michaeljohnson's blog

Phyllis Chesler’s reflections on how the radical feminist movement was powerful but also killed its own

How to destroy relationships, communities, and democracy

A major figure in the women’s liberation movement in the 60s and 70s, her dynamic flame burned out when she was only in her 20s. Her story dramatizes two dynamics that cripple radical movements.

How do we talk and think together coherently about love, domination, and cooperation?

An anthill. A beehive. A crackling campfire around which the cave kids could play, the cave elders stay, and the buffalo strips blacken all day

The blurb for a story in Truthout tells it. Dismiss the shame and blame, and cut to the strategic point:

Resistance From a Cage: Julian Assange Speaks to Norwegian Journalist Eirik Vold
Eirik Vold, Truthout:

A key element in movement building

We in the various change movements have our myths and dogmas, and they screw up how we approach our work and our longings for a different kind of world

A "grassroots" response to the question: What would it really take to give students a first-rate education

There’s a good graffiti story that goes with this title.The graffitti was "your karma ran over my dogma," but that story will have to wait for another time. The basic idea is not difficult: reality will make a mess outta of our theories, dogmas, ideologies. The 2008 meltdown is one example. Another is finding out that the other does not love me the way I think she/he should. This bubble gets busted ad infinitum.

More on the long, long perspective

We short-shift ourselves if we don't think in the long term, the really long, long term.

What I mean by the "yawning gap" between our potential and our practice of cooperation.

The point is to change the world, and to do that we have to become that change. Our political mission is a hugely spiritual mission of personal and collective transformation. More simply: learning to love.

There can be a creative tension between reform and change-the game approaches, if the focus is not on purity. [1]

Abstractions are guidelines and communication tools, not principles. Decisions are always connected to specific here-and-now situations. There is no principle that trumps all others. We are always balancing out one that is in tension with at least one other principle in the context of here-and-now needs, desires, and capacities. 

The Nation magazine ran a forum on “saving the Democratic Party” in its latest issue. The base article, written anonymously under the pseudonym L. R. Runner, is here and the responses to it are here .

Iceland's recovery has made the case for letting creditors of private banks gone wild eat the losses, and you can join a petition to the Congress and President.

There is a great need to re-invent the newspaper so it can serve the needs of particular communities everywhere. The Banyan Project is exploring the possibility of using the consumer co-op model for a community-based internet news service that would help communities advance their own interests.

Tell your Senators to support the credit union lending cap.

The Credit Union Lending Cap Increase needs your support

The situation in Quebec has escalated since February from a student strike over planned tuition hikes — effectively shutting down universities — to a state of generalized insubordination