New Clear Vision

From Rosa Parks to the ‘Walmart Four’

by Will Wilkinson

It was a real Rosa Parks moment on January 13 in Layton, Utah, when Walmart staff caught a convicted felon shoplifting a Netbook. They escorted him into an office where he pulled a gun, cocked it, and charged towards them. The four longtime Layton branch employees (Lori Poulsen, Justin Richins, Shawn Ray, and Gabriel Stewart), acting instinctively, disarmed him before he could barge back into the customer area. The investigating police officer reported that they acted in the “best interest and safety” of everyone around them.

A week later, Walmart dispatched a representative trained to handle situations like this with their well-known sensitivity. “You’re fired,” she told them. (more…)

Despite Harassment, Peace Activists Vow to Continue Work for Justice

by Randall Amster

On January 25, 2011, people gathered in cities across America to demonstrate against the ongoing harassment of peace organizations and individual activists by law enforcement agencies. In particular, these “solidarity actions” were focused on the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who had served subpoenas and raided the homes of people involved in anti-war and international solidarity work in Minneapolis and Chicago in late September 2010. From Boston to Los Angeles, activists rallied at federal buildings, collected petition signatures, distributed pamphlets, and peacefully demonstrated on street corners as part of the “National Day of Action to Stop FBI Repression and Grand Jury Witch Hunts.”

In Chicago, over 350 people assembled in front of the Dirksen Federal Building to protest U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s decision to subpoena 23 antiwar activists and order them to appear in front of a grand jury. In Minneapolis, more than 100 people swarmed the sidewalk at the downtown Federal Building, waving signs that read “Opposing war is not a crime” and “Hands off free speech,” denouncing the infiltration of their groups with undercover agents, and stating that they will not cooperate with the grand juries even if it means going to jail. Actions large and small were held in over 50 cities across the nation in a show of solidarity for peace activism and against official harassment. (more…)

“The Commons” — Lifeblood of Our Communities

by Jay Walljasper

Reflecting on the Rebirth of My Birthplace

by Raffi Cavoukian

A siren song is this Cairo freedom fire, the Tunisian spark now a roaring flame. A new Mecca in Tahrir Square.

I close my eyes and wander to the city of my birth, and I’m just eight years old in the heliopolis my Armenian family called home, playing in the Cairo sands, my father’s 1940s Studebaker winding up the road to the pyramids. And I’m now back in this moment, wondering what exactly is this social media liberation hour we’re in? The words come like this: (more…)

Replacing the Predatory with the Complementary

by Devon G. Peña

By now it is eminently apparent that both Left- and Right-wing politicians alike have it wrong when it comes to re-imagining the future of “making stuff” in the U.S. The question is not just: What do we make?  It is also: How do we make it?

We can begin to answer this by presenting an ideal type in the form of a purely heuristic “imagine that…” type of exercise. The conceptual distinction I wish to make is between a “predatory” economy at one end of the continuum and a “solidarity” economy at the other. I invite readers to engage this exercise of exploring both ends of this continuum, for the sake of analytical discourse and concrete possibilities alike.

Indeed, while the problems before us are manifold, it is equally the case that the answers we seek are closer at hand than it might otherwise appear. (more…)

In Search of a New Beginning … Before the End

by Randall Amster

Undertaking even a cursory review of the news queue evidences the apocalyptic overtones in our collective midst. In the most recent additions to the canon, 2010 ended with semi-sardonic coverage of the so-called “Snowpocalypse” and its aftermath, and 2011 began with perplexed musings over the “Aflockalypse” in which birds and fish seem to be dying in odd ways due to mystifying causes. Not long before, we had the perceptive invocation of the “Shopocalypse” by Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, and next year’s 2012 allusions promise to spawn a new generation of nomenclatural evolutions.

While we may be tempted to dismiss the suffix “-ocalypse” being deployed much like “-gate” as an all-purpose distortion device, on another level we can also perceive that its very utilization as both a linguistic tool and interpretation of concrete outcomes is telling about the times in which we live. We’re actually in good company on this, at least historically speaking, as the sense of looming apocalypse has been woven into the fabric of Western civilization since its earliest days of recorded reckoning. And there certainly has been no shortage of cataclysmic harbingers in the modern era, from the inception of cinema itself to the invocation of the “mushroom cloud” as part of political theater. This is, in short, our cultural talisman, and its influence upon us is palpable. (more…)

A New Lens and Lexicon for Navigating ‘Climate Collapse’

by Raffi Cavoukian

Are we tweeting while Earth burns? Is climate collapse our new collective Titanic? How do we best describe the survival struggle of seven billion in a way that connects with the public and with decision makers?

The science on global warming is clear and compelling. Earth is in serious climate crisis. That’s why many writers have recently upgraded climate change to climate collapse, climate catastrophe, the long emergency. To convey the climate threat fully, we need a new Story.

In a well known Greek myth, the very rich King Midas, who loves gold above all else, is granted his singular wish that everything he touches turn into gold. The gift becomes a curse when his golden touch kills plants, food and even his daughter, who is turned into a statue. Bereft and repentant, forsaking greed, the king begs for deliverance. His curse is lifted by a wash in the river. All he holds truly precious is restored. (more…)