UPDATE: Activists Scale Flagpole Behind Iconic Wall Street Bull, Raise 150-Square Foot American Flag with ‘Foreclosed?’ Stamped Over It UPDATE 2: link to Flickr set UPDATE 3: High-res photo. — In the past few weeks, our economic system has sustained some of the most dramatic shifts of the past 50 years. Comparisons have been made to the Asian economic [...]

Ever wanted to know what happens at RAN’s activist training camps and network gatherings? Last week we co-hosted a gathering of 60 activists in Chicago with the Student Environmental Action Coalition. Below is a reflection from Robin Markle, one of the youth leaders in RAN’s network. Robin serves on the national council of RYSE (explained [...]

If you’re like me and have a feeling this is a crappy deal but you weren’t sure exactly why, take a look at David Sirota’s latest article on the subject. Here is a summary of the article… the top five reasons members of Congress should (and as we’ve seen today, many have) vote against the bill: 1. [...]

On Lake Minnetonka today, just down the road from Cargill’s world headquarters, the rainforest agribusiness campaign set sail amongst the  hundred or so sailboats participating in a regatta in Wayzata Harbor.  We turned an M-20 sailboat into a floating banner in order to send Cargill a clear message in their own backyard.  The main sail [...]

(RAN is a nonpartisan organization that takes no stand on any political candidates. The observations below are intended to be a reflection on strategy and communication for activists and organizers, not as an endorsement of either candidate, or a comment on the policies or positions they represent.) Last night I saw Obama debate McCain. It was [...]

“‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice” Sometimes you have those moments when the world makes you feel like a character in a Lewis Carroll novel. The economic system is reportedly in meltdown (Washington Mutual gave us the largest bank failure in U.S. history tonight). The political system is reeling from an inability to actually deal [...]

(from multinationalmonitor.org – more than an interesting read. One of the best articles and analyses dealing with the problems of the ABC’s of Rainforest Destruction – and the relationships between the big companies and the big NGO’s – and the folks on the ground fighting to protect their communities and the integrity of the environment [...]

More on the Wall Street meltdown below with an internal shake-up at Citi over its responsibilities to clients. If you’re in San Francisco, or in New York, come out tomorrow to tell all of Wall Street what you think we should be doing with $700 billion dollars. Fortune/CNN Money blogs September 22, 2008, 4:39 pm Behind Sallie [...]

Last year in two different print publications, The New York Times and Rolling Stone, former Vice-President and Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore called for young people to commit civil disobedience to halt new coal fired power plants and climate change. Voicing his opinion at the Clinton Global Initiative, Gore said for the first time [...]

In my last post I mentioned the $700 billion of taxpayers money that the government is considering contributing to bailing out Wall Street. It’s a bad deal, no question about it. The proposal amounts to a blank check being written to the very institutions that have gotten us into this mess in the first place, [...]