GlobalShift

In keeping with the theme of making your immediate surroundings more beautiful, I would like to tell you about guerrilla gardening. Basically, guerrilla gardening consists of one or more individuals (the more the better) going to vacant lots, median strips, any forgotten piece of land and planting a garden. Technically, it is slightly illegal since the unused land is often owned by cities or private citizens. However, guerrilla gardening doesn’t exactly fall under vandalism laws either. The idea is to beautify, keep up the land, and haul trash, weeds and leftover debris from planting away.

On Sunday, March 7th, the Oscars will be giving out awards to this past year’s best films. One of the potential winners is the documentary “Burma VJ” which stars U Gawsita, a Buddhist monk from Burma who has been living as refugee in Utica, NY for the past year.
“Burma VJ”is about a peaceful protest lead [...]

It is no secret that the women of Saudi Arabia live under a great deal of oppression. It’s not much of a stretch to claim that they are treated like property under, what has so far been, a rather strict fundamentalist Islamic law. They are subservient to men in every way. Women must be fully [...]

When a disaster strikes, anywhere in the world, people tend to open their wallets en masse and donate to charity as their way of helping with the cause. Unfortunately, there are people in the world looking to take advantage of the misfortunes of others, who create false charities to trick people into donating money that [...]

Although I live in Los Angeles, we don’t have city sponsored, street cleaning in my neighborhood. Since I also live near a popular look-out/make-out spot, trash tends to accumulate quickly. I have noticed that more my neighbors and I pick up and beautify our street, the less trash and graffiti collects.

Brave New Films has recently released its 5th Anniversary Activist Collection, a DVD box set spanning 2004 – 2009. Containing a whopping 40 hours of material (something that shocked me – I was expecting closer to 8 or 10), the box set offers a compilation of short and long films, conversations with distinguished guests like [...]

Tan Zuoren, a Chinese activist who investigated in whether careless construction contributed to the deaths in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake was recently sentenced to five years in jail by the Chinese government.
Formally, Tan was indicted for subversion in having connections with the suppression of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
In response to the verdict, [...]

College students are making a difference every day. Young Visionaries is looking to reward several such activists.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is home to the world’s deadliest war since World War II and chances are, you don’t know much about it. In fact, the relative obscurity of the ongoing violence that has caused 10 million deaths and led to millions displaced has become almost as dumbfounding as the conflict itself. The [...]

Hedy Epstein is what some might see as a contradiction in terms: a survivor of the Holocaust and also a staunch advocate for the Palestinian people. Born in 1924 in Freiburg, Germany, Epstein was 14 when she escaped from Nazi persecution via the Kinderstransport to England. Since her 1948 arrival in the U.S., Epstein has [...]