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I've wanted to write about these two books for a long time, but adequately summarizing them is a daunting task. I just want to say to every activist and organizer: READ THESE BOOKS . I don't want to represent the authors' ideas, I want you to read them yourself . No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane F. McAlevey and The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution by Micah White are both aimed at activists and organizers -- people who already believe in the need for social change and are trying to influence the world in a progressive direction. Both books identify pitfalls and shortcomings in the current ways we approach our activism, and they offer concrete ideas for change, along with theory and philosophy to guide our decisions. Both are beautifully written, powerful, and essential. No Shortcuts  focuses on the labour movement, but McAlevey's analysis could apply to any movement. The labour movement is an excellent lens through which to...

The deadline to join the NDP and vote for Niki Ashton is August 17 . Last night I saw something that shocked me, and today I did something I've never done before: I joined a political party. And I did it so I can cast my vote for Niki Ashton for leader of the federal NDP. * * * * I worked on Saturday, and was very busy, with zero time to check headlines or social media. After work, I was watching the Red Sox trounce the Yankees and idly tapping on my tablet, when I was stopped cold. Heather Heyer was killed when a Nazi rioter drove a car into the crowd. I am not easily shocked. Perhaps I think I am shock-proof. But the spectacle of an angry mob carrying torches and Nazi banners, openly attacking a group of peaceful protesters, hit me like a gut punch. I've been writing about the collapse of the US empire, the US becoming a third world country, the fascist shift, and so on, for a long time. It's not like the rise of the white supremacists came out of nowhere. And it's no...

Since I'm making an effort to put more of my thoughts here, I'm gathering up a bunch of my Facebook posts and responses. If we know each other on Facebook, apologies for the repetition. I find much of the analysis and commentary I've seen about the recent US election to be quite strange. Donald Trump has been elected President of the United States. That happened. Here's what didn't happen. 1. "The United States is a democracy. The people chose Trump, end of story." 60,467,601 US voters chose Hillary Clinton. 60,072,551 US voters chose Donald Trump. More than 100,000,000 Americans eligible to vote did not vote. More than 5 million Americans cannot vote because they are either incarcerated or have been incarcerated, and thus have been disenfranchised. There has been rampant voter suppression and vote fraud in both the primaries and the general election. The United States is also a democracy if you close your eyes and stop up your ears. Some views on winn...

I've spent the past several months reassuring my co-workers and baldly stating on Facebook that Donald Trump would not become President of the United States. The lesson for me and for many of us: never underestimate what angry, alienated people can be led to do. The racism, hatred, and violence that is always present in the United States, decades of hopelessness and downward mobility that have gone completely unaddressed, and a demagogue fearmonger unafraid to pander to the lowest strains of American life: and here we are. It would appear the system is less rigged than I thought. I thought the corporatocracy that controls the US would not allow this to happen. I thought Trump's presence on the right -- a huge boon to Democrats by shutting down left-of-liberal resistance -- would also drive moderate Republicans to vote Democrat. If either of these scenarios came into play, they were not of sufficient magnitude to overcome the popular discontent and desperation. I fervently hate ...

Another awesome athlete protest that I have no time to write about. I can only thank Colin Kaepernick for his courage. Joy of Sox speaks for me:  To Mookie Betts (And Others): The Right To Protest Has Nothing To Do With The Military .

Many years back, I used to blog about a phenomenon called fascist shift . I borrowed the term from Naomi Wolf 's essential  The End of America , but the concept was something I had been thinking about for many years. In brief, fascist shift asks, What if we're all looking for jackboots and Sieg Heil and tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, and while we're keeping our eyes peeled for a scene from a black-and-white newsreel, a different brand of fascism moves in and sets up shop? What if today's fascism is more insidious and less obvious - and what if it's dressed up in a democracy costume? What if while you're saying That can happen here  and But they wouldn't do that , it already has, and they did. When you scroll through Wolf's ten indicators of fascism , are there any not seen in the US? And have any of them been repaired or reversed under Obama? Not a one. Now, though, Donald Trump's presidential bid and the many millions of Americans who supp...

On the long list of anti-democratic policies the majority Harper Government has enacted, the Orwellian-named Fair Elections Act ranks near the top. More properly called a voter suppression law, the Act effectively disenfranchise tens of thousands of Canadians. The Council of Canadians has taken the issue to court, including an ongoing Charter Challenge , but those won't affect the upcoming election. That means there's only one way to lessen the effects: voter education.  Last night at the Malton Library, we contributed to that effort, with  #VotePopUp , a voter education program for new Canadians.  Some weeks ago, I learned that one of our libraries had hosted this program, and jumped onboard. I worked with an amazing community organizer, who has a bit of funding from Samara Canada  and Elections Canada, and copious amounts of know-how through the Peel Poverty Action Group  and her own nonprofit, Building Up Our Communities. I promoted the program through v...

I've just finished two truly excellent works of nonfiction: Wild  and Zeitoun . Both books read like fiction, with clean, clear writing and page-turning suspense. Both document almost unbelievable, out-sized events, in one case likely unique, in the other - horribly - anything but. I highly recommend both books. I didn't expect to like Wild . Something about the phrase "best-selling memoir" just turns me off. But when the book was chosen as one of my Library's "Raves and Faves," I was intrigued. Those are always excellent books. (I'm quite proud that all five of my Raves and Faves suggestions made the list!) Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail  is a story of perseverance and redemption. Her life unhinged, battered by loss and confusion, the author decides to undertake a wilderness backpacking expedition. This is no casual walk in the woods; she's chosen a trail for which experienced backpackers may spend a year in training and res...

Guest post by Allan: Tomorrow - Saturday, March 14 - there will be protests across Canada against Stephen Harper's latest assault on democracy and free speech - Bill C-51 ("The Anti-terrorism Act 2015"). While Harper states the bill would merely "criminalize the promotion of terrorism" and give the government the power to remove "terrorist propaganda" from the internet, left unanswered is who defines "terrorism" and "terrorist propaganda". The bill is written in such overly broad terms it could be applied to nearly anything the Conservative government wants to deem criminal. The introduction of C-51 comes on the heels of news that the Communications Security Establishment, Canada's spy agency, is operating a covert, mass surveillance program that monitors the online activities of millions of Internet users around the world. Ron Deibert, a professor at the University of Toronto, likened the CSE program to a "giant X-ray mac...

The heroic Edward Snowden, in his own words, via Jesselyn Radack, at the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee in Brussels. I thank the European Parliament and the LIBE Committee for taking up the challenge of mass surveillance. The surveillance of whole populations, rather than individuals, threatens to be the greatest human rights challenge of our time. The success of economies in developed nations relies increasingly on their creative output, and if that success is to continue, we must remember that creativity is the product of curiosity, which in turn is the product of privacy. A culture of secrecy has denied our societies the opportunity to determine the appropriate balance between the human right of privacy and the governmental interest in investigation. These are not decisions that should be made for a people, but only by the people after full, informed, and fearless debate. Yet public debate is not possible without public knowledge, and in my country, the cost fo...

One month ago, something happened that should trouble us gravely. Something happened that people who believe in democracy and free speech and an independent media and civil liberties and human rights should find appalling and unacceptable. It's old news by now; anything that occurs one month ago is ancient history. I wasn't able to blog about it at the time, and in a way that is good. Events of great significance occur - our rights continue to shrink, governmental powers continue to expand, fascism and police states continue to be normalized - and we rarely have a moment to process one slippery step before we slide into another. On August 18, 2013, a man named David Miranda was taken into custody at London's Heathrow Airport. Miranda is the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald. And Greenwald, you'll recall, is one of the two people with whom Edward Snowden entrusted his evidence of the massive domestic spy campaign being perpetrated by the US government, with the help...

Abby Zimet reports on Common Dreams: Days before Bradley - now Chelsea - Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for helping expose U.S. war crimes in Iraq, the Obama Department of Justice filed a petition in federal court arguing that the perpetrators of those crimes - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al - enjoy “absolute immunity” against criminal charges or civil liability. The filing came in a suit brought by Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi single mother and refugee now living in Jordan, who alleges that the planning and waging of the Iraq war under false pretenses constituted a "crime of aggression" under a law used in the Nuremberg trials. Meanwhile, after the revolution...

Revolutionary thought of the day: No healthy democracy can endure when the most consequential acts of those in power remain secret and unaccountable. Glenn Greenwald

I've been hoping to write about this for months, but the right post and adequate time never seem to arrive at the same time. Rather than put it off any longer, I'll pretend this is Tumblr or Pinterest or somesuch, and post it here without additional commentary. * * * * * From Save Jeju Now : The Save Jeju Now website is an up-to-date record of the ongoing nonviolent struggle to stop the Jeju naval base construction project currently being forced upon Gangjeong Village, a tiny town located on the southern tip of Jeju, the Peace Island, in Korea. Since 2007, The South Korean government has been oppressively trying to build a war base, falsely and absurdly named the “Civilian-Military Complex Tour Beauty Port”, on top of the village and its precious environment despite the opposition of a strong majority of the villagers (94% of voters). The base will be used by the U.S. military in its strategy to contain China in the Asia-Pacific through aggressive US missile defense system eq...

The Freedom of the Press Foundation has posted the leaked audio recording of Bradley Manning's statement to the military court in Ft. Meade. In it, Manning explains why he leaked more than 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks. FPF also has posted transcript highlights, in case you can't make it through the full 35-page statement. The US military "court" - that is, Manning's accusers - are trying to prevent public access to the proceedings, especially Manning's own statements. We can all help thwart their plans. Listen to the statement here. You can download Manning's statement, in part or in full, and embed the audio on your own website: Help Spread Bradley Manning's Words Across the Internet . For more information on the groups FPF is helping to fund, go here . For more on FPF itself, go here . A man speaks the truth about war crimes and murder, and he is persecuted, tortured, and imprisoned. The people who are responsible for those war crimes co...

Right now there are no American women who were of reproductive age prior to Roe v. Wade , the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Yet reproductive rights in the US have never been more threatened. 2011 marked the passage of the most state-level restrictive abortion laws ever. 2012 saw the second-highest. More than half of all US women of reproductive age (15–44) now live in a state that is hostile to abortion rights. Ten years ago, it was fewer than one-third. The Guttmacher Institute has produced a series of infographics to illustrate the state of reproductive rights in the US. They are encouraging allies to share them widely. What happens to women who want abortions and can't obtain one? We're finally getting some actual data to answer that question. Annalee Newitz at io9 reports. Public health researchers with the UC San Francisco group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) used data from 956 women who sought abortions at 30 different abort...