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?
Occupy Wall Street received a surprise visit Monday from several leading Egyptian activists, including 26-year-old Asmaa Mahfouz. She is one of the founders of the April 6 Youth Movement, which is the group credited with helping to organize the January 25 protests that eventually toppled the regime of former president Hosni Mubarak.
Prior to the protest in January, Mahfouz recorded a YouTube video urging people to fill Tahrir Square. Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman spoke to her at Occupy Wall...
The Occupy Johannesburg protest took place on 15 October 2011, World Revolution Day, as part of a global call to action against corporate greed and economic inequality.
"Occupy" protests that took place worldwide on the day, have their genesis in the Occupy Wall Street movement.
SACSIS headed down to the Johannesburg protest and spoke to some of the activists and participants about their involvement with the growing global movement against economic injustice.
Editor's Note: You...
Fazila Farouk -
It’s always been understood that the one group with the greatest potential to bring about change is the youth. After all, it’s their future that’s at stake. And this year, young people all over the world have been at the forefront of news making struggles.
The one thing we should not forget about Mohamed Bouazizi, the young Tunisian who set himself alight catalysing the fall of dictatorships throughout North Africa, is that his immediate demand was about direct...
Richard Pithouse -
In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck's novel about the Great Depression, Tom Joad, the novel's central character, a man who has been made poor and who is on the run from the law, tells his mother in the climactic scene that: “I been thinking about us, too, about our people living like pigs and good rich land layin' fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin'. And I been wonderin' if all our folks got together....”
That wondering is a...
Modern capitalism has reached the end of its rope, argues Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University. Capitalism cannot survive as a system and what we are witnessing now is a structural crisis of the system.
In Wallerstein's view, the structural crisis goes on for a long time. It started in the 1970's and will go on for another 30-40 years. It's not a crisis of a year or of a moment, its a major structural unfolding of a system and we are in transition to another...
The third episode of Al Jazeera's must see documentary, Meltdown, looks at how the victims of the 2008 financial crash fight back. A protesting singer in Iceland brings down the government; in France a union leader oversees the kidnapping of his bosses; and thousands of families are made homeless in California.
Hordur Torfason, an Icelandic singer, leads the way in holding protests over the country's economy, calling for the resignation of the government and new elections.
Geir...
