Feminist Author, Shumalith Firestone dies at age 67

Shulamith Firestone, the author of The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, has died at the age of 67, apparently of natural causes, The New York Times' Margolit Fox. She had been found dead on Tuesday in her East Village apartment in New York. Lincoln Anderson writes in The Villager that her landlord Bob Perl has said the cause of death remains "unclear at this point."

The Dialectic of Sex was published when she was just 25, in 1970. Margalit Fox writes in Firestone's Times obituary, "Ms. Firestone extended Marxist theories of class oppression to offer a radical analysis of the oppression of women, arguing that sexual inequity springs from the onus of childbearing, which devolves on women by pure biological happenstance." Of the book, Naomi Wolf wrote, "No one can understand how feminism has evolved without reading this radical, inflammatory second-wave landmark.”

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Pregame show honors Civil Rights Heroes

ATLANTA -- Baseball paid tribute to some towering members of society on Saturday at the Civil Rights Game, an event designed to highlight the ongoing struggle for equality everywhere.

Jackie Robinson, the pioneer who broke baseball's color line in 1947, was never far from the conversation Saturday, and one of his teammates was one of the game's guests of honor.

Don Newcombe, who referred to Robinson as "my idol" earlier in the week, was on hand at Turner Field as one of the Beacon Award winners on Saturday, and he was joined by fellow award recipients Congressman John Lewis and the founding members of recording group Earth, Wind & Fire.

Newcombe and his compatriots were each driven onto the field in a convertible and took a victory lap, beginning in the right-field corner and stopping out by center field. Earlier in the day, the three had received their Beacon Awards as part of a banquet at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta.

Lewis, who has represented Georgia's 5th Congressional District since 1987, was touched by receiving his award, and he said that the Civil Rights Game is an important addition to the calendar because it draws attention to the progress that's been made and the work that still needs to be done.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Cellphone AIDS test studies going on in South Africa and South Korea

South African and South Korean researchers are working on making a smartphone capable of doing AIDS tests in rural parts of Africa that are the worst hit by the disease, a researcher said Friday.

The team have developed a microscope and an application that can photograph and analyse blood samples in areas far from laboratories to diagnose HIV and even measure the health of immune systems.

"Our idea was to obtain images and analyse images on this smartphone using applications," said Jung Kyung Kim, a professor in biomedical engineering at Kookmin University in South Korea.

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175th Birthday of Mother Jones

A labor organizer about whom relatively little was known even at the height of her considerable fame, Mary Harris Jones is thought to have been born on roughly this day 175 years ago in Cork, Ireland. The town of Cork is honoring her this week with the first-ever Cork Mother Jones Festival, a three-day event featuring concerts, a mass at the cathedral where she was baptized, a commemorative plaque, and a day-long bus tour of her childhood stomping grounds. At the age of 10, Jones and her family of tenant farmers fled Ireland to escape the potato famine, relocating to Toronto, Canada and, in Jones' case, later the United States.

As Jones' biographer Elliott J. Gorn wrote in this magazine, her image as a badass grandma has roots in personal tragedy. An 1867 yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee killed Jones' husband and her four children. A widow at 30, she moved to Chicago and built a successful dressmaking business—only to lose everything in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. She went on to toil in obscurity for two decades until suddenly inventing the persona of Mother Jones. "Or, to put it more precisely," Gorn writes, "she began to play a role that she and her followers made up as they went along. By 1900, no one called her Mary, but always Mother; she wore antique black dresses in public, and she began exaggerating her age.

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Pale Male's babies can't come home until rat poison is removed

UPPER WEST SIDE — Pale Male's two baby hawks have almost fully recovered from a bout of rat poisoning last month, but animal rescuers refuse to send them back to their home in Central Park because the area is still filled with rat poison.

Cathy Horvath, whose volunteer animal rescue organization WINORR-Wildlife In Need of Rescue and Rehabilitation is treating the famous offspring of the red-tailed hawk, said the park is too dangerous for the young birds because of the ongoing use of rodenticides at nearby institutions including the Central Park Boathouse and the American Museum of Natural History, as first reported by DNAinfo.com New York.

"I'm getting a little panicky because I don't know what to do with [the two baby hawks]. The museums and restaurants are using the same poison," said Horvath. "I can't put them back or they'll be dead."

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India cracks down on Tiger Tourism

In July the Supreme Court – motivated by a petition from self-described tiger-rights champion Mr. Dubey and dismayed at the mess of regulations governing tiger conservation – shocked the industry (and indeed Mr. Dubey) by slapping a blanket ban on tiger tourism.

That’s the business of taking vehicles full of tourists into the country’s nature reserves to see the critically endangered national animal, a centrepiece of most foreigners’ visits to India and an increasingly popular pastime for India’s growing middle class.

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Union-owned bank helps restore pay to Firefighters and Policemen

Earlier this summer, the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, cut the pay of its 400 firefighters and police officers to $7.25 an hour, as Working In These Times reported. Scranton Mayor Chris Doherty claimed that he was forced to cut the pay because the city simply did not have enough cash on hand to pay full salaries. Because of its poor finances Scranton had also been unable to get a loan to help cover the costs of back wages owed to firefighters and police. But a last-second $6.25 million loan from the union-owned Amalgamated Bank will help Scranton to meet its payroll this Friday and to pay the workers their backpay.

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Victory for online activists: European Parliament strikes down bill that would greatly hamper online freedoms

This July saw Europe declaring its own independence–from a multinational agreement that critics say would have increased censorship and restricted Internet freedom. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which aims to establish common standards for intellectual property rights enforcement, was defeated in the European Parliament by a 478 to 39 vote. Nine countries outside the EU have signed on to the treaty, including the United States, and if six now officially ratify it the pact will go into effect. But without European support, the agreement has lost its heft–an outcome that organizers attribute to a months-long campaign, in streets and on computer screens across Europe, to raise public awareness about the impact of this secretive trade agreement.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Chicago gears up for heirloom fruit orchard

Chicagoans will crave the Spitzenberg apple, Dave Snyder is certain. Whether in hand or in a morning danish, the name will simply roll off their tongues.

Snyder is an urban farmer and founder of the Chicago Rarities Orchard Project, or CROP. Inspired by author Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire and North Carolina rare-apples grower Creighton Lee Calhoun, Jr., Snyder thought his diverse and congested Logan Square neighborhood a befitting home for the city’s first orchard, where rare varieties of apples, such as the Spitzenberg, dangle from branches.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Universities, Civil Society Join Major Bid to End Poverty in South Africa

Cape Town — Poverty and inequality are named routinely among the key challenges facing South Africa today. This week a conference begins in Cape Town to consider not only the experiences and causes of inequality, but to explore practical strategies - policies and actions - that can reduce inequality and poverty in both the short- and long-term.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Soil Association holds month-long celebration of organic food

One of the UK’s leading organic food and farming charities has launched Organic September – a month-long celebration of “healthy, humane and sustainable food, farming and land use”.

The event, which is being coordinated by the Soil Association, encourages people to become immersed in an organic way of life, and is supported by a number of high-profile figures, including Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Xanthe Clay and Sophie Grigson.

“Organic September is Europe’s biggest celebration of all things organic and is a great chance for people to discover what makes organic food naturally different and to enjoy all the special offers and events happening across the country”, said Helen Browning, chief executive of the Soil Association.

“Why not give your body a boost before winter by cooking up some of the mouth-watering recipes we have collected based on fresh, seasonal organic fruit and vegetables.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Stolen Dog returned to Animal Welfare Society

Workers at a New Milford animal shelter are breathing a sigh of relief after their beloved pit bull Rocky, who they feared stolen, was returned on Monday.

Llewellyn, a Kennel Attendant at the Animal Welfare Society of New Milford, said immediate panic set in after Rocky, 6, disappeared on Sunday.

“I saw his harness was still in the basket; we realized he was gone,” Llewellyn said.

Llewellyn said someone broke in on Sunday evening while she was running errands. Rocky was the only missing thing.

“Clearly, someone broke in -- took him -- and got scared and dropped him (off somewhere),” Llewellyn said.

Luckily, the red-nosed pit bull wasn’t gone for long.

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University of Texas joins Workers Rights Consortium

THE UNIVERSITY of Texas (UT) at Austin, the largest collegiate apparel provider in the world, has agreed to sign with the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), a labor-rights monitoring group that works to end sweatshop conditions in the making of university apparel.

The decision was the result of a nine-year campaign by student activists. Throughout negotiations with the university, administrators repeatedly insisted the matter "was closed." Most recently, the logjam was broken by a sit-in at the office of UT President William Powers, during which 18 students were arrested.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Hundreds rally for Marshalltown's anti-bullying campaign

They flocked to the downtown square today clad in similar orange T-shirts with “Not In Our Town” and “Stop hate. Together.” emblazoned on the front.

But the messages on back were customized to fit their roles in this county seat that more than 27,000 Iowans call home.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Hair Salon assists homeless vets

Gwen Reese is lending her help to collect items for Valley homeless veterans.

For the next few weeks, people can drop off non-perishable food and other items at Reese’s beauty salon, A-Affordable Hair, 13930 Camino del Sol in Sun City West. The items will be delivered to a Victory Place, where homeless veterans live.

“If I can help one person, then that’s very important to me,” Reese said.

Pat Horton, who started the project, said after finding out about Victory Place she wanted to help and asked Reese to assist her.

In addition to the donation drive, Horton also has organized two “Sock-it-to-Me” projects, giving thousands of socks to veterans.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Homeless woman clears latest hurdle in illegal eviction

Though the voyage is not yet over, Sharon Green and her legal team are declaring a big victory.

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to review the Glendora woman's case against Anchor Pacifica Management Company and denied the city of Glendora's request to depublish the case. That should put the parties back on track to get Green into permanent housing, said Jolene Larimore, one of Green's attorneys.

Green has been homeless since being evicted from her affordable housing unit in Heritage Oaks Senior Apartments in 2010. A battle with Anchor Pacifica traveled all the way up to a California appeals court, which ruled that the 70-year-old had been illegally evicted from her unit.

The ruling from the Second District Court of Appeals declared that tenants in affordable housing units subsidized by redevelopment agencies are entitled to due process protections similar to the federal housing program rights.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

5th grader sends anti-bullying message through t-shirts

Possessing courage of conviction that belies his age, 10-year-old Nathan Cieslak illustrates that you are never too young to take a stand. Motivated by a mission to stop bullying, Cieslak recently launched a T-shirt campaign to raise awareness of a problem touching communities nationwide.

"I wanted to get word out to everyone that bullying is not cool," Cieslak explained. "I thought T-shirts get the word out better."

The black and white T-shirts feature a hand with a pointing finger and a slogan that reads, "Only You Can Prevent Bullying." The logo, created by Cieslak, and the slogan generate a powerful message, which according to Cieslak's mother, April, has evoked an amazing response from the community.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Uganda bans play with homosexual themes

Performances of a play about the struggles of a young, gay Ugandan businessman have been banned by the National Theatre of Uganda.

The River and The Mountain, written by the British playwright Beau Hopkins, is a sympathetic portrayal of a corporate businessman coming to terms with his sexual identity in a climate of oppressive homophobia.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

India considering bill against sexual harassment of domestic workers

Should the bill be passed by Parliament, for India’s 4 million women domestic workers, considered to be most vulnerable to sexual harassment, this would a major victory in their struggle for legal recognition as ‘employees’.

Underlining the importance of including domestic workers in the bill, Christy Mary, the national executive coordinator for the National Domestic Workers Movement, told Firstpost: “Firstly, there is no law in India to protect domestic workers. Very few states have included domestic workers under the Minimum Wages Act. And the central government is not a position to pass legislation exclusively for them. Domestic workers are extremely vulnerable to all kinds of abuses. And because of absence of a law, the police also don’t take them seriously. The inclusion of domestic workers will be a boost for them and it will encourage them to report cases. It is a surety for them to protect them from abuse.”

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Yemen seeks help for child bride

Nojoud Ali Al-Ahdal is the most famous Yemeni child bride and the first ever that revolted against the law and Yemeni tradition when approached a court in Sana’a demanding to be divorced from her 33 years old husband when she was only 9 years old.

Nojoud won the Glamour Magazine prize along with Condoleezza Rice to be the woman of the year in 2008.

A book about her life and her story was published by a French publication house in 2008. The publisher bought Nojoud a house in al-Hasaba neighborhood Sana’a from her share of the book sales. He also pays her a US$ 1000 a month to her father’s account as Nojoud is under age and cannot have her own account.

This money is supposed to be spent for her living along with her family. However recently her father got married to a third wife that keeps making troubles to Nojoud and her brothers and sisters.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Former Basketball Coach takes on Youth Violence

When new South Bend Community Schools Superintendent Carole Schmidt called a Town Hall meeting to address concerns in the district, Phelps meticulously went over his personal game plan. As usual, it relied heavily on instinct and adrenalin.

"There are about 200 people there and I get up and ask, 'OK, how can we put a team together of community assets to resolve this issue of youth violence, with education being the foundation?' '' Phelps recalled. "She says, 'The community has to come together.'''

Phelps, 71 going on 40, suddenly felt a familiar pang coaches who live for challenges never lose.

"I jump and say, 'I'll coach it!''' Phelps said. "I had no idea I was going to do that. Not sure what made me.''

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Egyptian Pandemic: Sexual Harassment of women

Campaigners in Egypt say the problem of sexual harassment is reaching epidemic proportions, with a rise in such incidents over the past three months. For many Egyptian women, sexual harassment - which sometimes turns into violent mob-style attacks - is a daily fact of life, reports the BBC's Bethany Bell in Cairo.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Area teens shocked by statistics form program to help confront HIV/AIDS

They took a look at the statistics: Those at highest risk for HIV infection are between the ages of 13 and 23. And then the group of teens looked around and realized: those numbers represented themselves.

The teens recently started a new forum called Prevent and Prevail to initiate open conversations about sex, HIV and AIDS.

Frustrated with the constrained atmosphere in school health classes, the teens said they decided it was time to take action. They piloted the forum this month with a small group of people at the Jim Toy Community Center at 319 Braun Court, in Ann Arbor.

The teens are all a part of Dedicated to Make a Change, a nonprofit youth organization in Ypsilanti that promotes social responsibility, justice and diversity through action. Among them are Nils Wilcoxen, 16; Allison Melcher, 16; and Cleo Ku, 15 — all students at the Early College Alliance at Eastern Michigan University.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Local Resteraunts donate profits to charities

If you think an über-twee neighborhood bar that serves beer from the local microbrewery and donates all proceeds to charity sounds like something straight out of the hipster utopia in TV's "Portlandia," you wouldn't exactly be wrong.

The ballroom of Portland's Oregon Public House - a soon-to-open nonprofit pub that will, indeed, serve local beer and seasonal, locally sourced food, pay employees fair wages, and donate all its profit to charities - was recently rented out to film a wedding scene in the IFC show.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Prosecutors recieve insight from ex-gang member

In what may be a first in the nation, San Francisco prosecutors negotiating plea deals for nonviolent felons are conferring with an in-house social worker who emerged from his own checkered past.

Aroche, a 34-year-old former Mission District gang member, was hired in February by District Attorney George Gascón as an "alternative sentencing planner" - a point man on tough love.

If Aroche's background is unique, so is his role. Traditionally, prosecutors focus on punishment, but Aroche seeks to give offenders what they need to live productively, whether drug treatment, education or housing.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Clothing Shop to be renamed after protests

AHMADABAD, INDIA—The owner of the “Hitler” clothing shop in western India says he will remove the sign and rename his store after hearing people’s complaints.

Rajesh Shah said Tuesday he had chosen the name in memory of his grandfather, a strict disciplinarian whom the family referred to as “Hitler.”

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Women are key to Native American Civil Rights

It was a conference on the complexities of American Indian civil rights, but it carried a timeless admonition that civil rights are human rights as expressed in a principled way of life, a message often conveyed by women, “The earth is our mother,” said Henrietta Mann, Cheyenne, “and we are still trying to live in harmony with one another.”

She was the opening speaker at the third annual Pathways to Respecting American Indian Civil Rights conference August 8 – 9 in Denver, Colorado, sponsored primarily by local colleges and government agencies and drawing more than 30 presenters and speakers. Many of whom shared first-hand experience with the issues being discussed.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Burma backs off of direct media censorship

Journalists will still be required to submit their work after publication, however, and are expected to comply with a vague set of “guidelines”. The censors have also warned editors that they could be prosecuted under criminal libel laws.

The announcement, posted on the Ministry of Information website and taking effect immediately, comes after a vigorous anti-censorship campaign by young Burmese journalists, who marched through the cities of Rangoon and Mandalay wearing T-shirts with the slogan “Stop Killing the Press”.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Global food price spike due to drought

The drought that desiccated the Midwest severely reduced the quality and quantity of this year’s corn harvest. This isn’t news in and of itself. The international impact of the drought, however, is.

Yesterday, the World Bank announced that global food prices went up substantially in July.

Global food prices soared by 10 percent in July from a month ago, with maize and soybean reaching all-time peaks due to an unprecedented summer of droughts and high temperatures in both the United States and Eastern Europe, according to the World Bank Group’s latest Food Price Watch report.

From June to July, maize and wheat rose by 25 percent each, soybeans by 17 percent, and only rice went down, by 4 percent. Overall, the World Bank’s Food Price Index, which tracks the price of internationally traded food commodities, was 6 percent higher than in July of last year, and 1 percent over the previous peak of February 2011.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org

Urban Naturalist Molly Steinwald challenges kids to find wildnerness in their urban surroundings

“I was really excited about big nature,” Steinwald says. “But every time I was working out in the desert, I’d find myself thinking, ‘I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.’ I kept coming back to small-scale, mundane nature that I knew as a kid: ‘I need to get back to help people who never see this stuff.’”

Today, Steinwald is doing just that as director of science education at the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh, where she has been charged with reimagining urban environmental education and revamping the venerable institution’s outreach programs for at-risk youth.

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To learn more about the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.!) Film Festival please visit: www.WeSurge.org