Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
—The Talmud
Activism offers perhaps the most important tool for fixing the problems of America: inequality, racism and nativism, environmental ruination, corruption, and more.
But only if it happens with the recruitment of massive numbers of people, decent organization, strong leadership, and a clear agenda.
Winning in politics requires amassing resources and exerting leverage. “Power concedes nothing without a demand,” Frederick Douglass famously noted.
News of Activism seeks to play a small but important role in America’s political and social movements: To provide links to the best writing on the web about political and social movements. Usually, we will provide “evergreen” articles, which do not get pale and stake with age. Sometimes, we’ll provide a newsy article if it captures an important and enduring point.
Our model is Arts and Letters Daily, which links three worthwhile articles every day. It is, as A&LD’s editors say, “a thinking person’s guide … a reading list with attitude.” We plan to do A&L Daily one better by organizing our links into categories and using searchable hashtags for pieces that do not fit under our categories.
We unabashedly favor reform: strengthened democracy, better schools, access to health care, breaking up monopolies, taking on the climate crisis, and curtailing the military industrial complex (not to mention the medical-pharma-insurance complex, the media-tech complex, the agriculture-chemical complex, and more).
We will link advocates and skeptics of all stripes, as long as they embrace small-d democracy and meet basic standards of journalistic and academic integrity. We are delighted to consider your nominations for links. Send them to newsofactivism@gmail.com.