social movements

Positive Thinking in a Dark Age

by

I recall a Buddhist parable involving a stick that appears from a distance to be a snake, causing fear to rise in the perceiver. As the perception shifts upon closer examination, the fear subsides and the relieved hiker continues down the path. Understanding and awareness have a lot to do with how we feel and how we act. As hosts to the dominant cultural mindset (our collective understanding of who we are in the universe), our minds play a critical part in both perpetuating our dominant way of life and also in shifting away from it.

The Twelve Days (and Months) of Climate Justice Day Five: The Radical Intersectionality of Black Lives Matter

by

Before there was indigenous resistance at Standing Rock, there was Black Lives Matter (and before that, Occupy, and before that the Zapatistas, and before that, May ‘68… and at the bottom of everything, there’s a turtle standing on an island).

Cities in Transition

by

CommonsPolis— a civil society initiative to create dialogue between progressive municipalist movements and city governments, and European citizens — held an encounter described as “a common space for exchange; cities in transition and citizen struggles” in Paris on November 24, 2016…

Sustainable Activism: Managing Hope and Despair in Social Movements

by

In our own experience of movements for change from the 1970s onwards we’ve been struck by the way in which a failure to contain despair can lead to unrealistic hopes, built on a denial of and a flight from some difficult truths.