Bil’in Village – A Palestinian village that is struggling to exist. Its continuing non-violent resistance to illegal Israeli occupation has been met with brutally violent repression from the Israeli occupation forces.

Connexions Library
Recent Additions

Forget shorter showers. – Why personal change does not equal political change.

Why is Leonard Peltier still in prison? – Leonard Peltier is a political prisoner who has spent more than 33 years in U.S. prisons for a crime he didn't commit.

Which side are you on? – The conflict between the Iranian theocracy and the Iranian women’s movement.

Double Jeopardy: Carbon Offsets and Human Rights Abuses. – The immediate and dire human costs of emissions trading.

‘Free speech’ – as long as it doesn’t offend anyone – On the issue of free speech most of the right and much of the left are in agreement: they are for it ‘in principle’, but only so long as it isn’t used to express views that they find offensive.

War is Peace – It’s hard for Americans to grasp that Washington is a war capital and the United States is a war state.

Looting Africa. – Canadian company eyes Congo gold.

For a worker’s recovery plan – The causes and cures of a new Great Depression.

Connexions Event
Calendar

Connexions Event Calendar – Upcoming events, shows, festivals, conferences, summits and exhibitions with the focus on social and enviromental issues.

Connexions works to connect individuals and organizations working for social change with each other, with information and ideas, and with the wider community. Connexions Online features resources and organizations fostering democratization, economic justice, environmental responsibility, civil liberties, and community.

We are currently looking for a home for the Connexions Archive. Read more....

Connexions Library

Articles, books, documents, periodicals, films, and other resources on a wide range of social and environmental issues. Includes thousands of full-text online documents and a searchable catalogue with bibliographic information, abstracts, and links for more than 10,000 publications indexed by Title, Author, Subject, Format, and Date.

Connexions Directory

Groups working for social justice, human rights, and environmental alternatives. – Subject Index — A-Z Index.

Connexions Calendar

Upcoming events, shows, festivals, conferences, summits and exhibitions with the focus on social and enviromental issues. Add events to Calendar here.

Connexipedia

The Connexions Social Justice Encyclopedia with more than 1,000 articles on persons, events, movements, and concepts related to activism, radicalism, resistance, solidarity, and social justice. Includes a subject index.

Alternative Media

Selected progressive news websites and publications.

Manifestos – Programs – Visions

Selected political programs, vision statements and manifestos.

Spotlight

Publicity and Media

Raising awareness of your issues and getting media coverage.

Organizing

Articles and resources about organizing for change.

Connexions Archive Needs a New Home

The Connexions Archive needs a new home. Founded in 1975, the Connexions Archive is a Toronto-based project dedicated to preserving the history of grassroots movements for social change. Connexions exists to conserve and publish important documents and resources created by citizen activists over decades of activism. By digitizing them we make them available to a wider national and international public of activists, students, scholars, and interested individuals. We need to find a secure home for the Connexions Archive. Please contact us if you have suggestions, leads, or contacts for suitable space. See the fact sheet about the archive or the detailed outline. Phone: 416-964-1511 or write mailroom [at] connexions.org

The Connexions Archive: Building on the past to create a better future.

Recent & Selected Articles

No longer a real newspaper, new Globe betrays Canadians
The new tarted-up, glossy, colour Globe and Mail is many things, but it is not a real “news paper.”
The Crimewave That Shames The World
It's one of the last great taboos: the murder of at least 20,000 women a year in the name of 'honour'.
In the Aftermath of the G20: Reflections on Strategy, Tactics and Militancy
The tactics of the Black Bloc make it clear that, for them, it is more important to smash windows than to try and march with thousands of workers and engage them in arguments about how to move struggles forward or that the problem is capitalism. So how radical is it to trash a few windows? It depends on what one means by radical. For us, radical is about workers gaining confidence and consciousness to fight back, not just at work, but in solidarity with others. Radical is about developing a sense of mass power, organising based on moving others into struggle, winning others to challenge the power in their workplace or community collectively, beyond the individualization of our society. Radical is about going to the roots of the system # not trashing its symbols.
Summit Protests Are Obsolete
I can understand why a lot of folks went to the G20 protests in Toronto, sincerely wanting to stand up and be counted against savage global capitalism and its consequences. The problem is, almost nobody who didn#t participate, especially those who only heard of the protests through the media, has any idea what the protests were about, or why the protesters were there.
How the #black bloc# protected the G20
The black-clad mob in Toronto has left a lot of people not only in the general public but in the wider nonviolent social/global justice movements in Canada feeling disgusted, demoralized and dispirited. Just the result you want if your goal is to marginalize and stifle dissent. The blocistes, in other words, are the most effective tool on the ground for silencing the valid concerns of the broad social movements.
From Klinghoffer to the Gaza Flotilla
Under the Rome Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation of 1988, it is an international crime for any person to seize or exercise control over a ship by force, and also a crime to injure or kill any person in the process. The treaty necessarily adopts a strict approach. One cannot attack a ship and then claim self-defense if the people on board resist the unlawful use of violence. In other words, according to international law, the actions of the Israeli military were beyond the law and those involved should be treated no differently than, say, the Somali pirates who are also in the habit of boarding ships by force.
America's Complicity in Evil
Once again the US government has permitted the Israeli state to murder good people known for their moral conscience. The Israeli state has declared that anyone with a moral conscience is an enemy of Israel.
The Fire This Time: Burning Bridges
Some activists hold back from condemning tactics that are politically stupid and destructive, like the recent Ottawa arson attack by a self-proclaimed 'anarchist' group, because of a commitment to the doctrine of a 'diversity of tactics'. However, the original idea behind a diversity of tactics, that is, a variety of approaches to organizing for change, has been appropriated by activists devoted to property destruction as a media spectacle, who feel that they should be exempted from criticism by other activists, no matter how much their tactics serve to undermine the building of a broad-based movement against capitalism.
The People v. the Bankers
The Greek "bailout" is actually a bailout of the international banks.
The Global War on Tribes
The point is not that all tribal peoples pose an egalitarian alternative to neoliberal capitalism. Some (such as Indigenous peoples) certainly do have strong egalitarian principles, but many other tribal peoples -- such as in the new conflict zones -- certainly do not (particularly toward women). The salient point is not that all tribal cultures are paradise, but that they are not capitalist, and neoliberal capitalism cannot stand anything other than Total Control.
Haiti - The Broken Wing
The courage and compassion of thousands of people willing to enter a chaotic disaster zone threatened with aftershocks are very real. Compassion arises out of a recognition that 'their' suffering is no different to 'my' suffering. Joining compassion with reason means asking why over 80 per cent of Haiti's population of 10 million people live in abject poverty. Why less than 45 per cent of all Haitians have access to potable water. Why the life expectancy rate in Haiti is only 53 years. Why seventy-six per cent of Haiti's children under the age of five are underweight, or suffer from stunted growth, with 63 per cent of Haitians undernourished.
The Dead End of Climate Justice
The notion of climate debt, highlighted as the principle avenue of struggle for the climate justice movement, poses some large problems. Contemporary demands for reparations justified by the notion of climate debt open a dangerous door to increased green capitalist investment in the Global South. Everything from energy to agriculture, from cleaning products to electronics, and especially everything within the biosphere, is being incorporated into this regime of climate markets. One can only imagine the immense possibilities for speculation and financialization in these markets as the green bubble continues to grow.
Tactics of desperation: Using false accusations of 'anti-semitism' as a weapon to silence criticism of Israel's behaviour
The Israeli state and its defenders are increasingly attempting to silence critics because they are losing the battle for public opinion.
Doom and Gloom
Jermey Brecher says that the social roots of doom are part of a common pattern that we can observe repeatedly in history. People live their lives and pursue their goals by means of strategies that have been developed over time. But sometimes they discover their established strategies aren't working. No matter how hard they try, their problems remain intractable. The natural result is despair. But the awareness that other people are experiencing the same despair changes the context in which it is experienced. It opens up new possibilities. Perhaps the problems that we despair of solving as individuals can be addressed through some kind of collective action. When people begin to explore that possibility, the result may be a social movement.
Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition
David Harvey says that there is a lot of work to be done to coalesce various tendencies around the underlying question: can the world change materially, socially, mentally, and politically in such a way as to confront not only the dire state of social and natural relations in so many parts of the world, but also the perpetuation of endless compound growth? This is the question that the alienated and discontented must insist upon asking, again and again, even as they learn from those who experience the pain directly and who are so adept at organizing resistances to the dire consequences of compound growth on the ground.
Obama's "We Got No Money" Rap
Obama is deliberately precipitating another crisis on the advise of his chief lieutenants. Summers and Geithner are steering the economy back into recession so they can implement the same austerity measures and "structural adjustment" programs which have been used throughout the developing world. It's "starve the beast" all over again. As the stimulus dries up, revenue-depleted states will be forced to auction off public lands, resources, parks and other assets to the highest bidder. The banksters and robber barons will feast on the country's treasures while the middle class is crushed by the freefalling dollar, lost home equity, and persistent high unemployment.
A Direct Tax On Fossil Fuel Is What The World Needs Urgently
A direct tax on fossil fuels is the only realistic way to achieve the necessary cuts.
Canada Is Now To Climate What Japan Is To Whaling
Here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush. Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada.
Connexions Archive seeks a new home
The Connexions Archive, a Toronto-based library dedicated to preserving the history of grassroots movements for social change, needs a new home.
On Palestinian Civil Disobedience
Human rights organizations have documented the forms of repression Israel deploys against villages that resist the annexation of their land. Once a village decides to struggle against the annexation barrier the entire community is punished. In addition to home demolitions, curfews and other forms of movement restriction, the Israeli occupation forces consistently uses violence against the protestors # and most often targets the youth -- beating, tear-gassing, as well as deploying both lethal and #non-lethal# ammunition against them.
The Goldstone report and the battle for legitimacy
It may yet be the case that, as in the anti-apartheid struggle, the shift in the relation of forces in the Palestinians' favour will occur not through diplomacy or as a result of armed resistance, but on the symbolic battlefield of legitimacy that has become global in scope.
Carbon trading # privatising the world#s forests
The World Bank sponsored carbon offset program has faced widespread criticism for, in effect, privatising forests and allowing rich nations to evade responsibility for cutting emissions themselves.
Hypocrisy over Cuba#s #political prisoners#
Political prisoners and Cuba can be a confusing mix, in our time of mass propaganda. Three groups have attracted international attention over the past decade.
Meet the Real Death Panels
Harvard-based researchers found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.
War Is Peace
Because the United States does not look like a militarized country, it's hard for Americans to grasp that Washington is a war capital, that the United States is a war state, that it garrisons much of the planet, and that the norm for us is to be at war somewhere at any moment.
I Am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now
Given the complexion of the three recent federal parolees, it might seem that my greatest crime was being Indian. But the truth is that my gravest offense is my innocence.
Double Jeopardy: Carbon Offsets and Human Rights Abuses
Whether you#re a climate change denier or doomsayer, an avid recycler or rabid consumer of plastic bottles, there is one very good but little-known reason to oppose carbon offsets: their immediate and dire human costs.
The Corporate Stranglehold on Education
Rather than challenge the economic irresponsibility, ecological damage, and human suffering, and culture of cruelty unleashed by free market fundamentalism, higher education appears to be one of its staunchest defenders, uncritically embracing a view of itself based on a market model of the academy.
Killing America#s Kids
Why is the Secretary of Defense so angry at having the war photographed? Easy: Spin control. Spin is so very important in war these days. While America is only barely a democracy, still, if the public, the great sleeping, acquiescent, ignorant beast, ever gets really upset, the war ends. The Pentagon is acutely aware of this.
Crisis And Hope: Theirs And Ours
Overcoming the multiple crises means tearing down an enormous edifice of delusions about markets, free trade, and democracy that has been assiduously constructed over many years and overcoming the marginalization and atomization of the public so that they can become participants, not mere spectators of action.
The Globalization of Garbage: Following the Trail of Toxic Trash
Despite a near universal international ban on exporting toxic or hazardous material, most of electronic waste from the United States ends up in China, India, Vietnam, or in African countries like Ghana, and Nigeria.
Gaza#s Kite Runners
Gazan children#s kites are expressions of defiance, hope and the longing for freedom.
Echo Platoon
Echo and other platoons like it are grim yardsticks for measuring the desperation in which a military under immense strain is now operating. Looking up at that military from Echo's airless limbo, from a world of soldiers who have fallen through the cracks of a system under great stress, you can see just how devastating America's two ongoing wars have been for the military itself. The walking wounded, the troubled, and the broken are now being pressured to reenter the fray.
Media Capitalism, the State and 21st Century Media Democracy Struggles
Robert McChesney talks about contemporary media capitalism and 21st century media democracy struggles to understand and change it.
Why The U.S. Government Hates Venezuela
Having lost in the realm of ideas, those supporting capitalism must compensate by other means.
Food Among the Ruins
Detroit, the country#s most depressed metropolis, has zero produce-carrying grocery chains. It also has open land, fertile soil, ample water, and the ingredients to reinvent itself from Motor City to urban farm.
Confronting fears of Eurabia
Growing anti-immigrant and Islamophobic sentiments have been fueled by statistics that claim to show that countries such as Germany and France will have Muslim majority populations by the turn of the century.
How the World Depression Hits Orissa
The recession in the West is having a profound impact on the deep rural interior of Orissa.
What the Left Should be Learning From Iran
There are those on the left who mirror neocon thought: They argue that since Washington is in opposition to it, Iran must therefore be considered a #good# government, worthy of solidarity. Others argue that if the Iranian state offers social programs and even if it only somewhat resists global capitalism then therefore its violent and authoritarian actions can somehow be justified, forgiven or denied.
Unintended Consequences
It will prove difficult to separate speaking against members of protected classes, or criticizing their practices, from hate. The two things are easily conflated. Once enacted, hate crimes will become independent of specific violent acts. An eventual likely outcome will be that speaking against members of specially protected classes will itself become a violent act of inciting violence.
Grassroots Power and Non-Market Economies
People are organized across many sectors that have never chosen to step out into the popular movement before. For example, indigenous peoples in the last 10 years or so have made a determination that they could no longer organize just as indigenous but had to become part of the so-called anti-globalization movement.
Who Controls The Black Bloc Anarchists?
Whose interests do the violent actions of the black bloc benefit? The interests of the general public in using free speech as a means of political change? Or the interests of the authorities in providing the perfect pretext with which to crush and outlaw that free speech? You can#t overthrow the entire system by smashing one bank and starting a bonfire. Real political change takes generations of struggle, decades of building respected educational platforms, and a gargantuan grass-roots movement focused on taking power on the local level and expanding upwards. Throwing a brick through a window isn#t going to achieve anything other than making the vast majority of the general public despise you even more, and support the very systems of power that you are supposedly opposing. The black bloc sect exist to provide the media with violent footage with which to demonize legitimate protesters.
Noise Busters
Good neighbors keep their noise to themselves.
For a Worker#s Recovery Plan - The Causes and Cures of a New Great Depression
Economics is now not just for the experts. If anything is clear from the panic that started in mid- September, 2008, it is that workers must understand the economy. For clearly the #experts# have no idea what they are doing.
Forget Shorter Showers
Why personal change does not equal political change.
'Free speech' - as long as it doesn't offend anyone
On the issue of free speech most of the right and much of the left are in agreement, and so too are many liberals, activists, and human rights apparatchiks. They hold essentially the same position on freedom of expression # they are for it #in principle#, but only so long as it isn#t used to express views that they find unacceptable or offensive. What they disagree about is merely who gets to decide what ideas are unacceptable, i.e., who gets to censor who.
The Transition Initiative
People never need communities more than when there are threats to security, food, and lives. The Transition Initiative recognizes how much we need this scale now, because of peak oil and climate change. But beyond this concrete need, the lack of a sense of community has negative psychological impacts on individuals across the #developed# world, as people report persistent and widespread feelings of loneliness, isolation, dispossession, alienation, and depression.
Why make a fuss about the murder of a brown-skinned Muslim girl?
History gives us numerous examples of social movements which come, over time, to adopt positions directly opposed to the principles on which they were founded. It appears this has happened to the 'feminists' who seek to silence those who speak out about violence against Muslim women.
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine
Luxemburg#s discussion regarding capitalism and democracy speaks to the world we live in today. Imperial war, she wrote, shows capitalism in #all its hideous nakedness.# This bloody nakedness is not only essential to capitalist development, but depends on it. Indeed, it is the most cataclysmic and radical of all capitalist shocks.
The Moronic Sport: ORVs on Public Lands
I do not accept the premise that abuse of our lands is something that we must tolerate as inevitable. It is our land. It is our children's land, and their children's land. We have a responsibility to pass these lands on to the next generation in better condition than we found them.
Talking about promoting 'responsible' ORV use is like suggesting we ought to promote "responsible wife abuse" or "responsible child abuse."

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