vision and practice for transformative social change
The vitriol and sheer negativity of some rabid conservative agendas feel like they drag us into contraction and smallness…Paradoxically, it’s only the expansive power of love that can lead us into a politic of inspiration. But how do we, especially in the face of great challenge and a fierce push to fight fire with fire, truly lead with love?
Written & contributed by Shepherd Bliss Occupy Wall Street (OWS) began using public space in New York’s Zuccotti Park on Sept. 17, which stimulated hundreds of similar encampments around and beyond the United States. During the past six months, this mass movement has been assaulted by police and by the corporate media. It has also [...]
Martin Luther King, Jr. | ”Why I’m opposed to the war in Vietnam” Listen to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Grammy Award winning speech (delivered on April 30, 1967) on the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. Review | Yoga to the People This review of Yoga to the People, with locations in Manhattan, Berkeley, [...]
Just as London was beginning to be set ablaze by Blackberries, I was bracing myself for the current Hollywood reboot of Planet of the Apes. The 2001 remake starring Mark Wahlberg left me mortally wounded, having claimed itself a “revisioning” of the original story and movie, it managed to not only leave every racist/colorist myth [...]
With a focus on marginalized communities, the Fund for Nonviolence’s programs support social justice that moves people toward compassion. They work with an understanding that the world we live in is one that is shared and therefore whatever we all do affects everyone in it. One of their programs, Justice with Dignity, seeks to support [...]
Find out what trainings, workshops, and events are happening in the field of transformative social change.
i believe that if you just do your little bit without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that in itself creates new potential.
“I am very, very content to just be here and to work with what I have. And not try to figure out how to have another life, how to have some life other than the one that’s in front of me. It seems like that’s what we’re often trying to do. We’re trying to figure out, How do I hurry up through this particular moment and get to another one?”
We at Spirit in Action believe activists need to create a collective vision of what kind of world we want to live in—not a utopian fantasy, but a vision based on what we know is possible…if we focus too much on the problems we can’t see the possibilities
Gladwell questions what he perceives as outsized claims that social media has transformed the landscape of social activism. Among the points he makes is that social media builds “weak ties” that may tap people’s participation without getting at the kind of motivation required to take the risks necessary to make…
Web of Change connects the foremost thinkers and do-ers in social media, technology, and social change. Together this is a growing community of leaders working for transformation of our organizations and our world.
Start the movement toward dismantling punitive justice and discovering the justice that comes from love: What is it that we have to see? What do we have to deconstruct? What are we holding onto that it’s time to dismantle in our own hearts so that we can create more space for real justice? This is justice that arises, not out of a sense of punishment, but out of a sense of love, justice that serves and embodies love. Not justice that is confused and mistaken for punishment.
