by Ahjamu Umi A seventeen year old youth has been gunned down. It’s a tragedy that’s all too familiar to African people around the world. Whether it’s in Sierra Leone, Somalia, Haiti, or Sanford, Florida, African life has no value, regardless of who’s pulling the trigger. This is the reason you won’t see me engaging…
Category: Essays & Letters
Will Brazil’s Anchor Hold?
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By Alan McFarlane The renowned Brazilian journalist, Carlos Heitor Cony, writing in Sunday´s edition of Folha de Sao Paulo, recounted a dear friend and colleague saying in the 1980s, “We´ve lost our moral anchor, not because of the dictatorship or the possible crisis, but because the humanistic values of our human society despite our philosophies,…
DA and Portland Police Lack Continuity
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by Mungen Cakes and Big Jon The Oregonian article “Occupy Portland Cases Crowding Court System” by Kate Mather, (March 15, 2012) illuminates a disturbing lack of continuity between actions of the District Attorney and the Portland Police Bureau. Occupy Portland defendants are being charged with misdemeanor offenses, such as interfering with a police officer, criminal…
Sacred Economics with Charles Eisenstein
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by Illona Trogub “You are not poor when you have no money, you are poor when you have nothing to offer…” – Maria Choupis Maria Choupis, a founding member of a cashless goods and service network in Volos, Greece, is beginning to live in a sacred economy. Coincidentally, it’s a topic that packed over 300…
Back To The Future: One More Argument For Non-Violent Action
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by Emily Lehr “Hope remains only in the most difficult task of all: to reconsider everything from the ground up, so as to shape a living society inside a dying society.” –Albert Camus It seems to me that the magic of Occupy lies in its origins. Consensus, dialogue, reclamation of space—these are the ways in…
UPDATE: A Repairable Racism Within Occupy Portland
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Please See Below for Update By Ahjamu Umi A few weeks ago, I wrote two articles on racism within the Occupy movement. Although I, and several people who responded to my articles, supplied several examples of how racism exists within the Occupy movement (simply because racism exists in every aspect of U.S. society and Occupy…
I Give Up. Almost.
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by Angela Davis I give up. Almost. Watching the news lately I have tried to think like an independent, conscious person. I make an effort to investigate, fact check, and use a critical eye to see through the hype and canned political soup we are spoon-fed every day. Just today, I was struck by the…
Soldiers for the Disenfutured
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by Robin Ryan Aren’t buzz words really what we’re talking about here? Anarchy, black bloc, cancer, democracy, empire, fascism: These are labels. And while labels might be necessary to bring a sense of compartmentalized order for our brains to store and correlate information, how terms are defined play a fluid role in the sorting. Whether…
Small Meetings, Germinating the Seeds of Democracy
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By Vargus Pike There is a side of the Occupy movement that does not consist of street marches and confrontations with police. It doesn’t involve the occupation of parks or shipyards. It is a side that receives little to no press, but in the end may be one of the most important aspects of the…
The Other Side
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By David Glenn Cox There is a common story to our lives. It is a story of love and loss, joys and regrets. We all share in these things equally and we are all locked inside of our times. It began as a simple conversation about how much things had changed in America since the…
