Legendary historian, playwright and social activist Howard Zinn likely died just the way he would have wanted — from a heart bursting with love and revolutionary spirit while on a speaking tour highlighting the voices of uncommon heroes in American history. read more »

Legendary historian, playwright and social activist Howard Zinn likely died just the way he would have wanted — from a heart bursting of love and revolutionary spirit while on a speaking tour highlighting the voices of uncommon heroes in American history. read more »

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The COP-15 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Dec. 7–18 is generating huge amounts of news coverage in the mainstream media but little of it is adding to the public’s understanding of the issues involved. read more »

The COP-15 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Dec. 7–18 is generating huge amounts of news coverage in the mainstream media but little of it is adding to the public’s understanding of the issues involved. read more »

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Leaders of 192 nations will convene for the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Dec. 7 through Dec. 18 to hash out badly needed policy to combat global warming and address climate justice. read more »

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For more than a year, a swelling movement of landowners, politicians, individuals and environmental organizations has been pressuring New York State to strongly regulate — or even ban — a natural gas drilling process that could wreak havoc on the environment. read more »

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A Review of the book, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City read more »

14 People Arrested Protesting Mountaintop Removal Mining in West Virginia By Jessica Lee MountainAction.org is reporting that 14 people were arrested June 18 in a peaceful act of direct action on a Massey Energy Co. mountaintop removal mining site near Twilight, W. Va. Four activists, in a daring act, scaled a 20-story tall piece of mining equipment to [...] read more »

The mood was electric in John Jay High School in Park Slope, Brooklyn, May 2. More than 3,200 people squeezed into classrooms to participate in workshops and panel discussions about chickens, rebel gardeners, Big Mac bashing and food justice. read more »

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Reclaiming Mothers’ Day By Jessica Lee “While my son was deployed to Afghanistan in 2003 I awoke from nightmares almost every single night: the knock on the door, uniformed military personnel on the doorstep, ‘We’re sorry to inform you…,’ images of my son disabled like the soldier in Johnny Got His gun, bombs raining on a family’s [...] read more »

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press wrote March 23 that a New York City-based photojournalist working in West Virginia claims a restraining order issued at the request of a mining company there is infringing on her right to report on a brewing local controversy. Antrim Caskey, a photographer based in New York, and five [...] read more »

For many of the hundreds of Indypendent contributors and volunteers during the past eight years, it has been impossible to separate John Tarleton from the newspaper. Tarleton stepped into the office of The Indypendent in the spring of 2001 with a large backpack on his shoulders after a decade of traveling, writing and laboring as a migrant farm worker. A former daily news reporter, he immediately became involved in The Indypendent, a dinky newspaper struggling to define itself. read more »

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By Jessica Lee, The Indypendent The Greenpoint-based blogger Morgan Pehme is reporting that Brooklyn residents are not happy that media mogul Rupert Murdoch is continuing to scoop up their local newspapers. Pehme commented on news published by The New York Observer March 10 that the 31-year-old independent newspaper, The Brooklyn Paper, has been purchased by  Murdoch’s News [...] read more »

THOUSANDS OF YOUTH DEMAND NEW CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY Youth Call for Green Energy and End to Coal Power on Monday Through Massive Lobbying and Direct Action By Jessica Lee The Indypendent WASHINGTON, D.C.—Just blocks away from Capitol Hill, a new conversation is sweeping the streets. Within the crowded sidewalks and cafes along H and 7th Streets, certain words [...] read more »

Women are stepping out from behind strollers and kitchen counters to fight for a bill of rights that would establish human rights and fair labor standards for the more than 200,000 domestic workers who are employed across New York state. read more »

Chapel of Sacred Mirrors: Visionary Artists Hope to Transform Society VISIT THE CHELSEA EXHIBIT BEFORE IT CLOSES ITS DOORS JAN. 1 By Jessica Lee On the fourth floor of a building nestled between the buzz of Manhattan and the Hudson River on West 27th Street, an artist couple is attempting to transform society. For more than four years, Chapel [...] read more »

The American Museum of Natural History has taken a stand in the debate on climate change. It’s about time that a premier science museum has stepped forward to present to the public what scientists have been sure about for decades. read more »

Change will not come by way of ballot or through Democratic leadership, Nowtopia and Toolbox both argue, but by a movement of grassroots lifestyle adjustments and on community-based projects that take on food autonomy, environmental protection, health care, education, media and sustainable infrastructure. read more »

The Indypendent’s Jessica Lee has been recognized in the 10 finalists for Project Censored’s Top Censored News Stories for 2007-2008 awards for her groundbreaking coverage of the proposed Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that could broaden the definition of terrorism to encompass both First Amendment political activity and [...] read more »

Today is a hot news day. Yet, although the stock market is crashing and Congress is locked in a bailout stalemate, I am having a hard time focusing on my work in the production of the next issue of The Indypendent. That’s because I’ve gotten hooked on the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator. That’s right. If Palin’s [...] read more »

For the last five months, several hundred Native Americans and their supporters walked coast-to-coast through 26 states, gathering on-the-ground testimonials about pressing environmental and cultural concerns. read more »

On July 4, 1827, New York state declared emancipation from slavery for Africans. Unable to celebrate openly on Independence Day due to threats of violence, the black community honored newly won freedom publicly July 5. read more »

Sen. Joseph Lieberman singles out YouTube videos as debate on “homegrown terrorism” continues amid civil liberties concerns read more »

It is estimated that more than 200,000 domestic workers are employed in New York state. Domestic workers say they are the “invisible backbone” of New York City’s economy, that without their work as nannies, caretakers and housekeepers, thousands of accountants, doctors, architects, bankers and those in the entertainment industry would be unable to work. read more »

While millions of Americans are unable to afford vitally important prescription drugs, many others find themselves dangerously overmedicated due to pill-pushing doctors and pharmaceutical companies. read more »

More than 2,500 delegates have gathered in New York from April 21 to May 2 for the Seventh Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to discuss not only how climate change is affecting indigenous populations from the Arctic to Oceania, but also to highlight that real solutions to the problem will come from these very communities. read more »

In a well-argued book, Shawnee/Lenape lawyer and scholar Steven T. Newcomb outlines how the doctrine of Christian discovery and dominion was used by European monarchs and colonists, and eventually the U.S. courts, to justify the taking of Native American land, through both physical and psychological warfare, and to refuse to grant complete Indian sovereignty today. read more »

The Indypendent’s Jessica Lee discusses current events with Shawnee/Lenape lawyer and scholar Steven T. Newcomb who’s new book, Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, reveals how tales from the Old Testament provided justification for European occupation of North America and future U.S. Indian policy and property laws. read more »

While Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continue to spar for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, a hidden conflict over uranium mining and radioactive waste dumping is simmering, pitting the two candidates, other prominent politicians and Wall Street financiers against many indigenous and non-native American communities. read more »

In a few months, the Supreme Court will decide in the cases of Al Odah v. United States and Boumediene v. Bush, if detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus, the fundamental right of those being held to challenge their detention before a court of law. The decision promises to have sweeping implications for civil liberties and the reach of executive power. read more »

In one close-up shot, a nude woman delivers her baby in a rush of bloody fluids, squatting in her New York kitchen. In another, a midwife hugs a near-mother from behind, hands locked together around her bare breasts, helping her with the natural motions of labor. In a raw bathtub scene, the naked Ricki Lake documents herself taking hold of her baby the second it slops from the birth canal into the water. read more »

Now that the primary field has been narrowed to a Clinton-Obama scuffle, The Indypendent takes a look at the dismal reality of two leading candidates’ platforms. For comparison, we also look at the positions of John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich, who recently dropped their presidential bids. read more »

Here are ten things you can do right now on issues that matter. read more »

The limits of the presidential election process has penned voters between corporatebacked candidates and a hard place after both antiwar candidates, Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Ron Paul (R-Tex.), were iced out of national debates, likely affecting the outcomes of both the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary. read more »

This holiday season shed your consumerism and put your money towards building a more sustainable world with an economy based on quality of life. read more »

Under the guise of a bill that calls for the study of “homegrown terrorism,” Congress is apparently trying to broaden the definition of terrorism to encompass both First Amendment political activity and traditional forms of protest such as nonviolent civil disobedience, according to civil liberties advocates, scholars and historians. Many observers fear that the proposed law will be used against U.S.-based groups engaged in legal but unpopular political activism, ranging from political Islamists to animal-rights and environmental campaigners to radical right-wing organizations. read more »

While Penn does not shy away from exposing McCandless’ childhood pain from his patriarchal, abusive father and submissive mother, neither does he explore it further, leaving the viewer blaming McCandless’ family rather than society. Fortunately, Penn allows us some degree of reality to trickle into the film by letting McCandless’ sister provide narration of her brother’s disappearance and ultimate death. read more »

Growing up in New York City, Daniel McGowan saw first-hand how pollution fogged the air and fouled the beaches in some of the city’s poorest communities, setting him on a lifelong path of environmental and social justice. But how he ended up drenched in gasoline and setting fire to Oregon’s Jefferson Poplar Farms in 2001 and was later targeted as a “domestic terrorist” is the story of someone who cared too much and didn’t know what else to do. read more »

The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) are international, underground environmental movements made up of anonymous and decentralized groups who use property destruction against companies and institutions engaged in exploiting and damaging the environment. The ELF was founded in 1992 in the United Kingdom by a group of radical environmentalists who split off from Earth First!, a group that engaged in public, above-ground acts of civil disobedience. read more »

Is green the new red? As the federal government continues its crack down on environmental activists, comparisons between the current “green scare” and the 1950s Red Scare are becoming eerily apparent. Will Potter, the leading journalist covering the “green scare” and host of the website, “Green is the New Red,” explains that the Red Scare was about more than the fear of communists infiltrating the U.S. government. “It was about the cultural threat,” he said. “People were against the entire system of capitalism, which so many felt was the very principle that the country was based on.” read more »

In the face of Columbia University’s stranglehold of West Harlem, longtime residents cannot help but think back to the tumultuous spring of 1968, when students and community members occupied university buildings for several days to protest the school’s planned construction of a new gymnasium in city-owned Morningside Park and the school’s involvement in the Vietnam War. The gym was controversial not only because it would be built on land originally slated for low-income housing, but also because its design included two entrances — one more expensive intended for Columbia’s students and a second for the largely black community — a segregated design that Harlem residents referred to as “gym crow.” read more »

Many activists kick away the meditation pillows and yoga mats with a fist in the air, demanding the right to be angry. Handler handles the subject well, describing how anger can fuel the compassion, truth and nonviolence needed to change the world. After time spent in India and subsequent years spent on selfevaluation, Handler often points to the lessons of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. “As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world — that is the myth of the atomic age — as in being able to remake ourselves,” Gandhi said. read more »

In Appalachia, where nearly four hundred million tons of coal were mined in 2005, Mountain Justice Summer, a network of environmental and community activist groups focused in Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee, is organizing to stop mountaintop removal mining, which destroys entire mountain ranges to unearth coal seams below the surface. Forests are razed, explosives blast the tops off mountains, and adjacent valleys and rivers are buried under mining waste. read more »

The U.S. Department of the Interior (in which the Bureau of Indian Affairs exists) estimates tribal reservations contain as much as 30 percent of all coal in the western united States, 4.2 billion barrels of oil, 17.5 trillion cubic feet of gas and as much as 37 percent of all uranium. At times, several tribes have found themselves fighting against the same transnational company such as when the Dine, Hopi and Zuni people fought campaigns against Peabody Coal. read more »

Rising Tide is a grassroots network that encourages nonviolent action to confront the root causes of climate change by promoting local, community-based solutions. read more »

In his recent unveiling of PlaNYC 2030, Mayor Bloomberg said New Yorkers were in the best position to lead the world in combating climate change. Ironically, he’s right. read more »

In what is considered an “offensive move” in the bicycle community, the Five Borough Bicycle Club (5BBC) and several other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit March 27 in federal court, asking the judge to stop NYPD’s new regulation. “Suing city government is not one of the ordinary roles of the 5BBC, but organizing group bicycle rides is,” the group disclosed on its website. “The NYPD’s parade rules essentially outlaw large bike rides, under the dubious claim that bicycle rides are a danger to public health and safety.” read more »

“New York City’s coastal location makes it particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and more powerful storm events that will result from unabated warming … Permanent inundation could result, with the collapse of either the Greenland or Antarctic ice shelves, which would lead to a 10- to 20-foot rise in sea level. Such a rise would greatly reconfigure the map of our city, sinking much of lower Manhattan beneath the water.” read more »

SEA OF PEOPLE Noon. Meet at Battery Park for a community walk up both sides of Manhattan Island. Wear blue. read more »

After assembling at 5:00 a.m., 25 activists blocked the back entrance by sitting in the street with their arms chained together inside plastic pipes. It took police more than five hours to break the blockade, eventually cutting them apart. Six individuals also locked themselves to the front gate. A 22-foot-tall tripod was erected with a demonstrator hanging from the apex with a rock-climbing harness. A march joined the blockade several hours later. read more »

“We’re putting our opposition to the surge into action,” said Phan Nguyen, a member of the Olympia Port Militarization Resistance. “If the Stykers aren’t shipped, the 4th Brigade won’t be deployed.” Three activists were arrested for third degree assault on March 2, the first day of protest. One protester, Navy veteran Wally Cuddeford, was dragged on his stomach and claimed to have been tasered three times while being held down by police. read more »

Wolf, who has been covering protests in San Francisco for more than two years, posted a video of the 2005 protest to his website and sold some of the footage to the local nightly news stations. Local and federal law enforcement agents, who were investigating clashes between police and demonstrators, tuned into Wolf’s video and soon served him a federal subpoena demanding him to release copies of his unpublished video footage and to testify about the protesters seen on the tape. Wolf has stated several times under oath that his unpublished material does not show video footage of any of the alleged crimes committed. “This case is not about a videotape and it’s not about justice. This entire matter is about eroding the rights of privacy and those of a free press,” Wolf wrote. “It is about identifying civil dissidents and using members of the news media to actively assist in what is essentially an anarchist witch hunt.” read more »

Imagine a search engine vastly more powerful than Google that could display the results as an interactive map in real-time. A $6 million Department of Defense (DOD) grant was awarded to the Parsons Institute for Information Mapping (PIIM), a research institute at The New School, to develop such a computer program to aid homeland security efforts at home and abroad. read more »

The National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) at CMU has already developed a wide range of war robotic technologies, including an artificial intelligence reconnaissance robot that is being utilized in Iraq. Pittsburgh peace activists are planning to shut down NREC on March 2. A recent POG press release states, “Let’s bring antiwar resistance to the center of the public’s attention and shut down a local player in the war machine." read more »

As stories about the “threat of Iran” blanket the mainstream media, unnamed government sources have been silenced by a small public radio station in Santa Fe, N.M. In an unprecedented media move, KSFR news director Bill Dupuy recently issued a memo to staff stating that the new policy of KSFR’s news department is “to ignore and not repeat any wire service or nationally published story about Iran, China, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia or any other foreign power that quotes an ‘unnamed’ U.S. official.” read more »

“It’s time to do sit-ins, but in a creative way. We have totally redecorated political offices with pink interior decorations and banners, turning them into halls of peace,” Benjamin recalled. “The action disarmed the police. Ya, they still arrested us, but they did it in a less aggressive way. It’s about doing actions that are serious, yet whimsical. Angry, yet joyful.” --- Medea Benjamin with CodePink and Global Exchange read more »

DHS and Boeing plan to approach border security through a “threat-based approach,” in which localized segments of the U.S. border are prioritized by the perceived risk of terrorism. Within eight months, Boeing plans to have a “model of the entire solution mix” deployed within southern Arizona. read more »

From the mucky waters of New Orleans, several groups emerged to provide aid to victims and make global warming a top priority. Rising Tide, promises to confront global warming at its source, using a no-compromise approach to stopping the extraction of fossil fuels and preventing construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure while building sustainable communities. Rising Tide North America formed a month after the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI declared “ecoterrorism” “the number one domestic terrorist threat” in January 2006. read more »

WEB EXCLUSIVE While the FBI knocks on environmentalists and animal rights’ activists doors and grand juries in three states continue to issue subpoenas and indictments, events are being planned in more than 40 cities worldwide this weekend to express opposition to the “Green Scare”, or the recent crackdown by the federal government on activists who fight [...] read more »

Ericsson Inc., Lockheed Martin Corp. Raytheon Co., Northrop Grumman Corp., and Boeing Co. are competing to be the lead contractor for SBInet. The main task is to integrate data from satellites, electronic sensors, unmanned aerial vehicles, and video with new infrastructure, computer and communication software, and law enforcement components into one program. read more »

The nationwide crackdown, dubbed “Operation Backfire,” has been hailed by the FBI as a major blow to environmentalists and animal rights activists. However, many supporters of the accused suspect that the string of arrests falls in line with decades-long FBI covert intelligence operations aimed at disrupting and discrediting political movements. read more »

“There are so many roadside bombings, and our soldiers are just targets over there,” said Ellouese Upton, 75, a recent member of the Tucson group. Upton, like the other Grannies, feels that she has lived a long life and had the opportunity to raise a family. So she is willing to trade places with a young service man or woman in Iraq so they could come home and do the same. when they tried to enlist in the U.S. Army, putting a new feminine face to the antiwar movement. read more »

Small details of volunteers began patrolling a 20-mile stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border on April 1 against what they say the government is failing to stop: an “invasion of mobs of illegal aliens and terrorists.” read more »