And most fires don’t much care where they started.

I took the Midwest Academy Training as a Student organizer in DC 2007. I am moving to the New York area and Googled you. The search brought me to this message. I like to get involved in organizing against military spending, bring people back to the US, and holding Obama accountable to the exit strategy that I feel helped get him elected.

Can you make an recommendations on organizations to contact?

Power to the Peaceful

here is a like to a recent direct action by Tucson students who are being denied the right to ethnic studies.

http://tucsoncitizen.com/three-sonorans/2011/04/27/video-students-take-over-tusd-board-chambers-wisconsin-style/

http://rehistoric.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/american-press-ignores-bangladeshi-textile-fire-the-gap-brand-remains-unscathed/

You need to purchase a ticket in advance to reserve your spot on the bus. You can purchase a ticket here on this website, or you can come visit our table with cash or check at the Atlantic Antic. The DSA table will be on Atlantic Avenue between Henry and Hicks Street. We will be there between 10am and 5pm.

This is about more than an attack on one person. When Beck et al. attack the “Cloward-Piven strategy” – the idea that an organized and outraged public can and ought to demand change – they are really attacking our most basic democratic tradition. Piven is a target precisely because her work has always supported democratic politics from below. That’s exactly what Glenn Beck wants Americans NOT to do, and it helps explain why the right is working overtime to offer a counter-narrative.

They are using scare tactics, scapegoating, distortions, deception, lies and intimidation to immobilize or demobilize or better yet misdirect people to attack the right’s perennial targets – like progressive taxation, social safety net programs or a widened franchise – rather than the real causes of our social and economic ills. These tactics undermine democratic politics. And as last summer’s instructions to go shout down Congress people at town hall meetings turn to this spring’s instructions to “break their windows” and legislators are subject to death threats and mob taunts, it is imperative that all small-d democrats respond.

So please:

(1) If you are a journalist, columnist or blogger, please write about this. If you have journalist, columnist or blogger friends, ask them to write about it.

(2) If you are a teacher, please teach your students about our history of protest politics and the essential role that the democratic mobilization of people to demand change has played in our nation’s progress towards social justice and equality. Consider doing a teach-in using Piven’s Challenging Authority. How Ordinary People Change America.

(3) If you are a member of a professional organization, consider passing a resolution condemning the scapegoating, fearmongering, intimidation tactics of the Tea Party right and their attack not just on Piven and Cloward but on democratic politics.

(4) No matter who you are, go out and organize for the change we need in this country. Defend democratic politics by living it.

(5) Become a fan of the Piven and Cloward page on Facebook and urge your friends to do the same.

(6) Spread the word. Let folks know about whatever you do to respond (and let us know on the FB page).