Twenty-one-year-old art student Emily Henochowiz sounds to be at ease with herself while giving an interview to the Village Voice as she says half-jokingly:

“I guess I can be grateful to the IDF for giving me the chance to see the world in a new way.”

Donning a pair of black rimmed glasses, the self-designed art on the left lens intentionally obscures what was once her eye before she lost it after being hit by an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) tear-gas canister.

Emily was born a grandchild of Holocaust survivors and from an Israeli father that emigrated to the U.S. raising her in Potomac, Maryland. Emily became a creative artist and eventually attended Cooper Union Art Program in Lower Manhattan. She then went over to Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem as an exchange student. Her main focus was to make art, study history, and improve her Hebrew.

During her stay, though, she witnessed how Palestinians were being treated by Israeli settlers. This slowly started to show through her drawings. In one case a group of settler’s taunted Palestinian children with prayers.

This experience ultimately drew her in to political action with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-based organization of volunteers (one having been the late Rachel Corrie) who push for nonviolent demonstrations against the IDF. As the Village Voice reports:

Emily says her ISM protest activities were about the Palestinians, to prove to them that ‘it’s not all of our people’ who are against them. ‘It was important for me to tell them, “I’m Jewish, and I support you,’’ she says. “We’re a people like any other, which is part of the reason we’re in the situation we’re in!” Not the self-serious type, she laughs and adds, “Just because we went through the Holocaust doesn’t mean we aren’t racist, too!”

Among her work is some creative graffiti against the Israeli construction of The Wall that separates Palestinians from their land. Emily took part in a dozen demonstrations throughout her semester, but it was the day after the massacre on the Mavi Marmara that brought her face-to-face with IDF soldiers firing tear-gas grenades.

On that day, she was waving an Austrian and Turkish flag at the Qalandiyah checkpoint near the West Bank in protest against the flotilla attack. A few boys from a distance started throwing rocks at the soldiers. Even though the rock throwers were not in close proximity to her, IDF soldiers fired tear-gas at close range directly at Emily. Two canisters hit on either side of her feet, but the third smashed directly into her left eye. Blood began running down her face, covering her Nakba T-shirt.

As Emily collapsed a Palestinian woman instantly ran over, caught her, and wrapped her arms around Emily’s body while simultaneously applying gauze to her injured eye and dragging her off to the side.

Emily was then rushed to Hadassah University Hospital only to find out after examination that she’d have to undergo surgery to remove the eye. Upon her fathers arrival from the States, he discovered that the room next to hers was holding an injured prisoner from the Mavi Marmara flotilla. At one point one of the doctors approached her father and asked:

“Are you Jewish? Because, then, how could your daughter be involved in such an activity?”

Emily however is not alone. There are many other Jewish Americans who have been outspoken against the Israeli government’s actions towards Palestinians. She has made her drawings a plea for others to take notice of the injustices visited upon Palestinians. Even though she has lost her eye in the process she remains upbeat:

After all, her political activism, she adds, “was a real change from who I was before—an experiment, in a way. And it ended in me losing my eye. But it’s OK.”

Emily continues to write and draw at her blogspot Thirsty Pixels and has no plans on giving up as an artist.

After a decade long nonviolent campaign to improve their pay and working conditions, domestic workers in New York celebrated the signing of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights by Governor David Paterson earlier this month. As Bill Fletcher Jr. writes:

The gist of the legislation is more than impressive. It establishes an eight hour legal work day; over time at time and a half after 40 hours for live-out domestic workers and 44 hours for live-in domestic workers; one day of rest in each calendar week; overtime pay on that day of rest if the worker chooses to work; after one year of employment three paid days off; workplace protection against discrimination, sexual harassment, and other forms of harassment; workers compensation; and the completion of a study by November 2010 of the feasibility of establishing organizing for collective bargaining.

[...]

This struggle is noteworthy on many levels, not the least of which being the building of a new relationship with organized labor. After the passage of the National Labor Relations Act, “excluded workers,” including but not limited to domestic workers, were largely abandoned by the formal union movement. While there has been a history of efforts to organize such workers into unions or union-like structures, with the exception of struggles such as the one led by the California-based United Farm Workers union, these have largely been off of the radar screen of most of the union movement. In some cases, such snubbing was the result of racism and sexism, while in other cases it was simply a sort of legalese narrowness, i.e., the law excludes these workers so they are out of luck.

The campaign in New York started to turn some of this around. Domestic Workers United, along with its national umbrella, are part of a newly emerging movement of organizations and centers that have emerged outside of the framework of organized labor but are seeking a new and respectful partnership with the unions. DWU and its allies in New York sought out labor union support. The New York City Central Labor Council embraced their efforts, but so too did both the Service Employees International Union Local 32B/32J (the mega building service local stretching from Massachusetts to Washington, DC) and the New York City-based Transport Workers Union, Local 100. The national AFL-CIO, representing more than ten million workers, also joined forces. Then AFL-CIO President John Sweeney offered his personal stamp of support for the efforts aimed at securing a domestic workers bill of rights.

While this should no doubt be seen as a step forward, as Fletcher notes, the struggle for true equality and economic justice for these historically exploited workers continues:

Concerns have been raised in some arenas that this victory has not gone far enough and there is certainly some truth to that.  There are decades of repair work that need to be done to make amends for the mistreatment and marginalization experienced by this workforce.  At a minimum a system of collective bargaining needs to be put into place whereby the state or cities take responsibility for ensuring that resources are made available to raise the living standard of these workers.  To expect total or near total victory at this stage, however, would be entirely unrealistic.  Much like newly organized workers in the 1930s, the first victories institutionalized their existence and granted them the raw elements of economic justice.  It took years of organization-building and struggle to advance based upon those early victories.

Over at News Junkie Post, Mike Kaulbars uses a Sun Tzu quote – “Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” – to frame his thoughtful critique of the Black Bloc, which is worth quoting at length:

While it is true that there is a certain amount of “hey look at me” frat boy element to the Bloc’s actions, it is a mistake to dismiss them as simply kids out for a riot. Many of them are as committed to the issues as anyone else in the movement. They are usually able to articulate at least [the] basics of Insurrectionary anarchism, and as Martha noted “their vandalism is clearly focused on the links between everyday economic violence and institutions,” ie it is not random libertinage. They are angry and violent, but they are not simply rioting.

However, having a cause and a politic is not the same as having a strategy.

The intellectual underpinnings of Insurrectionary anarchism are over a century old and framed within an entirely different social and political context. The modern defences of the methods (ie tactics) that the Bloc uses such as Ward Churchill’s ‘Pacifism as Pathology‘ and Gelderloos’ ‘How Nonviolence Protects the State‘ are laughable. They are intellectual pablum written for the naive believer to confirm their simplistic caricatures of nonviolent struggle. That anyone takes them seriously should be a mystery, but there is a reason that they do.

The basic pro-violence arguments as they articulated by the Bloc and supporters are summarized here. These may seem like parodies if you have never heard them, but they’re not. The entire case for violence rests on a cartoonish misrepresentation of what nonviolent struggle is and how it works. The alleged arguments are easily refuted (eg here) , so why are they so rarely challenged and exposed for the nonsense that they are?

In part because of the repressive tactics of the Bloc. Anyone who has attempted to have a rational discussion about tactics when Bloc sympathizers are present is aware that they practice silencing any dissent with a variety of tricks, from ad hominem attacks to accusations of not being in solidarity, etc. The faux anarchists really are a case study in the ‘Tyranny of Structurelessness.”

In part due to effective marketing. The phrase “Diversity of Tactics” (DoT) is inspired as an euphemism for violence (it puts “collateral damage” to shame) and allows the use of yet another logical fallacy to be used to prevent intelligent dialogue. Blocists will not allow any discussion of violence, you have to say “Diversity of Tactics.” In that way they try and force the false choice between accepting violence or being against diversity. It’s middle school debating tactics and logically incoherent, but it works to silence debate.

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Despite a judge’s ruling to delay enforcement of key provisions in Arizona’s notorious anti-immigrant law hours before it was scheduled to take effect, protesters descended on Phoenix yesterday. Hundreds blocked a street near City Hall and were confronted by officers in riot gear, while others beat on the metal door of the county jail. More than 50 protesters were arrested by the end of the day.

Hard line Arizona officials were no less deterred by the ruling as well. Gov. Jan Brewer and State Senator Russell Pearce both called it a “bump” in the road, while Sheriff Joe Arpaio went ahead with one of his controversial crime raids targeting illegal immigrants. But in a moment that should only bolster the resolve of those determined to fight this law nonviolently, Arpaio also told the Associated Press that he is “not going to put up with any civil disobedience.”

As if comparisons to the Civil Rights Movement weren’t already strong enough, such a statement practically summons the ghost of Alabama’s infamous law enforcer Bull Connor, whose aggressive tactics against peaceful demonstrators backfired when broadcast on national television.

But rather than wonder if Arpaio is so blinded by power that he would make this same mistake, protesters should be asking themselves if they are up to the challenge of remaining nonviolent if he does?

So far they have shown remarkable determination.

At 91 years old, iconic folk singer Pete Seeger is still plucking tunes of protest on his legendary banjo. Although he doesn’t write many new songs anymore, the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf moved him to team with folk singer Lorre Wyatt and pen a track called “God’s Counting on Me, God’s Counting on You.”

He debuted the song on two special occasions last week, first outside the senate chamber in Albany for a rally against hydrofracking in New York State and then a few days later at a fundraising concert for Gulf charities in New York City (video above).

The environment has long been a focus of Seeger’s work, particularly in his native Hudson Valley. So it’s no surprise he sees an immediate connection between the drilling in the Gulf and the proposed drilling near New York’s watershed.

In his trademark sing-along style, Seeger moved audiences with lyrics like “When the drill baby drill turns to spill baby spill/God’s counting on me/God’s counting on you” and the uplifting chorus, “Hopin’ we’ll all pull through/me and you.”

After the show, he told Rolling Stone, “I’m a fan of old songs that have a lot of repetition, spirituals… Some of the greatest songs in the world only have one line, like ‘This little light of mine.’ ”

For more on Pete Seeger and the important role of music in social movements, watch the endlessly inspiring documentary on Seeger’s life The Power of Song.

• Members of the youth climate group Consequence hosted a Big Oil Carnival for Senate staffers on the steps of Union Station in Washington DC on Tuesday. The event was complete with oil-themed games, Tony Hayward clowns, a stilt walking Uncle Sam and a message to the Senate: “Stop playing games with our clean energy future.”

• Greenpeace U.K. shut down at least 30 BP stations in London on Tuesday, fanning out to as many as 50 BP stations and posting banners that said, “Closed: Moving beyond petroleum.” They also pulled safety switches that cut off fuel supplies at the stations — and removed the switches so they couldn’t be turned back on again.

• Four supporters of the federal DREAM Act stood before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in full cap and gowns at a Netroots Nation luncheon in Las Vegas last week to protest his lack of conviction on a bill that would allow a pathway to citizenship for undocumented youth.

• An animal rights activist was arrested in Jordan’s capital on Sunday after covering herself in lettuce in a square along one of Amman’s trendiest streets. She held a placard reading “Let vegetarianism grow on you.”

• Rights activists, including celebrities such as Bianca Jagger and actors from James Cameron’s film Avatar, gathered outside the venue of the annual general meeting of the mining company Vedanta in London on Wednesday to protest its controversial plans to mine tribal land in the Orissa region of India.

• Eight people were arrested during a sit-in staged by the direct action group GetEqual in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday as part of an effort to push for a vote on the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, which would outlaw workplace discrimination based sexual orientation and gender identity.

• 15 people from a small town in North Queensland, Australia blocked a coal export terminal by camping on it for two nights to protest pollution and noise from the coal trains that pass through the town 15 times a day.

This past weekend, hundreds of activists gathered in Albany, New York for the United National Peace Conference. In this video, Voices for Creative Nonviolence co-coordinator and WNV contributor Kathy Kelly gives a rousing call to action to the gathering. If you wanted to make it to the conference, but weren’t able to (which was unfortunately my situation), you can still watch many other talks from the weekend by clicking here.

The last month has seen 6 Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, bringing our country’s total to seventeen. Yet even with a federal election looming and 61% of Australians wanting troops brought home our involvement in the war has bipartisan support. In fact, far from raising questions over our mission there, these deaths seem to only strengthen the government’s resolve to remain. The same seems to be true of the U.S. and many other NATO countries.  It strengthens their resolve not because it makes the mission there any more necessary, or more strategically important, but because of a principle called “the sacrifice trap.”

This psychological principle works through an escalating commitment to a failing course of action, ironically in order to justify that course of action.  The more one sacrifices in pursuit of a particular objective, the more difficult it is to change course from that objective, and the more stridently it will be defended.  Often we experience this when they are put on hold by a telephone company. Our dogged commitment to the call seems to grow the longer they make us wait.  This is not because we don’t want to hang up, but because we feel the time spent will have been a waste if we do.

The more soldiers who are killed in the course of this war, the more committed some governments seem to be to it.  It is partly a matter of saving face – no one likes to admit they have made a mistake, let alone governments or countries.  But greater than that is the sense of investment, which must be seen to bear fruit, even in the most fruitless course of action.  Furthermore, the greater the “investment,” the more the prize seems to be inflated in importance.

During the Talisman Sabre joint US/Australian military exercises in 2009, my friends and I had many conversations with soldiers from Australia and the U.S., many of whom had spent time in combat roles in Iraq and Afghanistan. To my surprise, almost without exception, they expressed the futility of the task there.  Some had lost good friends. But they were under orders, they said, and their families relied on the income they generated from the army.

It is believed that as many as 25 percent of US soldiers are looking for a way out of the military, yet don’t feel able to leave.  Having committed their lives to the military – and in many cases, committed acts they regret – the stakes have been raised to unacceptable levels to admit that they have been wrong.

The only way out of the sacrifice trap is to give those involved – soldiers, the military hierarchy, and government – a way out that enables them retain their dignity and reduces the cognitive dissonance between knowing their actions are wrong or counter-productive and doing it anyway.  Ironically, the more stridently the left pillories their actions, the less likely it becomes that it will change course, because it forces them deeper into the jaws of the sacrifice trap.

I wonder then whether the latest Wikileaks scandal might actually backfire on the voices for ending the war. If it leads to demonization and harshness, it almost certainly will.

Of course, toning down the criticism of the war does not mean that people should not be held accountable for immoral actions, but demonizing them will only hinder the process of necessary change.

There seems to be a delicate balance in this between personal pride and personal cost. Several countries have of course already backed out of their involvement in the war, but they have been countries with relatively little invested in terms of personal pride. Nations seem to have seen their way clear to withdraw when the cost outweighed the pride element.

If a rigorous cost-benefit analysis were to be undertaken – including accounting for the reality of property destruction, injury, and loss of life on all sides – I am certain it would reveal that the war in Afghanistan is really in no one’s national interest, and that there are numerous other, less costly options to achieve the stated objectives.  But until such advice is heeded, further commitment to this “war without end” will continue to be a disservice to us all – especially to those soldiers putting themselves at risk at the behest of their government.

Last month, on the streets of Otavolo, Ecuador, around three thousand peaceful marchers participated with the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) in protest of the Summit of the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA). With eight presidents of the countries involved at ALBA, CONAIE tried to deliver a communiqué asking why they weren’t invited to participate on behalf of the indigenous tribes.

More importantly, CONAIE’s demonstration was to focus on the government’s approach to neoliberal policies that only enriches themselves and foreign companies while impoverishing others. The CONAIE, like many other indigenous tribes protecting their lives and Pachamama (Mother Earth), protest against one of their most difficult opponents—global production.

To counter the Ecuadorian government’s unfriendly policies, CONAIE demands to be recognized as a sixth level of government. They want the ability to debate and veto the neoliberal business decisions that are aimed at damaging their territory.

These damages are done by the government’s allowance of Canadian mining companies coming into indigenous areas to exploit minerals on a large-scale (a gigantic open-pit copper mine), privatize water (forty-five percent of Ecuador’s water is under private control) and oil extraction in the Amazon. This would further displace communities, bring about deforestation, dry up or contaminate rivers, destroy the pristine landbase they’re dependent on and deteriorate the health of those living in the area.

In ongoing attempts to demonize CONAIE, the group and its members have been falsely marked as “terrorists” by Ecuador’s four-year President Rafael Correa on suspicion of trying to overthrow the government. A recent case of this supposed “terrorist” activity involved people breaking “through a police line” while marching at the ALBA summit and “allegedly” taking “a pair of handcuffs.” Somehow the theft and destruction of land and killings of indigenous people by the government doesn’t make it into this reality.

CONAIE resistance has consisted of hunger strikes, demonstrations, roadblocks and open negotiations with Ecuadorian government officials. Despite president Correa’s so-called progressive stance, his government tries to divide and dismantle the indigenous movement. In a Reuters interview, Correa dismissed those who resist as “‘infantile’ leftists, environmentalists and indigenous groups unwilling to modernize,” and says “The ecologists who say ‘no mines, don’t use non-renewable resources [petroleum].’ That’s like being a beggar while sitting on a sack of gold.”

Last year, while speaking to hundreds of Ecuadorians, President Correa clearly stated that he would not tolerate roadblocks: “With this law in hand, we will not allow these abuses, we will not allow uprisings, roadblocks, attacks on private property, or obstacles to an activity (mining) that is legal and that is being regulated.”

His concern over the roadblocks effectiveness has been demonstrated. In 2006, paramilitaries deployed by Falericorp (a communication equipment company) hired by Copper Mesa Mining (formerly known as Ascendant Copper Corporation) and possibly with the support of the Ecuadorian and Canadian government, invaded the Intag valley in Ecuador seeking concessions. During their entry into Intag, the hired guns were met by a peaceful blockade of villagers and a single-linked chain on the narrow Junin dirt road. A sign posted on a nearby tree read: “Mining companies are prohibited here. We don’t sell our land, we defend it.”

Without warning and unprovoked, the gunmen used pepper spray and then fired their weapons at the defenseless villagers. Although villagers were injured, they did not back down from the violent attacks. The thugs, stunned by the villager’s defiance, instead retreated themselves. Afterwards, 56 of the gunmen were held under citizen’s arrest until local authorities arrived. This eventually led to a peaceful takeover of the paramilitary’s camp in Chalguayacu Bajo and permanently stopped Copper Mesa Mining concessions.

However, events like this have altered how President Correa politically and strategically approaches the CONAIE and the indigenous tribes that are aligned with them. Correa excludes CONAIE and indigenous communities from constitutional state rights (contrary to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Correa doesn’t acknowledge CONAIE demands), and recently approved the New Ecuadorian Mining Law that lifted a ban on mining and labeled members from CONAIE as terrorist. This not only gives the government more excuses to arrest and prosecute, but to employ the use of lethal force.

In response to Correa’s tactics Marlon Santi who heads CONAIE remains optimistic and says that the movement will not become violent. CONAIE continues collective leadership instead of caudillismo (big man leadership), garners media attention to support their progressive protests and involves indigenous people, teachers, students, leftist and socialist movements. While only making up twenty percent of the population, indigenous people are the ones that President Correa should be representing, not the business elite who are the source of their corruption and deterioration. The structure that traditional indigenous tribes march for will help save Ecuador from becoming another country that cannibalizes itself in the name of economic prestige.

• After 90 days, a mass hunger strike by laid-off electrical workers in the center of Mexico City came to an end on July 23 following a preliminary agreement between federal governance secretary José Francisco Blake Mora and the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) the night before.

• After teaching at the Bangladesh International School (English Section) in Jeddah, at least six teachers suddently found themselves to be jobless and staged a sit-in protest at the school premises to challenge their termination allegedly without any prior notice.

• In Nepal, around 50 Bhutanese refugees started relay hunger strike in Beldangi-I camp on Monday to demanding refugee status and donor’s support for their livelihood.

• Fiat workers went on strike Friday to protest against the size of a bonus and the firing of five of their colleagues in a sign of mounting tensions over Fiat’s plans for its operations in Italy.

• A protest by Greek air traffic controllers entered its second day Monday, forcing delays at scores of flights at Athens international airport as a separate walkout by truckers choked fuel supplies.

• The unexplained disappearance of a Coptic priest’s wife in Upper Egypt led to a sit-in staged by thousands of Copts at the Coptic Patriarchate in Cairo last Friday, to protest what they consider “collusion by the state security services.”