10 things we can do to help reduce hunger and provide good food for all

Hunger exists in the United States. The reason is poverty. The root cause of poverty is powerlessness. Whyhunger uses the titled question as an approach to the solution by connecting communities to resources, while providing immediate access to nutritious emergency food. Bill Ayres, the executive director, co-founded WhyHunger thirty-five years ago to address the urgent need for food by establishing a food hotline and later included a multi-issued platform to build power and self-reliance in impoverished communities in the United States and worldwide. Why is there hunger in a world that can feed itself and how can we solve it? Here are ten things you can do to tackle the root causes of hunger and support long-term solutions at home and abroad.

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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

Another family saved from foreclosure by Occupy Our Homes

Occupy Our Homes, a movement to protect families from foreclosures and evictions, has enjoyed a recent string of successes. In February, the group helped Helen Bailey, the 78-year-old former civil rights activist who was threatened with foreclosure by JPMorgan Chase while the company trumpeted its efforts to uphold Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, to stay in her home following a successful campaign by Occupy Nashville.

The group also aided a Detroit husband and wife who spent months worrying they could be evicted from their home of twenty-two years. The couple received news they would be permitted to stay after an aggressive campaign that was led by members of Moratorium Now, Occupy Detroit and Homes Before Banks and included the family’s supporters blocking the contractor from placing a dumpster.

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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

Communities of Color find solutions in Boston

When it comes to pollution and climate change, all too often people of color shoulder the greatest burden. The recent fire at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California is just the latest example. We have more residents living near polluting industry. We suffer higher rates of asthma. And our neighborhoods are hit hardest by severe weather caused by climate change.

It makes sense, then, that more and more solutions to these problems are coming from communities of color.

A new report released this week by the Center for Social Inclusion highlights one of these solutions. The report, Energy Democracy: Community Innovation in Boston features the work of the Boston Workers Alliance, an organization founded by Green For All Fellow Aaron Tanaka.

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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

Raw milk victory for Missouri farmers

On July 31 Armand and Teddi Bechard entered into a consent agreement with the State of Missouri, ending a case that began in 2009. On two occasions in the spring of 2009, undercover agents from the Springfield-Greene County Health Department allegedly purchased raw milk at the Bechard's central delivery point, a health food store parking lot in Springfield.

The Missouri State Milk Board through the state attorney filed a lawsuit to enjoin the Bechards from delivering raw milk and cream to their customers at a central distribution point. Missouri statute allows for the sale and delivery of raw milk by unlicensed farmers; however, the Milk Board was insisting that raw milk could only be delivered to the customer's residence while prohibiting delivery at a central distribution point. The Greene County district attorney's office also brought a criminal action against Armand for allegedly selling milk at a premises off the farm; he was later acquitted on appeal in January 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

Karen Morrison-Hume is inspired by the struggles and courage of others

Having worked with society's most at-risk for the past 16 years, the missioner who breezes into Anglican Action's reception area is not the wearied woman you might expect.

Karen Morrison-Hume is immaculate, articulate and engaging, and seemingly as motivated as ever towards helping those who, for whatever reason, have found themselves at the bottom of life's pecking order.

When Mrs Morrison-Hume says on the glass half full or empty scale, hers is "always overflowing", it is easy to believe her.

Her endless enthusiasm for helping others may stem from the fact she does not perceive it as helping at all, instead looking at such interactions as symbiotic.

"The more we go out into these places where life is toughest, the more we'll receive."

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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

Gordon Brown demands R&A golf club to admit female members

Gordon Brown has accused one of the world's most influential golf clubs, the Royal and Ancient in St Andrews, of perpetuating discrimination by refusing to admit women as members.

The former prime minister said it was indefensible that the club, which until 2004 set the rules of the game worldwide, was still men-only after Augusta National, the most powerful club in the US, abandoned its ban on female members this week.

"If the golf club in Augusta can admit women, then shouldn't St Andrews? If they can do it in South Carolina, can we not do it in Scotland?" Brown asked.

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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 Press targeted on the Ivory Coast

Lagos, Nigeria, August 24, 2012--Ivorian authorities must immediately halt censorship of news outlets reporting critically on the government and investigate an armed assault on the offices of a publishing group, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

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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

Iranian women banned from universities in their own country

Universities across Iran have announced that almost 80 subjects in both the liberal arts and sciences will be off limits to incoming female scholars.

Female students learned of the bans, which will affect 77 fields across 36 universities, in letters received throughout the past couple of weeks, according to the Telegraph.

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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

African American Celebrities who support Gay Rights

Oprah Winfrey recently admitted that she received some of the most vitriolic and racist criticism of her career for supporting Ellen DeGeneres when she came out as a lesbian in 1997. Winfrey had guest-starred on the well-known episode of DeGeneres' sitcom in which the comedian let the world in on her sexual orientation.

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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

San Fransisco 49ers tell LGBT Youth: It gets better

The San Francisco 49ers have become the first professional football team to join the online antibullying It Gets Better campaign intended to build confidence and spark optimism in gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youths.

"Something you should never experience is being bullied, intimidated or being pressured to being a someone or something that you are not," 49ers linebacker Ahmad Brooks said, looking straight into the camera for the one-minute video that was posted Thursday on YouTube.

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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

Immigrants in Greece marching against Racism

Thousands of immigrants marched in Athens on Friday to protest police sweeps and a rash of racist attacks in Greece as the country struggles to pull itself out of a huge debt crisis.

Greece is the main entry point for illegal immigrants seeking a better life in the European Union.

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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

Disability Rights Movement in Russia

Russia’s ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in May signaled a great moment for the country’s more than 13 million citizens with disabilities. In practical terms, this long-awaited ratification means that Russia must now translate the guarantees in the convention into domestic legal reform and overcome the pervasive discrimination against people with disabilities. That is far from an easy task.

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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