The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question: How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question: How do we make democracy work for the poor?
How did the financial crash in Iceland inspire the Spanish Indignados and Occupy Wall Street movements? Why did the Arab Spring in North Africa end with Islamists running Egypt? How did the peaceful movement against a dictatorship in Syria degenerate into an all out civil war?
World famous Spanish sociologist, Manuel Castells, best known for his research on the information society, communication and globalization, talks about the emergence and characteristics of new social movements around...
“By using the simple slogan of the 1% and the 99%, the Occupy dynamic was able to raise questions of inequality. Globally the question often put to people is the issue of poverty. Poverty is quite different to inequality. When you talk about poverty, the reaction could be charity. One feels bad for the poor, you want to have soup kitchens, etc. But inequality doesn't really always give you the sense that the answer is charity, because inequality tells you that whereas some people are...
Laura Flanders of GRITtv sat down with professor and author, Noam Chomsky, to discuss his latest publication, OCCUPY, published in the Occupy Media Pamphlet Series by Zuccotti Park Press. During the interview, Chomsky talks about anarchism, racism, corporate power, the media and what it might be like to live in a non-market system.
"The US and Europe are committing suicide in different ways," says Chomsky. "In Europe it’s austerity in the midst of recession and...
Highlighting the birth of a truly global social movement against economic injustice, this superb documentary by Al Jazeera's Faultlines details the history of the Occupy Wall Street movement, clearly identifying its links to earlier occupations in Egypt and Spain.
According to Al Jazeera, Occupy Wall Street "has created a space in the American consciousness to believe in a different type of political power. One controlled, not by politicians or corporate money, but by people taking...
Nicholas Pell -
What a difference a year makes. It's hard to believe that this time in 2011, the world was abuzz over the Arab Spring. Flying in the face of the "death of history" narrative, the Arab Spring shocked the world by overturning some of its most entrenched authoritarian governments. Soon after, Occupy Wall Street became the American protest movement, both inspired by actions in the Arab world, as well as urging young Arabs on to further action. It seems pretty safe to say that the 21st...
Richard Pithouse -
In 1975 Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen's magnificent third album, crashed on to American radio with a dramatic lyrical intensity riding a rushing wall of rock and soul. Time and Newsweek put him on their covers in the same week and at 26 he found himself, along with Bob Dylan, as the newest avatar in the tradition of popular artists that, beginning with Walt Whitman and rolling on through Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly and John Steinbeck have brought a sympathetic poetic attention to the lives and...
