3 plays
Whatever Happened to Gus
Combustication
Medeski, Martin & Wood
A foundation in Germany has analyzed the social justice records of all 31 members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), ranking each nation in such categories as health care, income inequality, pre-school education, and child poverty. The overall performance by the United States — which boasts of being an egalitarian society — outranks only Greece, Chile, Mexico, and Turkey. Actually, three of those countries performed better than ours in the education of pre-schoolers, and Greece did better than the United States on the prevention of poverty.
Our bottom-of-the-heap ranking in social justice confirms the economic and political inequality that the Occupy movement is protesting. It also helps explain why this grassroots uprising in America has spread so rapidly to more than 600 communities and has generated such broad public support. After all, our nation is fabulously rich, ranking well ahead of nearly every other OECD member in national wealth, so there’s no excuse for us sitting at the bottom of the list in education, health care, poverty, and other measures of a democratic and egalitarian society.
(Source: wilwheaton)
Urban artist David Flores and 92-year-old Hollywood photographer Phil Stern show at The Phil Stern Gallery show titled “The Beginning of an Era.”
STOP SOPA
THE ESSENTIALS:
- Summary and bill text of SOPA - H.R. 3261: link
- Summary and bill text of PIPA - S.968: link
- Congressmen who support SOPA and how much money in donations they received to support it: link
IN DEPTH:
- Companies that support SOPA - link
- Companies that oppose SOPA & PIPA - link
- Video: What is PIPA and how will it affect you? link
- SOPA 101: An Infographic - link
- Tech Law & Policy: House takes Senate’s bad Internet censorship bill, tries making it worse - Analysis of SOPA & PIPA - link
GET INVOLVED:
- Take Action Checklist to Stop Censorship - link
- Join @YourAnonNews and @AnonymousIRC and pledge not to tweet between 8AM-8PM EST (1300-0100 UTC) on 18 January [check your local timezone here - Use hashtags #SOPAblackout and #J18
- Add the following banners to your Twitter pic: “CENSORED” - link | “STOP SOPA” - link
- How to contact Facebook and Google to support the January 18 SOPA blackout - link
- Contact your local Representative with info and a widget to find them by EFF and Wired for Change - link
Daniel Ellsberg, who passed the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971 and so helped end the war against Vietnam, and who is now seen as something of a secular saint, said last week: “Bradley Manning no more deserves to face charges of treason than I did.” Now 80, Ellsberg has been arrested twice on protests against Manning’s imprisonment.
Echolilia
All parents love their children. But what do you do when you can’t connect with them? In my case, I started making photographs of, and with, my son Elijah, who has autism spectrum disorder. This series—the title is from “echolalia,” a clinical term for the mimicking aspect of his condition—shows the bridges we’ve built on our shared journey of wonder, discovery, and understanding.
We began this project when Eli was five. He was doing well at school but fixating on odd things, lashing out, speaking repetitively. My wife and I couldn’t figure him out. Then I started taking pictures of him around the house. It was an instinctive act for a photographer: Point your camera at something in order to make sense of it. But a curious thing happened. As I documented what Eli was doing and creating, he became interested in the images I was making. I was learning how he thinks; he was learning what I like and value.
We soon had a system. Eli would do something unusual, one of us would notice, and we’d make a photo of it together. The pictures we took over three years were more raw and feral than anything I’d done as an editorial or advertising photographer. And more personal. This is, after all, the story of a father and his son.
Timothy Archibald’s book, Echolilia: Sometimes I Wonder, was published last year by Echo Press. See more of his work at timothyarchibald.com.
An array of political science related courses, which, for example, include:
Political Philosophy: Global Justice
Power: Interpersonal, Organizational and Global Dimensions
The reason we have the NLRB is:
“…to protect the rights of employees and employers, to encourage collective bargaining, and to curtail certain private sector labor and management practices, which can harm the general welfare of workers, businesses and the U.S. economy.”
Head Down Mouth Shut Work Work Work
Acrylic and Spray Paint on Canvas 3’x2’
Missoula, Montana; Boulder, Colorado; and South Miami, Florida, have all done it, but you know it’s really catching on when the Big Apple jumps on board. The New York City Council will vote Wednesday to get rid of corporate personhood in a growing nationwide backlash against the much-maligned Citizen’s United ruling.
Passed on January 21, 2010, Citizens United gave corporations the same political rights as people, opening the door for nearly unlimited political spending on elections. Though there are boundaries keeping a candidate from receiving or soliciting money directly from a corporation, the shifting of the rules and the weaknesses of the Federal Election Commission make this increasingly difficult to enforce.
Critics, including those associated with the Occupy movement, see Citizens United as a danger to democratic values.
We “are expecting elected officials to heed the call for constitutional reform that makes clear that democracy is for people, not for corporations,” said Jonah Minkoff-Zern, senior organizer of Public Citizen’s Democracy is for People Campaign.
New York City would be at least the seventh state to take up a similar resolution, but it will take movement in Congress to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision on the case.
In 2011, four constitutional amendments to overturn the case were introduced. To pass, two-thirds of lawmakers in both houses must vote for the changes.
“People across the country are standing up to reclaim our democracy,” said Minkoff-Zern. “New York City should support this movement by passing this resolution.”
(Source: solitaryforager)
