Connexions: What it is, how to use it

Connexions is many things: above all, a library featuring information about social change with 1000s of articles, books, films, etc. You can find stuff quickly, but to take advantage of the wealth of information on the site, use the research tools: the Search tool, browseable Subject Index, Title, Author, Chronological and Format indexes, and the many links within documents and on the menus (top and side) to related topics and further resources. More details about using Connexions here...

Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter

Get Other Voices, Connexions’ free newsletter, via email or online on Connexions.org.

Organizing: Who, Why, How

Change requires organizing. Power gives way only when it is challenged by a movement for change, and movements grow out of organizing. Connexions features articles, books, and other resources related to organizing. Read on...

Seeds of Fire: A People’s Chronology

What happened on this day in history? Seeds of Fire is people’s history, preserving memories of struggle, resistance, and persistence. Explore what happened on this day -- or on any day of the year. Find out about people, movements, strikes, rebellions, revolts, uprisings, and revolutions, as well as the crimes of the ruling classes. Start with what happened today....

The Connexions Archive

The Connexions Archive is a sister project to the Connexions website which keeps alive the rich history of grassroots movements for social justice. Connexions preserves ‘alternative’ histories that rarely appear in the mainstream record, and makes them available online to a wide public, as well as in physical form to researchers and scholars. Established in 1975, the Connexions Archive preserves and publishes materials spanning more than 50 years of grassroots activism. Find out more....

Alternative Media List

Connexions presents a selective list of alternative media: publications, websites, and broadcasters that offer critical alternatives to the mainstream corporate and state-owned media. We hope that it helps you to find websites and media that you’ll find useful in finding out and understanding what’s happening in the world. Explore it here...

Connexions Quotations

Words of wisdom and throught-provoking insights: a selection of quotations about social change, resistance, politics, and a wide range of other topics. Quotations are arranged in alphabetical order by the first letter of the first word, you can also browse by Author or Topic. Explore them here...

Connexions Gateways

The Connexions website has tens of thousands of pages and images related to many different issues and topics. To help you navigate the site and find what you are looking for (or perhaps what you didn’t even know you were looking for) Connexions offers a variety of overview pages designed to provide introductions and pathways to exploring different topics and issues. Read on...

Connexipedia

Connexipedia is an online encyclopedia with more than 1,000 articles on activism, radicalism, resistance, solidarity, social justice, events, movements, organizations, and people. Browse Connexipedia using the A-Z Index or the Persons, Organizations or Events indexes.

People’s History, Memory & Archives

The struggle to create a different future is also a battle over history and the meaning of history. Mainstream media and institutions of power try to consign inconvenient histories, struggles, and alternative visions to what George Orwell called “the memory hole.” People’s history projects such as grassroots archives – including Connexions – preserve and share stories of resistance, hidden histories, and alternative visions. This page is a gateway to resources on people’s history and grassroots archives. Find out more...

Manifestos, Programs, Visions

A selection of radical and progressive political manifestos, statements, programs and visions dating from 1649 to the present. here....

What is Socialism?

Socialism is one of the most searched terms on the Internet – and on Connexions.org. What is socialism? Why are so many people talking about it? What are the different varieties of socialism? Does socialism offer realistic solutions to the world’s problems? Connexions has a gateway to resources about socialism, socialist history, and socialist ideas. You’ll find articles, books, quotes, and a wealth of links to different ideas about socialism, its past, and its future. Investigate socialism here....

What is Marxism?

Marxism is a way of critically studying and trying to change the world, a world which is itself constantly changing. Connexions features a variety of interpretations of Marxism, with the emphasis on perspectives that see Marxism as a theory and practice of revolution, seeking to liberate society from capitalism and oppression, and create a free, just, and communal society inspired by the principle “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” Investigate Marxism here....

Challenges and Opportunities

We are faced with an uncertain future which will undoubtedly bring a whole array of challenges. But the upheavals that lie before us, internationally and in our own country, will also present us with new opportunities. It is no longer possible to claim that 'there is no alternative.' On the contrary, new alternatives are precisely what we have to create. We have to learn to talk together, figure out what we share, and live with differences on some issues. To change the world, we also have to change ourselves.

Time to Talk?

If we want to change the world, we need other people – millions, eventually hundreds of millions of others – to agree that the world needs changing and to join us in changing it. We need to persuade a majority of the population that a fundamental social and economic transformation is necessary and desirable. That’s easier said than done. What do we say, and who do we talk to? This newsletter offers tenative explorations of some of those issues.

This Moment

This issue takes its theme from Anne Frank, who wrote: “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” In discouraging times, those of us who have been working to improve the world need to try to remember that this is the moment when we need to keep trying, despite the odds.

Everything is Under Control. Until it Isn't.

We've gone close to the brink more times than most of us realize, but October 27, 1962 was the day the world we know almost came to an end. On that day, in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world was seconds away from all-out nuclear war.

Yes to Life in Spite of Everything

Children and Israel’s war on Gaza 2006 - 2024. The May 25 issue of the Connexions newsletter Other Voices is about the children of Gaza, who have borne the brunt of the wars and attacks that Israel has inflicted on Gaza, starting in 2006, and continuing through to the current genocidal onslaught. The newsletter highlights children’s instinct to keep on living, in the face of evil, and despite everything they are forced to bear...
Keywords: Gaza - Genocide

“How did you organize before the Internet?”

Connexions is working on a project devoted to answering that question, and we’d like your help. We’re looking for your recollections, stories, photos, and descriptions of your work, and we’re also looking for samples of printed and other materials that you or your group produced. Read more.

Yes, Trump is vulgar. But the US global shakedown is the same one as ever

Jonathan Cook writes: “If there is one thing we can thank US President Donald Trump for, it is this: he has decisively stripped away the ridiculous notion, long cultivated by western media, that the United States is a benign global policeman enforcing a ‘rules-based order’. Washington is better understood as the head of a gangster empire, embracing 800 military bases around the world. Since the end of the Cold War, it has been aggressively seeking “global full-spectrum domination”, as the Pentagon doctrine politely terms it... The innovation was that it all happened in front of the western press corps, in the Oval Office, rather than in a back room, out of sight. You either pay fealty to the Don or you get dumped in the river.”

With Trump's tariffs, it's time for a more self-reliant Canada

Donald Trump says he doesn’t need Canadian oil or anything else Canadian. Let’s face it, Canada has been dumped and is on its own. By raising tariffs unilaterally, Trump will grossly violate USMCA, the former NAFTA. It’s no use doing deals with Trump, that he will break. Instead, let’s dust ourselves off and make things by Canadians for Canadians. Canada was tossed out of similar arrangements before.

Trump's Threats, Canadian Challenges

US President Donald Trump blew the bugle: Canada should be the 51st State, perhaps he might legally annex it, certainly hold it responsible for its failures as border watchers, for allowing undesirable people to flow into the US and permitting drug peddlers to supply the insatiable consumer market in the US. More, Trump bellowed, Canada’s spending on its military is forcing the US, as the defender of all that is good and holy, to bear an unfair burden.

My heart broke 20 times

These stories, captured in the hours, days, and few weeks after the ceasefire in Gaza, are a testament to what war takes and what people hold onto. They are about loss, yes, but also about the small, stubborn acts of survival and hope that keep people going.

We've Been Here Before: A Review of Thomas Frank's "The Wrecking Crew"

Lambert Strether writes: "Thomas Frank’s The Wrecking Crew was published in 2008. It covers the ideology and praxis of post-Powell Memo conservatism, with particular attention to Bush the Younger — the “maladministration,” we used to call it — ending at the beginning of the Obama Era. Since I got on the Frank train only with 2016’s Listen, Liberal!, I hadn’t read it until I got the bright idea of writing this post."