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Bright years of resurgence: The revolutionary potential of #BlackLivesMatter.
African American studies scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor examines the persistent inequalities facing Black Americans generations after the contradictory political gains of the Civil Rights Movement, and explains how the Black Lives Matter movement has the potential to challenge not just police brutality, but America's political leadership and the pervasive roots of inequality itself.
Keeanga is author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation from Haymarket Books.
Trump's violent tabloid spectacle lands on the Midwest.
Writer Sarah Kendzior reports back from a trip to the absurd theater of Donald Trump's St. Louis rally, where a click-hungry newsmedia and Midwesterners abandoned by political elites set the stage for a bizarre, contradictory spectacle reminiscent of Central Asian dictatorships.
Sarah wrote the recent articles Who won the Midwest? Not the people who live in it for the Globe and Mail and Trumpmenbashi: What Central Asia’s spectacular states can tell us about authoritarianism in America for The Diplomat.
From uprising to coup: Narratives clash over Brazil's political unrest.
Live from São Paulo, Brian Mier explains how the narrative of a "people's uprising" against Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff is crumbling to reveal the reality of the situation - a coup engineered by international business interests, the rightwing of the judiciary and the country's economic and media elites bent on privatization of state resources - and why Dilma's recent neoliberal concessions have many on Brazil's left rallying to save the democtratic process itself, not the president.
Brian sent us the the Brasilwire piece Overthrowing Dilma Rousseff: It’s Class War, and Their Class is Winning and A Coup is in the Air: The Plot to Unsettle Rousseff, Lula and Brazil from The Wire to explain what's really happening in Brazil.
How nonviolent confrontation wins public opinion and political power.
Mark and Paul Engler survey half a century of political progress to explain how rights and freedoms are seized by activists, not granted by politicians, and why claiming the future we want - from climate action to economic equality - requires an understanding of past protest actions, and a renewed commitment to organization, innovation and nonviolent confrontation.
Mark and Paul wrote the new book This is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century from Public Affairs Books.
Five years of bloodshed, bombs and revolutionary work in Syria.
Writer Shiyam Galyon recounts the first five years of the Syrian revolution - from the hopeful first reformist protests, to the remarkable perseverance of civil society amidst incredible violence - and explains why Western governments must understand that the path to a peaceful, pluralistic, Syrian democracy begins with recognizing the voice, and leadership, of Syria's revolutionaries.
Shiyam is author of the article Syrian Protests Bloom During Lull in Bombings posted at Warscapes.
It lols for thee: Laughing in the face of other people's deaths.
Jeff Dorchen considers the death of Garry Shandling, and considers the deaths of everyone else he isn't considering in Iraq, and keeps considering other unpleasantries like Jerry Seinfeld's rich people car show, the relative grimness of Pauly Shore, invasion, soccer, the commonality of death and and the shortness of laughter.
