sundance

Occupying the mountaintop–Tennessee’s prayers for the planet

While those of us following the Occupy movement online or on television may see it as a fairly conventional protest movement, complete with marching and chanting, a quick look at various encampments (or remnants thereof) around the country shows something quite different: alternative communities that value the input of all participants. Those communities themselves are the real protest: by living something quite different, even temporarily, Occupiers are able to highlight the absurdities of the current political structure.

Collection of Occupy movement posters

If you plan on heading to an Occupy protest in your local hometown and want to wave a message that’s a step up from the crude signs made from pizza boxes and random flattened bits of cardboard (or like the one that Anne Hathaway was spotted carrying recently) then head on over to Occuprint. It’s a well produced online resource that “showcases posters from the worldwide Occupy movement” and “is meant to connect people with this work, and provide a base of support for print-related media within the Occupy movement.”

Boobs and BP at Coney Island’s 2010 Mermaid Parade

In case you missed it, last Saturday was Coney Island’s 28th (if we did our math right) annual Mermaid Parade. It’s usually one great big, silly, public, burlesque parade of skimpy costumes, garish mardi-gras art and mer-related merriment. But this year had a political vibe to it like no other: protests against BP and the [...]

Corduroy skirts are a sin

It is hard being a homo these days. Every time I turn on the TV I see more crimes against us and more laws passed limiting gay marriage and then, on top of all that, we have to put up with hateful protesters. One of my gay brothers, Chris Pesto, a student at Syracuse, had [...]

Planting hemp seeds on DEA front lawn gets farmers arrested

Industrial hemp may be one of the most versatile and environmentally benign crops out there, but because of its relationship to marijuana, the cultivation of this crop has been banned in the United States since the late thirties. Last week, a group of farmers, along with David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, staged a protest in front of the Drug Enforcement Agency in Washington, DC, and were promptly arrested for planting hemp seeds on the agency’s front lawn.

West Virginia Tree Sitters Halt Mountaintop Removal Blasting

Two tree sitters with the Climate Ground Zero campaign have forced coal giant Massey Energy to cancel blasts on a mountaintop removal mine above Pettry Bottom, a Coal River Valley town in Raleigh County.

Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon”

A friend of mine recently posted this sharp and witty poem on his blog in between his busy days working on his MD/PhD in biomolecular chemistry. Like him, I was surprised by my unfamiliarity with what Slate called “one of the one of the finest, funniest protests ever recorded.”

20th anniversary of “Tank Man”

Today, June 5 marks the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests which is largely symbolized by this photograph of an anonymous Chinese man standing firm against a line of advancing tanks. Four other photographers managed to capture this moment–photographs which had be smuggled out of China past the state security.

NPR sits down with one of the photographers, Jeff Widener (whose version seen above is one of the most widely reproduced photographs of that moment) to discuss how his life was changed by that image.

Robert Redford: the importance of Earth Day

Image: NASA On its 39th anniversary, Earth Day still feels vital to me, but I know that some of you out there think that its time has passed. Every day should be Earth Day, you say. Choosing just one, single day to say you care about the planet we call home — what good is [...]