Move Your Money Campaign

* Move Your Money on ABC World News :

People all over the US are choosing to move their money out of bigger banks and into smaller, community-oriented financial institutions that generally avoided the reckless investments and schemes that helped cause the financial crisis.


Fueled by the personal initiatives of thousands, it’s a grassroots effort that has the potential to shift power in the financial system away from Wall Street and to Main Street.


The idea came just before Christmas. A few friends were having dinner wondering what personal actions they could take to help limit the power of the big banks and create a more sane, stable financial system. How, they wondered, could they help end the era of Too Big To Fail? The financier at the table recommended that everyone could move their money out of the Wall Street banks and into community banks. Community banks are typically more conservative about how they manage their money, they’re more closely connected to the people and businesses who live near them, and they’re more inclined to make loans they know will get paid back. In other words, they have the values that more people would want banks to have.


The filmmaker at the table reminded the others of the story told in the classic film It’s A Wonderful Life — a tale about a small banker, played by Jimmy Stewart, who almost gets crushed by a big banker. In the end, though, the community rallies around the small bank and helps save it.


Three days later, the filmmaker made a short video, displayed on this site. The editor wrote a commentary about the idea. And others started pulling various resources together.


Since that first dinner the idea has spread like wildfire. Thousands of people have pledged to move their money away from the casino-style Too Big To Fail banks and give their money to community banks and credit unions. The media has picked up on the campaign and bloggers have added their two cents — most of them praising the effort, some critical.



Source: Www.moveyourmoney.info

Tiananmen Massacre 1989: Tank Man

The Tian'anmen Square protests of 1989, referred to in most of the world as the Tian'anmen Square massacre and in the People's Republic of China (PRC) as the June Fourth Incident (officially to avoid confusion with two prior Tiananmen Square protests), were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the PRC beginning on 14 April. Led mainly by students and intellectuals, the protests occurred in a year that saw the collapse of a number of communist governments around the world.


The protests were sparked by the death of a pro-democracy and anti-corruption official, Hu Yaobang, whom protesters wanted to mourn. According to wikipedia, by the eve of Hu's funeral, 1,000,000 people had gathered at Tiananmen square. The protests lacked a unified cause or leadership; participants included disillusioned Chinese Communist Party members and Trotskyists as well as free market reformers, who were generally against the government's authoritarianism and voiced calls for economic change and democratic reform within the structure of the government. The demonstrations centered on Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, but large-scale protests also occurred in cities throughout China, including Shanghai, which remained peaceful throughout the protests.


The movement lasted seven weeks, from Hu's death on 15 April until tanks cleared Tiananmen Square on 4 June. In Beijing, the resulting military response to the protesters by the PRC government left many civilians and military personnel charged with clearing the square dead or severely injured. The number of deaths is not known and many different estimates exist. Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times estimated the death toll at 400-800 based on information he gathered from multiple medical sources.


Following the conflict, the government conducted widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, banned the foreign press from the country and strictly controlled coverage of the events in the PRC press. Members of the Party who had publicly sympathized with the protesters were purged, with several high-ranking members placed under house arrest, such as General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. There was widespread international condemnation of the PRC government's use of force against the protesters.

From Russia With Hate

The Documentary investigates a growing movement in Russia where neo-Nazi groups are brutally attacking immigrants and spreading their hate by posting violent videos online.


Frustrated young poeple claiming the superiority of the white race, and attacking foreigners.


National Socialists Organizations, and The Skinheads are the main russian groups investigated.

Soldiers are refusing to participate in the Iraq War

August 11, 2006 Iraq Veterans Against the War Press Conference at the Arlington Northwest Memorial. Seattle, Washington www.ivaw.net Sgt. Ricky Clousing U.S. Army interrogator


A wave of soldiers are refusing to participate in the U.S. war against Iraq.


GI resisters are getting considerable support from other soldiers and veterans.


Following the press conference, a group of Iraq Veterans Against the War, along with former GI resisters and other supporters went with Ricky Clousing to Fort Lewis, where Ricky surrendered himself to military custody.

The New Age Travellers

The New Age Travellers are a group of people who often espouse New Age and/or hippie beliefs, and who travel between music festivals and fairs in the United Kingdom in order to live in a community with others who hold similar beliefs.


Their transport and homes consist of vans, lorries, buses and caravans converted into mobile homes. They also make use of improvised bender tents, tipis and yurts. New age travellers were largely a product of 1980s and early 1990s Britain, but a small number continue to travel in the country today, and cultural groupings with similar composition have also manifested themselves in other countries, such as New Zealand.


The movement originated in the free festivals of the 1970s such as the Windsor Free Festival, the early Glastonbury Festivals, Elephant Fayres, and the huge Stonehenge Free Festivals in Great Britain. Later events included the Castlemorton Common Festival, a huge free and illegal event which attracted widespread media coverage and prompted government action. Some legal festivals, such as WOMAD, continue to be held in a variety of countries, including the UK.


In the UK during the 1980s, the Travellers' mobile homes - generally old vans, trucks and buses (including double deckers) - were driven in convoys. The movement had faced significant opposition by the British government and mainstream media, epitomised by the authorities' attempts to prevent camps at Stonehenge, and the resultant Battle of the Beanfield, in 1985 - the largest mass civil arrest in English history.

Anarchists Movement History In U.S.

Anarchism in America is a 1983 documentary, directed by Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher, and produced by Pacific Street Films. It has been re-released by AK Press to DVD.


The film begins by explaining the filmmakers' interest in anarchism based on their involvement in the group Transcendental Students while in film school at NYU. The film includes interviews with influential anarchists Murray Bookchin, Paul Avrich, Jello Biafra, Mollie Steimer and Karl Hess, and with poet Kenneth Rexroth. It also discusses the Spanish Civil War, the 1917 Revolution, the influence of Emma Goldman and the case of executed anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.


The film labels anarchism as the only ideology that is staunchly anti-authoritarian, and discusses how anarchist ideals align with the revolutionary, independent spirit of America from rural communities to urban zones.

The Wobblies

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies) is an international union currently headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. The IWW was founded in Chicago in June 1905 at a convention of two hundred socialists, anarchists, and radical trade unionists from all over the United States (mainly the Western Federation of Miners) who were opposed to the policies of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).


The convention, which took place on June 27, 1905, was then referred to as the "Industrial Congress" or the "Industrial Union Convention"—it would later be known as the First Annual Convention of the IWW. It is considered one of the most important events in the history of industrial unionism and of the American labor movement in general.


At its peak in 1923 the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict. Today it is actively organizing and numbers about 2,000 members worldwide, of whom fewer than half (approximately 900) are in good standing (that is, have paid their dues for the prior two months). IWW membership does not require that one work in a represented workplace, nor does it exclude membership in another labor union.


The IWW contends that all workers should be united as a class and that the wage system should be abolished. They may be best known for the Wobbly Shop model of workplace democracy, in which workers elect recallable delegates, and other norms of grassroots democracy (self-management) are implemented.


According to Wikipedia, the origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain.

Humanist movement: What is Active Nonviolence?

An exploration of nonviolence in human history, including Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Silo.

Accirding to wikipedia, the Humanist Movement is an international volunteer organisation that promotes nonviolence and non-discrimination. It is not an institution. It takes its inspiration from the current of thought referred to as New or Universal Humanism that has been developed since 1969 by its founder Mario Rodríguez Cobos, pen name: Silo.

New Humanism focuses on the overcoming of pain and suffering at a personal, interpersonal and social level. It defines violence as anything that causes pain and suffering to human beings. In this way violence is seen to have many different aspects, not just the well-known physical form but also; economic, religious, psychological, sexual, ethnic, etc.