Keyword: activism

On Protest Hotspots and Analytical Blind Spots

Picture: United Nations Jane Duncan - Oukasie, Sharpville, Orange Farm, Siyathemba: images of violent protest action against poor service delivery have dominated the news in the past few weeks, signalling growing frustration with the Jacob Zuma administration’s failure to address the implosion of services in parts of South Africa. But all too often, media coverage does not help us to understand the complex forces that gave rise to such protests. Coverage tends to be episodic, focusing on the moment of protest, which does...

Vandana Shiva on Gandhi for Today's World

Picture: Franziska Seel David Barsamian - Vandana Shiva is an internationally renowned voice for sustainable development and social justice.  She is a physicist, scholar, political activist, and feminist, and recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, the alternative Nobel Prize. She is also director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in New Delhi. Author of many books, her latest are Earth Democracy and Soil Not Oil. She spoke in New Delhi with David Barsamian, founder of...

Reinventing the Political Space in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Picture: United Nations Prishani Naidoo & Ahmed Veriava - Growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s in South Africa, our imagination of freedom and its possibility would be shaped by the time. As children, the invisible participants of history, we discovered the world and its possibilities through the struggles of our elders and the passions our parents had fallen into.  This was the world of the liberation movement given to us in the militancy of the songs, slogans, and forms of protest that were exploding around us, as well as in the poems...

Bloomberg Interviews Mary Robinson

Watching the mainstream try to climb inside the head of formidable human rights advocate, Mary Robinson, makes for fascinating viewing. For human interest enthusiasts, Robinson talks about what inspired her monumental human rights journey, in part one (this clip) of the Bloomberg interview. Her exceptional rights-based analysis of politics, socio-economic and development issues in parts 2-6 of the interview, makes watching the entire program, well worth the effort. Find links to the rest of...

One Person Can Change the World

What can just one person do to change the world? "You get up off your butt and you take action. There is nothing magical about change. It is getting up off your ass and caring enough to take the first step to contribute to an issue you care about." says Nobel Peace laureate Jody Williams. Williams is the co-founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Her work contributed to the new International Treaty to Ban Cluster Munitions.