Sunday, October 28, 2012

The Surprising Power of the People

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New World Notes News
Vol. 5, No. 43 -- October 28, 2012


This week in New World Notes, radio program #243, October 30, 2012

The Surprising Power of the People

Copenhagen, 2011

In brief

Feeling powerless to change The System? Howard Zinn (1992), Chris Hedges (2012), and singer David Rovics discuss several examples of how large-scale nonviolent popular resistance surprisingly appeared and forced major changes in--or overthrew--bad systems.

From the Civil Rights movement in the South (1950s) to the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe (1980s) to the Arab Spring (2011-), citizens, nonviolently, often have produced major change.

Is "Occupy" the beginning of something big?

Civil-rights marches, 1963. Above: Oak Park, Illinois.
Below: Washington, D.C.

Notes, credits, & links

Zinn's remarks are excerpted from an hour-long talk, "Virtual Optimism," which he gave in Berkeley, California, in 1992. Recording courtesy of the Pacifica Radio Archives.

I have slightly condensed Chris Hedges' brief address to the Left Forum, in New York, March 18, 2012.

Music added: David Rovics, Tunisia 2011.

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "thumb") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford.

You can listen to any installment of New World Notes online or else download it (as an mp3 audio file) for later listening. The show is archived at both radio4all.net and (from #90 onwards) The Internet Archive. Either link should get you a reverse-chrono listing of available installments. Or browse the show's Web site: Each installment has a page, and each page has links to the recorded audio. See the gray sidebar on the right ("CONTENTS [Links]") for a table of contents.

Series overview:
Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for.

Above: Poster by Christiaan Briggs. Below: Howard Zinn

Coming soon (Tuesday air debut date shown)
  • November 6 -- The Firesign Theater
Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):
A-Infos Radio Project http://www.radio4all.net

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