According to an interesting piece in Yes! Magazine, “an anticipated quarter of a million Reverse Trick-or-Treaters are bringing the chocolate to you [this Halloween]—fairly traded, bite-sized morsels glued to cards that explain widespread human rights violations occurring on non-fair trade cacao farms around the world. ”
Other fair trade organizations and businesses partner on the campaign, but the program is more than an opportunity for fair trade businesses to push their own products. It has twin goals: convincing major players in the chocolate industry, like Hershey, to switch to fairly sourced cacao, and teaching children the value of activism before they’ve learned the meaning of cynicism. It takes “a gimme gimme holiday,” said one participating parent, and turns it “into a giving back holiday.”
While I regularly watch The Daily Show and think its political satire is second to none, the Rally to Restore Sanity that will be held on the Mall in Washington D.C. tomorrow is problematic on many levels. Of all the critiques I’ve seen, Daniel Denvir over at Alternet best captured my sentiments:
When he announced the rally, Jon Stewart made a concerted effort to appear politically unaligned, screening clips that imply an equivalence between the wacky right and the wacky left. As Jon Stewart has it, the problem is “loud folks” and a tone of political debate that has become untempered: too many crazies yelling and screaming, comparing people they don’t like to Hitler.
But yelling is not just a matter of loud noise expelled through the human throat. It matters what’s being yelled. When it comes to the Republican Party — and Democratic fellow travelers — they are shouting in favor of corporate exploitation and war.
The Tea Party far right leans on made-up things, also known as lies — “ground zero” Mosque, illegal immigrants purposely causing highway accidents, death panels killing grandma — to win political power. The left has a different problem. We could have used a little more hysteria in recent years, as Wall Street robbed Main Street and the most powerful military on earth invaded multiple countries. Instead, a real anti-war movement never materialized to challenge one of this nation’s most violent presidencies. The people “who have shit to do” that you cited as your fan base, Jon Stewart, should have been out in the streets protesting and putting our 1960s radical parents to shame. But we’ve got “shit to do.” On the Internet, I suppose.
Rather than writing off Code Pink as crazies, which is unfair, Stewart would have been much more constructive if he had acknowledged that they are right to be upset with the ongoing wars that have cost so many lives, but challenged their tactics.
I agree that screaming “war criminal” at government officials isn’t a wise approach strategically and will not likely draw many new people into the peace movement. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as possible.
Moreover, I was very disappointed when Stewart made the argument that most Americans are legitimately just too busy to protest. It really reminded me of the folks who think they are clever and original when they tell demonstrators to “get a real job.”
The truth of the matter is that activists are often some of the hardest working people, participating in protests and other forms of political action on top of their day jobs and family obligations, because they believe it important to speak out and challenge power when it is abused. That sentiment and the true dedication of so many activists to building a better world themselves should be held up as a model for what is necessary to have a healthy democracy, not dismissed and insulted as a waste of time.
Women all over Iceland left work at 2:45 on Monday in a co-ordinated action to highlight continuing inequality in society. As well as equal pay and promotion opportunities in the workplace and respect in the home, this year’s special theme was domestic violence.
Residents of the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem carried out a sit-in protest Thursday over a strike that has reduced healthcare services across the Palestinian territories and abroad.
Kashmiri leaders and activists organized a sit-in before the UN office in Islamabad on Wednesday to mark the day of invasion and occupation by Indian troops as a black day in the history of Kashmir.
Rail traffic in Greece came to a standstill on Monday at the start of a three-day strike by state railway employees in protest against plans to privatize the loss-making national rail system (OSE).
The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), on Monday began a one-week nationwide warning strike to protest the non-implementation of the 57.3 per cent salary increase for their colleagues in universities in the south eastern part of the country.
Truck loaders at Grocery Haulers, Inc., represented by Teamsters Local Union 863, staged a one-day unfair labor practice strike on Wednesday to protest the company’s refusal to negotiate a contract.
Over at Foreign Policy In Focus, Mark Engler just posted this great video on global military spending, which features WNV contributor Frida Berrigan. As he explains:
In 2009, the U.S. government spent some $650 billion on its military. This is more than the next 46 highest-spending countries combined. Much of this treasure ended up in the hands of profit-driven weapons manufacturers. In the following short film, directed by filmmaker Iara Lee, Cultures of Resistance takes a brief look at the current state of what President Eisenhower famously called the “military industrial complex.” With the United States waging two wars overseas at the same time that millions of people are out of work at home, those pushing to reel in government spending and balance the budget would be wise to look carefully at bloated and unchecked military spending.
The truth of the matter is that the US actually spends far more than the official figure cited in this film. Many expenses that the average person would consider defense-related – such as funding for the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Energy’s maintenance of the nuclear stockpile, military aid to allies, and the share of interest payments on the national debt that can be attributed to the past military spending – are hidden in other parts of the federal budget. When all of these costly extras are added up, the United States’ unofficial military budget tops out at more than $1 trillion.
If we truly want to find nonviolent solutions to our problems and address the many pressing crises we currently face, this enormous Pentagon budget needs to be dramatically cut.
On Monday, Lech Walesa – the leader of the nonviolent Solidarity movement that brought an end to Communism in Poland - spoke to 12,000 workers at a rally of building and construction trades union.
Outsiders may wonder—why is Burma’s main democratic opposition boycotting elections on November 7th, after twenty years of waiting?
This video from Burma Partnership, which features some of my favorite activists on the Thai-Burma border, offers some answers. Win Hlaing, an MP-elect from the 1990 elections, alongside Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was never allowed to claim office after their party won in a landslide. He describes how this time, the regime has already guaranteed their win before election day, with Daw Suu and most of the opposition behind bars, and top generals assuming ‘civilian’ identities to contest. Naw Htoo Paw, an ethnic Karen activist who has been actively campaigning to bring the junta to the International Criminal Court asks a key question—how we can possibly expect real political change when those responsible for crimes against humanity are still in charge? Outspoken Ashin Sopaka, brings to mind the scores of brave monks who took to the streets in 2007’s Saffron Revolution, with another impassioned call to resistance.
With less than two weeks before the elections, a recent junta announcement has banned any international observers or journalists. Those with the best info on both the elections and various forms of resistance to them are Burma’s independent media outlets with one foot inside the country (read: networks of undercover journalists) and one foot out. Burma News International, the Irrawaddy, and the Democratic Voice of Burma (of Burma VJ fame) are good ones to watch.
Some foreign journalists have snuck in and managed to do some interesting interviews inside the country. A recent piece in The Independent spotlights the challenges facing opposition candidates who have in fact decided to contest. Tellingly, they say they are fighting an election they know they cannot win.
As genetically modified organisms become more prevalent, so do protests against them. In just the past few months, French activists have uprooted GM vines at a research center, Spanish activists have destroyed experimental GM Maize crops, and Haitian farmers have burned Monsanto seeds. But are these destructive direct actions the best form of protest against the rising corporate control of the food system and its very genetic material?
My good friend Zack Denfeld, a self-described information ecologist and lecturer at Pacific Northwest College of Art, is developing a creative form of resistance through his Center for Genomic Gastronomy. Taking a somewhat Yes Men-inspired, tongue-in-cheek approach, Zack is extending the logic of GMO’s to their unnatural conclusion by putting them in situations their inventor’s never considered.
In his first experiment with the Center for Genomic Gastronomy, Zack made sushi rolls out of GloFish—a patented brand of GM fluorescent zebrafish, which is publicly available as a pet. The idea, as Zack explains in the above video, is to give people the opportunity to beta test transgenic fish before the FDA approves GM salmon—soon to be the first genetically-engineered animal for human consumption.
We’ve made a number of recipes with these [GloFish], so you don’t have to wait for approval from the government to try these transgenic fish if you’re interested. What’s really interesting about this is they’ve been existing in science labs and all of a sudden one guy had a really interesting market strategy, which was to make them available to the public. And we think that’s really innovative and we’re building on his innovation by cooking with them. I don’t know how happy he is about that, but I want to ask you how happy you are with these recipes. If you’re all for transgenic foods, you’ll love my sushi rolls. If you don’t like my glowing sushi rolls you may want to tell the US FDA to hold off on that transgenic salmon. The decision is up to you. You are no longer passive. You are active in this process.
In another experiment—this time going after the secret nature of GM research—Zack created a recipe called Vegetarian Bouillabaisse. It calls for something known as the Fish Tomato—a somewhat mythical GM design that involves a tomato being inserted with a cold-tolerant gene from a fish.
In our research we found documents that proved this very much did exist. This brings up really important questions. Is the Fish Tomato vegetarian? Is it an animal? Is it a plant? We don’t know. But it’s important to eat this, taste this and find out. The problem is we can’t because both the genome and the data that came out of the research vanished in a cloud of confidential business information and corporate appropriation. The issue here is that if we don’t have the data we’re not doing science. Scient is about verifiability and repeatability. So we need to stop calling the people who don’t give us data scientists. They’re not scientists. They’re just biohackers like me and you. Until they make their data public we should not call them scientists.
When I spoke with Zack about his work, he stressed the imporance of being able to reach these so-called scientists with our concerns. They are people after all. And they can be reasoned with and persuaded to reconsider their actions. But when their work is challenged destructively, they, like most people, respond with indifference. They just write off the protesters. If however, the protests are targeted at discrediting their work and exposing their inability to anticipate its consequences, they are far more willing to listen. Having scientists on our side, instead of on the corporation’s side, may be the key to preserving control over our food systems.
Earlier this month, Liu Xiaobo, the most prominent dissident in China, received the Nobel Peace Prize. In contrast to last year’s decision, the Norwegian committee gave the coveted honor to a much more worthy nominee this time around.
As Commonweal explained in a nice editorial last Friday:
A literary critic and political essayist, Liu played a prominent role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, where he helped save hundreds of lives by convincing the student demonstrators to leave the square without resorting to violence. He was arrested and jailed until 1991, and he lost his university teaching position. Undeterred, he continued to write in favor of gradual, nonviolent political reform, individual rights, and the autonomy of civil society. In 1996 the regime sentenced him to three years in a labor camp. As China prepared to host the 2008 Olympics, Liu and a handful of other prominent dissidents issued “Charter 08,” calling once again for China to reform itself along liberal democratic lines and to honor its obligations, under international agreements and its own constitution, to protect basic human rights such as freedom of expression and assembly.
His co-authoring of that document led to his imprisonment for 11 years for “inciting subversion of state power.” In his 2009 “Final Statement” to the court that sentenced him, Liu wrote:
“I have no enemies and no hatred. None of the police who monitored, arrested, and interrogated me, none of the prosecutors who indicted me, and none of the judges who judged me are my enemies… Hatred can rot away at a person’s intelligence and conscience… That is why I hope to be able to transcend my personal experiences as I look upon our nation’s development and social change, to counter the regime’s hostility with utmost goodwill, and to dispel hatred with love.”
The BBC has a great video of a flash mob staged by the Dutch orchestra at Hague Station to protest government plans to cut back on the orchestra. In the clip, the musicians gather amidst the morning commuters and play a lively tune, as passersby get a taste of what might be lost. Check it out here.
BBC political editor Nick Robinson lost his cool last week in grand fashion. After calmly delivering a live report on Britain’s planned cuts to public spending with an antiwar protester’s sign looming just behind his head, Robinson waited until he thought the cameras had stopped rolling to wrench the sign away and stomp on it. Unfortunately for Robinson, not all the cameras had stopped rolling. Someone standing nearby had caught the whole incident on their camera phone. It has since become a viral sensation on YouTube, forcing Robinson to apologize for his actions.
“I lost my temper and I regret that. However, as I explained afterwards to the protesters who disrupted my broadcast, there are many opportunities to debate whether the troops should be out of Afghanistan without the need to stick a sign on a long pole and wave it in front of a camera.
“I am a great believer in free speech but I also care passionately about being able to do my job reporting and analysing one of the most important political stories for years.”
While it’s doubtful this rather half-hearted apology will erase the image of Robinson violently trashing a sign that reads “Cut the war-not the poor,” the protester involved in the skirmish—a former charity worker, who lives in a tent opposite the Houses of Parliament—is handling it in a way consistant with his peaceful beliefs:
“I had the sign on a very long pole so it was high enough to get in camera shot.”When Nick grabbed hold of it, the pole split in two and the bottom half hit me in the face and injured me.
“By my reckoning, he could be charged with assault and criminal damage for smashing up my sign but I’d never consider pressing charges as it would be a waste of taxpayers’ money.
“He was getting pretty irate during his piece to camera and I think the way he handled the situation was very unprofessional but I don’t hold any bad feelings towards him.
“He was just trying to do his job and it must have been a very stressful day for him.
“I wasn’t trying to wind him up but it’s the only way I can get the message across, and I think it’s something that there needs to be proper debate on.
“I wish I had the chance to talk to Nick about it – not an angry confrontation, but just to find out what he really thinks about the war in Afghanistan, because I don’t think the words on the banner were what made him smash it up.”
According to an interesting piece in Yes! Magazine, “an anticipated quarter of a million Reverse Trick-or-Treaters are bringing the chocolate to you [this Halloween]—fairly traded, bite-sized morsels glued to cards that explain widespread human rights violations occurring on non-fair trade cacao farms around the world. ”
While I regularly watch The Daily Show and think its political satire is second to none, the Rally to Restore Sanity that will be held on the Mall in Washington D.C. tomorrow is problematic on many levels. Of all the critiques I’ve seen, Daniel Denvir over at 
