Click:art craft set THE GOOD NEWS: People who are new to activism can learn a lot from the social movements of the past. On March 9, the Republican governor of Florida, Rick Scott, did something that only weeks ago seemed impossible: He signed a bipartisan bill limiting access to guns. It was the first…
Month: March 2019
Limited justice for Syria on the horizon
Syrian being evacuated from Zamlka in Syria's eastern Al-Ghouta province outside Damascus,Syria, 25 March 2018. Picture by Anas Alkharboutli/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved. The recent attacks in Eastern Ghouta in which a swath of land housing a population of 400,000 was surrounded, shelled incessantly and later invaded have refocused the world’s attention on the events…
Can Surfers Leave Beaches Cleaner Than They Found Them?
With a world title on the line on the North Shore of Oahu, four surfers — John John Florence, Gabriel Medina, Jordy Smith, and Julian Wilson — battled it out at the 2017 Billabong Pipe Masters at the famed Banzai Pipeline, the third event of the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing and the final stop…
Aristides de Sousa Mendes: a light in the dark
Aristides and Angelina de Sousa Mendes with their first six children, 1917. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain. "It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't…
Ryan Hollingshead On His Near-Fatal Accident And Giving Back
FC Dallas midfielder Ryan Hollingshead is the winner of this year’s MLS Humanitarian of the Year, an award honoring a player for their athletics and their service in the community. Hollingshead has made contributions on and off the field since being drafted out of UCLA in 2013’s MLS SuperDraft. After FC Dallas selected him in…
From civil society to political society
Agnieszka (right) in the row of 'critics' in the foreground. Team Syntegrity 2017, Artchimboldi, Barcelona. For many years now I have been meeting activists in Poland and in Europe – people working in NGOs, social movements, informal environments and cultural institutions. Some are embedded in professional western NGOs that resemble corporations, some occupy theatres or…
No, NFL Player Protests Are Not Harming Papa John’s Pizza
Papa John’s, a chain restaurant that makes arguably awful pizza yet still boasts over 5,000 locations worldwide, saw its stock price drop by 11% this week, wherein CEO and founder John “Papa John” Schnatter saw his net worth tumble by $70 million. (Do not weep for Schnatter; Forbes still pegs his personal balance sheet at…
The Israeli algorithm criminalizing Palestinians for online dissent
Graffiti on the separation wall in the West Bank, Palestine. Photo by Wall in Palestine. Flickr.com (CC BY-SA 2.0) Some rights reserved.The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) arrest of West Bank human rights defender Issa Amro for a Facebook post last month is the latest in the the PA’s recent crackdown on online dissent among Palestinians. Yet…
The DACA Generation Has Their Stories Told In This Immigration Opera
THE GOOD NEWS: An old art form gets a new life that reflects the diversity of America today. While an elderly man rests his ailing body in bed, his son sits on a stool beside him holding a guitar in his hands. He begins to play. Above the plucked notes, the son’s voice rises, singing…
Nicaragua facing the horror of unbridled repression
Protests against state sponsored violence in Nicaragua. Source: Wikimedia Commons. All Rights Reserved. The repression of Daniel Ortega’s government against students and the unarmed civilian population that keep on protesting in the streets has left so far more than 300 dead, and the number of wounded and missing is rising daily. The trend has not…