Best of Truthdig’s Ear to the Ground 2016: A Showcase of Activists’ Approaches to the Election

dedevanderroove / Gage Skidmore / Twitter / timevanson

Editor’s note: From Dec. 23 through New Year’s Eve, Truthdig is running a roundup of the top 10 stories of 2016 in the following categories: Live Blog, A/V Booth, Report, Book Review, Ear to the Ground, Cartoon, Film Review, Live at Truthdig and Truthdigger of the Week.

Our Ear to the Ground section was flush with election news this year, of course. However, the most-read posts in 2016 were not so much about election results as about activism inspired by the democratic process. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose organization’s leaks of emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign left their mark on the election, shows up more than once on this list; but he was beaten to the No. 1 position by a peculiar form of protest that took place earlier in the year.

10. Glenn Greenwald: The Media’s Coverage of Donald Trump Is ‘Kind of Hysterical’ In a conversation with Slate, The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald agreed that a Donald Trump presidency “poses … extreme dangers” to the U.S., but the journalist also argued that the mass media created a dangerous, unblinking consensus against Trump while failing to reach his voters.

9. WikiLeaks Accuses Facebook of Censorship in Hillary Clinton Email Release Two days after WikiLeaks’ release of a searchable archive of 30,322 of the former secretary of state’s emails, the organization called Facebook on the carpet for allegedly blocking users’ access via the social network to the Clinton dispatch.

8. Arizona Secretary of State Confirms Election Fraud During Primary Vote During a committee hearing at the state Capitol in Phoenix, Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan admitted that wrongdoing occurred in March 22 Arizona primary for the presidential election.

7. Chelsea Clinton Attacks Bernie Sanders: ‘We Are Not Electing a King’ Chelsea hit out at her mother’s Democratic rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, leveling harsh criticism at his proposal to end mass incarceration in the U.S.

6. Julian Assange Explains Why Voting for Hillary Clinton Will ‘Spread Terrorism’ The WikiLeaks founder told Americans that his “years of experience in dealing with Hillary Clinton” and the “thousands of her cables” he read led him to a crucial conclusion: Voting for the former secretary of state would “push the United States into endless wars which spread terrorism.”

5. Noam Chomsky and Over 100 Intellectuals Denounce ‘Savage’ Media Treatment of Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn “We do not expect journalists to give any elected leader an easy ride,” a letter published in The Guardian and signed by more than 100 intellectuals reads, “but Corbyn has been treated from the start as a problem to be solved rather than as a politician to be taken seriously.”

4. Washingtonians Hound Superdelegate Who Supported Clinton After Constituents Favored Sanders Bernie Sanders crushed Hillary Clinton in Washington’s caucuses, yet state Rep. Rick Larsen, a superdelegate, was ready to vote for her anyway.

3. Electoral College Members in Colorado and Texas Seek to Reject Donald Trump In the wake of news that Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the popular vote, many Americans turned to the Electoral College in hopes that it would vote against Trump.

2. Julian Assange: Next Leak of Hillary Clinton Emails Will Be Enough to Indict Her, but … WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said his organization’s second leak of Hillary Clinton emails should be enough to indict her—but expressed doubts the FBI would do so.

1. World’s Largest ‘Fart-In’ Is Planned for Hillary Clinton’s Acceptance Speech in Philadelphia Philadelphia—Cheri Honkala, the leader of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, announced that her group was organizing the world’s largest “fart-in” to be held on July 28 at the Wells Fargo Center during Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination.