#self-governance

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Right-wing politics
fromTruthout
2 days ago

No Kings Must Mean No War: Foreign Policy Is Least Democratic Space in Politics

The majority of Iranian Americans oppose the war on Iran, despite media portrayal of pro-monarchy sentiments.
Left-wing politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
21 hours ago

Here are three ways we can turn anti-Trump solidarity into political power | Robert Reich

Solidarity against Trump's policies can be transformed into political power through targeted activism and voter mobilization.
#nyc-community-boards
fromwww.amny.com
4 days ago
New York City

NYC community boards: What to know about these civic groups, how they operate and why there's a reform push

NYC politics
fromwww.amny.com
3 days ago

NYC Council members would have more control in establishing community boards, per new bill

A new bill proposes that NYC Council members appoint half of community board members to enhance local representation.
New York City
fromwww.amny.com
4 days ago

NYC community boards: What to know about these civic groups, how they operate and why there's a reform push

NYC Community Boards are essential for civic engagement, allowing residents to voice opinions and influence local governance.
fromTruthout
3 days ago

Rupture and Repair Under Fascist Conditions

"We have a great opportunity in our movements to learn how to be opponents without being enemies," says Tanuja Jagernauth. This perspective emphasizes the importance of maintaining respect and understanding even amidst conflict.
Social justice
fromPhilosophynow
5 days ago
Philosophy

The Collective City

Islamic philosophy invites plurality and coexistence, emphasizing the importance of dialogue and the acceptance of error in understanding.
#elections
SF politics
fromPadailypost
5 days ago

Candidate defends party registration

Jim Irizarry claims he mistakenly registered with a far-right party, while opponent David Canepa argues it was intentional and questions Irizarry's qualifications.
SF politics
fromPadailypost
5 days ago

Candidate defends party registration

Jim Irizarry claims he mistakenly registered with a far-right party, while opponent David Canepa argues it was intentional and questions Irizarry's qualifications.
fromAllthingssmitty
1 week ago

You probably don't need to lift state - Matt Smith

Keep state as close as possible to where it's actually used. Lift it when multiple components need it or you need to coordinate behavior between components.
React
Boston
fromBoston.com
6 days ago

After 'No Kings' rally, local organizers are looking to sustain momentum. What's next?

The 'No Kings' coalition in Boston emphasizes ongoing engagement and plans for May Day mobilization with weekly actions and community involvement.
#democracy
US politics
fromSlate Magazine
1 week ago

This Democracy Expert is Warning that ICE at the Airports is Absolutely a Dry Run for the Midterms

The United States is experiencing a rapid decline in democratic norms and institutions, with significant threats to upcoming elections.
#local-elections
London politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
4 days ago

Your Party to focus local election efforts on backing independent candidates

Your Party is targeting urban areas with large Muslim populations to support independent candidates and community groups against Labour.
London politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
4 days ago

Your Party to focus local election efforts on backing independent candidates

Your Party is targeting urban areas with large Muslim populations to support independent candidates and community groups against Labour.
NYC politics
fromNew York City, NY Patch
6 days ago

Your Vote Decides Which New York Neighborhood Fix Mamdani Will Tackle Next

Over 11,600 New Yorkers participated in the Mayor's Municipal Madness to select city projects for repair by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Relationships
fromPortland Monthly
2 weeks ago

From the Editor: Building Community Isn't Always Fun. Do It Anyway.

Proximity-based community organizing builds solidarity across differences through sustained engagement and shared material goals, fostering understanding that transcends initial disagreements.
SF politics
fromThe Nation
2 weeks ago

Bridging the Red-Blue Divide, One Concrete Deed at a Time

Community Works builds trust across partisan divides by organizing nonpolitical community service activities that unite neighbors regardless of political affiliation.
Philosophy
fromThe Nation
2 weeks ago

In Defense of Being Performative

Democracy requires citizens to actively perform civic engagement; dismissing performative politics misunderstands that democratic participation is inherently performative and essential for democratic survival.
fromwww.bbc.com
1 week ago

Campaigners celebrate after new town plans dropped

Campaigner Aysha Hawcutt stated that residents were 'not anti-homes', but believed the Adlington plan was 'the wrong proposal in the wrong place'. She expressed pride in the community's resilience against the development threats.
London politics
World politics
Portraying leaders as evil symbols justifies intervention while obscuring underlying political structures that enabled their rise, perpetuating cycles of instability.
fromNonprofit Quarterly | Civic News. Empowering Nonprofits. Advancing Justice.
3 weeks ago

Rotating the Clipboard Built Our Workplace Democracy | Nonprofit Quarterly | Civic News. Empowering Nonprofits. Advancing Justice.

Losing staff could be detrimental to the projects we worked on, and there was a growing dissatisfaction with how meetings were run. These mostly one-sided discussions left the quieter half of us feeling pushed aside, like our thoughts didn't matter much. If things stayed this way, I worried the good people on our team would start quitting one by one.
Non-profit organizations
Social justice
fromThe Nation
2 weeks ago

How to Defend Democracy One State at a Time

States are organizing coordinated opposition to federal government actions through legal and legislative tools, while organized citizens are demanding change and electing new leaders to strengthen democracy.
UK politics
fromwww.bbc.com
2 weeks ago

Reform council leader survives no confidence vote

Reform UK council leader George Finch survived a no-confidence vote by one vote at Warwickshire County Council, with 27 voting against removal and 26 voting for it.
Philosophy
fromApaonline
3 weeks ago

Why We Need a Formal, Mandatory, and Remunerated "Citizen Lobby"

Post-Cold War optimism about democracy and internet freedom has been undermined by geopolitical tensions, neoliberalism, nationalism, and corporate influence that concentrate power among the already wealthy.
Environment
fromHigh Country News
1 month ago

The essentials of democracy - High Country News

Environmental protections are being dismantled through regulatory actions without public input, while climate change impacts devastate agricultural communities dependent on water resources.
UK politics
fromwww.bbc.com
3 weeks ago

Council leader bullish on no-confidence vote chances

A 19-year-old Reform UK council leader faces a no-confidence vote over allegations of bringing the authority into disrepute, but maintains he is performing well and dismisses the challenge as a political stunt.
Education
fromArchDaily
1 month ago

When the School Becomes the City: Community-Centered Projects in the Global South

School architecture functions as a catalyst for social transformation by creating multifunctional civic spaces that integrate education, culture, sports, and community engagement within urban territories.
Philosophy
fromApaonline
3 weeks ago

Secrecy, Democracy, Necessity

Executive officials justify secrecy through claims of protecting decision-making integrity and national security, but such necessity arguments alone cannot legitimize secret governance in democracies.
Business
fromHarvard Business Review
1 month ago

What to Do When Your Board Is Meddling in Operational Work

Boards are increasingly adopting operational roles, blurring governance and management boundaries through private equity-style monitoring as economic uncertainty and AI disruption intensify.
EU data protection
fromInfoWorld
1 month ago

Sovereignty isn't a toggle feature

European cloud alternatives like Hetzner and Scaleway can deliver comparable performance and capabilities to AWS while significantly reducing costs, though they require greater operational responsibility and architectural commitment to sovereignty.
fromTruthout
1 month ago

The Science of Unlearning And Why Organizers Need It

Real change rarely happens through debate or persuasion. Instead, transformation grows out of relationships, shared struggle, cognitive dissonance, and practice. Together, Kelly and Lewis explore what organizers can learn from the science of neuroplasticity, the role of rupture and confrontation, and why movements need to focus less on 'changing minds' and more on creating conditions where people can unlearn harmful beliefs and step into collective action.
Social justice
World politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Autocracy is rising in the west. But the global south proves it's not inevitable | Kenneth Roth

Autocrats face growing internal pressure from their populations, while democracy remains valued globally despite Western challenges from far-right movements and disaffected voters.
fromArchDaily
1 month ago

Designing With, Not For: CatalyticAction's Participatory Practice

Architecture is often evaluated through finished forms, yet some practices operate in a different register, one where design unfolds through relationships, time, and use rather than through a single outcome. For CatalyticAction, participation is not a parallel social activity, but the means through which spaces are conceived, constructed, and sustained over time. Based between Beirut and London, the practice has worked across the Middle East and Europe, developing public spaces, schools, playgrounds, and everyday urban infrastructures through long-term collaboration with local communities.
Design
Philosophy
Tyranny corrupts all psychic faculties into servants of lawless appetite, with reason producing ideology to rationalize control rather than ceasing to function.
Women
fromPsychology Today
1 month ago

What Is It About Women in Leadership That Reduces Corruption?

Greater female political representation correlates with lower corruption and stronger public service delivery, partly because women are often excluded from corrupt networks.
World politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Politics Without Politicians by Helene Landemore review power to the people

Randomly selected citizen assemblies replacing electoral politics reduce polarization, deepen civic bonds, and produce more legitimate, deliberative collective decisions.
Philosophy
fromPsychology Today
1 month ago

Neighbors, It's Time to Make a Stand

Universal conviction in one's own righteousness divides humanity, while accelerating evolutionary mismatch from our technology-created world remains our shared existential problem.
History
fromThe Atlantic
1 month ago

The Commons: The Unfinished Revolution

The American Revolution reshaped political power but preserved many social hierarchies, and inclusive historical portrayals recognize marginalized contributors.
fromFast Company
2 months ago

Our embrace of individuals over institutions isn't serving us well

In the early 20th century, sociologist Max Weber noted that sweeping industrialization would transform how societies worked. As small, informal operations gave way to large, complex organizations with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, leaders would need to rely less on tradition and charisma, and more on organization and rationality. He also foresaw that jobs would need to be broken down into specialized tasks and governed by a system of hierarchy,
History
Law
fromAbove the Law
1 month ago

Accountability In An Age Of Unaccountability - Above the Law

Legal system turmoil: arrests, Epstein file fallout, judicial misconduct, and mounting ethical breaches requiring disbarment of dishonest administration lawyers.
fromArchDaily
2 months ago

Who Owns Public Space? Three Active Models of Shared Management Shaping Urban Commons in Europe and New York

Public space is often understood as belonging to no one in particular, collectively accessible yet institutionally maintained, yet a growing number of initiatives are challenging this assumption by testing shared management and distributed ownership models. In Paris, Adoptez un banc introduces a sponsorship-based approach, allowing individuals and groups to support temporarily and symbolically claim responsibility for historic public furniture without compromising its collective use.
France news
LGBT
fromThe Walrus
1 month ago

The Sports Organization That Stood Up to Alberta | The Walrus

Skate Canada will not host events in Alberta due to provincial restrictions on transgender athletes, upholding national standards for safe, inclusive sport.
fromenglish.elpais.com
2 months ago

It is easier to overthrow a tyrant than to govern a leaderless country

Any lingering doubts about the true motives behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq were dispelled when looters were ransacking Baghdad, carrying off millennia-old artifacts from the Iraqi capital's archaeological museum, while U.S. troops fortified the Ministry of Oilthe only government building left untouched and from which not a single document emerged. The disastrous and illegal invasion, spearheaded by the United States with military support from the United Kingdom
World news
fromThe New Yorker
1 month ago

Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight

Last week- after the Wall Street Journal broke more news about the Trump family's dodgy crypto-business dealings and before the President shared a racist video of the Obamas depicted as dancing apes-the Amazon entrepreneur Jeff Bezos decided that one of his smaller properties, the Washington Post, has proved such a drag on his two-hundred-and-thirty-billion-dollar fortune that prudence required that he obliterate much of its newsroom.
Media industry
US politics
fromThe Atlantic
2 months ago

Put Humans in Charge Again

Strong executive authority and flexible decision-making enable rapid, large-scale public works, mass hiring, and fast crisis responses when bureaucratic processes are bypassed.
Philosophy
fromApaonline
1 month ago

What Accountability-Seeking Protest Can Tell Us About Democracy

Different kinds of political protest pursue distinct aims; accountability-seeking protest aims to hold actors responsible and can reinforce democratic community bonds.
fromPsychology Today
2 months ago

How Can We Change the World?

There's a myth in our society that real change requires force, strength, and domination. We celebrate athletes, CEOs, and politicians who crush their opponents. But history tells a different story. Lasting social change has often been triggered by humble people whose weapons were passion, principle, and an unwavering commitment to justice and the truth - not the truth we see on TV or read in print media, but rather the truth that we feel deep inside ourselves.
Social justice
#economic-democracy
fromApaonline
1 month ago
Philosophy

Democratizing the Economy through Community Wealth Building: Recent Lessons from the UK and Poland

fromApaonline
1 month ago
Philosophy

Democratizing the Economy through Community Wealth Building: Recent Lessons from the UK and Poland

fromLGBTQ Nation
1 month ago

Political pragmatism is not a moral failing. It may be the only thing that can save us. - LGBTQ Nation

He is not worthy of the presidency. He takes bribes blatantly. And now he's being a racist, blatantly. They were supposed to deport the dangerous criminals. They were not supposed to go after small children, storm schools, bring terror upon, you know, the little kids and the women and children, not just the immigrants in the school. All the children are scared.
US politics
UK politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Council leader claims local authority bullied' to delay polls for extra funding and powers

Norfolk council leader withdrew from devolution and LGR after government reversed election postponement, accusing ministers of bullying by tying funding and powers to cancelling elections.
US politics
fromThe Atlantic
2 months ago

American Democracy Is Showing Signs of Life

American democracy faced severe authoritarian threats under Trump but shows resilience through declining presidential support, mass protest, citizen defense, political opposition, and judicial resistance.
Philosophy
fromAeon
1 month ago

Institutions are how we scale up cooperation among millions | Aeon Essays

Institutions enforce cooperation but must also prevent guardians from abusing power, effectively shifting the cooperation problem upward rather than eliminating it.
fromNonprofit Quarterly | Civic News. Empowering Nonprofits. Advancing Justice.
1 month ago

Philanthropy Must Defend the Right to Bear Witness | Nonprofit Quarterly | Civic News. Empowering Nonprofits. Advancing Justice.

"Are you okay?" These were Alex Pretti's last words, said to a woman after ICE agents had tackled and pepper-sprayed her. Videos from bystanders show Pretti holding up a phone, attempting to document what was happening before he himself was pepper-sprayed, wrestled to the ground, and killed by those officers. He lost his life not for committing violence, but for documenting it, and stepping in to protect someone facing it.
US politics
UK politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Tell us: do you live in a Reform run council or mayoral authority?

Reform UK captured over 600 local seats and controls 10 councils, campaigning to cut waste, lower council tax and reform local governance.
Philosophy
fromApaonline
2 months ago

In the Midst of a Crisis: Relational Liberalism and the Contemporary Challenges to Democratic Legitimacy

Contemporary democracies face a legitimacy crisis driven by widespread erosion of trust, causing representation breakdowns, unchecked power, and extreme asymmetries in wealth, status, and influence.
fromwww.mercurynews.com
2 months ago

Bouie: There is a sickness eating away at American democracy

The truth is that as a country we have often found one reason or another to let the powerful escape the consequences of their actions. Consider Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America, commander in chief of a rebellion that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Davis spent two years in federal custody after the end of the war. The indictment against him was dismissed following his release, and he spent the rest of his life a free man.
US politics
UK politics
fromwww.bbc.com
2 months ago

Police called as councillors vote to shelve elections

Redditch Borough Council voted to request postponement of May local elections to support local government reorganisation, citing £192,000 savings.
US politics
fromPsychology Today
2 months ago

Protesting Can Be Good For You

Participating in political protests builds social connection, reduces stress through collective effervescence, and strengthens community allyship against state aggression toward vulnerable groups.
fromPsychology Today
2 months ago

How to Have Better Political Conversations

The principle of intellectual charity is fundamental to constructive political conversations. This principle states that, in any discussion, we should accept the best version of an opponent's ideas, not a distorted version or a "straw man." Exaggeration and distortion of opposing opinions (always present, to some degree, in political debates) have become the standard form of political argument in contemporary America.
Philosophy
US politics
fromThe Atlantic
2 months ago

I Tried to Be the Government. It Did Not Go Well.

Government staffing cuts and institutional disruptions have weakened regulatory oversight, prompting individuals to perform personal safety checks such as buying Geiger counters.
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