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Do Ongoing Global Events Prove the World Is Ready for Revolution?

(ANTIMEDIA) Earth — Paralleling the increasingly draconian policies marking a worldwide descent into fascism, are massive protests — born in the Arab Spring, but arguably an angrier, more potent extension of the Occupy movement — indicative of an unprecedented tipping point.

We, the people of this planet, now stand together, gazing over the precipice whose murky depths of State repression demand we ask one imperative question: have we finally had enough?

“[W]e have lost the way,” Charlie Chaplin implores us to consider in his renowned and timeless monologue from The Great Dictator, because “Greed has poisoned men’s souls — has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.”

And now, 76 years after Chaplin cautioned us to scrutinize our collective humanity, that avarice — evidenced in imperialism championed by the U.S. government — has ossified a lazy apathy in the populace, of seeming impenetrable resolve. Until now.

Chaplin revolution

Though sparks of revolution have sporadically ignited people’s movements countless times before, our present tipping point most likely began with the self-immolation of a young fruit cart vendor in Tunisia in 2011. So incensed by an unjust law and a policewoman’s disrespectful public slap as she attempted to confiscate his only means of supporting a large family, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in front of a government building  — and set off the tremendous wave of protests for democracy and human rights, which came to be monikered the Arab Spring.

Occupy followed shortly afterward in a moment many believed with certainty would force an unparalleled shift toward freedom. But the government, keen to maintain its maniacal chokehold of control, also knew this — and infiltrated the movement to impart divisive infighting and confusion to effectively quash the threat.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Cincinnati’s experiment with an economy that works for everyone

Community members gathered for an owners meeting at Apple Street Market in February. (Facebook / Apple Street Market)

With the 2016 presidential campaigns underway, economic populism has taken center stage. Bernie Sanders, calling for a $1 trillion investment in a sustainable infrastructure jobs program along with publically funded health care and college education, has forced Hillary Clinton to offer vague support for similar measures, while even some Republican candidates, like Marco Rubio, have asserted the need to stop the “fall of the [American] worker.” Not content to wait for national politicians to follow through on non-binding proposals, 1worker1vote — a joint venture launched in 2009 by the United Steelworkers, or USW, and Mondragon USA — has been pursing a grassroots agenda to move populist discontent beyond protest and toward the building of new institutions.

The 1worker1vote network has developed and is beginning to implement a “union co-op” model, which calls for a business structure that combines worker, and sometimes community, ownership with union representation. With the model, 1worker1vote hopes to demonstrate the viability of a democratic economy, both in terms of ownership and management, capable of eventually replacing the corporate-managed economy that generates astounding wealth for those at the top while leaving nearly a quarter of the country living in poverty and half the population stuck in a debt trap with zero net assets.

“Profit should be for people, not for profit’s sake, and capital, while important, is subordinate to labor,” explained Ellen Vera, a founding member of both 1worker1vote and one of its member coops, the Cincinnati Union Cooperative Initiative, or CUCI.

The claim conjures images of the clashes between labor and capital of a bygone era, and, more recently, growing grassroots protest for a democratic global economy that began in 1994 with the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico and have continued during the first years of the new millennium with the global justice and Occupy movements.

 

 

Violent Clashes Break Out Next To New ECB Headquarters In Frankfurt As Thousands Protest Austerity: Live Webcast

Violent Clashes Break Out Next To New ECB Headquarters In Frankfurt As Thousands Protest Austerity

It’s not just Greece which is protesting the utter lack of reforms enabled by the ECB known as “austerity” – as of today so is Germany itself with the so-called #Blockupy movement. According tolocal media reports, the start of anti-austerity rallies in Frankfurt coincided with the European Central Bank opening its new headquarters, whose occupants are now besieged by tens of thousands of protesters, so perhaps #OccupyQ€ would have been more appropriate. Police said they expect around 10,000 anti-capitalist protesters, marching under the banner of leftist alliance Blockupy, to attend the rally, with a march through the city planned for later in the evening. The result is what according to a police spokesman “is one of the biggest deployments ever in the city.

As the photos below shows, several police cars have been set on fire, with windows being smashed and demonstrators throwing stones at police ahead of the massive demonstration on Wednesday, and as riots break out across Frankfurt even as thousands of police respond with water cannon, pepper spray and mass arrests.

 

Authorities say at least one officer has been injured by a stone hurled by an activist, near the city’s opera house.

Organizers have accused the police of sparking the violence, saying they set up a “civil war type scenario” to provoke demonstrators. “This is not what Blockupy planned,” spokesman Hendrik Wester told German news agency DPA.

Video footage has shown riot police running through the city, with at least one protester being dragged away.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

The return of Occupy London: this time it’s truly political | Share The World’s Resources (STWR)

The return of Occupy London: this time it’s truly political | Share The World’s Resources (STWR).

Occupy is back in London, UK, with a renewed focus on politics and an ambitious vision: to galvanise a mass movement for real democracy and establish a huge People’s Assembly to debate a list of specific demands for radical political reform.


This week, stalwarts of the Occupy Democracy campaign in Britain are continuing to stand their ground in Parliament Square. The heavy-handed police crackdown and evictions may have scuppered much of the plans for peaceful and creative demonstrations, but the re-emergence of the Occupy movement is a welcome sight in an increasingly unequal, stressed and disaffected city of London.

The goal of the new Occupy campaign is laudable and significant: to direct energy from current single issue struggles into “a critical mass that can radically challenge the corrupt unrepresentative [political] system”. Initially staged in solidarity with Hong Kong’s ongoing civil disobedience campaign, the aptly-named #TarpaulinRevolution aimed to galvanise a mass movement for real democracy by transforming the Square into a civic space where activists can re-envision and rethink the fundamentals of our society, not only through protest activity but also with a programme of talks, workshops, community assemblies, music and theatre.

– See more at: http://www.sharing.org/information-centre/blogs/return-occupy-london-time-it’s-truly-political#sthash.oKQsOREi.dpuf

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