As reported by the New York Times last week, a consulting firm hired by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), an alliance of coal and utility companies, is set to launch a project called “America’s Power Army.” It will have 225,000 volunteers at its disposal to send to town hall meetings, fairs and other functions attended by members of Congress, where they can ask questions about energy policy and promote coal interests.

Of course, mentioning this now can only draw comparisons to the right-wing protesters trying to derail town hall meetings on health care reform. Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews and others have linked the protests to insurance firms and corporate lobbying groups. But so far, these rather extreme and hostile crowds have had little effect on Obama’s plan (which, ironically, is already very corporate friendly). Top Democrats have vowed that they won’t be bullied by the conservative protesters.

This is an interesting point because single-payer advocates, who also feel left out of the health care reform talks, protested with civility and factual information (rather than carrying guns and crying “Socialism!”). As a result, they were able to advance their cause by at least securing a meeting with Sen. Baucus, even though nothing came out of it. Conversely, the general rowdiness of the town hall protesters appears to have worked against them. But that’s not to say corporate influenced activism—or AstroTurfing as it is sometimes called—can’t work.

According to the Times, the coal industry has already used it to great effect:

ACCCE used Hawthorn and Lincoln Strategies for a project prior to the presidential election last year that was aimed at raising the issue of “clean coal” technology. During that effort, Lincoln workers staffed rallies for presidential candidates, debates and both Republican and Democratic conventions. They reached out to citizens at those events.

It was during a primary rally that a question about coal elicited a response from then-Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, giving support for research into “clean coal technology.” ACCCE repackaged part of Obama’s statement into a television ad this year.

Clearly the coal industry has harnessed a vital aspect of effective protest action: civility. And that makes their next project, America’s Power Army, all the more scary. The question for environmental activists is how to react. Even though they’re fighting for the broader public interest, and by most accounts have the public’s support, they will be hard pressed to combat the well-funded citizen campaigns of the coal industry.

The best solution I can see for environmental activists is to continue exposing the dirty ties of these coal advocates and reach out to those who might be persuaded to join their cause—such as relatives of coal miners—and remind them that the coal industry does not have their best interests at heart.

Although this is a relatively new phenomonon, it is unlikely to go away. So please feel free to chime in with suggestions for ways to combat corporate lobbying disguised as grassroots activism.

After the authorities evicted a Minneapolis woman who staged a months-long, public fight to stay in her foreclosed home, dozens of activists broke into the house, opened it back up and helped her move her belongings back in.

• Labour unions at KGHM in Poland held a two-hour strike on Tuesday to protest a government proposal to sell a 10 percent stake in Europe’s second-biggest copper producer.

• Approximately 19,000 taxis in Honduras joined the general strike late last week, asking for the return of Manuel Zelaya.

• In Greece, nearly 600 immigrant detainees are on a hunger strike protesting the Greek policy of transporting migrants from the cities to remote places before deportation.

• Some 2000 property tax collectors staged a sit-in in downtown Cairo demanding job reforms and a halt to what they called a crackdown on their independent union.

• In Australia, aboriginal elders and families from Ampilatwatja have set up a permanent protest camp outside their government-controlled community in protest against policies that have neglected their needs and desires.

• In Yemen, over 60 illegal Sudanese immigrants – now detained in Amran’s Central Prison – started a hunger strike protesting the silence of the respective authorities towards their plight.

• Shops, schools and businesses were closed across much of Indian Kashmir on Tuesday as separatist groups observed the first anniversary of a prominent Kashmiri leader’s death, who was killed when police fired on a protest march he was leading toward Pakistan’s portion of divided Kashmir in the disputed Himalayan region.

• Hundreds of students from Nigerian universities yesterday marched through the streets of Lagos in a peaceful protest demanding that the Federal Government sign the agreement it had reached with the Academic Staff Union of Universities without modifications.

• Golden Arrow bus drivers in South Africa went on an illegal strike yesterday after allegations of racism in the workplace.

Organizers behind Britain’s Camp for Climate Action are looking to shed their image as “dangerous radicals” and move toward the mainstream. Fortunately, by the sound of it, they will do so not by abandoning their high-profile direct actions or by softening their tone, but by using more creative marketing and outreach efforts.

For instance, the public is being asked to vote on this year’s target of environmental protest and the winner will be announced at the end of August, during this year’s week-long eco-fest near London. The contestants are Drax Power Station, the UK’s single biggest emitter of carbon, and Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station, owned by energy giant E.ON. The tone of the website where people can vote takes on a reality/talent show theme, where each polluter gets to state its case for why it deserves to be protested.

Drax says: “I am a colossus of a carbon dinosaur, and proud of it. CCS? You must be joking mate, I don’t have any truck with this new fangled technology, won’t work anyway. I’ll smoke till I die, and I’ll take you all with me! Hahaha! Nah, only joking. Nah, not really. Ratcliffe. What a joke! Run by a bunch of bleeding heart liberals, if you ask me.”

Ratcliffe says: “To be honest, this attempt to paint Drax as the biggest carbon dinosaur, I feel a bit sorry for them. Sure they’re big, but E.ON – we’ve got reach, man! We talk to some pretty important people, you know what I mean? Across the world, we emit way more than Drax. In comparison Drax is, well, I don’t like to say, but a bit of a backwater yokel.”

While this may sound rather silly, if not a diversion, to some hardcore activists, Climate Camp is approaching this move with some trepidation. They realize what they’re attempting has a catch-22 aspect to it. Even if they manage to attract a mainstream audience, a good number will still be scared off by the intensity of direct action. And yet, as the Guardian recently pointed out, previous police crackdowns on Climate Camp protesters have gained them positive media attention and public sympathy.

It will be an interesting experiment to see if playing to the mainstream is more effective at capturing attention than simply letting the direct actions speak for themselves. My sense is that as long as Climate Camp remains true to its activist roots, any attempt to reach more people is a good thing. We certainly don’t need more middle-of-the-road environmental lobbying groups.

Demonstrators angry at the closure of Britain's largest wind turbine factory in the Isle of Wight gathered outside the home of Business Secretary and stand-in Prime Minister Peter Mandelson.

• Climate change activists in South Lanarkshire, England dumped coal outside city council headquarters to protest plans for an open cast mine, as well as to highlight the environmental and health impacts of the proposal.

• Dozens of activists from environmental groups gathered in Jerusalem yesterday to protest plans for a new coal-based power plant in the southern city of Ashkelon.

• Close to 50 midwife supporters in Wilmington, North Carolina gathered yesterday to protest Carolina OB/GYN’s decision to close its midwife program.

• About a third of the total workforce at a New Zealand telecom have gone on a two day strike to show solidarity for workers striking at a second telecom over contract issues.

• Classes at Melbourne University were canceled yesterday when staff went on strike over job cuts.

Marching Longshoreman in San Francisco (1934)

“Why is there so little protest in response to these hard economic times?” asks Peter Dreier, in an interesting piece for The Nation. It’s important and difficult question for activists to ask themselves.

Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that most Americans are not schooled in nonviolence, or made aware of the rich history of activism and dissent in this country. If young people grew up studying the theory, strategy and tactics of nonviolence  – and how it has been used historically – as much as they do math or science, we would have a far better sense of how to create a more democratic and just world.

While Dreier doesn’t really provide much of a direct answer to his question, he does suggest that we can can learn from our history about what may be necessary today. He then gives a nice explanation of how nonviolent action during the 1930s played a crucial role in pushing President Franklin Roosevelt -  who was “in many ways a cautious, even conservative, politician” when he was first elected – to make the many progressive reforms of the New Deal a reality.

Across the Farm Belt, hundreds of farmers would show up and stop a foreclosure sale by the force of numbers. Some farmers threatened to call a national strike if Congress didn’t act. In Sioux City, Iowa, farmers put wooden planks with nails on the highways to block agricultural deliveries. [These protests] led to passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the Emergency Farm Mortgage Act…

[...]

In the 1930s, the United States was a nation of renters. As the Depression worsened, there were huge waves of evictions, because tenants didn’t have the income to pay rent. Utility companies shut off electricity and heat. In many cities, when word spread that a family was being evicted, a crowd would gather–sometimes ten people, sometimes a few hundred. The police would remove the furniture from the house and put it out in the street, and the crowd would bring the furniture back. This happened so often that some police officers would refuse to evict or arrest people. These protests set the stage for the New Deal’s housing programs, the first time that the government provided subsidies to create affordable housing.

In January 1933, several hundred jobless Americans surrounded a restaurant just off Union Square in New York City, demanding that they be fed without charge. In Seattle in February 1933, about 5,000 unemployed people occupied the County-City Building demanding jobs or relief. These and similar protests around the country set the stage for the nation’s first cash assistance program for struggling families.

Through the 1930s, workers engaged in massive and illegal strikes and sit-down protests in factories and retail stores throughout the country. In 1934, 1.5 million workers–including longshoremen, teamsters, factory workers and retail clerks–went on strike. In San Francisco, 130,000 workers joined a general strike.

With the recent killing of Taliban leader Baitullah Massoud, some might be tempted to think that a military victory in Afghanistan is just around the corner. Mark Juergensmeyer, a leading scholar of terrorism, religion, and global politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, insists in Religion Dispatches today that we shouldn’t get our hopes up. (Years ago, before rising to prominence, Juergensmeyer wrote a lovely book called Gandhi’s Way: A Handbook of Conflict Resolution.) He offers, first, the familiar reminder that the U.S. is not seen as a liberating force by the locals:

Like the North Vietnamese, many Afghan activists—and an increasing number of Pakistanis—are motivated to fight against the American presence because of their love of freedom. They see the US military, like the Soviet forces before them, as a foreign occupying power. The Taliban, as draconian as they may be, are seen as enemies of the enemy: us. It is the US military presence, paradoxically, that is uniting the Taliban and marshalling wide public support behind it.

Most usefully, Juergensmeyer reports on a recent meeting of experts on South Asia. They agreed to five necessary steps that need to be taken to ensure stability in the region. None of them, the U.S. leadership may be surprised to learn, involves sending in more troops.

1. Support self-determination.

2. Demilitarize.

3. Recognize the religious and organizational diversity.

4. Respect the legitimacy of religious politics.

5. Be open to regional solutions.

For details on each of these, see Juergensmeyer’s article. What he emphasizes above all is the need to stop trying to impose a Western-style society as if that were the only hope for stability. He reminds us of Badshah Khan, a leader who crafted a nonviolent political movement in the tribal regions out of local values and traditions. In large part, the ruthless violence we often think of as being endemic to that region is a reflection of our own behavior there.

About 400 people marched outside the North American Leaders Summit in Guadalajara, Mexico on Sunday to protest the negative affects of free trade and to demand benefits for retired Mexican laborers who worked in the US.

• The sit-in at the Vestas wind-turbine plant on the Isle of Wight came to an end on the 19th day when bailiffs arrived to evict the six remaining workers on Friday. A day later, workers took part in a rally outside the factory gates as part of their pledge to continue fighting for their jobs.

• Another Vestas factory on the Isle of Wight has been hit with a sit-in. Late last week three activists appeared on the roof and unfurled a banner that read: “Vestas Workers – Solidarity in Occupation. Save Green Jobs.” Since then three more have joined the protest.

• A dozen state workers in Oakland, California marched in front of the state house to protest a budget cut known as “Furlough Fridays,” which is forcing them to take off three Fridays a month without pay for the rest of the fiscal year.

• Scotland’s first Climate Camp comes to an end today amid reports of anonymous activists sabotaging a coal conveyor belt that leads to the largest power station in Britain.

• Fifteen Greenpeace activists, including a ship captain, were rung up on charges in relation to two protests of the Queensland coal terminal last week.

As lawmakers begin their month-long recess this week, conservatives are making a concerted effort to derail town hall meetings being held by Democrats on health care reform across the country, according to the Center for American Progress.

Last week, The Progress Report obtained a leaked memo from a volunteer with Tea Party Patriots, a website sponsored by Americans for Prosperity (AFP) (led by a former associate of Jack Abramoff) and FreedomWorks (led by former Republican Majority Leader and current lobbyist Dick Armey). The memo detailed how town hall goers should infiltrate meetings and harass Democratic members of Congress. The memo said activists should “stand up and shout out and sit right back down” so the representative is “made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington.” The overall goal, said the memo, is to “rattle” the elected official.

[...]

The published memos are similar to talking points being distributed by FreedomWorks that push an anti-health reform assault all summer. Patients United, a front group maintained by AFP, is busing people all over the country to protest health care reform. America’s Health Insurance Plans, the trade group and lobbying juggernaut representing the health insurance industry, is also sending staffers to monitor town halls in 30 states. Meanwhile, Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPR), led by disgraced hospital executive Rick Scott, is running a national campaign against a public health care option.

[...]

Two nights ago, Reps. Steve Kagen (D-WI) and Steve Driehaus (D-OH) had to face down angry mobs. Kagen, whose town hall was targeted by the Wisconsin chapter of AFP, was “repeatedly disrupted” by “incomprehensible” shrieks and shouts from conservatives.

I personally don’t have any problem with conservatives protesting policies that they do not agree with. What I do take issue with however is the fact that these demonstrations are being to at least some extent orchestrated and pushed by the insurance industry and other health care lobbyists that have a strong financial stake in maintaining the despicable status quo.

Also, being on the right side of the issue is important. While these conservative protesters may be genuinely concerned about greater government involvment in health care, I think they are either incredibly selfish (in not wanting to help those who are unnecessarily suffering and dying due to the failings of our current system) or more likely simply ill-informed on this issue.

Even a brief look at the dismal state of the health care system in the U.S. should make the need for a far more  massive overhaul than the Democrats are currently proposing obvious. Here are just a few statistics that was I able to quickly throw together:

1. Leaving health care to the market has left 47 million Americans without coverage and tens of millions more underinsured.
2. Since the economic crisis began, and estimated 14,000 Americans are loosing their insurance every day.
3. The Urban Institute estimates that the lack of insurance leads to 27,000 preventable deaths in the U.S. every year.
4. Medical bills are behind more than 60 percent of personal bankruptcies in the U.S.
5. We spend more per person on health care than any other country in the world, but lag behind many other industrialized countries in virtually every health statistic you can think of. For example, according to an article in the Washington Post: “Infant mortality in the United States is 6.8 per 1,000 births, more than twice as high as in Japan, Norway and Sweden and worse than in Poland and Hungary.”

Visit Healthcare-NOW! or Physicians for a National Health Program to learn more about what I think is truly needed in this country: Single-payer national health insurance. And if you care about real reform, make your voice heard at these meetings as well. A calendar of these events can be found here.

Two long-time peace and anti-nuclear activists have brought their nonviolent protest and resistance to the U.S.-Mexico border. John Heid, a Quaker with Christian Peacemaker Teams, and Fr. Jerry Zawada, a Franciscan priest, were arrested on trespassing charges as they prayed and offered repentance for the thousands of migrant deaths that are the consequences of an increasingly militarized border.  In a prepared statement, Heid and Zawada announced their intentions:

On this, the 64th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, we call for an end to militarization in all its guises. An end to bombs, nuclear and conventional. An end to the use of Drones (unmanned aerial vehicles). An end to walls, fences and their virtual counterparts that divide us and promote fear of each other. An end to war without end.

This morning we vigil at the gates of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base,home of a Predator UAV unit which now flies missions around the clock in Iraq and Afghanistan armed with Hellfire missiles which have killed hundreds of unarmed civilians. We demand an end to the unilateral slaughter.

This afternoon we vigil at a communication tower, “Tucson-1″ (virtual fence) construction sight. Fences and walls, solid and virtual, have funneled people in migration deeper into the harsh, dangerous terrain of the Sonoran desert, resulting in more than 5,000 deaths since 1994.

These three – bombs, drones and fences/walls – are lethal weapons directed specifically at noncombatants. Cities like Hiroshima, villages in Iraq and Afghanistan and the U.S.-Mexico borderland have been deliberately targeted and violated. These are crimes against humanity. A betrayal of civility. In spiritual terms, a sin. “Today we pray without ceasing for a world without weapons and fences. We pray for peace, for justice, for unity which makes walls and war obsolete.

The virtual tower that Heid and Zawada were arrested at is part of a larger initiative by U.S. federal authorities to deter migrants from crossing the border.  With physical walls – and in some places double walls – making urban crossings much less likely in places like San Diego, Nogales, and El Paso, the flow of migrants has been channeled into remote places hardly accessible to Border Patrol vehicles.  But with the introduction of these virtual towers, equipped with cameras, video, and radar, authorities are pushing migrants into even more lethal terrain. Joseph Nevins reports on the escalation of U.S. border enforcement in his book Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the “Illegal Alien” and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary.

One scholar at the Scalabrini International Migration Institute, Gioacchino Campese, argues that the deadly U.S. immigration policy is not only immoral but also failing.  In his essay “Cuantos Mas” (from A Promised Land, a Perilous Journey: Theological Perspectives on Migration) Campese writes:

After more than ten years since the implementation of the new border strategy, the results have been mostly negative: the federal government has spent billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money; because of border enforcement the smugglers’ industry has boomed to the point of becoming basically indispensable; the violation of human rights of immmigrants continues unabated; there is no real proof that this strategy has substantially reduced “illegal” immigration in the USA; the border build-up, rather than deterring undocumented immigrants from entering the USA, discourages them from returning home; and, most tragically, the number of immigrants dying at the border has simply skyrocketed.  To deal with this latter problem the Border Patrol launched in 1998  – five years after the El Paso experiment [Operation Hold the Line] – search-and-rescue operations to help immigrants stranded in the deserts and mountains of the border region.  But despite these efforts the number of deaths continues to rise because of the strategy itself – the rerouting of the immigrants towards the most dangerous terrains – that is causing these deaths.  The. U.S. government refuses to take any responsibility for all these casualties, which are considered one of the “unintended” consequences of the nation’s effort to protect its sovereignty.

The “unintended consequences,” which are more intentional then many Americans are willing to admit, are the reasons why John Heid and Fr. Jerry Zawada sat in prayer at the virtual tower surveillance site.  The site they visited is only one of seventeen towers in a 23-mile stretch of the border surrounding Sasabe.  The two men, long-time friends through the Catholic Worker and Plowshares movement, have moved their lives and work to the U.S.-Mexico border south of Tucson.  Both are members of the No More Deaths community, whose humanitarian efforts have saved thousands of lives in the harsh terrain of the Sonoran desert.

Four port workers, who were sacked for attempting to create two independent unions, are on hunger strike in the Panamanian port of Balboa.

• Normal life was paralysed in Manipur for 48-hours this week, due to a general strike to protest the killing of a youth.

• In India, the executive committee of the UP Engineers Association (UPEA) decided  on Tuesday that engineers in all the services of the state government will boycott work to protest the failure of the police to arrest the murderers of an assistant engineer, Manoj Kumar Singh, in Gorakhpur.

• Los Angeles firefighters rallied in front of City Hall to protest the $39 million in cuts on Wednesday.

• In Kashmir, three casual labourers continued with the hunger strike—‘fast unto death’— inside the make shift tent, erected outside the office of chief engineer at Rajbagh to protest working conditions and unpaid wages.

• In Afghanistan on Wednesday, some 100 people from Kohat village took four bodies to Kandahar, as a sign of protest alleging that international troops carried out air raids on the village at 01:00 a.m., which left four civilians including three children dead.

• Bus drivers gathered in London wearing only their underwear to highlight a “huge disparity” in wages they claim is damaging services. Members of the Unite union unveiled boxer shorts with the words “Stop the race to the bottom” in Marble Arch.

• Up to 400 students gathered in protest near the Autonomous University of Honduras in the city on Wednesday. Adding to the pressure, some 15,000 nurses and other workers at 28 hospitals declared themselves on an indefinite strike, joining public school teachers who have been off the job for weeks.

• In Australia, more than 300 teachers rallied outside Queensland’s parliament to protest against the state government’s refusal to further negotiate wage increases.

• Bank employees unions decided to observe a nationwide strike after talks with the government and the Indian Bank’s Association (IBA) collapsed on Wednesday.  The bank employees are demanding a 20 percent raise in salary, resumption of talks and expeditious settlement of all their demands.