Tag Archives: popular culture

Beyond The Choir:: Climate scientists reaching beyond the choir & dropping the F-bomb VIDEO

reposted from BeyondTheChior

A while back Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, offered some sound advice to climate scientists about “good climate communication”. Basically, if you’re a climate scientist who wants society to take your data seriously, you have to be something of a political scientist too. Mooney spotlights the Evangelical Climate Initiative as an example of good climate communication that can reach a broader constituency. It’s something that’s “not what you’d expect”. The name itself breaks a popular stereotype about who cares about climate — and a stereotype about evangelicals: that they’re inherently anti-science.

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Climate scientists have understandably been too busy being scientists — but Mooney suggests that they need to engage people with more than cold rational data. They’re hurting their cause by not treating it like a cause — sometimes even like a “war room”. Mooney wants climate scientists to get “in the game”.

Last week some creative climate scientists heeded that call. Okay, this video is probably designed to reach a slightly different audience than the Evangelical Climate Initiative’s base. But there are plenty of audiences to activate in this struggle. Enjoy…

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Overcoming political polarization… but not through facts

Ethan Zuckerman has posted a beautiful piece that stitches together many of the ideas we deal with in How To Win and the Center for Artistic Activism. I can’t recommend it enough:

Overcoming political polarization… but not through facts

It ties together polarization, confirmation bias, the media, David Simon and The Wire, and the need for addressing values and narrative before facts.

I’ll post it here for the sake of archiving: Continue reading

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Diggers: If you can act it out, it’s real.

We thought: culture is much more important than politics. Let’s just start getting people living the way they wanna live.

You wanna live in a world where you don’t have to work? Let’s make it.

You wanna live in a world where you can get food for free? Let’s make it.

You wanna live in a house with lots of women and men and live the way you want? Let’s do it.

Let’s make the world that you imagine real by acting it out.

And if you can act it out, it’s real.

– Peter Coyote on The Diggers

From a PBS documentary on The Diggers.

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Imagine Peace by Yoko Ono

IMAGINE PEACE

by yoko ono

to the pebble people: start your own campaign!

A butterfly is hopping from flower to flower. Oh, good. I think. The butterfly is busybodying as usual.

We are like butterflies. We busybody ourselves every day for our survival as we think we know how. But the difference with us, is that we know we are not as innocent as the butterflies. We are about to ruin this planet we call ours through our stupidity.

Luckily, there are so many of us in the world, who are now awakened, ready to act to save our world.

So let’s work together to save this planet. Since destiny is created by first imaging what destiny we want for ourselves, we should IMAGINE PEACE in a big way with total conviction. In the old days, gurus sat and meditated day and night. That was pretty powerful. But we live in a different world. Time is so precious to us now. A million kids can be killed in one second as we are wondering what to do. So we can’t just sit and meditate. We should IMAGINE PEACE day and night, as we go about our daily lives.

Yes. One thing that is interesting is you cannot be violent while you are imagining peace.
 If all of us in the world imagined peace at all times, there will be no dis-ease (disease) in the world. In fact, dis-ease will disappear from this planet altogether.

We should focus on healing the world we have destroyed, by asking our healing power to come out.
 Our intent of healing will start to show it’s power by just asking for it.
 When all of us ask the world to be healed, it will be.

Know that it is that simple.
 We are all connected.
 We affect each other right away.
 We affect each other even when we are in fear, confusion, anger, wanting to destroy the world.
 That’s how strongly connected we are.

Let’s start thinking what you can do, knowing that we are standing in the midst of an incredible disaster created by us, the human race. It is so bad that the farmers, who are providing what we eat, are being bankrupted for not complying to the ways of greedy corporate needs, losing their ancestral lands…some of them even committing suicide. The saddest thing is that so many children are sexually abused, sold for human parts and die or perish before their teens.

Please take a good look at what is happening around you. It may seem hopeless. But it is not. It is not difficult to change your down feeling to pure energy of getting the work done with love. Is that possible? Yes, it is.

The Universe will be affected immediately as you start to want to think the right way and correct the disease in our world. Since, disease is only a dis-ease, a condition created by our confused minds.

Send your message through the internet of how you love life and why. Because the people on the internet are also your family. 
If you keep meditating in your mind – not giving yourself the luxury of making a special sit-in meditation, but doing what you can do to change the world, if you did that for three months you will see the difference in your life and even a difference in our planet. Thus, we will be making a quiet revolution together.

Just do what you can do. Nothing more. 
By that, you will be starting the wheels of goodness to turn.

Something especially wonderful was told to me just recently. Two scientists who were researching the effect of waves in the ocean for two years, came to the conclusion that the smallest stimulus to the water be it a drop of a pebble, or a child splashing the water at the shore, affects the whole ocean, each time. Well, I thought we do affect each other on land, but I hadn’t realized that that was true in the ocean as well! What a blessing! Nature is making things so easy for us!

So now I call ourselves the small pebble people. Send small pebbles to the world. Don’t make big splashes with large stones. That will attract people and the wrong people as well. Our quiet revolution will not make announcements, but one day will be accepted by all people as the norm of life. The human race has done that with many things. Like we wanted to fly, and invented aeroplanes. We wanted to see the other side of the moon, and we have. This time, we want to heal our planet, and bring peace to this world. We will.

I am now starting to miss the butterflies. Where are they now? Once there were so many.

It’s time for you to start your own campaign today. You will see that it spreads and covers the world very fast, and meanwhile it will make you one of the small pebble people. Small pebble people are people who know that small pebbles, when they’re dropped in the ocean, will immediately affect the ocean of the whole wide world. Again, don’t throw big stones. It scares people and creates repercussions.

So we’ll just keep dropping small pebbles. Together. That’s how we will change the world. We change, and the world changes. Have trust in what you can do. Have trust in how fast we can change our world for the better. Why? Because we have to.

I would like to share an affirmation with you. Now say it in your mind with the firm belief that we are one, and together. We’ll make it.

In the name of Truth, Peace and Love:
Our Planet is healthy and whole.

We, the People of Earth,
See clearly, Hear clearly, Think clearly,
Make the right Judgement, right Decision and the right Move
For the benefit of Us, our Planet and the Universe.

We are now bathing in the light of dawn,
Standing in the Heaven we have created together on this Planet.

We wish to share this age of Joy with all lives on Earth,
As We are One,
United with Infinite and Eternal Love.

For the highest good of all concerned, So be it.

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Miami's Community Avengers

Have No Fear the Community Avengers are Here!
As the right wing mob mobilizes to shut down democratic debate on health care reform; as Van Jones is forced from the White House through distortions of the truth and plays on racial and political fears; as the recession deepens – the masked marauders known as the Community Avengers are swooping in to save the day.

The Community Avengers are a team of residents from Miami who are standing up in these trying times, calling out the criminal bankers, and inspiring action. They have been spotted tumbling out of a van at a recent Miami Dade County budget hearing, moving into the seething crowd and taking to task politicians with their lively chants and street theater. After mixing with all those malcontented with proposed cuts to the Miami Dade County budget, the Community Avengers did a double header and headed over to a health care town hall for a show down with the riled up right wing.

Just this week the Community Avengers joined forces with residents and pastors from Miami Gardens to fight back against banks bent on eviction rather than loan modification.
Always on call to do battle with the villains of bad government and corporate greed, the Community Avengers rallied to support an ordinance that would sanction foreclosing banks.

Click here to read more about this action: http://tinyurl.com/Communityavengers

It is time for progressive people everywhere to learn a lesson from the Community Avengers. Let’s creatively mobilize and call out the culprits across the country. Where right wing pundits play on irrational fears, we will be there. Where greedy bankers rob our people, we will be there. Where government bows to a marginal and maniac minority, we will be there.

You too can be a Community Avenger!

- Joseph Phelan, Miami Workers Center

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Wassup 2008

Funny, engaged in pop culture, arguably hard-hitting message… this is good.

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The Penguin "gets it"


YouTube – Pol-d

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Seun Kuti

Seun Kuti was interviewed on PRI’s Sound of Young America a couple weeks ago. Choice excerpt typed below and you can listen to the whole program here:

SK: Afrobeat is not pop.

JT: Did you ever think that you would be – because afrobeat was certainly popular in Nigeria, it’s not *the* pop music of NIgeria in 2008. Did you ever think you would pursue a career as a pop musician?

SK: No never never never.

JT: How come?

SK: Although I have a hip-hop band and producer back home, I never see myself as someone who’s going to do pop music. I had to make a decision of what I wanted to do, you know. So, right now as an adult I think there’s no way – I don’t even listen to pop songs. you know?

JT: [...] what about hip-hop for example?

SK: Well hip-hop is different, you’ve got a little real hip-hop out there and you got a little garbage as well, so I intend to listen to people that are a bit real, you know. People that speak about the environment, what is happening to them. I love to hear that.

…Because basically I feel that all black artists all over the world, the whole diaspora and Africa and everywhere, we all know we’re from really and we have an obligation to the continent. So I just feel that the access, the chance to make a difference with your music – because it’s not enough to go to Africa with a camera from CNN or FOX or whatever, you know, to get more credits to your humanity. Build a school, put some water – hey I went to Africa! That’s not it. That water, that’s cool, but not the problem in 2 years after they leave. What we can do is… put the struggle in our music, even if it’s one song. It will last forever. 10 generations will hear that song and they will understand what’s happening now. This is the records. This is the new records in this age where we have CIA, Homeland Security everywhere, there are secret services all over the world, you know, trying to stop us from expressing ourselves. Almost all records are classified, never knowing what is happening or anything. We have “official reports.” Everything always conflicting each other. “There are bombs, there are no bombs.” “9-11 was planned, it was not planned.” We always have that.

So, I just feel, we artists, since we can (inaudible) in our cities and not be censored, we have that power, we should make a very good use of it. Because we keep doing this and not being socially relevant and conscious like we were in the 60s and 70s to keep our rights, they’re gonna take away our freedom of this expression as well. And then we wont do shit.

JT: Do you every get to see, or have you since you put out this record, had any chance to see impact from your music? I mean, talk to people that have been changed by it or affected by it?

SK: Well no. I’ve not met anybody, but I’m sure I’m going to probably win a lot of people over to our side with this CD. Because I feel people right now in the world need to put humanity before the human, you know? We need to think about the general picture, not the individual one.

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I’m Rubber, You’re Glue …

by Jonathan Alter
Published Aug 23, 2008
From Newsweek magazine issue dated Sep 1, 2008

It’s hard to predict what will stick. ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ was a hand-scrawled sign hung in Little Rock.

When NEWSWEEK reported earlier this summer that the McCain family owns at least seven houses, few outside the hothouse of politics noticed. Voters assume that all politicians are rich and didn’t seem to care that John McCain’s wife, Cindy, is worth $100 million and owed back taxes on one of the properties. But when Politico asked McCain last week in New Mexico how many residences he and his wife owned and he answered, “I think—I’ll have my staff get [back] to you,” the story suddenly took off, fueled by the impression that McCain is old and out of touch with Americans struggling to pay their mortgages. Will it do his campaign real damage? Depends on the “stickiness.”

The same goes for Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver. The buzz of 70,000 people screaming for him at Invesco Field will wear off if he doesn’t frame his economic message in a way that otherwise inattentive Americans can recall. Without an indelible metaphor, all of his policy speeches are written in invisible ink.

Modern campaigns are about flinging 10 things against the wall every day and hoping something sticks. Everything else, from fund-raising to advertising (paid for by the fund-raising) to speechmaking to Web strategy, is in the service of applying that adhesive, either to cement the candidate’s message or muck up the opponent’s engine with sludge.

That’s because memorable lines, images, gaffes and monikers act like a piece of gum on the bottom of your shoe. They get your attention and may even shape your voting behavior. In the world of marketing, “sticky branding” means intentionally creating an emotional attachment to a consumer product. In the blogosphere, a “meme” (a word coined by the science writer Richard Dawkins in 1976) is an idea that spreads virally, beyond anyone’s control. Political campaigns often try to add gobs of glue (as Obama did on the seven-house story), but why some stories stick and others don’t remains something of a mystery.

Pop-culture references help. Ronald Reagan used a Clint Eastwood line, “Go ahead, make my day,” to great effect. When Walter Mondale wanted to stigmatize Gary Hart for lacking substance in 1984, he quoted from an ad for Wendy’s: “Where’s the beef?” The political spot that made the biggest splash this summer aired only briefly on TV. But the use of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton helped McCain label Obama as just another celebrity. If big names cut through the clutter, so does name-calling. GOP hit men like to refer to “Barack Hussein Obama,” the better to brand him as a foreigner. And Democratic polemicists are already referring to “Exxon John” and “another four years of John McSame.”
Continue reading

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Tropic Thunder – comedy is anarchy

…in comedy, context is everything. “Tropic Thunder”… doesn’t risk simply offending; at times the picture is almost appalling in its tastelessness — I watched parts of it agape. But Stiller and his ensemble… understand that comedy is anarchy. As much as we want our lives to be stable and manageable, comedy demands that we relinquish our sense of orderliness, sometimes even our better judgment. Respectful comedy is dull comedy. In the early ’90s, when Robert Mapplethorpe’s sexually explicit photographs were causing a flap about the public funding of art, I recall seeing people wearing buttons decreeing, “Art can’t hurt you.” But if it can’t cut into you, deeply or at all, what good is it?

from Salon review of Tropic Thunder.

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