Activism

The Hand That Gives Also Takes Away

Submitted by Bob Burton on

The Australian logging company Gunns is reviewing its corporate sponsorships as it struggles to deal with a dramatic slump in sales of woodchips to Japanese customers. In an interview, the company's new chief executive, Greg L'Estrange, flagged that the company would be cutting back its sponsorships. "We haven't finished our discussions but certainly you would say our appetite for some of these areas has diminished. Life is a two-way street.

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Main Source: 
The Examiner (Launceston, Australia), July 24, 2009
Topics: 
Activism
Corporate Social Responsibility
Environment

From Cell to Sell: Police Recruit Activists as Spies

Submitted by Diane Farsetta on

In Scotland, police have been offering environmentalists money in return for information about activist groups. "They said 'if you help us, we will help you,'" one anti-nuclear activist stated, referring to military police officers. The Guardian reports that "a network of hundreds of informants ...

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Main Source: 
The Guardian (UK), April 27, 2009
Topics: 
Activism
Environment
Secrecy

Beyond MoveOn: Using the Internet for Real Change

Recently the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice asked me to write an article for them with my ideas of how grassroots activists could better use the Internet for real change. As a member of the group, I was happy to tackle that assignment, and here are my thoughts.

Barack Obama owes his election in no small part to his brilliant use of social networking websites, email, cell phone texting and blogs, all utilized in unprecedented ways by his campaign staff to promote, organize and fund his unlikely victory. He employed techniques pioneered by online groups such as MoveOn and took them to an entirely new level. Thanks to Obama's use of the Internet, politics in America will never be the same. It's crucial that peace and social justice activists at the state and local levels understand and harness these new technologies in organizing for fundamental social change.

FreedomWorks Behind Tax Day Tea Party Protests

Submitted by John Stauber on

Who makes up the Tea Party movement? The Tax Day Tea Party protest movement is not as spontaneous as its organizers would like you to think. Chris Good writes, "Here is the organizational landscape of the April 15 tea party movement, in a nutshell: three national-level conservative groups, all with slightly different agendas, are guiding it.

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Main Source: 
Atlantic.com, April 13, 2009
Topics: 
Activism
Astroturf
Right Wing

Entergy's Indian Point PR Reaches Critical Mass

Submitted by Diane Farsetta on

The energy company Entergy has hired yet another public relations firm to promote its Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York. Entergy's new firm is the Breaux Lott Leadership Group, which will "deal with nuclear issues as the license of its Indian Point facility ... is up for renewal." The firm's leadership, former U.S.

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Main Source: 
O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub req'd), April 7, 2009
Topics: 
Activism
Nuclear Power
Public Relations

EDF Goes Nuclear on Greenpeace

Submitted by Diane Farsetta on

An executive with the French government-owned energy company EDF "has been charged on suspicion of spying on the environmental group Greenpeace." The executive, "who previously worked as a police commander, is being investigated for conspiring to hack into Greenpeace France's computer system." Under investigation is whether EDF, "the world's biggest nuclear-reactor operator, hired a private detective agency run by a former member of the Frenc

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Main Source: 
The Guardian (UK), April 1, 2009
Topics: 
Activism
Nuclear Power
Corporations

CoalSwarm a Nerve Center for the Green Energy Movement

Submitted by John Stauber on

The San Francisco Chronicle's website profiled "Ted Nace, director of the CoalSwarm website and an important part of the anti-coal movement that has been in the news in recent weeks." CoalSwarm is a "nerve center," a partnership with the Center for Media and Democracy within the

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Main Source: 
San Francisco Chronicle blog "The Thin Green Line," March 13, 2009
Topics: 
Activism
Energy
Environment

Afghan Escalation OK with MoveOn, Anti-War Insiders

Submitted by John Stauber on

Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent notes that "President Obama’s announcement today of an escalation in the American presence in Afghanistan is being met with mostly silence - and even some support - from the most influential liberal groups who opposed the Iraq War. ... MoveOn.org ...

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Main Source: 
The Plum LIne Blog, March 27, 2009
Topics: 
Activism
Afghanistan
War / Peace

White House, HCAN, Ignore the Single Payer Option

Most western democracies guarantee their citizens a right to medical services through their own version of government managed single payer health care. But such a system has been attacked in the US as "socialized medicine" since before the 1950s especially by lobbyists for the insurance and drug industries who would see their profits decline. Although Barack Obama was elected on a health care reform platform, his version ignores single payer. Nor is single payer advocated by his allies in the well-funded coalition called Health Care for America Now, composed of MoveOn, USAction, ACORN, Americans United for Change, the unions SEIU and UFCW and other liberal heavy hitters. Journalist Russell Mokhiber, founder of the new group Single Payer Action, notes that no advocate of a single payer system was invited to the recent White House summit on health care reform. Only protests by Progressive Democrats of America and others won an invitation for Congressman John Conyers, sponsor of the United States National Health Care Act: H.R.676. Mokhiber quotes Dr. David Himmelstein of Physicians for a National Health Program: “The President once acknowledged that single payer reform was the best option, but now he’s caving in to corporate health care interests and completely shutting out advocates of single payer reform," even though "the majority of Americans favor single payer, and it’s the most popular reform option among doctors and health economists."

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