“I am very, very happy to announce that for the first time, Dow is accepting full responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe. We have a $12 billion plan to finally, at long last, fully compensate the victims, including the 120,000 who may need medical care for their entire lives, and to fully and swiftly remediate the Bhopal plant site,” said the supposed Dow Chemical spokesman, Jude Finisterra, on Dec. 3, 2004, during an appearance on BBC World.
Logic, a rapper known to incorporate meaningful messages with his music, recently released his newest track, “1-800-273-8255.” Covering topics of depression and suicide, the song and its subsequent music video uses the phone number of a national suicide hotline as its title.
This satirical website ridicules hipster racism and black tokenism, using two fictional white characters - Sally and Johnny - who have many black friends. The webpage is fairly simple and features fictional testimonies by black people celebrating the stereotypes and innocuous, but prejudiced behavior of Sally and Johnny. There is also a section of submitted testimonies and hate mail/fanmail.
There’s some great news for supporters of The Sarkeesian Effect, the seemingly random collection of badly filmed interviews with assorted people who dislike Anita Sarkeesian that is allegedly being edited into a film of some kind!
Transfixed by racial, political, and socioeconomic tensions saturating the news, movement artists Jon Boogz and Lil Buck, enveloped by the art of Alexa Meade, switch off the TV and release their emotion into a stirring dance that is both a lament and a spirited call to action.
"The Scream: 21st Century Edition" was created by New York-based artist Jim Costanzo in response to the Iraq War. The piece is directly inspired by Edward Munch's painting, "The Scream." Costanzo expresses anger and frustration at the illegal American war and the attack on our civil liberties.
The video for “Borders,” a song off MIA's album Matahdatah, features images recalling all sorts of migrations from the developing world—there are people crossing deserts, fences, and bodies of water. Though much of M.I.A.’s work has been about women and children, this video is filled with brown men: the ultimate bogeyman for many in the West, stereotyped as terrorists, criminals, and job-takers.
Force: Upsetting Rape Culture is a group of creative activists who seek to raise awareness about rape culture and promote consensual sex. They "create art actions to generate attention and get millions of people talking," in hopes that sex can become an empowering act rather than one of violence.
In 2004, the United Nations called the LRA crisis in northern Uganda the “most forgotten, neglected humanitarian emergency in the world.” Invisible Children was founded to change that and to fight against the false notion that our responsibility to each other stops at our own nations’ borders.
With Radiohead's "Everything In Its Right Place" as the soundscape, Jude Law narrates in this powerfully sad little video clip created in collaboration with Greenpeace. Please visit savethearctic.org
and sign the petition.
There was once a time when Israeli songs like A Matter of
Habit were routinely written, aired and became hits. These
were songs of political commentary or protest, songs of hope
and idealism. They represented the aspirations of Israel's
secular liberal (generally Ashkenazi) elite. But that was
long ago.
Cruelty-Cutter is cruelty-free shopping made simple! Cast away any doubts when purchasing items by using Cruelty-Cutter to scan an item and have an immediate response about its animal testing status. Share your results with friends on social media and also share your concern or praise with the company itself. Companies that still choose to test on animals will get the message that Cruelty-Cutter users are against what they are doing!
A photo project/online feed to increase visibility of sex workers and increase the sex workers’ sense of community of voice, in response to a spate of violence against the community in Ireland. The project led to a piece in The National, and increased area interest and conversation about violence against sex workers.
World Without Oil (WWO) is an alternate reality game (ARG) created to call attention to, spark dialogue about, plan for and engineer solutions to a possible near-future global oil shortage, post peak oil.
Trash Tycoon is an upcycling social network game developed by Guerillapps. The game applies traditional social gameplay features to highlight real-world issues such as waste, water, and “green” activities. Gameplay includes cleaning trash, recycling, and constructing products and decorations out of recycled material.
Sima Qian: China's 'grand historian' By Carrie Gracie BBC News, Beijing
Speaking truth to power has always been a high-risk strategy in China. Its rulers tend to prefer flattery, and writers who forget this do so at their peril. China's "grand historian" - 2,000 years ago - was one of many who have paid a terrible price.
A trio of far-right, pro-gun provocateurs is behind some of the largest Facebook groups calling for anti-quarantine protests around the country, offering the latest illustration that some seemingly organic demonstrations are being engineered by a network of conservative activists.
Alejandro Ghersi, the Venezuelan-born artist behind Arca, is part of a relatively recent and growing diaspora, and at a time when the political situation back home is at a fever pitch, it feels difficult not to see the ways this album relates to the anguish of that experience.
During the Steubenville, Ohio rape case in 2012, members of Anonymous uncovered and promised to release names of unindicted participants in the rape of a teenager by high school athletes.
Greenpeace released a video to spread the word that Nestle, the maker of Kit Kat, was using palm oil purchased from companies that are destroying the Indonesian rainforest and pushing orangutans towards extinction. The video, which features a guy opening a Kit Kat at work, pulling out an orangutan finger and taking a bite, shocked hundreds of thousands of viewers. The Greenpeace campaign against Nestle was a success.
For the past five years, we’ve screened SIMA juried films in communities and classrooms across six continents and witnessed an increasing demand to use the inspirational force of documentary filmmaking to build a global digital community around today’s most pressing issues.
AISHA FUKUSHIMA is a Singer, Speaker, Educator, and ‘RAPtivist’ (rap activist). Fukushima founded RAPtivism (Rap Activism), a hip hop project spanning 20 countries and four continents, amplifying universal efforts for freedom and justice.