New Clear Vision

Women Organizing Against Gender Violence

by Victoria Law

During the last decade, the growing movement toward prison abolition, coupled with mounting recognition of the need for community responses to gender violence, has led to increased interest in developing alternatives to government policing. Moving away from the notion of women as victims in need of police protection, grassroots groups and activists are organizing community alternatives to calling 911. Such initiatives, however, are not new. Throughout the twentieth century, women have organized alternative models of self-protection.

This piece will examine past and present models of women’s community self-defense practices against violence. By exploring the wide-ranging methods women across the globe have employed to protect themselves, their loved ones, and communities, this piece seeks to contribute to current conversations on promoting safety and accountability without resorting to state-based policing and prisons. (more…)

Nonviolence Rejects ‘Othering’ … and Topples Dictators

by Winslow Myers

Muhammar Khaddafy’s brutal reaction to the aspirations of his own people is becoming a textbook case in the futility of opposing the citizens from whose consent a leader’s political authority derives, however illegitimately. Instead, his stubborn egotism has led to absurd violence, even civil war. At moments like this, the world trembles with indignation and apprehensive hope.

The non-violent invincibility of people power, the argument of Jonathan Schell’s underrated masterpiece of political philosophy, The Unconquerable World, may be coming true before our eyes again as it did in the Philippines in 1986 and Czechoslovakia in 1989. We do not yet know which model will dominate in the short run in the Middle East and Northern Africa, the violence of state power, or the nonviolence of citizens seeking their rights as leaders abdicate peacefully. Citizen invincibility is not manifesting in all cases without additional tragic sacrifice to the callous will of dictators. But in the end it will prevail. (more…)

Can Ecological Democracy Trump Partisan Politics and Neoliberalism?

by Devon G. Peña

Over the past two and a half decades, environmental justice activists have tried to address the limits and contradictions of liberal democratic approaches to the protection of our most vulnerable communities. We have danced with the state but have also come to recognize how the existing framework for proactive transformational action is limited by the regulatory apparatus established by former President Bill Clinton through Executive Order 12898.

While E.O. 12898 proved useful to imaginative movement organizations and communities seeking to address the legacies and continued challenges of environmental racism, the status of the framework as an Executive Order also limited prospects for genuinely transformational change. It now seems clear that this is not the best framework to sustain our movement’s political influence, scientific efficacy, and mobilizing capacity. This essay charts the limits and contradictions of Executive Order 12898, summarizes prior efforts at legislating environmental justice, and closes with an analysis of the prospects and possible orientations of a new federal law for environmental justice. (more…)

If at First You Don’t Secede…

by Randall Amster

Progressive eyes have been rightly transfixed on Wisconsin of late, with the en masse display of “people power” directly confronting attempts to erode public infrastructure and eviscerate the leverage of collective bargaining that so many have struggled for over the decades. Coming on the heels of popular uprisings in Egypt and across the region, and with the potential for an ensuing General Strike in the offing if austerity measures persist, the “Wisky Rebellion” has captured the imagination of workers and activists, spawning solidarity actions around America and inspiring people in other states to push back against comparable rightwing machinations.

Arizona has been no exception, as hundreds gathered in Phoenix recently to show their support for protesters in Wisconsin, and to voice their displeasure at similar policies in their midst. If there’s another state in the union with a competing claim to be the frontline of reactionary politics gone haywire, it is surely Arizona. Beset by invidious legislation and a decimated economy, among other issues, the nascent “failed state” ethos that has taken hold in the desert is escalating even as the leading edge of a people’s movement begins to push back half a continent away. While Phoenix bears little overt resemblance to Madison, either geographically or politically, the national assault on sane governance compels us to explore the linkage. (more…)