✨🚀 From the streets to the stars, beautiful trouble is on the rise🤩✨
As Mercury enters retrograde in Aries, the arc of the universe tilts towards trouble!!
Closer to home, our next monthly direct action funding deadline is rapidly approaching! We are looking to fund creative actions in our two current focus areas of a lasting ceasefire and freedom for Palestinians and raising the pressure on the fossil fuel industry through our Get Up Rise Up direct action fund. These critical intersecting struggles are frontline battles for both the soul and survival of life on Earth. Shifting power with strategic nonviolence is a heroic mission. Are you and your comrades ready to step up and address meaningful targets with solid action logic?
Send in your application by April 5th, this Friday, to be considered. Need more time? Prep your application for May 5th, the next deadline!
From the toolbox: Don’t worry about being a lousy actor — you’re a great one.
Anyone can act. Really, they can. We act every day as we smile and accept a world crumbling around us. Why not channel that energy to cause beautiful trouble, opening possibilities and imagination? The Yes Men have done just that for years. In their latest action, they launched their “Climate Anxiety Toolkit” at a Wall Street conference.
Credit: The Yes Men
Meet our new Beautiful Trouble Team Member!
Nawa Villy Sitali
Movement Mindset Program co-lead, Mutompehi the Villager (Senior Village Person)
Nawa Villy Sitali is a social movement specialist and frontline activist from the territory of Barotseland in Zambia. Growing up in rural Nampundwe, a small village west of the Capital City, Nawa developed a passion for politics but was never given an opportunity to meaningfully engage in politics due to his age. In 2018, he co-founded the social movement called Youth4Parliament as a response to the exclusion of youth in politics. Nawa is also a movement builder who shares his experiences and skills in supporting the growth of other movements in the Global South.
Troublemaker in The Guardian
Beautiful Trouble’s Prime Minister of Special Projects got the last word on this Guardian story on the growing global movement for a ceasefire and an end to the occupation in Gaza:
“I have never seen this level of people consistently taking to the streets. For years, you could say: ‘You can be progressive except on Palestine.’ We can’t say that any more.”
She added: “The writing is more on the wall than it’s ever been.”
New book: Comrades Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix publish Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea
When people stand together in solidarity, they become a powerful force that can challenge systemic injustices. Taylor and Hunt-Hendrix shine a light on the idea of solidarity in their new book and in a New York Times oped:
“Solidarity is simultaneously a bond that holds society together and a force that propels it forward. After all, when people feel connected, they are more willing to work together, to share resources and to have one another’s backs.”
