Peter Rothberg

Poorest Countries Hit Hardest by Climate Change

Peter Rothberg on February 6, 2012 - 4:00pm ET

One of the many terrible ironies of the climate change crisis is that the nations that have contributed the least to the problem are the ones who are now on the frontlines working hardest to prevent consequent disasters.

In this short video, Rushanara Ali, the British Labour Party’s Shadow Minister for International Development, returns to Bangladesh, where she was born, to witness innovative local adaptation strategies to cope with climate change supported by CARE Bangladesh.

New Film Takes on Komen Foundation and 'Breast Cancer Industry'

Peter Rothberg on February 3, 2012 - 3:49pm ET

With the most fortunate timing a political doc can ever hope for, Pink Ribbons Inc. opens in Canada today and will soon be slated for US dates.

A feature documentary based on Dr. Samantha King’s book Pink Ribbons Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy, the film takes the Susan G. Komen Foundation to task for its fiscal management and marketing alliances with multinational corporations and argues that the devastating reality of breast cancer, which marketing experts have labeled a “dream cause,” has been hijacked by a shiny, pink story of success.

As the doc recounts, breast cancer has become the poster child of corporate cause-related marketing campaigns. Countless women and men walk, bike, climb and shop for the cure. These days you can row and jump for the cause. You can be a warrior in pink by driving a Ford you’ve pumped with pink gasoline, tote a pink hand gun, bake a pink cake in your pink stand mixer and, later, wipe yourself clean with pink premium toilet tissue.

Each year, these efforts raise millions of dollars in the name of breast cancer, but where does this money go and what does it actually achieve? The film takes on these questions and argues that it’s time to take off the rose-colored glasses and repoliticize the discussion.

Challenging Arizona's Ban on Ethnic Studies

Peter Rothberg on February 1, 2012 - 3:02pm ET

In January 2011, Arizona state Attorney General Tom Horne declared the Tucson Unified School District MAS (Mexican American Studies) program illegal. This despite the curriculum’s astonishing success in graduating 100 percent of its students from high school and obtaining college placement for 82 percent of its alumni.

Over the past year, teachers, students and administrators have come together to challenge Horne’s ruling, but on this past January 10, the TUSD school board voted four to one to immediately cease all MAS classes.

Horne’s decision entailed the widespread removal of select books that were used in the curriculum. The list of banned books is extensive, includes important Latino authors and activists’ books that were banished from the school system and has provoked particular outrage in Arizona and beyond.

Adding insult to injury, officials recently went into schools during the school day in front of students and “confiscated” seven books from the classrooms deemed to promote “ethnic resentment.” Among them were several best-selling classics including Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire, and Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, by Bill Bigelow.

My colleague Habiba Alcindor penned a good post detailing the furious and forthright responses of numerous activist groups to Arizona’s efforts to censor ethnic studies.

The Education for Liberation Network and its affiliated Teacher Activist Groups (TAG) have been particularly active. Starting today, February 1, the first day on which the TUSD must comply with this law, TAG is coordinating a month of nationwide teaching workshops about the banned MAS program.

TAG has pulled together a wealth of resources on its website, including sample lesson plans from the MAS curriculum as well as creative ideas for exploring this issue with students of all ages. Pledge your support, tell your own story and download and share the curriculum. Whatever happens in Arizona, we can keep the ideas and values of MAS alive by teaching them in our own classrooms, community centers, houses of worship and homes.

At the same time, politely implore Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and Attorney General Horne to rescind HB 2281 banning the indisputably successful MAS program.

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Help Peaceful Uprising Rebuild

Peter Rothberg on January 26, 2012 - 3:52pm ET

Peaceful Uprising is the group founded by Tim DeChristopher, who was hauled off to prison for speaking out against the corrupt relationship between our government and the fossil fuel industry. The group was absolutely critical to the success of the anti-Keystone pipeline protests this past summer. In fact, because foundations demand a credible “fiscal sponsor” when a group is small and with none of the larger environmental groups wanting to be seen as officially endorsing civil disobedience, all the funding behind the Keystone protests went through PeaceUp, because it was willing to take the risk.

Its reward? Peaceful Uprising recently discovered that it was one of 200 nonprofit projects, under the fiscal sponsorship of something called the International Humanities Center, that have been financially wiped out in an astonishing act of apparent fraud. (This post has the details.) In short: International Humanities Center, (a 501(c)(3) non-profit based in California) spent the money donated to Peaceful Uprising on its own, highly suspicious operating costs.

For the last few weeks, Peaceful Uprising has been reaching out to as many other IHC projects as possible (some of which are working to bring basic needs to people in war-torn countries in the global South) in order to lead a unified response. A coalition has now submitted a request for an investigation to be conducted by California public officials.

With little hope of recovering the stolen money, the group has moved under a trusted local nonprofit umbrella, Living Rivers, and is in the process of researching what it takes to become its own autonomous non-profit structure.

With our support, Peaceful Uprising will rebuild and continue to push harder in the fight against climate change. An extremely transparent organization, here’s what the group plans to do with whatever funds it can raise in 2012:

1. Continue work with the Occupy movement.
2. Continue working with organizers of upcoming escalations of the movement, bringing a voice to PeaceUp’s Core Principles.
3. Keep pushing the fight against the tar sands on the ground in Utah.
4. Continue to educate our community in Utah on the tyranny of Rio Tinto’s Kennecott through our Rio Tinto Truth campaign.
5. Continue to bring song and street theatre as tools for creating social change and building communities of resilience and solidarity.

DONATE here!

More ways to help right now:

Spread this post via Facebook & Twitter and blast it out to your networks via email.

Implore friends, family and colleagues to donate… any amount is helpful.

Brainstorm and email any creative ideas to grow the movement.

Join the group’s mailing list.

Finally, watch this video with DeChristopher, filmed in 2011 by my former colleague Kevin Gosztola, in which Peaceful Uprising’s founder explains how environmental activists are using civil disobedience techniques learned from earlier American social movements to take bold action to resist the anti-environment status quo.

Top Ten Civil Rights Songs

Peter Rothberg on January 12, 2012 - 7:29pm ET

In honor of Monday's national holiday marking the birth of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., I embarked on the impossible task of selecting a top ten list of songs about civil rights. The theme has resonated deeply with generations of artists of all stripes and inspired considerable musical tribute so this list is meant simply as a starting point for discussion (and listening!) Please use the comments field below to let me what I missed.

In random order:

1. Mavis Staples, We Shall Not Be Moved

2 The Impressions, People Get Ready

3. Sam Cooke, A Change is Gonna Come

4. Nina Simone, I Wish I Knew (How It Would Feel to be Free)

5. Phil Ochs, Here's to the State of Mississippi

6. Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A Changin'

7. Sweet Honey in the Rock, Eyes on the Prize

8. Gil Scott-Heron, 95 South (All of the Places We've Been)

9. The Roots, Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round

10. The Staples Singers, Freedom Highway

Occupy Congress on #J17

Peter Rothberg on January 10, 2012 - 1:40pm ET

In its first direct engagement with the federal government, the Occupy movement will take its collective national might to Washington, DC, on Tuesday, January 17. People are planning to mass at West Front Lawn at Capitol Hill at 9:00am, followed by a rally, teach-in, vigil, protest action and, of course, an evening Occu-Party. There are also concurrent meetings with individual members of Congress throughout the day. Organizers are encouraging people to contact their own legislators directly.

“If you would like to meet with your member(s) of Congress it is best if you request to schedule the meeting. Folks who are doing logistics for Occupy Congress are available to help, but the most powerful tool to help get a meeting is the fact that you are the constituent and the member of Congress theoretically represents you. It is best to schedule Congressional meetings sometime between 9:00AM and noon on January 17th since that is the time period specifically set aside in the Occupy Congress schedule for direct Congressional meetings.” (This nifty guide details exactly how to go about arranging appointments.)

Check out this page for details on ride-shares, charter buses, lodging and other necessary logistics as well as ways to make your voice heard whether you can get to DC or not.

Occupy Our Food

Peter Rothberg on December 28, 2011 - 9:44am ET

On this past December 4, food activists from across the country joined the Occupy Wall Street Farmers March for "a celebration of community power to regain control over the most basic element to human well-being: food."

The rally began at La Plaza Cultural Community Gardens where urban and rural farmers talked about the growing problems with the industrial food system and the solutions based in organic, sustainable and community based agricultural production. This was followed by a three-mile march from the East Village of Manhattan to Zuccotti Park, the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

This video by Anthony Lappe offers an inspiring glimpse into this new movement. Check it out and then go to Food Democracy Now, a grassroots community dedicated to building a sustainable food system, to find out how you can help.

Top Ten Christmas Songs

Peter Rothberg on December 24, 2011 - 10:46pm ET

Many thanks to everyone who read this blog in 2011. I greatly appreciate your support, insightful comments and commitment to bettering our world. I’ll get back to music about making change in 2012, but for now I hope you enjoy this alternative Christmas playlist, presented in random order. Happy holidays!

The Ramones, Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Merry Christmas Baby

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, All I Want for Christmas

Amy Winehouse, I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus

Belle & Sebastian, Little Town of Bethlehem

Weezer, The Christmas Song

Bob Dylan, Little Drummer Boy

Bob Marley and the Wailers, White Christmas

Blink 182, I Won't Be Home for Christmas

Smashing Pumpkins, Christmastime

Remembering Vaclav Havel

Peter Rothberg on December 18, 2011 - 4:27pm ET

“There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.” —Vaclav Havel, Summer Meditations, 1993

Vaclav Havel rose from a persecuted life as a dissident playwright hounded by secret police to a symbol of freedom as the leader of Czechoslovakia’s 1989 Velvet Revolution and then the Czech Republic’s first President. He died Sunday, after a long illness, at the age of 75.

During the Prague Spring reform movement, which ended with the 1968 Soviet invasion, Havel became chairman of the free-speech Circle of Independent Writers. The next year, his writing was banned and he moved from Prague to a rural town, where he got a job in a brewery but continued writing. His plays became famous in the West and, later, behind the Iron Curtain, and he became a symbol of the world’s political conscience as the co-founder and spokesman of the human rights movement Charter 77.

In this short clip, Lou Reed and Havel talk about music’s relationship to the politics of social change and the very prominent role artists played in Czechoslovakia’s own Velvet Revolution, including the inspiration provided by Reed’s Velvet Underground.

This 2008 interview with Sir David Frost, Havel’s last extended conversation with a Western journalist, offers insight into what he considers the enduring issues of his life.

Remembering Christopher Hitchens

Peter Rothberg on December 16, 2011 - 10:33am ET

When I was a Nation intern, Christopher Hitchens was, by far, our group’s favorite writer for the magazine. Beyond being a spellbindingly brilliant orator and the most prolific and incisive writer any of us had ever seen, on a very basic level he treated us well and with respect. He also treated us to numerous rounds of drinks, including one memorable group visit at 11:00 am to his apartment on Connecticut Avenue in the Adams-Morgan section of Washington, DC. He must be respected, he should be forgiven and he will be dearly missed.

Check out these very incomplete video highlights demonstrating the majesty of Hitchens’s persuasive abilities.

On the invasion of Grenada (1983):