Apparently, some kind of Worldwide Wave Of Action started last week, billed as a rekindling of the Occupy movement. Having covered at least half a dozen previous “international days of action”, my well-honed cynicism kicked into gear as I remembered how all the previous “worldwide” action days drew hundreds of thousands in cities outside the US — while inside the US, the turnouts could be generously described as pathetic.

The current “worldwide” Wave Of Action was no different, judging from what I was seeing on my Twitter feed. Cities in the UK and Europe turned out healthy numbers while in the meantime, in the US, I saw the usual sad smattering of thin, weak protests, with small veterans’ contingents and others gathering in places like the NYC Vietnam War Memorial and Zucotti Park, only to be chased off or arrested by police.

I was also somewhat less than inspired by the vagueness of their rhetoric and sloganeering. On Twitter I saw pronouncements like “movement of movements” and “bring your own goals”, with no mention of any specific issues, such as war and militarization, unemployment, state-enforced economic austerity, the destruction of civil liberties, or the US-instigated “revolution” in the Ukraine — just lots of lofty faux revolutionary hype and empty poetic slogans.

I won’t speak for the rest of the world, but in the US, the “Wave Of Action” was more like a “ripple of action”.

Oh, yeah — and, cupcakes.

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Last week JPMorgan Chase, world-renowned den of thieves, decided to try and buff up their PR by staging an event on Twitter, a question-and-answer event under the hashtag #AskJPM. Needless to say, hilarity ensued.

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From the Pipeline Peace Walk donations page:

This summer, Love Bomb Seed Bomb, the People’s Garden, the Harvest Collective, Permatecture Design, the Compassionate Earth Walk, Occupy the Keystone XL Pipeline and Pipeline Peace Walk will walk the length of the Keystone XL Pipeline, from the Canadian border in Montana, down to the Gulf of Mexico, in a pilgrimage to defend nature from the Oil Machine. We walk for our children, for nature, the plants and animals, and for the next seven generations of humanity…

…We will walk thousands of miles to shift our reality, and to build a better future, by demanding we depart from the old paradigm, and enter into the new. As we walk we will be visiting communities along the pipeline, lending support to their current struggles, and telling their stories.

Along the way we will be in service to communities who are resisting the Keystone XL Pipeline. We will meet up with Moccasins on the Ground in South Dakota, Farmers Unions in Kansas, Bold Nebraska in Nebraska, Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance in Oklahoma, and Tar Sands Blockade in Texas. Throughout the summer we will be traveling to be in service to these causes, and to help create links between the communities along the Keystone XL Pipeline path. At current, we are also coordinating with #Fearless Summer to create collective movement.

This is the art I created for the cover of the Pipeline Peace Walk Guide, published as an aid to the activists walking the length of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Find out more about the Pipeline Peace Walk on Farcebook here.

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How to make a “seed bomb”, part 1

How to make a “seed bomb”, part 2:

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By this time, most of you — especially in the progressive activist community — have heard the old “stone soup” story. Based on the concept of “stone soup”, Occupy Monsanto, as part of its ongoing campaign against GMO foods and for citizen awareness of GMOs, is staging an “eat-in” on the grounds of the FDA’s Center For Food Safety And Applied Nutrition in the suburbs of Washington, DC on April 8. The organizers are inviting folks to bring their favorite organic ingredients for a vegetarian soup to be cooked at the event, designed to raise awareness of the FDA’s recent decisions on GMOs in favor of Monsanto, and the entirely-too-close relationship between corporations and the FDA, especially in the person of its Deputy Commissioner for Foods, Michael Taylor.

So, folks… are you hungry for a little “food democracy”?

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