Stuck behind a truck from Galt's Gulp

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I am not actually a supporter of Mayor Bloomberg's edict. But I gotta say, the Protests™ are starting to get more annoying than the rule.

Or, put another way ...

(pic. source: Brain Rage)

Euphemism of the Day

The NYT is calling the astroturf group formed by Big Soda "grassroots-style."

Pretty good shirt, though:

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Two Graphic Reminders

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Pics swiped from Strong Intelligent Women Choosing Equality & Freedom Instead Of Religion, on Facebook, via Rita Matthews.

Subvertising

Here's a five-minute talk (because that's all Ignite allows!) by Tae Phoenix, aka Teresa Valdez Klein. It's about spending surprisingly tiny amounts of money to get your message out there, for example, on Facebook.

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(h/t: Baratunde Thurston on TWiT #339, via Don McArthur in G+ comments)

Not sure how I feel about this, but ...

... it certainly bears further contemplation, and I definitely sympathize with the underlying motivations.

Ban The Box

Our “Ban the Box” campaign calls for the elimination of the questions about past convictions on initialpublic employment applications. Our aim is to win policy change through grassroots mobilizations, and to build a political movement of formerly-incarcerated activists. This campaign will allow us to target and challenge the many “boxes” on a variety of applications (i.e. employment, housing, social services, etc.) we are required to check that supports structural discrimination against formerly-incarcerated people.

Banning the box on public employment applications will contribute to public safety because it will promote stable employment in our communities. Communities of color and poor communities already are targeted by mass imprisonment, racial profiling, school closures, and low employment rates. People coming out of prison or county jails need to be able to feed their families, pay rent, and reunite with their families, and return their lives as productive members of the community. People with jobs and stable community lives are much less likely to return committing crimes in order to survive.

Ban The Box is a campaign being conducted by All Of Us Or None.

(h/t: Rexi44)

If you're feeling down on what we call our political process, don't watch this ...

... thing I randomly hopped to on the YouTube. But it is quite well done, I think.

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What do you think? Seems dated? Or (discouragingly) current?

Next time you're ready to sneer at a call for collective action ...

... watch this:

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Thanks for all of your help.

(h/t: Progressive Change Campaign Committee)

Hello, remote readers!

To those of you who are kind enough to follow this blog by RSS, Facebook, G+, FriendFeed, and so on, how about dropping on over to the site itself today, 18 January 2012?

Something to think about. Something to act on.

[Update 19 January 2012] Thank you if you dropped by, and thank very much if you participated in any way.

"Cute Cats and the Arab Spring"

[Update] Audio-only file now available for download, if you prefer. See this post.

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"When Social Media Meet Social Change"

Here is the 2011 Vancouver Human Rights Lecture, given by Ethan Zuckerman. Even if you think you can't stand to hear one more word about Facebook and Twitter saving the commoners from the ruling classes, I encourage you to give this a chance. Despite his obvious enthusiasm for new media and what it may afford in bringing about monumental change, Zuckerman is quite realistic about the limitations and the risks. Also, he hates the word "viral."

It's about fifty-four minutes long, plus about thirteen minutes of Q&A at the end. If you'd rather download an MP3 of the highlights, see Cory Doctorow's tweet or right-click and save this directly.

Without further ado ...

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Related links: Ethan Zuckerman's blog and a cute cat.

Is Chick-fil-A worse than Hitler?

(In case you missed the tweet and the other tweet.)

Petition here.

Line of the Day: 2011-12-01

Swiped from Lee Fang's Second Alarm.

Wouldn't it be great if this was how peace in the Middle East was finally achieved?

A message of solidarity with the Egyptian blogger Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, from about 40 Israeli women, organized by Or Tepler (or, perhaps, Or Templar):

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I feel like the governments don't represent the enlightened, simple people who want peace.

(h/t: Some Guy on Fark | pic. source | photo credit: Anat Cohen)

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In further developments, Aliaa Elmahdy is now calling upon Egyptian men to wear the hijab.

And then there's this, which I swiped from Aliaa's site, just because I like it:

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Here is something to contemplate on a Sunday morning

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Pic via Ken Layne, who also has video posted. Along with some righteous words.

[Added] A partial screengrab from James Fallows's post, which is also well worth reading in its entirety:

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More from Fallows:

This Occupy moment is not going to end any time soon. That is not just because of the underlying 99%-1% tensions but also because of police response of this sort -- and because there have been so many similar videos coming from cities across the country.

As a wise friend of mine predicted about a week ago.

The above is not a one-off. See, for example, Joshua Holland's report, "Caught on Camera: 10 Shockingly Violent Police Assaults on Occupy Protesters."

[Added2] In summary.

Black and Blitt

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(artists: R. Black | Barry Blitt)

Line of the Day: 2011-11-18

This Is Not Your Fucking Movement; This Is Our Fucking Movement:

Let's be honest here: the march this morning to shut down Wall Street was useless if its goal was to, well, shut down Wall Street. The New York Stock Exchange is, more or less, a show. Multi-million dollar financial transactions are not done by crazy, sweaty guys on a loud, chaotic floor. They're done digitally. So whether or not the secretaries and junior fuckbag executives and janitors got into work didn't stop a single transfer of funds from one rich asshole to another. It pissed off some people and got the cops more overtime.

But, as ever, as ever, since it's started, everyone, from The Daily Show to Diane Rehm, right, left, and middle, has insisted that Occupy Wall Street conform to some readily defined paradigm of what a protest movement needs to be. Essentially, they are echoing something that Karl Rove drooled out the other day when he asked protesters at a speech he giving at Johns Hopkins University, "Who gave you the right to occupy America?" The real question is "Who took that right away?"
    -- The Rude Pundit

Happy American Censorship Day!

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More info at AmericanCensorship.org. Write to your Congressional representatives at FightForTheFuture.org/pipa.

[Update] Overlay banner now removed. Thanks to all who wrote, signed, and read.

Cover story

“Fighting Back,” by Barry Blitt. From the New Yorker, 24 Oct 2011.

Or, to put it another way:

Another boyhood hero lost, who, it turns out, was disturbingly not that much older than me

Gil Scott-Heron, who was one of the first people outside of my immediate family to raise my consciousness, has died at the age of 62. Back when I was a kid and first learned of him thanks to a lucky purchase from a sale bin at the record store, he was … you know, a grown-up, so therefore, incomprehensibly older.

The NY Times says, "His death was announced in a Twitter message on Friday night by his British publisher, Jamie Byng." (This looks like it.)

I wonder what the man most famous for his poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" would make of that. More to the point, I wonder what he thought of the immense amount of social media coverage of the Arab Spring and other recent uprisings. I hope that made him happy, although I can well imagine he had mixed feelings about it.

Here is a live recording -- the original version, I think -- of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" where he is accompanied only by drums (via Peter Rothberg).

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Here is the version I grew up with, where he is accompanied by a full band.

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Nice collection of images there by spuddy83. I liked that he is evidently too young to know who "Julia" was. (It is explained to him several times in the comments.) That speaks to the staying power of the poem, as does the number of other versions, covers, mashups, etc., to be found on YouTube.

The Guardian's obit is also worth a look.

(h/t: the "In the news" section on the front page of Wikipedia as of a few minutes ago)

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[Added] Thanks to AemJeff in the Comments for reminding me of this one.

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[Added2] Roy Edroso has a brief, smart remembrance and some recommended links.

Revenge Protest Sign of the Nerds

I adore this:

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Quite appropriately placed in Jon Chait's fine post, "Liberalism's Bumper Sticker Problem." Obtained from Owen Abroad.

[Update 2012-02-25 09:57] Changed image URL -- new hosting site for image.

Protest!

Peter Rothberg of The Nation emails to say, in part:

Dorian Lynskey's comprehensive new book, 33 Revolutions Per Minute, details the history of the protest song in America and around the world. It's a bracing and informative survey, even if you're familiar with the topic, and it happily got us at The Nation thinking about our favorite all-time protest songs.

Seriously picking a top-ten is an impossible task, but in the interests of getting the conversation started, here are my choices.

Please tell us what you consider the single best protest song of all-time. We'd love to publish your choices in a special post at thenation.com.

I'm not sure that this is my all-time favorite, especially compared to some of Rothberg's choices (1, 4, and 9, especially) but I filled out the form to nominate this for inclusion on any short list: Country Joe and the Fish, "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag."

Live solo version:

Studio version:

(x-posted)