United States

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.

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

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 .

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

We have to change the game, not simply the rules of the game.

The purpose of the working group, "is to take a comprehensive look at the economic benefits, innovative companies and emerging policy issues around the growing 'sharing economy.'"

The Union Co-op Model: this country’s largest industrial labor union teamed up with the world’s largest worker-cooperative to present a plan that would put people to work in labor-driven enterprises that build worker power and communities, too.

At a time when so many are so clear that the current system is not working—what might? Is it already happening? There’s more information about OurGoods.org at their website and you don’t have to be officially ordained as an “artist” to join it.

At the Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF), our approach has been to help nonprofit organizations develop the financial capacity to keep providing the programming their missions demand. The end goal of this work is the facilitation of social change, but the approach demands an initial focus on the welfare of individual organizations. But what if we approached the question from another angle? What if we started by focusing on the needs of whole communities and then asked what resources individuals and organizations - including nonprofits - could provide to fulfill those needs?

SolidarityNYC has worked to "challenge the social justice movement to take up grassroots economic community development" as a way of building solidarity and concrete alternatives to capitalism.

 a number of commentaries on OWS and beyond that I found especially good