Solidarity

The annual gathering of the World Social Forum (WSF) – the left’s response to the elitist annual Davos World Economic Forum  – runs in Montreal from August 9 to 14 with several thousand people from dozens of countries attending.
More than 1,000 self-managed sessions have activists discussing and creating progressive alternatives to traditional political, economic and social policies that they will take back to their own countries.

Illegally I stepped upon the Royal Family’s castle grass in central Copenhagen during the flag day ceremony (September 5, 2013) honoring Danish voluntary soldiers’ return from their war in Afghanistan. My sign read and my voice shouted: “Stop the War! War Criminal Mercenaries!”

TRNN’s Kwame Rose interviews Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on the last day of the Democratic National Convention about why she thinks she can mobilize voters who were inspired by the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Somewhere, maybe on the other side of the world from you right now, countless people are sitting locked in small rooms because of things they wrote. It’s a strange idea. How could the written word be so dangerous that the person responsible for it should be placed in a box, locked away from society along with arsonists and murderers? So many of these journalists and artists are unknown. They do not have hashtags. But one of them, Ashraf Fayadh, has become a rallying call around the world.

The Jamaican police are very brutal in their policingof the African working-class in Jamaica.  However, oppressive conditions tend to give birth to resistance.

Recently I went on a 15 day visit to Russia organized by the Center for Citizen Initiatives.  The group visited Moscow, the Crimean peninsula, Krasnodar (southern Russia) and St. Petersburg.  In each location we met many locals and heard diverse viewpoints. CCI has a long history promoting friendship and trying to overcome false assumptions between citizens of the USA and Russia. The founder Sharon Tennison has focused on making people-people connections including the business community, Rotary clubs, etc..

Last year, I wrote an article that made many readers unhappy. As soon as it was published, I began receiving messages of abuse and angry, threatening calls.
I hesitated about reporting the threats to the local police in Washington State and, in the end, I resolved to file the unpleasant experience under a burgeoning folder of ‘controversies’ caused by my writings. The title of the article was: “‘I Can’t Breathe’: Racism and War in America and Beyond.”

Photo courtesy of Judith Gilles
On October 10, 2015, over 100 Turkish activists were killed by twin explosions at a peace rally in Ankara, the country’s capital. Three months later, 10 were killed in a popular tourist area in Istanbul. Then 28 in a military convoy. Then 37 in a public square. Then 4 in Istanbul. Then 11 in Istanbul. Then 45 in Istanbul.

This week we unpack the historic #Brexit vote in the UK, which has sparked a political crisis and generalized a populist anti-immigrant sentiment.
For the musical break, we’ve got Caxton Press, with Broken Dreams.

For the sake of brevity, the posting is all about pushing back into the amnesic chambers of the North American mind, dendrites rewired to believe the world is a place where only one species – Americas Consumo-Erectus – is allowed to live with life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and me-myself-and-I religion.