Black Friday & The Importance Of Having A Voice On The Job
This year I call on progressives to not only speak up for native people, but to remind our friends and family how important it is that workers have the right to organize for better conditions at work. And there’s no better time than Black Friday to have these conversations.
The Largest All-Vegan Thanksgiving Food Share
Long Island Food Not Bombs, in recent years has re-defined food sharing programs, constantly outdoing similar programs and even themselves with the quantity of food shared, it’s quality, and the community participation the sharing inspires. There has never been a Food Not Bombs chapter that has exponentially grown this way, and in LIFNB’s growth […]
A Plea for Progress
As Election Day is upon us, I vacillate between continuing to play my assigned role in the sham of American “democracy” (i.e. voting for someone who will, in the end, cater not to the needs of the people, but to whichever corporation has financed her/his campaign) and casting a non-vote of protest. This year, however, […]
Mainstreaming Palestine With Invincible
Save the Date! – OCTOBER 26, 2010 PROJECT PALESTINE PRESENTS – Mainstreaming Palestine An evening of music, words and a motion picture. Featuring INVINCIBLE “One of the most talented emcees I’ve ever heard, black or white, male or female”—Talib Kweli THE NEW SCHOOL 66 W. 12th Street, Room A-404 Pamela Olson Oklahoma-born Author, Hear excerpts from […]
Cipher’s ‘Joyous Collapse’ is Making the Political, Personal
This week Sparrow’s Andy Stepanian highlighted the political punk band Cipher in an article he wrote for The Huffington Post. The article garnered a bit of attention for Cipher, which was the point …Cipher has always put sincerity, ethics, and substance before the fluff of the music industry, if only every band had the hearts […]
35 Seconds – Short Stories From Haiti
Yesterday, Sparrow cofounder & contributor, Andy Stepanian wrote an article for The Huffington Post about a new documentary short by Dustin Miller, Nate Williams & Eric Hires about what life is like in post-earthquake Haiti. There are serious concerns that with a lack of popular media attention that the relief efforts to Haiti will subside during […]
Peace Activists Targeted By FBI for Justice Work; Protests Planned Nation-Wide This Week to Show Solidarity & Support
If, in fact, there is anyone left who still believes that Barack Obama is a progressive, I offer this past Friday’s raids on peace activists in Minneapolis and Chicago as proof to the contrary. The homes of eight activists were invaded and their belongings confiscated due to their support of the Palestinian cause and the […]
Victory for Activists, Animals & Environment as Proposed LNG Island is Shut Down!
After an 18month+ campaign by activists in the Northeast the proposal to build an Liquid Natural Gas terminal and artificial island 13 miles south of Long Beach has been shut down! In April of 2009 The Sparrow Project partnered with Clean Ocean Action, The Surfrider Foundation, local environmentalists, politicians, and artists in an effort to […]
Russell Simmons on Activism, Spirituality & Bold Native
After hosting the New York premiere of Bold Native, the first fiction film about the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Russell Simmons sits down to talk about veganism, spirituality and radical activism. On the nine billion animals bred, raised and killed for food annually in the U.S., Simmons says, “Aside from all the suffering we’re causing […]
Calling All Designers! – New Book, Designing For Social Change, Makes Call For Submissions
Calling all community-based graphic designers! Author Andrew Shea is looking for projects to feature in his upcoming book. Have you used a graphic design to help a community in need? Do you have insights into this process? If so, visit andrewshea.com/book.html and submit your work. From the website: “This book will emphasize strategies to help […]
Bold Native: Like All Revolutionary Films…
When Open Road Film’s Denis Hennelly and Casey Suchan set out to make Bold Native they wanted to work in the spirit of revolutionary films like Easy Rider. They succeeded. Bold Native is a feature film on the subject of animal liberation but at its heart, much like Easy Rider, it’s a road film about […]
Uganda Skate Union Support Shirts & CNN
The Uganda Skateboard Union in Kitintale Uganda has whittled itself out a little place in the hearts of us here at Sparrow. If you are able to, please consider buying one of these t-shirts we made to support their beautiful program that embodies solidarity and hope. One year ago Cassi Amanda Gibson visited their […]
BP’s Greenwashing & Greenpeace’s Rebranding
For those reading this via RSS or on facebook click here to view the full post w/ video. Last week Andy Stepanian of The Sparrow Project wrote an article for The Huffington Post declaring that, “all of BP’s greenwashing can clean up their spill,” and this week that is becoming evident. The article drew […]
Long Beach Swim 4 Humanity Event to Benefit Surfaid International
Much thanks are due to Danny Bobis of Cipher for this contribution, and moreover big thanks are owed to Danny for all the hard work he has put into coordinating this amazing fundraiser in Long Beach. Worldwide, 10 million children die each year from preventable diseases. You can help make a difference by participating in […]
Adham the Father of Sayaaf
Please Check Out Andy Stepanian’s Article this week on Huffington Post, Share It With Your Friends, & Leave Comments on the Huffington Post Blog So That They Will Continue to Pay Attention To This Important Story! “Before Abu-Sayyaf was an inmate in a secretive US political prison called a ‘Communications Management Unit’ Abu-Sayyaf was a […]
Interview with Moby & Miyun Park
A few weeks ago the sparrow project had the privilege to sit down with multi-platinum recording artist and producer, Moby and Miyun Park, executive director to the Global Animal Partnership to discuss their new book Gristle out now through The New Press. Gristle addresses issues ranging from workers rights to animal welfare to the environmental […]
Anti-LNG Earth Week Events
For more info on the Green Expo click here. Long Island says, “NO TO LNG!” With little public review a group of investors proposed the construction of an artificial island 13 miles south of Long Beach that would import and re-gas foreign Liquid Natural Gas (LNG.) The plan is bad for our environment, it poses […]
Muzzling A Movement 3/23/2010 NYU
The NYU Student Animal Legal Defense Fund presents “Muzzling A Movement” a speaking engagement with former SHAC 7 prisoner Andy Stepanian, and Dara Lovitz whose book, Muzzling A Movement, on the suppression of speech & first amendment protected protest within the animal protection movement, is due out this summer from Lantern Books. Activist & former […]
All Bottled Up
Last Month I posted about the privatization of water through corporate control of municipal water systems. As I mentioned in the previous post, the second way corporations are stealing our water is through bottling. FLOW (For the Love of Water), a documentary which came out in 2008 brilliantly (and frighteningly) lays out the international […]
Cipher’s Maurice Mitchell Heads Out On A Community Building Tour
Some folks in the music scene can get nostalgic from time to time and reminisce of the, “good old days” when rock was political and it, “meant something.” Cipher is one of those bands that brings back nostalgia far more vivid than the memories of the apple pies grandma used to make. For some it’s […]
Dennis Lyxzen of The (International) Noise Conspiracy on Capitalism, Radical Actions, and Finding Your Own Space to Be Political
The economy seems to be a topic on the mouths of people worldwide. Regardless of which nation, and whatever you want to call it; economic downturn, financial crisis, post-bubble America, or recession, there is no arguing that the economy, specifically capitalism, is a topic that is widely being talked about today. Everyone from pundits on […]
The Corporate Theft of Water
It is essential to all forms of life, covers a third of the earth, makes up over half of the human body and yet I can’t find a way to begin my discussion of water. Maybe it’s for the very reasons I just mentioned. The fact that water is all around us, is us and […]
Envy on the Coast & Cipher Say No to LNG
Ryan Hunter of Envy on the Coast Speaks out against the proposed construction, the effects on marine habitats, the toll of fossil fuels on human life & foreign policy & why you should contact Govenor Paterson and tell him to put an end to the proposed LNG island. Envy on the Coast speaks out out […]
Spirit Songs A Musical Taxonomy of the Amazon
“Spirit Songs A Musical Taxonomy of the Amazon” is a documentary that my friends and I are making about healing songs—called icaros–and the shamans of the Peruvian Amazon who sing them. Until recently, these shamans have served for generations as the doctors, pharmacists, psychologists, and priests for the over three million indigenous people that live […]