Below is an interview I did for UTNE Reader about FaceLeft. There are various other accounts available online, of course. FaceLeft is a social networking system meant to federate progressive organizations from all over the world, benefitting each materially and of course socially and politically. The first hosts of subsystems are Z - who got the ball rolling - UTNEReader, Syriza (the Greek left party), and Dollars and Sense (an American economic monthly). You can see ZSocial…

It is interesting that in 1912 the Socialist Party of America had around 118,000 in membership. Adjusted for population, such a party would be about 400,000 strong today. What a sad comparison to the fledgling parties of the left today. If we are talking seriously about an alliance of democratic socialists/socialdemocrats/labor, then this I can get behind. Although there is some debate as to the effectiveness of having political office, it can serve to benefit growing an organization if done from…

  Preface             This is an essay based on a presentation that I recently gave at the Anarchist Bookfair in NYC. I welcome feedback and constructive critique, as I hope to use much of this as a basis for my part in an IOPS panel at the NYC Left Forum on June 7-8, 2013. Much of this information and all the page citations are based on the analysis and history in the book “Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism…

It has come to my attention, with the release of the "Preconditions for the IOPS Founding Convention" polling results, that we have what I would consider an unsatisfactory process. As an example I will reference the first question, "How many online members do we need to have before the founding convention?", to point out the flaw. As it stands, "Less than 5,000" is the top answer and winning option with 189 votes, but a total of 362 votes were tallied for "5,000", "7,500", and "10,000." In this…

Fellow IOPS members, Stephen Roblin and Jason Chrysostomou and I would like to interview three of four members of the Organisation for a Free Society in the upcoming weeks. We've worked on an introduction and come up with some (too many!) questions. If anyone has any suggestions for the interview, please feel free to offer them in the comment section below. Thank you in advance. Preeti Introduction In 2008, several activists and organizers who were heavily involved in the student,…

In a media alert earlier this year, we described our under-resourced challenges of the corporate media as 'jousting with toothpicks'. Although the analogy was light-hearted, the work of Media Lens is serious and would not be possible without your support. Our alerts and books are regularly cited and praised by readers, including journalists, academics and activists; but especially by so-called ordinary people who recognise that the corporate news media keeps the public ignorant about much that is…

  My broad thoughts on revolutionary strategy [edited and re-uploaded] The aim is to create an introduction to revolutionary strategy for people who are new to this area.  Feedback welcome. Thanks for all the comments so far. 

This is a video that tells the story of a group of young people in Paraguay, living in a village near Asunción, the capital of Paraguay. The village is on top of a landfill, essentially a gigantic garbage dump. The families living there in deep poverty search the trash heap for recyclable material to sustain themselves.       The youngsters the video tells about have formed a symphony orchestra, performing on instruments made out of all kinds of items found in the trash. As…

Last year, I devised what I called a "ten-year plan" of activism for myself to help build towards participatory economy. I'd like to share that plan here: Step One - Write a blog consistently to chronicle it all. (Status: Done!) :-) Step Two - Devise some database, or simulacrum, or role-playing game of sorts, for a participatory economy. The idea is to show to ourselves (that is, parecon advocates) that the idea, frankly, is worth pursuing. If it's not, we can drop the idea and look for something…