Kaveri Rajaraman, who graduated from Harvard University in 2009 with a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology, was arrested In Bangalore, India on Saturday, Jan 19, 2013. She was picked up for resisting the demolition by the municipal corporation of tin-sheds in a housing area for the Economically Weaker Section in Bangalore city.

In 1984 the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP -The Greater Bangalore Municipal Corporation) built 1512 houses in Viveknagar, Bangalore and distributed them to Economically Weaker Section families in 1996. These residential units were not provided basic facilities like water or toilets. The buildings started cracking 5 years after being handed over and collapsed after 7 years of allotment. Three persons including a child died in the building collapse and several were injured.

India is currently in a state of disgust and shock over the brutal gang-rape of a 23-year-old woman on a moving bus in the capital, New Delhi, on Sunday, Dec 16th 2012. This single event has galvanized the city of Delhi and has also made people across India sit up and take notice. In a country where violence against women is endemic - even the number of cases of sexual violence that do get reported are disturbingly large - one incident triggering such a mass reaction is quite rare. Delhi has earned the reputation as the "rape capital" of India and even assaults of women in moving vehicles, such as this one, are not without precedent - women have been forced into vehicles and gang-raped before. Of course, the brutality of this particular incident, where the female victim was also assaulted with an iron rod has particularly touched people to the core.

As a member of the Alliance for Secular and Democratic South Asia (“Alliance”), a Cambridge, MA based organization which champions issues in South Asia, the news of the November 24th Tazreen garment factory fire in Dhaka Bangladesh in which 112 workers lost their lives was a rude jolt. It was also a reminder that such things seem sickeningly repetitive. Only in October, the Alliance had organized a panel discussion called “Corruption and Capitalism in Bangladesh and Pakistan,” which dealt with the incident of fire this September that claimed the lives of 300 garment workers in Karachi, Pakistan. In the blurb of that event we had written that, “Such an incident is not an anomaly but the inevitable consequence faced by workers with near non-existent negotiation powers in Bangladesh and Pakistan.” On this occasion, faced with another horrific incident, the Alliance decided to come out to the streets, as it were, to hold a candle-light vigil and protest rally at Harvard Square on Dec 1st.

The only groups that we demand a strict adherence to nonviolence from are the marginalized and their advocates. We call their grievances ‘ideologies’ as a means of crushing any discursive avenues by which they can be addressed. And then, when what are sometimes the worst elements of their own society finally turn their isolation into violence, we call it terrorism.

"The war on terror” Lewis Lapham said in a 2011 speech at Stanford University, “is a war on an unknown enemy and an abstract noun--and it can't be won.” Terrorism is a nebulous term. It is an idea that, in a political context, we use it in order to describe a campaign of organized violence used against civilian populations by a group in order to obtain that group’s various political ends. The word itself is used so often in the media, as George Orwell noted in his essay Politics and the English Language, that its meaning has either been totally lost or changed forever. It is always in the service of war against this term ‘terrorism’ or to stop certain ‘terrorists’ that we justify the industrial slaughter of defenseless civilian populations all over the Middle East--and it is again being used to sell an atrocity happening right now more than 5,000 miles away from Boston in the Gaza strip.

It could not be more different than Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is 9 a.m., and I am walking past a crumbling Catholic church, looking out into a valley nestled between two volcanoes. A group of children run to hug me. There is no school, and they want to play soccer.

There was something about running across a damp field with them, knowing their little legs will take them to the goal much more quickly than yours will. For a few minutes, you forget where you are; forget the mudslide-stained concrete houses, the tin roofs, the overwhelming atmosphere of poverty. You are teaching English to children, yelling words for goal, ball, swerve, duck, and kick. You are with kids who love a sport, just like most kids anywhere in the world. They're laughing, and their mothers are watching you from underneath the eaves of tin roofs. You grin, and they grin back. You only wish good things upon these good people.

Press Pass TV is a non-profit organization that harnesses the power of media arts to empower youth in under-served communities. In this segment, PPTV partners with the City School to take an in-depth look at an innovative education program in Haiti - Empowerment Through Education Camp. You can learn more about Press Pass TV by clicking here and more about ETE Camp here.

On June 16, on the eve of the Greek parliamentary elections, with the future of the European Union in doubt and a newly-elected Socialist president in France, French citizens in the U.S. and Canada voted to elect a candidate in a newly created constituency to represent them in the French National Assembly. They chose Corinne Narassiguin, a 37-year old member of the Socialist Party who has worked as a banker on Wall Street for twelve years.

A few facts about the election: 27% of representatives to the newly elected French National Assembly are women. By way of comparison, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, women number 17 % of voting members of the U.S. House of Representatives. In Finland the ratio is 43% and in Sweden 45%. The sympathies of French expatriates in the U.S. tend to lean to the right (in French terms); in the presidential elections in May they voted against the Socialists. In New York, capital of finance and fashion, French expatriates voted two-to-one in May for the right. 53 % of French expatriates in Boston voted the same way. Those in Canada, in contrast, were solidly (58%) for the left.

In this interview, Bill McKibben opens the Global Teach In on Wednesday by reviewing the scale of environmental challenges that corporate power and carbon-lobby pose for humanity as a whole. Asked to address economic alternatives, he notes that there are many welcome projects but cautions that the scale and pace of change require an immense social movement to challenge corporations and governments. If successful, these social movements will find that that tomorrow's economy favors decentralized development and job creation.

Many years ago, in a situation that still produces much pain, close friends were thinking through treatment for their gravely ill child. They had exhausted conventional and experimental therapies; their doctors were urging them to do what they could to make their son feel comfortable and loved. Then, suddenly, after years of suffering, our friends had smiles on their faces. A cure was available! For a brief moment, I shared their joy but then realized that we were victims of quackery. I had no reasonable alternative to offer them, but I knew that the quacks and their expensive cure would only rob our friends of their last memories of their son. That pain has resurfaced as I contemplate how to respond as a progressive organizer to the recent events in Libya.

Last night I attended a large gathering of activists who came together in Arlington Center, Massachusetts, to listen to MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky and Institute for Policy Studies fellow Phyllis Bennis discuss how to reinvigorate and expand the Peace Movement. Both speakers emphasized the need for anti-war activists to make links with other groups working for change, and particularly to get involved in supporting the majority of Americans who are overwhelmed by the ongoing economic crisis. Unemployment, cuts in wages and benefits, inflation in the area of fuel, food, and college tuition, have left many working people and youth depleted by everyday survival demands, as well as made them vulnerable to right-wing messages blaming immigrants and other victims of economic depression for their own suffering.