We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, April 6, 2013

The USA vs. Leslie James Pickering

Click here to access article by Geoff Kelly from ArtVoice.
Last August, Leslie James Pickering received unsettling news from an old acquaintance he’d known in Portland, Oregon, where both had lived in the 1990s. Pickering’s friend, now living in the Southwest, had received a phone call from two men who identified themselves as agents in the FBI’s Buffalo field office.
The author's report illustrates how one who protests against destructive environmental policies, especially those that inhibit corporations' self-proclaimed right to plunder, and engages in other activist campaigns become targets of US police state agents.
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