Political movements

- Portland, the US capital of alternative cool
- Are electric or hybrid cars a green marketing myth, or a real solution?
- Is This the Most Beautiful Street in the World?
- Voices from the previews of ‘In Transition 2.0′ (video)
- When the Transition Movement & the Community Rights Movement Start Collaborating, Watch Out!

On February 6, journalist and activist Chris Hedges wrote a searing article on the Black Bloc. Occupy theorist David Graeber wrote an open letter in reply.

The Black Bloc first appeared in the 80s and has been with demonstrations across the world ever since. The Black Bloc is a tactic, whereby black-clad individuals wearing hoods and masks appear in the midst of a demonstration to trash stores, break windows, etc.

Not involved with Occupy? It's still important. Occupy is a wild card which could break through the stalemate on energy, climate and politics which bedevils the United States. It could also fizzle out. Or it could take a dark direction, as did some of the radical politics in the 1970s.

- The rising global protest movement: job insecurity and the "precariat" (Dr. Standing interview)
- NYT: Occupy Movement Regroups, Preparing for Its Next Phase
- We’re More Unequal Than You Think
- Punishing Protest, Policing Dissent: What is the Justice System For?

Outrageous, snarky, “madly engaging,” bileful—these are a few of the terms that have been used to describe author and social critic James Howard Kunstler. But he’s actually a great deal more than these things, as anyone who's really come to know him, even if only through his books and Internet postings, can tell you. His most personal writings reveal a human, vulnerable, wonderfully versatile, cheerful side that few people know exists.

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

That the real, physical world is the source of our own lives, and the lives of others. A weakened planet is less capable of supporting life, human or otherwise.

Thus the health of the real world is primary, more important than any social or economic system, because all social or economic systems are dependent upon a living planet.

In the countries of the Global South, women are the primary producers of food, the ones in charge of working the earth, maintaining seed stores, harvesting fruit, obtaining water and safeguarding the harvest. Between 60 to 80% of food production in the Global South is done by women (50% worldwide) (FAO, 1996). Women are the primary producers of basic grains such as rice, wheat, and corn which feed the most impoverished populations in the South. Despite their key role in agriculture and food however, women; together with their children; are the ones most affected by hunger.

- How the Occupy Movement Changed Urban Government
- Tweetin’ ’Bout a Revolution
- Richard Reich: The Downward Mobility of the American Middle Class
- How a Tragic Soccer Riot May Have Revived the Egyptian Revolution
- Chris Hedges and the black bloc

The financial crisis and the Occupy movement have challenged Left-Right distinctions and prompted calls for an entirely new economic order.

The next Marx will produce not a manifesto for the middle class. Rather, the new synthesis will fuse economics and environmentalism in a way that fundamentally reorients both disciplines. Marx pioneered political economy; Marx 2.0 will pioneer planetary economy. It’s not just about greening capitalism, as if enough solar cells and Prii will save the world. Our current economic system has reached its planetary limit.

- Put planet and its people at the core of sustainable development, urges report
- UN panel aims for 'a future worth choosing'
- UN paints bleak picture of sustainability
- U.N. pitches Rio+20 talks as a departure from political strife over climate change

Climate-change calamities, devastating for those affected, have important implications for how we think about the role of government in our future. During natural disasters, society regularly turns to the state for help, which means such immediate crises are a much-needed reminder of just how important a functional big government turns out to be to our survival.

Two new books on the Occupy movement, reviewed by Transition Voice's Erik Curren.

A day of hard rain and wind could not dampen the spirits of activists representing the 99% as they gathered at Justin Herman Plaza (dubbed Bradley Manning Plaza by locals) in San Francisco on Friday, January 20th, 2012, to mark the dark anniversary of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision with a day of action. Organized by a coalition of over 55 Bay Area organizations and dozens of OccupySF affinity groups, protestors disrupted business as usual with demands that banks end predatory evictions and foreclosures and that corporations lose the rights of personhood.

Caring about the air, water, and land that give us life. Exploring ways to ensure Canada’s natural resources serve the national interest. Knowing that sacrificing our environment to a corporate-controlled economy is suicide. If those qualities make us radicals, as federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver recently claimed in an open letter, then I and many others will wear the label proudly.

- Could Ecuador Be the Most Radical and Exciting Place on Earth?
- El Mundo: Cómo bajar de marcha sin perder el tren
- Le “Peak Everything” (ou la fin des haricots)

- New York Times writer Andrew Revkin on climate change: "Occupy wherever you are to help us have a smarter relationship with energy"
- You Got To Move: Stories of Change in the South (documentary on Highlander Folk School)
- My Path To Transition Organizing
- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking