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Throughout the world, solutions to some of the greatest challenges of the day are either nascent or fully thriving. Organized people's movements - sometimes with help from supportive government - are changing the structures which cause violence, poverty, inequality, and environmental destruction.

Guaranteed Access to Healthcare

A growing chorus of people around the world is insisting that health care is a human right and that it must be guaranteed by the state. The Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations provide the legal framework for this fundamental right, while many national constitutions, such as those of El Salvador and South Africa, enshrine it. Grassroots movements like the People’s Health Movement add muscle to ensuring that the right is respected. And where the resources or the political will don’t exist, community networks meet local health care needs themselves.

Guaranteed Access to Healthcare

India Strikes Blow Against Big Pharma

Submitted by admin on Wed, 04/10/2013 - 15:30

Cross-posted from Truthout

By Dean Baker

Last week, India's Supreme Court rejected the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis' patent on the cancer drug Gleevec. While the immediate issue was the ability of Novartis to charge its patent-protected price for the drug in India, the decision will have an enormous impact on the future of public health not only in India, but around the world.

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Global Left Converges in Tunisia to Promote New Vision for Earth's Future

Submitted by admin on Thu, 03/28/2013 - 09:30

Cross-posted from Common Dreams

By Jordan Flaherty

 

ON HUMAN RIGHTS DAY, BUILDING THE MOVEMENT TO RECLAIM DEMOCRACY

Submitted by admin on Tue, 12/04/2012 - 10:37

By Beverly Bell
December 10, 2012

Larry Cohen has headed the 700,000-member Communications Workers of America (CWA), under the banner of “Fight Back,” since 2005. Prior to that, he headed up CWA organizing for twenty years. He is also founder of Jobs with Justice.

Given the path we’ve been on in this country, the American dream is in tatters. Whether it’s a voice on the job or our standard of living or health care or education, all are being destroyed on our watch. But we can stand up and fight back. Not only through the kind of spontaneous movement that people saw with Occupy, but a more sustained and broad-based movement that can work for constitutional change as well as protect people’s houses; secure, sustainable jobs; health care; our retirement, whether it’s social security or pensions; and on and on.

The Day after the Elections in Woody Guthrie’s Country

Submitted by admin on Thu, 11/01/2012 - 10:46


By Beverly Bell
November 1, 2012

While all eyes and ears are trained on the elections, Woody Guthrie, whose 100th birthday we celebrate this year, offers up another perspective on politics. In his poem “This Is Our Country,” he wrote, “I seen the pretty and I seen the ugly and it was because I knew the pretty part that I wanted to change the ugly part. Because I hated the dirty part that I knew how to feel the love for the cleaner part.”

"If Not Me, Then Who? If Not Now, Then When?" New Video on US Courts of Women on Poverty

Submitted by admin on Mon, 08/13/2012 - 12:03

 
Check out Women's Economic Agenda Project (WEAP)'s inspiring new video on the US Courts of Women on Poverty! Cross-posted from WEAP.

US Courts of Women – New Film Shows a Community of Activism, Renewal, Healing and a New Vision for America

The energy was undeniable.  You could see its cathartic healing on people’s faces and in their walk as we came together to speak and to focus on the women and their experiences that were at the heart of the US Courts of Women, Western Region. While women and men gave their testimonies about the violence of being in poverty, cried, shouted, leaned into each other, and at times felt helpless too, videos and photos captured the heartbreak, and also the healing. A number of people were documenting with videos and pictures, in particular Janny Castillo and Jon Mycal of B.O.S.S, and Austin Long-Scott. They captured the synergy that occurred as people found not just someone who was listening to them, but more importantly, someone who was hearing them. And it was a deep well.

DREAM Activist Speaks from Broward Detention Center on Democracy Now

Submitted by admin on Mon, 08/13/2012 - 11:54
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Cross-posted from Democracy Now.

In a Democracy Now! exclusive, producer Renée Feltz speaks with Viridiana Martinez, a DREAM activist detained about a week ago who is being held in the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Florida. Click here to listen.

Martinez is one of a group of undocumented immigrant activists with the National Immigrant Youth Alliance who have infiltrated the Broward Transitional Center and found dozens of immigrants there who should be released under the Obama administration’s policies. The group said they found more than 60 detainees with no criminal record or prior deportations, some of whom were detained as passengers in vehicles.

Steps forward to Abolish Poverty in America: First US Courts of Women on Poverty

Submitted by admin on Mon, 07/30/2012 - 12:02

Read this account about the very first US Courts of Women on Poverty, from our friends at the Women's Economic Agenda Project!

Cross-posted from the Women's Economic Agenda Project.

 

Steps forward to Abolish Poverty in America

Summary of Resolutions of Action
Story and Photos by Austin Long-Scott

“POVERTY IS AN ACT OF VIOLENCE!,” WEAP’s Executive Director Ethel Long-Scott shouted out in her opening comments at the very first US Courts of Women on Poverty. Over the next four days the outpouring of both stoic and emotional testimony certainly reflected her words.  Many participants cried as they listened to others pouring out their intimate stories about the horrors and the violence that poverty brought into their lives.

BIRTHING JUSTICE: One System for All -- Universal Access to Health Care

Submitted by admin on Fri, 05/18/2012 - 07:08

By Beverly Bell
May 18, 2012

The French system’s slogan is, “Everyone contributes according to his resources and receives according to his needs.” And this is not just rhetoric. Ever since the 1940s, France has made budgetary decisions to turn this dream into reality. But in France, as in many other countries, the logic of the market is now slicing away at universal access. As has been proven elsewhere, and as some in French civil society are now realizing, a strong health care system can only survive if the population fights to protect it.

 

Global Fund for Women Highlights "Top 10 Wins for Women's Movements"

Submitted by admin on Wed, 03/14/2012 - 11:53

 

Cross-posted from the Global Fund for Women's piece, "Top 10 Wins for Women's Movements."

As millions rose up last year demanding justice, women were on the front lines and behind the headlines pushing to advance human rights. Global Fund for Women celebrates International Women’s Day with ten victories won by our grantee partners in 2011. From securing bodily rights to delivering justice to rape survivors, women are indeed ushering in peace and justice for all.

Birthing Justice: Women Creating Economic and Social Alternatives

In "Birthing Justice: Women Creating Economic and Social Alternatives," 12 women from movements around the world invite us into their lives, sharing their vision of what the world can and must become, and showing us what they and their community are doing to build that world. From Idla Martines de Souza organizing with the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil, to Emem Okon building peace in middle of a resource war in Nigeria, to Juana Ferrer and Via Campesina turning towards food sovereignty to end gender violence, each of these women have important wisdom and vision to share with us all.