- Workers belonging to CGIL, Italy’s biggest labor union, will walk off their jobs today for four hours to protest cuts at companies such as Fiat SpA, Alcoa Inc. and Antonio Merloni SpA. The strike called by CGIL, with a membership of 5.5 million people, and a demonstration in city centers will cripple traffic and cause delays in public transport and air travel.
- More than 300 unionized workers at Shaw’s food distribution center in Methuen, Mass., have been on strike since Sunday after rejecting what they call an “unjust and inequitable” contract offer.
Posted under Africa, Asia, Europe, Fasts, Immigration, Labor, Pakistan, Protests, Sit-ins, Strikes, United States
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Over at Killing the Buddha (which I also co-edit), we’ve got a really valuable conversation today between the radical of many causes Abe Osheroff and the activist/journalist Bob Jensen. It’s a reflection on intransigence, futility, and the failures of hope, which should be familiar themes to anyone who has put any time into struggling against the principalities and powers of injustice:
Robert Jensen: I’ve heard you use the term “long-distance runner” before. Is that the key—the notion that we have to be in it for the long haul and not expect things to change dramatically all at once?
Abe Osheroff: Not the long haul—the endless haul.
RJ: What’s the difference between long and endless?
AO: Oh yeah, there’s a difference. We will never win the fight. We will influence the players. We may be able to make life better in many ways. We will blunt the shit that the government and the corporations throw at us. But we’ll always be coping with things. My view is that there’s no destination for the train I’m on. No destination, just a direction. No final station on that train. There’s no final destination, no socialist society where we will all be able to sit back and have a wonderful life. Bullshit!
RJ: No utopias.
Read the rest at Killing the Buddha.
The jury trial of three Ploughshares peace activists, Adrian (Adi) Leason, Peter Murnane and Sam Land is being held in Wellington, New Zealand this week. People are coming from around New Zealand and Australia to support them and to give voice to the issue behind their trial—the need to close the Waihopai Spy Base and end New Zealand’s links with the US war machine. Waihopai is New Zealand’s most important contribution to that war machine, far more so than any Special Air Service presence in Afghanistan, and has been operating as an outpost of US intelligence 24/7.
Lets rewind, to 6 a.m. the morning of the April 30, 2008. Adrian, Peter and Sam have entered the Waihopai Spy Base in Blenheim, New Zealand, and used a sickle to deflate one of the two 30 meter domes covering satellite interception dishes. The group then build a shrine and pray for the victims of the war with no end—the so-called “War on Terror” led by the United States, a war that has resulted in illegal military invasions, illegal detention and torture and an unprecedented attack on civil liberties in all Western democracies.
The use of the sickle in deflating the dome was significant. It is taken from the vision of the prophet Isaiah in the Hebrew scriptures:
“They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, their spears into sickles; nation shall not lift sword against nation; and there shall be no more training for war” (Isaiah 2:4).
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Twenty-three-year-old American peace activist Rachel Corrie died seven years ago when she was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza as she stood before a Palestinian home facing demolition. Democracy Now! devoted yesterday’s show to an interview with her sister Sarah and two parents, Cindy and Craig, who are currently in Haifa for the start of a civil trial against the state of Israel over the unlawful death of their daughter. I was struck by Craig Corrie’s words when Amy Goodman asked if the family would get a chance to meet the man who drove the bulldozer.
We would like to meet that person. There are lots of victims, Amy, when you look at a war and what happens. And we lost Rachel, and that hurts every day, but that bulldozer driver lost a lot of his humanity when he crushed Rachel. We’re told by B’Tselem, for instance, that in 2004, I believe, the highest—the cause, proportionately, of deaths in the Israeli soldiers, the highest one is suicide. There’s a big toll to soldiers. And I guess I have to hold out my hand, in some way, that if that man could understand what he’s done, in terms of our loss, if he could mourn our loss of Rachel, I could mourn his loss of humanity.
There’s a lot of steps, as Sarah says, that would have to happen that way. But yeah, I’d like to meet him. And it’s not about trying to put him in jail. It doesn’t do me any good if his children don’t have a father, if he has children. But some way, like Desmond Tutu talks about, of mending the tear in society, and I think it’s more like a wound in your arm, and to expect that one half of a wound would heal and the other half stay unhealed is impossible. Both halves have to heal.
Forgiveness is obviously at the very core of nonviolence, but it is often a difficult task to carry out. The fact that someone like Craig Corrie is ready and willing to do this should motivate anyone who harbors anger toward another human to repair the divide. His gesture also shows that good has come from Rachel’s untimely death and perhaps even more is on the way, should he ever meet the driver.
The International Center for Nonviolent Conflict has a couple of interesting events coming up. The first is part of an online lecture series on topics related to nonviolent conflict and civil resistance. There have been two presentations since the series began last month, but the latest one is scheduled for this afternoon, starting at 12pm EST. University of San Francisco politics professor Stephen Zunes will be speaking about “the long history of nonviolent action throughout the Islamic world” and highlighting “case studies including Iran, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Mali, Western Sahara, Indonesia, Pakistan, and others.” You must register to attend the Webinar.
The second event is the ICNC’s fifth annual Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict at Tufts University. This week-long Institute “brings together international professionals and journalists from around the world to learn from top practitioners and scholars about strategic concepts and present applications of civil resistance.” It will take place June 20-26. Go to the ICNC website to learn more about the application, which is due March 15th.
If you want to be notified of more events put on by the ICNC sign up for their bi-weekly emails, which also include links to many great stories about nonviolence.
On Tehran Bureau, an interesting new blog on PBS’s website about Iran, an Iranian friend of ours - writing under a pen name – published an important article last week with some sound strategic advice on nonviolence for the Green Movement.
The goal is to erode the pillars of support for the regime until loyalties shift, practical power begins to drain away, and the regime starts crumbling from within. Civil disobedience is thus not primarily aimed at demonstrating the moral superiority of the opposition movement — though that is admittedly one objective — but rather to disrupt the “normal” flow of commerce, politics, and everyday life. Clearly, a violent struggle against a much stronger foe has little chance of disrupting “normal” conditions except for fleeting moments, since violence gives the state license to stamp out its opponents with the full range of instruments at its disposal.
Moreover, violence he argues would only cede the religious “center,” which includes most clergy and millions of everyday citizens, to the hardliners. He then enumerates several critical strategic principles, including:
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- A parade of Indian people from many nations gathered in Seattle on Monday to commemorate the invasion of Fort Lawton 40 years ago, when more than 100 Indian people and their allies stormed the property and took a portion of the land “by right of discovery.” After a month of protests the government decided to donate a portion of the land for a cultural center.
- About 30 people gathered outside the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Denver, Colorado on Sunday to protest a decision by the archdiocese not to re-enroll a child in a Catholic school in Boulder next year because the child’s parents are lesbians.
Posted under Health care, LGBT rights, Labor, Land rights, March, Middle East, Militarism, Protests, Sit-ins, Strikes, United States
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Among Catholics eager to stop and prevent war, matters can quickly become theoretical. The church, after all, generally teaches some form of just war theory, which allows for the possibility that war might be necessary and even right under certain circumstances. But in my interview with Andrea Bartoli of the Catholic lay organization Sant’Egidio, published today at The Immanent Frame, he suggests that the theoretical question has gotten more attention than it deserves. The gospel preaches peacemaking, and Christians should be hearing—and acting on—that call first and foremost. Practice matters more than theories.
NS: Since Augustine, Catholic tradition has upheld just war theory. Does Sant’Egidio see itself, like the Catholic Worker movement in the United States, as a challenge to that tradition? Or does its approach to peacebuilding fit within the just war framework?
AB: Augustine discusses peace about 2,500 times and war a couple of dozen. Everybody discusses what Augustine said about just war, but they usually fail to recognize that he speaks about just peace much more. Sant’Egidio focuses on the parts of Augustine that focus on peace. War is a possibility. War is a human choice. But from our perspective, the Christian position cannot be but a peaceful one, both in terms of being peaceful ourselves and in terms of being peacemakers. We don’t begin with theories. We work for peace because, to the poor, war is the worst of all conditions—Andrea Riccardi called it “the mother of all poverty.” Rather than holding a theoretical argument in favor of, or against, war, we need to be bound to practice. We’re more concerned with orthopraxis than orthodoxy. We want to be orthodox, but we have an even greater desire to actually practice the gospel.
Read more about Sant’Egidio’s remarkable work in our full interview at The Immanent Frame.
Peter Robinson, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week condemning the student protests in California for invoking the spirit of social justice movements from the 1960s and 70s. According to Robinson, the protests “demonstrated the entitlement mentality and self-absorption that has come to dominate much of higher education.”
We have here the vocabulary of the peace movement, of the struggle for decent conditions for migrants and other exploited workers, and of the civil-rights movement. Yet what did the protesters demand? Peace? Human rights? No. Money. And for whom? For the downtrodden and oppressed? No. For themselves. At a time when one American in 10 is unemployed and historic deficits burden both the federal government and many of the states, the protesters attempted to game the political system. They engaged in a resource grab.
Yeah, these whiny college students have it all: massive loan debt and a shrinking job market. Why should they complain about being exploited by the student loan industry or being victims of poorly managed state funds? So what if they have to spend more money to go to school longer or possibly not at all for a job that’s likely not waiting for them.
And what about the issues facing minority students that have also bubbled to the surface? I guess that doesn’t show that these protests are about more than just money or that they have something in common with the struggles of minority groups in the 60s and 70s.
It’s clear we all need a lesson in economic justice from Peter Robinson. How else are we going to understand why it’s not “entitlement mentality and self-absorption” when wealthy conservatives like Robinson and his colleagues at the Hoover Institution oppose taxing the rich?
Yup, if there’s one thing history has proven it’s that self-absorbed people love to protest, engage in nonviolent direct action, face possible arrest or even police brutality. Those are clearly the traits of people who feel a sense of entitlement, not people who feel burdened, exploited and marginalized.
According to The Guardian, the head of a right wing group known as the Young Britons’ Foundation has called for trespassing environmental activists to be “shot down” by police.
In October last year, when Greenpeace activists scaled the Palace of Westminster to protest against climate change policy, he called on police to “next time shoot them down … start with water cannon and if that doesn’t work, maybe crank it up a level or two”.
His words are more than just bluster, however, considering that the Young Britons’ Foundation is in the business of training Tory parliamentary candidates.
So what if police did start using water cannons on climate protesters? My hunch is that such brutality would result in what Michael Nagler calls a “paradox of repression.” Environmentalists might gain more public sympathy than they have ever enjoyed before, much like the civil rights movement did after Birmingham.
Does that mean they should welcome the water cannons? No. But it does mean that protesters shouldn’t let threats such as these scare them away from taking action. They pose a threat of their own if they remain committed to action.
What do you think? Am I being to optimistic? Would the general public ignore, or perhaps even applaud the use of water cannons against a Greenpeace activist who scaled a government building or national monument? Would the mainstream media not be sympathetic?
Last week on WBUR, Boston’s NPR station, there was a nice interview with Gene Sharp and his assistant at his office. In the interview, he discusses his take on nonviolent action, what’s going on in Iran, and far-left critics who think he’s a government agent. The segment can be streamed off of the station’s website.
Hundreds of thousands took part in the National Day of Action to Defend Public Education yesterday. It was the largest day of coordinated student protest in years. While much of it was focused on the university and state college campuses of California, where students face a 32 percent tuition hike, there were protests at campuses across the country on issues ranging from minority representation to privatization. According to Amy Goodman:
At the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, police used pepper spray to break up a student protest organized by Students for a Democratic Society. Fifteen students were arrested. At SUNY Purchase in New York protesters took over the Student Services Building. Students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill staged a sit-in at the chancellor’s office. In Washington state, the Olympia Coalition for a Fair Budget held a mock funeral for public education and healthcare and brought a coffin to the state Capitol building. And here in New York City, students and teachers at the City University of New York rallied outside Governor David Paterson’s office.
Watch the above Democracy Now! segment for more details.
The Move Your Money campaign started earlier this year seems to have gained some serious momentum. According to John Zogby, writing for Forbes:
Fourteen percent of all adults said that in the past year they have actually moved some of their banking from a large national bank to a community bank or credit union. We asked them why they moved their banking and listed several possible reasons. They could choose more than one reason. Based on that question, we found that 9% of all U.S. adults have taken some of their business away from big banks as a protest.
While this seems pretty encouraging, Zogby also noted that it’s hard to tell what effect the protest is having on the banks, as well as whether more people will get involved. But both sides of the political spectrum are taking part.
Our survey found Democrats more likely to be interested in moving their money out of big banks, but one-quarter of Republicans have also considered doing the same.
For Zogby, the ultimate question is whether this “big bank backlash” will force the Obama administration and Congress to reform the nation’s banking and finance. He isn’t holding out hope.
Bank reform is a much more an inside game with rules that are even more complex than those of health care. That, and the campaign contributions of bankers, gives the financial industry much more ability than any of the players in healthcare reform to shape legislation. Congressional challengers will hammer incumbents who voted for the bailouts, but their election won’t likely change how banks and Washington relate.
But he closes on this encouraging thought:
If enough Americans are serious about making big banks more accountable, they will need to do it themselves by taking their business elsewhere.
