About a dozen teen protesters briefly shut down an Abercrombie & Fitch store in San Francisco on Tuesday afternoon as part of a day of national protest against the company’s continued practice of perfuming the air of their stores with unregulated toxics. Spearheaded by the advocacy group Teens Turning Green, the protesters entered the store marching around chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, these toxic fumes have got to go.”

According to the Bay Citizen, the perfume in question, Fierce, “contains 11 chemicals not listed on the label because they are considered trade secrets, including eight that can trigger allergic reactions, such as headaches, wheezing and asthma.” It also contains diethyl phthalate, a synthetic solvent that has been linked to “DNA damage in human sperm, changes to male fetuses’ genitals in utero and alternations in baby boys’ sex hormones when exposed via their mothers’ breast milk.”

After police arrived and shut down the store, ejecting protesters and customers alike, the teens regathered outfront with their signs. As the Bay Citizen reported:

The girls chanted: “Why is it toxic?” To which the boys would heartily respond: “Because it kills my sperm!”

A&F has remained rather stand-offish about the whole incident, posting a defense of Fierce on its Facebook page without really acknowledging the protest.

The reaction on Facebook to the statement was split between those continuing to decry the scent and those defending it. “What happened to the customer’s always right?” posted one Kathleen Suits. “You’re just going to ignore this protest about the air pollution in your store? Then we’ll ignore your store and its affiliates!” Happy profits!!”

While unclear where the campaign will go from here, it’s encouraging that teens have been able to take things this far–defying the apathetic youth stereotype.

This weekend I joined over two thousand people in Washington, DC for Appalachia Rising, a conference and march against mountaintop removal mining. The march paused in front the Environmental Protection Agency and PNC Bank, which helps to finance mountaintop removal, before concluding in front of the White House, where around one hundred activists were arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience.

Appalachia Rising will likely prove to be a historically significant event, as this is the first time that a broad coalition of organizations, mostly based in Appalachia, came together to organize a large nationwide march against mountaintop removal.

Mountaintop removal has had devastating consequences for the region, including poisoned drinking water (which frequently comes out of the faucet black, red, or green) and deadly avalanches, flooding, and mudslides. It also puts miners out of work, since mountaintop removal requires only a third of the number of miners required for underground mining. Coalfield residents feel earthquake-like blasts while the mountains are being exploded and endure loud electronic beeping at night. Dust from the blasts can coat houses and roads, sometimes rendering the painted lines on the highway invisible, endangering drivers.

Appalachia Rising was a blue-collar and grassroots event, with most of the organizers and participants hailing from coal mining regions. In an article that offended a number of the protesters, the Associated Press smirked that the march was a “festive” gathering of bearded hippies with facial piercings, chanting “old standbys” like “We Shall Overcome.” What that reporter did not realize, or did not acknowledge, is that many of the beards, red bandanas, bluegrass music, overalls, and the “ho down”-style dancing of protesters awaiting arrest were not counter-cultural fashion statements but everyday expressions of Appalachian culture. I probably learned more about the history and culture of Kentucky in the three days I spent at Appalachia Rising than in the past four years of living there. Read the rest of this article »

• On Tuesday, hundreds of people rallied in at least a dozen cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Los Angeles and San Francisco, against the FBI for raiding eight homes and offices of antiwar activists in Minneapolis and Chicago last week.

• Spanish workers disrupted transport and television broadcasts in the first general strike in eight years as demonstrators marched in a dozen European cities against government spending cuts.

• More than 100 flights were canceled at Brussels International airport Tuesday afternoon as workers went on strike to protest internal personnel moves. The Belgocontrol company, which manages air traffic, said Belgium’s civil airspace will be closed until Wednesday afternoon.

• In Afghanistan, hundreds of people demonstrated on Saturday over a US-led raid on Masmood village in that allegedly killed innocent, civilian villagers.

• In Australia, about 150 protesters and three politicians unhappy with the treatment of asylum seekers gathered yesterday in Canberra on the first sitting day of the new parliament to demand the federal government take action.

• Thousands of protesters rallied Tuesday in Bucharest over government austerity measures that have cut state salaries.

• Thousands of Slovenian police, customs officers, veterinary inspectors and journalists began an open-ended strike Monday to protest a government plan to freeze their salaries for two years.

• Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists with GetEQUAL and Join the Impact Chicago (JTIC) held a flash mob yesterday at the congressional office of Rep. Daniel Lipinski calling on him to show leadership and demand that Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi – who he supported for that position – fulfill her promise to hold a House vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) this year.

• About 2,000 rubber plantation workers in Cambodia protested yesterday against a Franco-Cambodian firm, accusing it of failing to pay them agreed-upon day wages.

• In Pakistan, dozens of people staged a sit-in outside the residence of Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani in Multan on Monday against the death of a man in police custody.

• Workers on hunger strike at a textile factory in Zagreb continued for the eighth day in a row on Monday, demanding five months of salaries.

“Pop-pop?”

I tunneled up from sleep, realizing that my six-year-old great grandson was at the foot of my bed, all dressed for his school day and wanting to touch base with me before he left.

“Hi, Yasin,” I said groggily. “Come into bed if you want.”

He jumped in and crawled into my arms while I woke myself up a bit more. “Good morning,” I said as I gave him a squeeze.

“Why did you go to jail yesterday?” he asked, alert with curiosity. I could feel his worry about me ebbing as he felt the familiar strength of my arms around him.

“I didn’t think President Obama knew how strongly your Pop-pop and lots of other people felt about his letting coal companies blow up mountains,” I said. “We thought if we let ourselves be arrested it would get his attention.”

“Yasin, time to go to school.” It was Yasin’s mom Crystal at the door of my bedroom. She came further in to take a look at me; she too worried sometimes about her seventy-two-year-old grandfather.

“Have a good day at school,” I said as he wriggled out of bed.

I was one of more than a hundred people from many walks of life, from famed NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen to the son of generations of coal miners, from West Virginia’s Larry Gibson, who has spoken to the United Nations about the pillage of his mountains, to a multiply-pierced young anarchist woman from Chicago. We were there with thousands of of supporters on September 27 to participate in Appalachia Rising, the first mass nonviolent direct action in Washington, D.C. to oppose mountaintop removal. Read the rest of this article »

More than 100 people were arrested yesterday during a protest at the White House over mountaintop removal. The organizing group, Appalachia Rising, wants President Obama to “immediately abolish the practice of blowing up mountains and dumping the debris into nearby streams and valleys to reach seams of coal.”

One of those arrested was NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen (pictured above), who told reporters:

The science is clear, mountaintop removal destroys historic mountain ranges, poisons water supplies and pollutes the air with coal and rock dust. Mountaintop removal, providing only a small fraction of our energy, can and should be abolished. The time for half measures and caving in to polluting industries must end.

Obama and his EPA will be tested on this issue in the coming weeks, when they decide on a project in West Virginia that would become one of the largest strip-mining operations in Appalachia.

• Around 50 Australian climate change activists with Rising Tide closed down operations at the world’s largest coal port yesterday, after entering three terminals and attaching themselves to loaders.

• Five Rainforest Action Network activists hung two billboard sized banners a downtown Minneapolis skyway during Thursday’s morning rush hour, calling attention to Cargill’s continuing role in the destruction of some of the world’s last remaining rainforests.

• Some 300 female and male textile workers in the Northern Iranian city of Rasht staged a rally across the governor’s mansion to demand seven months of back wages.

• A developer bricked up the front of a Barclays bank in Dorset England yesterday to protest the lack of credit available for small firms.

• In northern Uganda, Limu residents have begun planting cassava, yams, sugarcane, and potatoes in the middle of a road that leads to Gulu University to protest its atrocious condition.

Last week, art activists with Liberate Tate – a group that is part of a growing movement calling on the Tate Modern in the UK to end its sponsorship agreement with BP – staged a “guerilla art intervention” at the museum. According to the group’s press release:

At 5pm, around 50 figures dressed in black entered the gallery each carrying a BP-branded oil paint tube. In a circle they placed the paint tubes on the floor and each stamped on one, spraying out dozens of litres of paint in a huge burst across the floor. The installation art work, ‘Crude’, was then signed ‘Liberate Tate’ and offered to Tate for its collection.

Earlier this week it was revealed that the FBI had monitored antiwar activists in Iowa City who were planning on protesting the 2008 RNC in Minneapolis far more extensively than was previously thought.

According to the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

Agents staked out the homes of political activists, secretly photographed and shot video of them, pored through their garbage, and studied their cell phone and motor vehicle records, according to records detailing the FBI’s counterterrorism investigation.

Federal agents and other law enforcement officers also watched and documented the protesters’ comings and goings at such places as the Iowa City Public Library; the New Pioneer Co-op natural foods store; the Red Avocado restaurant and the Deadwood Tavern; and the Wesley Center campus ministry of the United Methodist Church.

The FBI’s nine-month investigation in 2008 is detailed in more than 300 pages of documents obtained through the federal Freedom of Information Act by David Goodner, a former member of the University of Iowa’s Antiwar Committee, and provided to The Des Moines Register.

The Iowa Independent has now posted the FBI files in their entirety on their site. They can be viewed or downloaded by clicking here.

• Lines of riot police encircled and attacked hundreds of Egyptians who took to the streets on Tuesday to protest against what they claimed were plans for the president’s son to assume power.

• 27 people in French Polynesia on hunger strike over the slow reconstruction after Cyclone Oli have called off their action after a government delegation arrived on the island of Tubuai and said that their grievances would be considered.

• According to union estimates, some 3 million French workers staged a nationwide one-day strike and rallies Thursday to protest government plans to increase the pension age and challenge a key plank of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s economic policy.

• On Wednesday, the staff of Mogadishu’s Global Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) walked out in protest against a takeover by a radical Islamist group.

• Members of the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual and Transgender Center at the University of Rhode Island began a sit-in at the campus library on Wednesday at midnight. The group is unhappy with ongoing negotiations with URI officials over budget, campus climate, and other issues.

• Along with other cities, university teachers in Islamabad went on a strike on Wednesday and suspended classes to protest against a cut in the budget for the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and non-payment of funds for raising of salaries by 50 percent.

• About 100 people demonstrated Wednesday morning outside a downtown Los Angeles courthouse where 33 immigrant rights activists face charges of civil disobedience for their protests against Arizona’s immigration law.

• More than 150 charter school students in San Bernardino, California walked off their campus on Tuesday afternoon to protest conditions they say range from unsafe play areas to unsanitary food and a change in leadership.

This Sunday, September 26, Jennifer Sleeman, an 80-year-old Catholic convert from Clonakilty in Cork, Ireland, is calling on Catholic women to boycott Mass. In an interview with the Irish Times, Sleeman explained her action this way:

Stay at home and pray for change. We are the majority. We may have been protesting individually but unremarked on, but together we have strength and our absence, the empty pews, will be noticed.

Whatever change you long for, recognition, ordination, the end of celibacy, which is another means of keeping women out, join with your sisters and let the hierarchy know by your absence that the days of an exclusively male-dominated church are over.

Men are of course welcome to support the boycott as well.

Sojourners editor Rose Marie Berger has set up a Google Map that shows the locations around the world where women have agreed to the boycott. If you want to be included on the map, leave Rose a comment on her site or if you’re tech savvy you can update the map yourself.

In general, I think this is a great idea. Given that the church is such a large institution though, to have a real effect a boycott like this would likely need to include millions of Catholics. They would also need to be outspoken about their reasons for not going to church, otherwise the Vatican might not make the connection.

And although it would be difficult, the boycott would need to be an indefinite. Staying away from church for one Mass will be easily ignored. That said, this one-day action could prove to be an important first step towards building a larger movement for change in the Catholic Church.