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The Activist Beat with Rose Aguilar, host of Your Call on KALW in San Francisco is a weekly roundup of progressive activism that the mainstream media ignores, undercovers, or misrepresents.

As we come to the end of 2011, we should take time to reflect on what the citizens of the world have accomplished from Wisconsin to Cairo.

We’re saturated with information. We’re always on the go. We’re disgusted with the current state of affairs. We’ve become desensitized to violence and brutality.

For all of those reasons and many more, it’s important to step back and reflect. Reflect on what’s been accomplished. Reflect on the possibilities. I spent hours this week reading about and looking at photos of the women of Egypt who defiantly took to the streets after the military beat and dragged them through the streets of Cairo.

The people of the Middle East and North Africa have put their lives on the line for basic freedoms. Many have paid the ultimate price.

On Saturday, Tunisians celebrated the year-anniversary of their uprising. It all started with a young fruit vendor in a remote Tunisian town who took his life on the morning of December 17, 2010.

For years, 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi suffered police brutality and injustice for simply trying to support his seven-member family. According to an in-depth piece about Bouazizi, Foreign Policy reports the $73 he earned each week was his family’s main source of income.

One morning, inspectors seized his produce and his electronic scale after accusing him of failing to pay a fine for an arbitrary infraction. A policewoman slapped him across the face in front of onlookers. He tried to get his things back from local authorities, but didn’t get anywhere. He was tired of being bullied. He was tired of the corruption and bribery. He had had enough. Right then and there, he doused himself in paint thinner and struck a match.

Mohamed died on January 4, 2011. Ten days later, Tunisia’s President Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia after 23 years in power. The uprising quickly spread to Egypt, leading to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak after 30 years in power.

Mohamed Bouazizi’s actions will go down in history for starting a movement that no one could have predicted. He was a hero for humanity.

The movement has since spread to Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and beyond.

Here in the United States, we are entering month three of the Occupy movement. Despite what many commentators would have you believe, the movement is far from over.

In a recent San Francisco Chronicle piece, Tony Fels, associate professor of history at the University of San Francisco, wrote that the “movement has reached a tactical dead end.” Demonstrators might not have nicely packaged sound bites. There are no go-to leaders. Most of the encampments have been dismantled. But the movement is far from dead.

I’m planning to send Fels information about a new UC Riverside study called “Diffusion of the Occupy Movement in California.” Researchers surveyed 482 incorporated towns and cities in California and found that 143 – nearly 30 percent –had Occupy sites on Facebook between Dec. 1 and Dec. 8. And they’re almost evenly divided between Northern Califoria and Southern California.

The study listed several success stories within individual movements. Occupy Riverside activists helped an ex-Marine reoccupy his home. Occupy Petaluma protestors successfully petitioned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to suspend evictions during the holidays. Occupy Redding is supporting postal workers who are protesting job cuts.

UC Riverside researchers conclude that these actions, along with the recent port shutdowns, prove that “this movement has broad support and is capable of powerful collective action.”

As we round out the year of growing inequality, rising poverty, a bought and sold government, and an ever shrinking media, I’m more convinced than ever that change has to come from the local level.

It’s up to those of those of us in the independent media to shine a light on the corruption, inequities, and solutions to our many problems. We have the solutions. What we don’t have is the political will.

We must also continue giving a voice to the unsung heroes and sheroes in our communities and beyond. The people who are standing up for a more just society. That is my goal and hope for the New Year.

I’m Rose Aguilar for Uprising.