Posts Tagged ‘ Occupy Wall St. ’

Stiglitz on economic inequality

June 30, 2012
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The issue of economic inequality has been receiving quite a lot of attention in the past few months–at least in the progressive media. This is no doubt due in part to the Occupy movement and to the anti-austerity protests in Europe, which have really thrust the issues of inequality and economic justice into the spotlight. More so than at any point in the last several decades, there is a real public thirst for understanding the causes and consequences of economic inequality and what can be done to reverse it. The Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is one of several academics who have…

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How ego and ideology are destroying the world’s greatest public university (Mark LeVine)

May 12, 2012
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How ego and ideology are destroying the world’s greatest public university (Mark LeVine)

Irvine, CA – The University of California is home to many of the country’s leading scholars in dozens of fields, and for decades it has been an important laboratory for social change in the United States. It has also been at the forefront of many struggles for political, social, civil and labour rights struggles, as both an incubator of new ideas and practices and as a laboratory in which various attempts to change the balance of power and responsibility between social groups, and between society and government, have played out.  So you might not be surprised to learn that as one…

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Situationism and “The Protester”

January 2, 2012
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Dan Hind, author of The Return of the Public and The Threat to Reason and this year’s winner of the Bristol Festival of Ideas Prize, expressed his opinion on Situationism and the Occupy Movements in AlJazeera’s Opinion Space. While the whole article is worth reading, here are some quotes:  In the years after the World War II, the US and Western Europe saw unprecedented rates of sustained economic growth. Food and accommodation were cheap and working people could afford a vast range of novel commodities – electronic gadgets, cars, new styles in furniture and opportunities for leisure. Decades of war, depression and social…

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Noam Chomsky at Occupy Boston

December 28, 2011
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On October 22 Noam Chomsky addressed the crowd at the Occupy Boston Movement:

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Danny Glover and Cornel West

December 28, 2011
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Danny Glover and Cornel West are two of the leading voices in the 21st century American civil rights movement, a movement that is no longer primarily about race. The fundamental injustice that they are addressing affects us all, regardless of race or gender.  These two men (and many more like them) move America beyond race far more than the election of Obama does. And this contrast between, on the one hand, Glover and West speaking at the Occupy movements and, on the other, Obama speaking at the Martin Luther King memorial couldn’t be more striking. By representing and catering to…

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Dani Rodrik on economics

December 16, 2011
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Dani Rodrik, author of The Globalization Paradox and professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University, wrote an interesting article on contemporary economics called Occupy the Classroom? which comments on the Harvard students who walked out of an economics class taught by Greg Mankiw. While the students complained that the introductory economics course “propagates conservative ideology in the guise of economic science and helps perpetuate social inequality,” Rodrik insists that it is only at the undergraduate level (or in media reports) that economics conveys that impression. In Rodrik’s view, that appearance of conservative ideology evaporates at the graduate level. Consider the following: “Let…

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Rocky Anderson for U.S. Justice Party

December 14, 2011
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Very interesting interview on Democracy Now:   A new political party has entered the fray as an alternative to Democrats and Republicans ahead of the 2012 elections. On Monday, the Justice Party formally kicked off its formation with an event in Washington. Former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson will run for president on the Justice Party ticket. Although hailing from a solidly red state, Rocky Anderson has been known as one of the most progressive mayors of any major U.S. city in recent years. During his two mayoral terms from 2000 to 2008, Anderson was an outspoken champion of…

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The Occupy Wall Street Movement

October 14, 2011
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John Nichols, writing in The Nation, provides a nice analysis of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. My only criticism is that Nichols seems to understand it as mostly an American movement. Wall Street may be, as he says, the right target for Americans to address, but Wall Street is ultimately just a part of something broader, something that has no geographic boundaries, namely,  global capitalism. Laurie Penny, speaking on Democracy Now, said that:  “What I found fascinating, being at Wall Street, is how similar it is to protests that I’ve seen in London over the past 6 months. And I’ve talked…

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