Community Organizing And Movement Building News

Defending Mother Earth in Cochabamba
February 1, 2010
A report from Porto Alegre on the Bolivian climate change initiative  Go...

Save the Dates! US Social Forum 2010
January 25, 2010
Save the Dates! Join Funders "Accompanying" the US Social Forum process - Participate in monthly funder discussions, starting on Tuesday, January 26 - Join FNTG's delegation to Detroit from June 21-26  Go...

Copenhagen Is Not Just About Climate Change -- It's About the What Kind of People We Want to Be
December 15, 2009 - George Monbiot, Monbiot.com
This is the moment at which we turn and face ourselves. Here, in the plastic corridors and crowded stalls, among impenetrable texts and withering procedures, humankind decides what it is and what it will become. It chooses whether to continue living as it has done, until it must make a wasteland of its home, or to stop and redefine itself. This is about much more than climate change. This is about us.  Go...

Opportunity in Crisis, Navigating the Perfect Storm
October 9, 2009 - Tanya Dawkins, Global-Local Links Project; Alexandra Spieldoch, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy; Aldo Caliari, Center of Concern; Karen Hansen-Kuhn, Action Aid-USA and Lane Vanderslice, Hunger Notes, Social Watch International
The U.S. unemployment crisis underscores the reality of a system that does not recognize or guarantee essential social or economic rights. Since December 2007, the number of unemployed has risen to 13.1 million – 5.6 million more than at the start of the recession. Movements for human rights, green jobs, fair trade, healthcare and housing are advancing proposals and stepping up demands for real and structural solutions. The U.S. cannot afford to squander this opportunity for real change.  Go...

Globalization Goes Bankrupt
September 21, 2009 - Chris Hedges, TruthDig.com
The rage of the disposed is fracturing the country, dividing it into camps that are unmoored from the political mainstream.  Go...

Where Does Society's Wealth Come From?
July 24, 2009 - Andy Carloff, www.punkerslut.com
Investigating where wealth and luxury come from; and then analyzing the idea of rights and justice in terms of property. "...we are living on a planet where the few, idle Capitalists own the majority of wealth."  Go...

G20 summit - News, Analysis, Blogs, Tweets and more...
March 31, 2009 - Telegraph UK
The G20 global summit which takes place in London on April 2 gathers the finance ministers and central bankers of 20 countries, including the seven major industrialised nations. The EU is represented by France, and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank also participate.  Go...

US won't participate in racism conference
February 27, 2009 - EDITH M. LEDERER, ASSOCIATED PRESS
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States has decided not to participate in a U.N. conference on racism in April unless the final document is changed to drop all references to Israel and its criticism of religion, a senior U.S. official said Friday.  Go...

Globalisation - WTO Lauds Civil Society Impact
October 9, 2007 - Abimbola Akosile, AllAfrica Global Media
Director-General of World Trade Organisation (WTO) Mr. Pascal Lamy has commended the efforts of civil society groups on trade negotiations, environmental issues and agriculture, to ensure a successful globalisation process.  Go...

LET’S GET ON WITH IT!
August 3, 2007 - Celeste Lacy Davis, Funding Exchange
With a theme of “Another World is Possible; Another US is Necessary,” the first ever US Social Forum ignited a prairie fire of optimism within the progressive left, the sheer size and diversity of which has not been witnessed in this country in decades. For veteran and virgin social justice advocates alike, the week-long convergence of activists, academics, simply curious locals, and impassioned global sojourners in the city of Atlanta this summer should have helped to shatter a longstanding, paralytic myth that the American left is dead.  Go...

Edwards, Obama & Labor: Will the Populist Moment Become A Long-Term Movement?
July 31, 2007
In the last two weeks, something profound started happening out on the 2008 campaign trail - a momentum has started building like I haven't seen in my lifetime. Two out of the top three best-polling Democratic candidates are starting to engage in a battle for the populist mantle. How this battle plays out and how organized labor asserts itself in the next few months could very well set the stage for - or kill in its infancy - the rise of a broader populist movement in America.  Go...

Social Forum shows how unorganized the revolution can be
July 16, 2007 - Walter C. Jones, Savannah Morning News
For five days, Georgia has been the epicenter of liberal activism during the first U.S. Social Forum, a convention of sorts for more than one hundred groups. This wasn't like the national conventions the Republicans and Democrats hold every four years. People at the two major political conventions, for example, only have two choices of bathrooms while those at the Social Forum have three - male, female and neutral - courtesy of the Queer Visibility Committee of the organizing board.  Go...

Another world is possible
July 2, 2007 - John Nichols, The Capital Times
The political discussion in the United States is, for the most part, disappointing -- not merely because it is too ideologically and intellectually narrow, but also because it is too backward in focus... At a certain point, you just want to say: "Get over it! At a point when only one in five Americans think the country is headed in the right direction, isn't it time we changed course?" That's the message of the thousands of Americans who have gathered in Atlanta in recent days for the U.S. Social Forum.  Go...

USSF – 2007 and After…
July 12, 2007 - Michael Albert, ZNet
At the US Social Forum 2007, in the city that hosts CNN and Coke, in hotel venues where debutantes ironically were on parade, the progressive community stood tall and steadfast, proud and capable. The forum’s over 900 sessions were truly diverse in those presenting and those attending. Indeed, I cannot remember - going all the way back to an also highly diverse Black Panther Party Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in September 1970 - any other large leftist event in the U.S. as consistently multi-cultural as USSF 2007. More, I can remember very few that were as gender and sexuality balanced. And the USSF 2007 even had youth in abundance, a feature sorely lacking in recent activist conferences.  Go...

An Even Newer Left
June 30, 2007 - Dan Berger, The Nation
At first sight, the only applicable description of the first US Social Forum would be chaos. Utterly overwhelming. Ten thousand people mill about the Atlanta Civic Center and its environs, trying to choose between dozens of workshops, issue-themed tents, merchandise and information tables, meetings, and plain old socializing. It is a scene perhaps best captured in fragments rather than full sentences. Organizers. Housing. Immigrant workers. Vision. Prison abolition. Puppets. Speeches, newspapers, fliers, banners, flags, books, shirts. Laughter. Dance parties. Water. Media. Fundraisers. Collaboration. Resisting state and interpersonal violence. Imagining. Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, ghetto, barrio, reservation. The city. Youth. Networking. Strategy.  Go...

US Social Forum Reflections: Forum Forges Common Ground
July 2, 2007 - Matthew Cardinale, Atlanta Progressive News
In all, the crowds were huge, the workshops passionate and inspiring, and participants made ideological, relational and personal gains, both large and small.  Go...

Feminists Participate in First-Ever US Social Forum
July 5, 2007 - Feminist Daily News Wire
Twelve thousand activists assembled in Atlanta from June 27 to July 1 under the banner "Another World is Possible; Another US Is Necessary" for the first-ever United States Social Forum. The Forum featured over 900 workshops, a film festival, and multiple plenary sessions organized around six core areas including women's rights. Feminist Majority Foundation and Ms. magazine staff joined activists from over 100 women’s organizations at the Forum to help create a new feminist vision for the United States and the World.  Go...

Big Cheers for First-Ever U.S. Social Forum
July 4, 2007 - Haider Rizvi, OneWorld.net
New alliances between activist communities in the Unites States and those involved in social justice movements across the Gulf of Mexico are in the offing. Encouraged by massive participation in marches and gatherings held in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta last week, organizers of the U.S. Social Forum (USSF) are now seeking to forge closer links with activists in the Caribbean and Latin American countries

Visioning a Better US at the United States Social Forum
July 16, 2007 - Mari Rice, PoliticalAffairs.net
The United States Social Forum was held in Atlanta, Georgia on June 27-July1, 2007. A diverse group of over ten thousand people came for the first ever Forum of it’s kind held in the United States. They came from all walks of life: young, old, poor and professional, Native, Latino, African American and European American. They came from other parts of the world including Africa, Latin America, Asia, the Caribbean, North America, and Europe. Activist, academics, trade unionist and community organizers came united in their belief that “Another world is possible,” the slogan for the United States Social Forum.  Go...

U.S. Social Forum: The view from Canada
July 8, 2007 - Judy Rebick, ZNet
After spending five weeks in Bolivia this summer, I was convinced that the new paths out of this destructive, hateful morass we call neo-liberalism would come from those most marginalized by its greed and violence. Little did I imagine that one of the strongest signs of this direction would come from the belly of the beast itself.  Go...

[previous 5] [next 20]