Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information or to customize your cookie preferences.

‘Far Out: Life On & After the Commune’: An Interview with Harvey Wasserman

News Feed
Friday, April 4, 2025

A new documentary film, Far Out: Life On & After the Commune, directed by Charles Light, tells the story of a group of leftwing journalists who splintered off from what was known as Liberation News Service (LNS). With candid then-and-now footage, Light’s eighty-five-minute film reveals the communards as young hippies and senior citizens, and shows how their paths intertwined with folk/rock superstars to fight the good fight.  One of the film’s co-stars is author and historian Harvey Wasserman who is also the longest active contributor to The Progressive. His first article for the magazine, about campus protests, “Reform, Not Revolution”, appeared in August 1967, while his most recent, “Drones, Nukes, and the Myth of Reactor Safety,” was published in January. The irrepressible veteran activist was interviewed via telephone in Los Angeles for the following conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity. Q: What was the Liberation News Service? Harvey Wasserman: LNS was a pioneering news service that provided articles to the underground press, which consisted of about 400 counterculture newspapers burgeoning throughout the country in 1967 and 1968. We were antiwar, pro-civil rights and pro-pot legalization and known as the “Associated Press of the underground.” LNS was launched the day before the October 21, 1967, March on the Pentagon. Q: How did your commune grow out of LNS? Wasserman: It’s living proof of the law of unintended consequences. The FBI infiltrated our news service. As part of COINTELPRO, J. Edgar Hoover sent agents into LNS to break it up. We’d moved to New York City, and agents instigated horrible anti-gay attacks at our meetings against co-founder Marshall Bloom. George Harrison gave Marshall permission to screen the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour movie at Fillmore East benefits, and with that money, Marshall bought a farm in Massachusetts, where we secretly relocated with our mimeograph machine in August 1968: Montague Farm in Massachusetts.  Q: What was it like transitioning to living off of the land?  Wasserman: We didn’t know what we were doing. We were all suburban kids. We froze the first winter. Gradually, we learned how to live in the country, in a farmhouse. The first major decision came in the spring, when we were planting our garden and some wanted to spray. But one woman, Cathy Rogers, sort of the farm’s matriarch, said, “No, we’re not using chemicals.” We actually revived for our whole generation the whole ethos of organic farming. Within a couple of years, the garden was magnificent. To learn how to do it, we used a handbook on organic gardening.    Q: How were women involved in life at the communal farms?  Wasserman: They ran the place. The antiwar and civil rights movements in the early days were run by men. Women, in many cases, weren’t treated particularly well. A lot of the feminist movement came out of the communes. The environmental movement has really been a women’s movement, in touch with Mother Earth.   Q: Some of the communards were gay. How did other commune members react to that? Wasserman: You have to ask them. If you had asked me back then what it meant to be gay, I had no idea. A lot of it was new to us.  Q: What were relations like with other local residents in the area? Wasserman: All over the map. We were like aliens landing in Montague. Mostly the locals didn’t know what to make of us. We were smart enough to form relations. The farmer down the road had a maple sugar operation. He needed labor when he’d gather the maple syrup from the trees; we drove the tractors and emptied the buckets. In many cases, we formed really beautiful relations with locals.   Q: The communards went back to the land to remove themselves from a New Left factional fight. But how did the outside world catch up with you?   Wasserman: Some of us had a mindset to escape politics; others stayed active. The Vietnam War was still on. We considered our presence in the countryside to be very political. Then, as fate would have it, the world came to us. In December 1973, we opened the local paper and on the front page was an aerial photo of the Montague Plains and superimposed on it was an artist’s rendition of a nuclear power plant they wanted to build there. Collectively, instinctually, we said, “No fucking way we’re going to let them build this in our backyard.” We deepened our opposition to nuclear power by studying the books Secret Fallout by radiologist Ernest Sternglass, and Poisoned Power by Manhattan Project scientist John Gofman. Q: The film Far Out contends that the commune’s opposition to the construction of this plant sparked the U.S. grassroots anti-nuclear movement. Wasserman: The first thing is we came up with the slogan “No Nukes,” printed the first bumper sticker and T-shirt; it’s gone global ever since. Northeast Utilities put up a tower at the proposed site to test wind direction and in February 1974 Sam Lovejoy took a crowbar and knocked over the tower. Dan Keller and Charles Light, from the commune, who made Far Out, earlier also made the documentary Lovejoy’s Nuclear War.  In Seabrook, New Hampshire, you had really great antiwar activists. We’d drive up from Montague to Seabrook for meetings about a proposed nuclear power plant. The town was really against it—Seabrook voted four times to not allow the plant to be built. It became an issue of home rule. We hooked up with the American Friends Service Committee in Boston. They taught us the Quaker tradition of nonviolent resistance. On August 1, 1976, 100 people went onto the construction site; eighteen were arrested. Keller and Light made a movie about this, too, called The Last Resort. On August 22, we had a bigger demonstration; 180 people were arrested. We thought we could stop Seabrook by occupying the site. On April 30, 1977, we had a few thousand people at the rally; 1,414 were arrested at the site. The rightwing governor demanded that we post bail, so about 1,000 hippies were jailed in five National Guard Armories around the state, which became world news. At the end of two weeks, 550 people still refused to give bail.            Q: What role did musicians play in these protests? Wasserman: In the summer of 1978, we were allowed [by local authorities] onto the Seabrook site, then under construction, and we held a peaceful, illegal rally with Pete Seeger, Jackson Browne, and 20,000 people. Jackson, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Carly Simon, and Graham Nash started doing concerts [to raise awareness, and funds, for the anti-nuclear efforts]. They were already involved in the movement. They said, “We gotta do a big concert, let’s go to Madison Square Garden.” Bruce Springsteen signed on and we added concerts. The four nights sold out immediately, and we decided to add a Sunday concert and rally at Battery Park City, in Lower Manhattan. We ended up with between 200,000 and 250,000 people. It was the Woodstock of the seventies. Then demonstrations started happening all over the country.    Q: How did the success of these concerts impact the communes?   Wasserman: New York was a complete psychedelic miasma [laughs]. We’d been in the country for ten years of communal living and all of a sudden, we were in Manhattan, at Madison Square Garden, and encountered all this money, media, and fame. It really took us to another place and kinda shattered the farm. But the commune did hold together. A core community stayed at the farm through the 1980s and 1990s, and in 2003 we sold it to a Buddhist community. People from the farm who stayed in Massachusetts are still active and just defeated a bad battery facility they wanted to build nearby. We’re all still anti-nuclear.   Far Out: Life On & After the Commune will be showing at five Laemmle venues in California (Encino, Glendale, Santa Monica, Claremont and Newhall) at 10:00 a.m. on April 5 and 6 and at 7:00 p.m. on April 7 as part of Laemmle Theatres’ Culture Vulture series. There will be panel discussions with filmmaker Charlie Light, Harvey Wasserman, and musician Patty Carpenter. The panels take place after the 10:00 a.m., April 5 show at Encino; the 10:00 a.m., April 6 show at Glendale; and the 7:00 p.m. screening at Santa Monica. The panel on April 7 also includes Mom actress/activist Mimi Kennedy and Judith Rubenstein, commune member and psychologist. Far Out can also be viewed online. Ed Rampell is a Los Angeles-based film historian and critic who contributes regularly to The Progressive. His novel about the Native Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement for Indigenous rights, The Disinherited: Blood Blalahs, will be published this spring. Read more by Ed Rampell April 3, 2025 8:00 AM

A new nonfiction film recounts urban “drop-outs” who returned to the land, igniting the movements for organic farming, U.S. grassroots anti-nuclear activism, and more.

A new documentary film, Far Out: Life On & After the Commune, directed by Charles Light, tells the story of a group of leftwing journalists who splintered off from what was known as Liberation News Service (LNS). With candid then-and-now footage, Light’s eighty-five-minute film reveals the communards as young hippies and senior citizens, and shows how their paths intertwined with folk/rock superstars to fight the good fight. 

One of the film’s co-stars is author and historian Harvey Wasserman who is also the longest active contributor to The Progressive. His first article for the magazine, about campus protests, “Reform, Not Revolution”, appeared in August 1967, while his most recent, “Drones, Nukes, and the Myth of Reactor Safety,” was published in January. The irrepressible veteran activist was interviewed via telephone in Los Angeles for the following conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What was the Liberation News Service?

Harvey Wasserman: LNS was a pioneering news service that provided articles to the underground press, which consisted of about 400 counterculture newspapers burgeoning throughout the country in 1967 and 1968. We were antiwar, pro-civil rights and pro-pot legalization and known as the “Associated Press of the underground.” LNS was launched the day before the October 21, 1967, March on the Pentagon.

Q: How did your commune grow out of LNS?

Wasserman: It’s living proof of the law of unintended consequences. The FBI infiltrated our news service. As part of COINTELPRO, J. Edgar Hoover sent agents into LNS to break it up. We’d moved to New York City, and agents instigated horrible anti-gay attacks at our meetings against co-founder Marshall Bloom. George Harrison gave Marshall permission to screen the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour movie at Fillmore East benefits, and with that money, Marshall bought a farm in Massachusetts, where we secretly relocated with our mimeograph machine in August 1968: Montague Farm in Massachusetts. 

Q: What was it like transitioning to living off of the land? 

Wasserman: We didn’t know what we were doing. We were all suburban kids. We froze the first winter. Gradually, we learned how to live in the country, in a farmhouse. The first major decision came in the spring, when we were planting our garden and some wanted to spray. But one woman, Cathy Rogers, sort of the farm’s matriarch, said, “No, we’re not using chemicals.” We actually revived for our whole generation the whole ethos of organic farming. Within a couple of years, the garden was magnificent. To learn how to do it, we used a handbook on organic gardening.   

Q: How were women involved in life at the communal farms? 

Wasserman: They ran the place. The antiwar and civil rights movements in the early days were run by men. Women, in many cases, weren’t treated particularly well. A lot of the feminist movement came out of the communes. The environmental movement has really been a women’s movement, in touch with Mother Earth.  

Q: Some of the communards were gay. How did other commune members react to that?

Wasserman: You have to ask them. If you had asked me back then what it meant to be gay, I had no idea. A lot of it was new to us. 

Q: What were relations like with other local residents in the area?

Wasserman: All over the map. We were like aliens landing in Montague. Mostly the locals didn’t know what to make of us. We were smart enough to form relations. The farmer down the road had a maple sugar operation. He needed labor when he’d gather the maple syrup from the trees; we drove the tractors and emptied the buckets. In many cases, we formed really beautiful relations with locals.  

Q: The communards went back to the land to remove themselves from a New Left factional fight. But how did the outside world catch up with you?  

Wasserman: Some of us had a mindset to escape politics; others stayed active. The Vietnam War was still on. We considered our presence in the countryside to be very political. Then, as fate would have it, the world came to us. In December 1973, we opened the local paper and on the front page was an aerial photo of the Montague Plains and superimposed on it was an artist’s rendition of a nuclear power plant they wanted to build there.

Collectively, instinctually, we said, “No fucking way we’re going to let them build this in our backyard.” We deepened our opposition to nuclear power by studying the books Secret Fallout by radiologist Ernest Sternglass, and Poisoned Power by Manhattan Project scientist John Gofman.

Q: The film Far Out contends that the commune’s opposition to the construction of this plant sparked the U.S. grassroots anti-nuclear movement.

Wasserman: The first thing is we came up with the slogan “No Nukes,” printed the first bumper sticker and T-shirt; it’s gone global ever since. Northeast Utilities put up a tower at the proposed site to test wind direction and in February 1974 Sam Lovejoy took a crowbar and knocked over the tower. Dan Keller and Charles Light, from the commune, who made Far Out, earlier also made the documentary Lovejoy’s Nuclear War

In Seabrook, New Hampshire, you had really great antiwar activists. We’d drive up from Montague to Seabrook for meetings about a proposed nuclear power plant. The town was really against it—Seabrook voted four times to not allow the plant to be built. It became an issue of home rule.

We hooked up with the American Friends Service Committee in Boston. They taught us the Quaker tradition of nonviolent resistance. On August 1, 1976, 100 people went onto the construction site; eighteen were arrested. Keller and Light made a movie about this, too, called The Last Resort.

On August 22, we had a bigger demonstration; 180 people were arrested. We thought we could stop Seabrook by occupying the site. On April 30, 1977, we had a few thousand people at the rally; 1,414 were arrested at the site. The rightwing governor demanded that we post bail, so about 1,000 hippies were jailed in five National Guard Armories around the state, which became world news. At the end of two weeks, 550 people still refused to give bail.           

Q: What role did musicians play in these protests?

Wasserman: In the summer of 1978, we were allowed [by local authorities] onto the Seabrook site, then under construction, and we held a peaceful, illegal rally with Pete Seeger, Jackson Browne, and 20,000 people.

Jackson, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Carly Simon, and Graham Nash started doing concerts [to raise awareness, and funds, for the anti-nuclear efforts]. They were already involved in the movement. They said, “We gotta do a big concert, let’s go to Madison Square Garden.” Bruce Springsteen signed on and we added concerts. The four nights sold out immediately, and we decided to add a Sunday concert and rally at Battery Park City, in Lower Manhattan. We ended up with between 200,000 and 250,000 people. It was the Woodstock of the seventies. Then demonstrations started happening all over the country.   

Q: How did the success of these concerts impact the communes?  

Wasserman: New York was a complete psychedelic miasma [laughs]. We’d been in the country for ten years of communal living and all of a sudden, we were in Manhattan, at Madison Square Garden, and encountered all this money, media, and fame. It really took us to another place and kinda shattered the farm. But the commune did hold together. A core community stayed at the farm through the 1980s and 1990s, and in 2003 we sold it to a Buddhist community. People from the farm who stayed in Massachusetts are still active and just defeated a bad battery facility they wanted to build nearby. We’re all still anti-nuclear.  


Far Out: Life On & After the Commune will be showing at five Laemmle venues in California (Encino, Glendale, Santa Monica, Claremont and Newhall) at 10:00 a.m. on April 5 and 6 and at 7:00 p.m. on April 7 as part of Laemmle Theatres’ Culture Vulture series.

There will be panel discussions with filmmaker Charlie Light, Harvey Wasserman, and musician Patty Carpenter. The panels take place after the 10:00 a.m., April 5 show at Encino; the 10:00 a.m., April 6 show at Glendale; and the 7:00 p.m. screening at Santa Monica. The panel on April 7 also includes Mom actress/activist Mimi Kennedy and Judith Rubenstein, commune member and psychologist. Far Out can also be viewed online.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Measles Misinformation Is on the Rise – and Americans Are Hearing It, Survey Finds

Republicans are far more skeptical of vaccines and twice as likely as Democrats to believe the measles shot is worse than the disease.

By Arthur Allen | KFF Health NewsWhile the most serious measles epidemic in a decade has led to the deaths of two children and spread to nearly 30 states with no signs of letting up, beliefs about the safety of the measles vaccine and the threat of the disease are sharply polarized, fed by the anti-vaccine views of the country’s seniormost health official.About two-thirds of Republican-leaning parents are unaware of an uptick in measles cases this year while about two-thirds of Democratic ones knew about it, according to a KFF survey released Wednesday.Republicans are far more skeptical of vaccines and twice as likely (1 in 5) as Democrats (1 in 10) to believe the measles shot is worse than the disease, according to the survey of 1,380 U.S. adults.Some 35% of Republicans answering the survey, which was conducted April 8-15 online and by telephone, said the discredited theory linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism was definitely or probably true – compared with just 10% of Democrats.Get Midday Must-Reads in Your InboxFive essential stories, expertly curated, to keep you informed on your lunch break.Sign up to receive the latest updates from U.S. News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors. By clicking submit, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy.The trends are roughly the same as KFF reported in a June 2023 survey. But in the new poll, 3 in 10 parents erroneously believed that vitamin A can prevent measles infections, a theory Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has brought into play since taking office during the measles outbreak.“The most alarming thing about the survey is that we’re seeing an uptick in the share of people who have heard these claims,” said co-author Ashley Kirzinger, associate director of KFF’s Public Opinion and Survey Research Program. KFF is a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.“It’s not that more people are believing the autism theory, but more and more people are hearing about it,” Kirzinger said. Since doubts about vaccine safety directly reduce parents’ vaccination of their children, “that shows how important it is for actual information to be part of the media landscape,” she said.“This is what one would expect when people are confused by conflicting messages coming from people in positions of authority,” said Kelly Moore, president and CEO of Immunize.org, a vaccination advocacy group.Numerous scientific studies have established no link between any vaccine and autism. But Kennedy has ordered HHS to undertake an investigation of possible environmental contributors to autism, promising to have “some of the answers” behind an increase in the incidence of the condition by September.The deepening Republican skepticism toward vaccines makes it hard for accurate information to break through in many parts of the nation, said Rekha Lakshmanan, chief strategy officer at The Immunization Partnership, in Houston.Lakshmanan on April 23 was to present a paper on countering anti-vaccine activism to the World Vaccine Congress in Washington. It was based on a survey that found that in the Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma state assemblies, lawmakers with medical professions were among those least likely to support public health measures.“There is a political layer that influences these lawmakers,” she said. When lawmakers invite vaccine opponents to testify at legislative hearings, for example, it feeds a deluge of misinformation that is difficult to counter, she said.Eric Ball, a pediatrician in Ladera Ranch, California, which was hit by a 2014-15 measles outbreak that started in Disneyland, said fear of measles and tighter California state restrictions on vaccine exemptions had staved off new infections in his Orange County community.“The biggest downside of measles vaccines is that they work really well. Everyone gets vaccinated, no one gets measles, everyone forgets about measles,” he said. “But when it comes back, they realize there are kids getting really sick and potentially dying in my community, and everyone says, ‘Holy crap; we better vaccinate!’”Ball treated three very sick children with measles in 2015. Afterward his practice stopped seeing unvaccinated patients. “We had had babies exposed in our waiting room,” he said. “We had disease spreading in our office, which was not cool.”Although two otherwise healthy young girls died of measles during the Texas outbreak, “people still aren’t scared of the disease,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which has seen a few cases.But the deaths “have created more angst, based on the number of calls I’m getting from parents trying to vaccinate their 4-month-old and 6-month-old babies,” Offit said. Children generally get their first measles shot at age 1, because it tends not to produce full immunity if given at a younger age.KFF Health News’ Jackie Fortiér contributed to this report.This article was produced by KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF. It was originally published on April 23, 2025, and has been republished with permission.

Evangelical churches in Indiana turn to solar and sustainability as an expression of faith

A growing number of evangelical churches and universities in Indiana are embracing renewable energy and environmental stewardship as a religious duty, reframing climate action through a spiritual lens.Catrin Einhorn reports for The New York TimesIn short:Churches across Indiana, including Christ’s Community Church and Grace Church, are installing solar panels, planting native gardens, and hosting events like Indy Creation Fest to promote environmental stewardship.Evangelical leaders say their work aligns with a biblical call to care for creation, distancing it from politicized language around climate change to appeal to more conservative congregations.Christian universities such as Indiana Wesleyan and Taylor are integrating environmental science into academics and campus life, fostering student-led sustainability efforts rooted in faith.Key quote:“It’s a quiet movement.”— Rev. Jeremy Summers, director of church and community engagement for the Evangelical Environmental NetworkWhy this matters:The intersection of faith and environmental action challenges longstanding cultural divides in the climate conversation. Evangelical communities — historically less engaged on climate issues — hold substantial political and social influence, particularly across the Midwest and South. Framing sustainability as a religious obligation sidesteps partisan divides and invites wider participation. These faith-led movements can help shift attitudes in rural and suburban America, where skepticism of climate science and federal intervention runs high. And as the environmental impacts of fossil fuel dependence grow — heatwaves, water scarcity, air pollution— the health and well-being of families in these communities are increasingly at stake. Read more: Christian climate activists aim to bridge faith and environmental actionPope Francis, who used faith and science to call out the climate crisis, dies at 88

A growing number of evangelical churches and universities in Indiana are embracing renewable energy and environmental stewardship as a religious duty, reframing climate action through a spiritual lens.Catrin Einhorn reports for The New York TimesIn short:Churches across Indiana, including Christ’s Community Church and Grace Church, are installing solar panels, planting native gardens, and hosting events like Indy Creation Fest to promote environmental stewardship.Evangelical leaders say their work aligns with a biblical call to care for creation, distancing it from politicized language around climate change to appeal to more conservative congregations.Christian universities such as Indiana Wesleyan and Taylor are integrating environmental science into academics and campus life, fostering student-led sustainability efforts rooted in faith.Key quote:“It’s a quiet movement.”— Rev. Jeremy Summers, director of church and community engagement for the Evangelical Environmental NetworkWhy this matters:The intersection of faith and environmental action challenges longstanding cultural divides in the climate conversation. Evangelical communities — historically less engaged on climate issues — hold substantial political and social influence, particularly across the Midwest and South. Framing sustainability as a religious obligation sidesteps partisan divides and invites wider participation. These faith-led movements can help shift attitudes in rural and suburban America, where skepticism of climate science and federal intervention runs high. And as the environmental impacts of fossil fuel dependence grow — heatwaves, water scarcity, air pollution— the health and well-being of families in these communities are increasingly at stake. Read more: Christian climate activists aim to bridge faith and environmental actionPope Francis, who used faith and science to call out the climate crisis, dies at 88

Will the next pope be liberal or conservative? Neither.

If there’s one succinct way to describe Pope Francis’s stewardship of the Catholic Church over the last 12 years, it might best be  done with three of his own words: “todos, todos, todos” — “everyone, everyone, everyone.” Francis, who died Monday morning in Vatican City, was both a reformer and a traditionalist. He didn’t change […]

Pope Francis meets students at Portugal’s Catholic University on August 3, 2023, in Lisbon for World Youth Day, an international Catholic rally inaugurated by St. John Paul II to invigorate young people in their faith. | Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images If there’s one succinct way to describe Pope Francis’s stewardship of the Catholic Church over the last 12 years, it might best be  done with three of his own words: “todos, todos, todos” — “everyone, everyone, everyone.” Francis, who died Monday morning in Vatican City, was both a reformer and a traditionalist. He didn’t change church doctrine, didn’t dramatically alter the Church’s teachings, and didn’t fundamentally disrupt the bedrock of Catholic belief. Catholics still believe there is one God who exists as three divine persons, that Jesus died and was resurrected, and that sin is still a thing. Only men can serve in the priesthood, life still begins at conception, and faith is lived through both prayer and good works. And yet it still feels like Pope Francis transformed the Church — breathing life into a 2,000-year-old institution by making it a player in current events, updating some of its bureaucracy to better respond to earthly affairs, and recentering the Church’s focus on the principle that it is open to all, but especially concerned with the least well off and marginalized in society. With Francis gone, how should we think of his legacy? Was he really the radical progressive revolutionary some on the American political right cast him as? And will his successor follow in his footsteps?   To try to neatly place Francis on the US political spectrum is a bit of a fool’s errand. It’s precisely because Francis and his potential successors defy our ability to categorize their legacies within our worldly, partisan, and tribalistic categories that it’s not very useful to use labels like “liberal” and “conservative.” Those things mean very different things within the Church versus outside of it. Instead, it’s more helpful to realize just how much Francis changed the Church’s tone and posturing toward openness and care for the least well off — and how he set up to Church to continue in that direction after he’s gone. He was neither liberal nor conservative: He was a bridge to the future who made the Church more relevant, without betraying its core teachings. That starting point will be critical for reading and understanding the next few weeks of papal news and speculation — especially as poorly sourced viral charts and infographics that lack context spread on social media in an attempt to explain what comes next. Revisiting Francis’s papacy Francis’s papacy is a prime example of how unhelpful it is to try to think of popes, and the Church, along the right-left political spectrum we’re used to thinking of in Western democracies.  When he was elected in 2013, Francis was a bit of an enigma. Progressives cautioned each other not to get too hopeful, while conservatives were wary about how open he would be to changing the Church’s public presence and social teachings. Before being elected pope, he was described as more traditional — not as activist as some of his Latin American peers who embraced progressive, socialist-adjacent liberation theology and intervened in political developments in Argentina, for example. He was orthodox and “uncompromising” on issues related to the right to life (euthanasia, the death penalty, and abortion) and on the role of women in the church, and advocated for clergy to embrace austerity and humility. And yet he was known to take unorthodox approaches to his ministry: advocating for the poor and the oppressed, and expressing openness to other religions in Argentina. He would bring that mix of views to his papacy. The following decade would see the Church undergo few changes in theological or doctrinal teachings, and yet it still appeared as though it was dramatically breaking with the past. That duality was in part because Francis was essentially both a conservative and a liberal, by American standards, at the same time, as Catholic writer James T. Keane argued in 2021. Francis was anti-abortion, critical of gender theory, opposed to ordaining women, and opposed to marriage for same-sex couples, while also welcoming the LGBTQ community, fiercely criticizing capitalism, unabashedly defending immigrants, opposing the death penalty, and advocating for environmentalism and care for the planet. That was how Francis functioned as a bridge between the traditionalism of his predecessors and a Church able to embrace modernity. And that’s also why he had so many critics: He was both too liberal and radical, and not progressive or bold enough. Francis used the Church’s unchanging foundational teachings and beliefs to respond to the crises of the 21st century and to consistently push for a “both-and” approach to social issues, endorsing “conservative”-coded teachings while adding on more focus to social justice issues that hadn’t been the traditionally associated with the church. That’s the approach he took when critiquing consumerism, modern capitalism, and “throwaway culture,” for example, employing the Church’s teachings on the sanctity of life to attack abortion rights, promote environmentalism, and criticize neo-liberal economics. None of those issues required dramatic changes to the Church’s religious or theological teachings. But they did involve moving the church beyond older debates — such as abortion, contraception, and marriage — and into other moral quandaries: economics, immigration, war, and climate change. And he spoke plainly about these debates in public, as when he responded, “Who am I to judge?” when asked about LGBTQ Catholics or said he wishes that hell is “empty.” Still, he reinforced that softer, more inquisitive and humble church tone with restructuring and reforms within the church bureaucracy — essentially setting the church up for a continued march along this path. Nearly 80 percent of the cardinals who are eligible to vote in a papal conclave were appointed by Francis — some 108 of 135 members of the College of Cardinals who can vote, per the Vatican itself. Most don’t align on any consistent ideological spectrum, having vastly different beliefs about the role of the Church, how the Church’s internal workings should operate, and what the Church’s social stances should be — that’s partially why it’s risky to read into and interpret projections about “wings” or ideological “factions” among the cardinal-electors as if they are a parliament or house of Congress. There will naturally be speculation, given who Francis appointed as cardinals, that his successor will be non-European and less traditional. But as Francis himself showed through his papacy, the church has the benefit of time and taking the long view on social issues. He reminded Catholics that concern for the poor and oppressed must be just as central to the Church’s presence in the world as any age-old culture war issue. And to try to apply to popes and the Church the political labels and sets of beliefs we use in America is pointless.

Grassroots activists who took on corruption and corporate power share 2025 Goldman prize

Seven winners of environmental prize include Amazonian river campaigner and Tunisian who fought against organised waste traffickingIndigenous river campaigner from Peru honouredGrassroots activists who helped jail corrupt officials and obtain personhood rights for a sacred Amazonian river are among this year’s winners of the world’s most prestigious environmental prize.The community campaigns led by the seven 2025 Goldman prize winners underscore the courage and tenacity of local activists willing to confront the toxic mix of corporate power, regulatory failures and political corruption that is fuelling biodiversity collapse, water shortages, deadly air pollution and the climate emergency. Continue reading...

Grassroots activists who helped jail corrupt officials and obtain personhood rights for a sacred Amazonian river are among this year’s winners of the world’s most prestigious environmental prize.The community campaigns led by the seven 2025 Goldman prize winners underscore the courage and tenacity of local activists willing to confront the toxic mix of corporate power, regulatory failures and political corruption that is fuelling biodiversity collapse, water shortages, deadly air pollution and the climate emergency.This year’s recipients include Semia Gharbi, a scientist and environmental educator from Tunisia, who took on an organised waste trafficking network that led to more than 40 arrests, including 26 Tunisian officials and 16 Italians with ties to the illegal trade.Semia Gharbi campaigning in Tunisia. Photograph: Goldman environmental prizeGharbi, 57, headed a public campaign demanding accountability after an Italian company was found to have shipped hundreds of containers of household garbage to Tunisia to dump in its overfilled landfill sites, rather than the recyclable plastic it had declared it was shipping.Gharbi lobbied lawmakers, compiled dossiers for UN experts and helped organise media coverage in both countries. Eventually, 6,000 tonnes of illegally exported household waste was shipped back to Italy in February 2022, and the scandal spurred the EU to close some loopholes governing international waste shipping.Not far away in the Canary Islands, Carlos Mallo Molina helped lead another sophisticated effort to prevent the construction of a large recreational boat and ferry terminal on the island of Tenerife that threatened to damage Spain’s most important marine reserve.Carlos Mallo Molina. Photograph: Goldman environmental prizeThe tourism gravy train can seem impossible to derail, but in 2018 Mallo swapped his career as a civil engineer to stop the sprawling Fonsalía port, which threatened the 170,000-acre biodiverse protected area that provides vital habitat for endangered sea turtles, whales, giant squid and blue sharks.As with Gharbi in Tunisia, education played a big role in the campaign’s success and included developing a virtual scuba dive into the threatened marine areas and a children’s book about a sea turtle searching for seagrass in the Canary Islands. After three years of pressure backed by international environmental groups, divers and residents, the government cancelled construction of the port, safeguarding the only whale heritage site in European territorial waters.“It’s been a tough year for both people and the planet,” said Jennifer Goldman Wallis, vice-president of the Goldman Environmental Foundation. “There’s so much that worries us, stresses us, outrages us, and keeps us divided … these environmental leaders and teachers – and the global environmental community that supports them – are the antidote.”For the past 36 years, the Goldman prize has honoured environmental defenders from each of the world’s six inhabited continental regions, recognising their commitment and achievements in the face of seemingly insurmountable hurdles. To date, 233 winners from 98 nations have been awarded the prize. Many have gone on to hold positions in governments, as heads of state, nonprofit leaders, and as Nobel prize laureates.Three Goldman recipients have been killed, including the 2015 winner from Honduras, the Indigenous Lenca leader Berta Cáceres, whose death in 2016 was orchestrated by executives of an internationally financed dam company whose project she helped stall.Environmental and land rights defenders often persist in drawn-out efforts to secure clean water and air for their communities and future generations – despite facing threats including online harassment, bogus criminal charges, and sometimes physical violence. More than 2,100 land and environmental defenders were killed globally between 2012 and 2023, according to an observatory run by the charity Global Witness.Latin America remains the most dangerous place to defend the environment but a range of repressive tactics are increasingly being used to silence activists across Asia, the US, the UK and the EU.In the US, Laurene Allen was recognised for her extraordinary leadership, which culminated in a plastics plant being closed in 2024 after two decades of leaking toxic forever chemicals into the air, soil and water supplies in the small town of Merrimack, New Hampshire. The 62-year-old social worker turned water protector developed the town’s local campaign into a statewide and national network to address Pfas contamination, helping persuade the Biden administration to establish the first federal drinking water standard for forever chemicals.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionLaurene Allen. Photograph: Goldman environmental prizeThree of this year’s Goldman recipients were involved in battles to save two rivers thousands of miles apart – in Peru and Albania – which both led to landmark victories.Besjana Guri and Olsi Nika not only helped stop construction of a hydroelectric dam on the 167-mile Vjosa River, but their decade-long campaign led to the Albanian government declaring it a wild river national park.Guri, 37, a social worker, and Nika, 39, a biologist and ecologist, garnered support from scientists, lawyers, EU parliamentarians and celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio, for the new national park – the first in Europe to protect a wild river. This historic designation protects the Vjosa and its three tributaries, which are among the last remaining free-flowing undammed rivers in Europe.In Peru, Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari, 56, led the Indigenous Kukama women’s association to a landmark court victory that granted the 1,000-mile Marañón River legal personhood, with the right to be free-flowing and free of contamination.Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari. Photograph: Goldman environmental prizeThe Marañón River and its tributaries are the life veins of Peru’s tropical rainforests and support 75% of its tropical wetlands – but also flow through lands containing some of the South American country’s biggest oil and gas fields. The court ordered the Peruvian government to stop violating the rivers’ rights, and take immediate action to prevent future oil spills.The Kukama people, who believe their ancestors reside on the riverbed, were recognised by the court as stewards of the great Marañón.This year’s oldest winner was Batmunkh Luvsandash from Mongolia, an 81-year-old former electrical engineer whose anti-mining activism has led to 200,000 acres of the East Gobi desert being protected from the world’s insatiable appetite for metal minerals.

Suggested Viewing

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

Our team is always growing.
Become a partner, volunteer, sponsor, or intern today.
Let us know how you would like to get involved!

CONTACT US

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Subscribers receive a free day pass for streaming Cinema Verde.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.