of the protesters:
Virginia Holwell, a 59-year-old shareholder [...]

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On the Series-O-Tubes-o-Spheres and in conversations with some friends, I’ve been hearing the same theme – the Right has overplayed their hand. From Scott Walker’s Wisconsin crusade to wipe out public unions to the House Republicans jumping off the cliff by signing up to privitalize/gut Medicare ala Ryan, conservatives are pushing policies that go [...]

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