On December 13th, a Tacoma-based jury declared five Disarm Trident Now Plowshares activists “guilty” of trespass, felony damage to federal property, felony injury to property, and felony conspiracy to damage property. The charges against the Disarm Now Trident activists resulted from their November 2, 2009 Plowshares action at the Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base, which is located just outside of Bremeton, Washington. The activists, who will be sentenced on March 28th, 2011, each face a potential prison sentence of ten years.

According to the Disarm Now Plowshares blog:

Anne Montgomery, 83, a Sacred Heart sister from New York; Bill Bischel, S.J., 81, a Jesuit priest from Tacoma Washington; Susan Crane, 67, a member of the Jonah House community in Baltimore, Maryland; Lynne Greenwald, 60, a nurse from Bremerton Washington; and Steve Kelly, S.J., 60, a Jesuit priest from Oakland California … cut through the chain link fence surrounding the Navy base during the night of the Feast of All Souls … They then walked undetected for hours nearly four miles inside the base to the Strategic Weapons Facility, Pacific (SWFPAC). This top security area is where the Plowshares activists say hundreds of nuclear missiles are stored in bunkers. There they cut through two more barbed wire fences and went inside. They put up two big banners which said “Disarm Now Plowshares: Trident Illegal and Immoral,” scattered sunflower seeds, and prayed until they were arrested at dawn. Once arrested, the five were cuffed and hooded with sand bags because the marine in charge testified “when we secure prisoners anywhere in Iraq or Afghanistan we hood them…so we did it to them.”

After the jury rendered their verdict, Father Steve Kelly “faced the jury, and all the Disarm Now Plowshares defendants stood with him with their hands raised in blessing as he said, ‘May you go in peace and have a safe, happy holiday.’” These words and loving gesture well encapsulate the profound spirit that animates the witnesses of Plowshares activists and their supporting communities, as well as that of generations of nonviolent peace activists and actions that root the Plowshares.

Read the rest of this article »

A decision to halt the construction of a highway that would cut through Moscow’s Khimki forest earlier this year has been overturned. Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Sergei Ivanov, announced on Tuesday that the development would go ahead as planned, adding that, “additional ecological measures will be taken.” The issue had become a cause celebre and culminated in an unusually large rally and concert in Moscow in September. Even Bono got in on the act. It was then that President Dmitry Medvedev seemed willing to bend, calling for a public review of the project and raising the possibility that the highway would be redirected.

As the Washington Post put it:

With powerful construction and political interests arrayed against nascent civic activism, his attention offered the possibility that ordinary citizens were being heard in a country where the powerful, the connected and the corrupt hold sway.

Others saw the move as nothing more than a way of letting off steam. After a summer of devastating forest fires, a record setting heat wave, and crippling draught—one fifth of the country’s wheat crop was destroyed—the old growth Khimki forest had taken on a larger significance.

“There was never any chance of an alternative route being chosen,” Alexei Mukhin, head of the Center for Political Information, told the Moscow Times. “Too much money had already been spent on the original route. All the authorities did was take a timeout to let public opinion cool off. It was a good tactic on their part.”

Activists had campaigned for years to bring the issue to the broader public and it seemed to have paid off. But it also came at a price.

People hold portraits of journalist Mikhail Beketov and environmental activist Konstantin Fetisov during a rally in central Moscow, Russia, Sunday, Nov. 14, 2010.

In 2008, Mikhail Beketov, a Khimki journalist, was brutally beaten for his coverage of the issue and corruption linked to the town’s mayor. On November 4, Konstantin Fetisov, a prominent Khimki activist and opposition politician ended up in a coma with a fractured skull after he was viciously beaten by men with baseball bats. Two days later, Oleg Kashin, a young reporter for the daily newspaper Kommersant was attacked outside of his Moscow apartment, just a 10-minute walk from the Kremlin. “A month later, I am still in the hospital,” Kashin wrote in a column printed in the New York Times. “One of my fingers has been amputated, one of my legs and both halves of my jaw have been broken, and I have several cranial wounds.”

Kashin covered many issues—from nationalist youth movements to regional corruption—as well as the Khimki forest dispute. “I had written several articles criticizing a proposed highway between the two cities that would run through the town,” he notes, “something the local authorities want but many residents oppose.” It is unlikely that those who ordered the attack will be apprehended. Or that either case will be solved.

Still, the Khimki forest defenders, as they’ve come to be known, have vowed to push on. They’re already pursuing a lawsuit in the European Court of Human Rights and campaign leader Yevgeniya Chirikova has said that, “there will be more lawsuits.” The forest defenders also plan to hold a demonstration in central Moscow on New Year’s Eve protesting the Kremlin’s decision.

• DREAM Act supporters, including young immigrants and allies from across the country, gathered at the symbolic Lincoln Memorial on Monday and processed to the National Christmas Tree at the White House while singing holiday carols. The event kicked-off a week full of actions in the holiday spirit aimed at conservative lawmakers.

• A tug boat carrying supplies to an offshore Australian gas drilling rig was prevented from leaving Port of Newcastle by a local activist, who attached himself inside the tug.

• Greek unions grounded flights, kept ferries docked at ports and shut down public services today to protest wage cuts as the government sticks to conditions of an international bailout.

• Sudanese authorities arrested 46 women and six men who tried to hold a protest in Khartoum on Tuesday against the brutal police whipping of a young woman shown in a video posted on YouTube and charged them with disrupting public order.

• Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett joined over 100 people Monday to protest Governor-elect Scott Walker’s successful effort to scrap a federally financed high-speed rail line.

• Australian academics, artists and activists gathered at the Australian Embassy in London yesterday to call for the release of their countryman and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

• Some 500 secondary-school teachers picketed the governor’s office in Kyrgyzstan’s northern Talas Oblast yesterday to demand a salary increase. It was the latest in a series of such protests across the country, since teachers in a number of southern districts went on strike at the beginning of the month.

Guardian environment editor Damian Carrington has started an interesting conversation about “the balance between impact and taste in environmental campaigns.” The topic surfaced in regards to a controversial image that’s currently up for auction by renowned British graffitti artist Banksy. The image depicts Disney’s Jungle Book characters “awaiting execution against a backdrop of clear-felled devastation.” It was apparently featured on Greenpeace billboards and leaflets around the UK in 2002 and again recently for the group’s forest campaign, despite raising copyright concerns. But as Carrington points out, the bigger concern for activists is whether an image can go too far.

In the last year or so, there’s been Plane Stupid’s polar bears falling from the sky, the government’s bedtime stories TV ads, the images of shanty towns around Buckingham Palace, and, of course, the exploding children in 10:10′s notorious short film.It’s clear that involving children in campaign films or images requires very careful thought. Does that apply to much-loved cartoon characters, who in this Banksy image appear to be lined up for beheading? I’d be interested in your thoughts.

Most of the commenters seem to find little fault with Banksy’s image. I tend to agree, as it humanizes the issue of deforestation in way that is unfortunately necessary for most people to understand its importance. It also has the side benefit of prodding a major corporation to think about the issue. As a Greenpeace representative noted, somewhat humorously:

Our letters to the company urged them to consider the reality of rainforest destruction, and how their characters might help raise awareness of this issue. Their concern for the environment didn’t stop them threatening ‘further action’, sadly.

What do others think? When has a protest image gone too far? Can anyone cite examples?

The immediate one that comes to mind was created by the Russian art collective Voina earlier this year. They painted a 65-metre erect penis on a drawbridge in St Petersburg, facing the city headquarters of the federal security service FSB. Ironically, Banksy is in the midst of donating £80,000 to Voina to help two of its members, who are in prison awaiting trial on charges of hooliganism.

Kim Ives, journalist for Haiti Liberte.

While things are heating up in Haiti, in New York it’s getting cold. Freezing cold. Perhaps this is one reason so few people showed up outside the United Nations headquarters on Friday afternoon to demand the withdrawal of troops from Haiti and that a legitimate election take place.

But it wasn’t just the weather that kept people from coming to the protest, organized by the Coalition Against Sham Elections and Occupation, a recently-formed coalition of Haitian community groups. It may have also been a lack of clarity about the Coalition’s platform. “People know what they are against: the UN, the elections. But they don’t know what they’re for,” explained Kim Ives, a journalist for Haiti Liberte who has been working in Haiti for decades.

Ives compared this moment in Haiti’s history to a similar one in 1934, when guerrilla actions forced a nearly two-decade-long US occupation to end. Then, as now, people were out in the streets, demonstrating, and intermittently showering their occupiers with threats and acts of violence.

“The new constitution of ’86, and the election of [Jean-Bertrand] Aristide, signaled the beginning of a period of national democratic revolution,” said Ives. It was during that time, when Aristide’s Lavalas Family came into power following decades of the Duvalier dictatorship, that Haiti saw itself finally breaking free from economic dependence on its powerful neighbor. The UN occupation that followed Aristide’s ousting and his replacement by Rene Preval, Ives explained, was a way of keeping a hold on Haiti, preventing it from moving toward sovereignty. Read the rest of this article »

Inmates in Georgia are mounting a historic strike, and they’re using technology to coordinate it. The New York Times reports:

In a protest apparently assembled largely through a network of banned cellphones, inmates across at least six prisons in Georgia have been on strike since Thursday, calling for better conditions and compensation, several inmates and an outside advocate said.

Inmates have refused to leave their cells or perform their jobs, in a demonstration that seems to transcend racial and gang factions that do not often cooperate.

Their demands are listen on the website of the Georgia Green Party:

A LIVING WAGE FOR WORK:  In violation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, the DOC demands prisoners work for free.

EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES:  For the great majority of prisoners, the DOC denies all opportunities for education beyond the GED, despite the benefit to both prisoners and society.

DECENT HEALTH CARE:  In violation of the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments, the DOC denies adequate medical care to prisoners, charges excessive fees for the most minimal care and is responsible for extraordinary pain and suffering.

AN END TO CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS:  In further violation of the 8th Amendment, the DOC is responsible for cruel prisoner punishments for minor infractions of rules.

DECENT LIVING CONDITIONS:  Georgia prisoners are confined in over-crowded, substandard conditions, with little heat in winter and oppressive heat in summer.

NUTRITIONAL MEALS:  Vegetables and fruit are in short supply in DOC facilities while starches and fatty foods are plentiful.

VOCATIONAL AND SELF-IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES:  The DOC has stripped its facilities of all opportunities for skills training, self-improvement and proper exercise.

ACCESS TO FAMILIES:  The DOC has disconnected thousands of prisoners from their families by imposing excessive telephone charges and innumerable barriers to visitation.

JUST PAROLE DECISIONS:  The Parole Board capriciously and regularly denies parole to the majority of prisoners despite evidence of eligibility.

Common Dreams gives a bit of a sense of the conditions these people are dealing with. Note the flagrant promotion of particular forms of religion, which is becoming increasingly common in prisons across the United States:

It’s a fact that Georgia prisons skimp on medical care and nutrition behind the walls, and that in Georgia’s prisons recreational facilities are non-existent, and there are no educational programs available beyond GED, with the exception of a single program that trains inmates to be Baptist ministers. Inmates know that upon their release they will have no more education than they did when they went in, and will be legally excluded from Pell Grants and most kinds of educational assistance, they and their families potentially locked into a disadvantaged economic status for life.

Both Common Dreams and the Greens are publishing the phone numbers of prison wardens and encouraging readers to call and express their support for the striking inmates:

• Macon State Prison is (978) 472-3900
• Hays State Prison is at (706) 857-0400
• Telfair State prison is (229) 868-7721
• Baldwin State Prison is at (478) 445- 5218
• Valdosta State Prison is (229) 333-7900
• Smith State Prison is at (912) 654-5000
• The Georgia Department of Corrections is at http://www.dcor.state.ga.us and their phone number is (478) 992-5246

H/t Eli.

• Several hundred nuclear energy opponents formed a human chain around a German nuclear storage site yesterday to protest transports of radioactive material.

• About 100 animal rights advocates gathered at a bear check station in New Jersey on Saturday to protest the last day of the state’s first bear hunt in five years, which killed nearly 600 bears.

• Hundreds of people gathered in Moscow on Sunday to call for the resignation of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

• A group of about thirty people came out to the City of Vancouver’s first candlelight vigil on violence against women, which was held on Friday to coincide with International Human Rights day and the end of 16 Days of Activism on Gender Violence.

• In a protest apparently assembled largely through a network of banned cellphones, inmates across at least six prisons in Georgia have been on strike since Thursday, calling for better conditions and compensation.

• Hundreds of environmentalists in the Philippines completed a four-day 150-kilometer march-caravan rally on Friday to protest areas where large-scale mines will operate.

At the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in Oslo today, Thorbjørn Jagland, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, emphasized the centrality of nonviolence to Liu’s thought and work:

Liu was born on the 28th of December 1955 in Changchun in China’s Jilin province. He took a Bachelor’s degree in literature at Jilin University, and a Master’s degree and a PhD at Beijing Normal University, where he also taught. Stays abroad included visits to Oslo, Hawaii, and Columbia University, New York.

In 1989 he returned home to take part in the dawning democracy movement. On the 2nd of June he and some friends started a hunger strike on Tiananmen Square to protest against the state of emergency that had been declared. They issued a six-point democratic manifesto, written by Liu, opposing dictatorship and in favour of democracy. Liu was opposed to any physical struggle against the authorities on the part of the students; he tried to find a peaceful solution to the tension between the students and the government. Non-violence was already figuring prominently in his message. On the 4th of June he and his friends tried to prevent a clash between the army and the students. He was only partially successful. Many lives were lost, most of them outside Tiananmen Square.

Liu has told his wife that he would like this year’s Peace Prize to be dedicated to “the lost souls from the 4th of June.” It is a pleasure for us to fulfil his wish.

Liu has said that “The greatness of non-violent resistance is that even as man is faced with forceful tyranny and the resulting suffering, the victim responds to hate with love, to prejudice with tolerance, to arrogance with humility, to humiliation with dignity, and to violence with reason.”

Neither Liu himself nor his wife were permitted to leave China to accept the prize. Behind Jagland, on the stage, were two empty seats.

• More than a thousand people converged on Sydney’s town hall demanding that the Gillard government protect Australian-born Wikileaks frontman Julian Assange in the first offline mass action in the country since “cablegate” broke.

• Tens of thousands of students flooded the streets of London and other cities yesterday as lawmakers approved a new round of education cuts and tuition hikes.

• Thousands of commuters in Mumbai protested the suburban Western Railway for treating its commuters like “animals” on a day that is marked as International Human Rights Day. A sit-in was held in front of the Western Railway general manager’s office.

• As many as 9,000 inmates in 26 prisons across Greece launched a hunger strike to protest overcrowded detention facilities on Wednesday.

• Teachers in the La Habra City School District in Orange County, California went on strike Wednesday to protest a two-percent pay reduction, cuts to health care benefits and two required furlough days.

• Families and friends of drone attack victims came from the tribal areas of Pakistan to Islamabad on Friday, where they gathered outside the Parliament House to protest drone attacks.

Over at Common Dreams, Brian Terrell, a Catholic Worker from Iowa who I will be traveling with to Afghanistan today, has a nice piece critiquing Obama’s upcoming review of the war and discussing one alternative assessment that our delegation is supporting.

The Obama administration will soon be making public its “December Review,” assessing the situation in Afghanistan. This assessment will not, apparently, confuse the issue with facts. “We have a policy in place,” said Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for communications, to reporters on Air Force One on the occasion of the president’s December 3 visit there, and the review is not meant to lead to major shifts in that policy. “This is a process which is diagnostic in nature,” Rhodes explains. It is interesting language coming from the White House. What can we make of a “diagnostic” procedure, to expand on the analogy, which is not intended to inform or effect a predetermined treatment? Doesn’t this constitute malpractice?

A “December Review” at this time, a month after our occupation of Afghanistan has exceeded the Soviet’s is a good idea. Yet the review the Obama administration mandated has been rendered meaningless before it has even been published.  It does not deserve much consideration. This December, however, is an auspicious time for all Americans to carefully review and assess the impact of the war at home and abroad and to demand real changes in policy. It is also long past time that Americans listen to the people of Afghanistan. On December 19, the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, based in Bamiyan, are calling for a “Global Day of Listening to Afghans.” This might be the true December Review that we need.

To find out more see http://vcnv.org/global-day-of-listening-to-afghans

If you can join us on the Skype call for this “Global Day of Listening to Afghans” that would be phenomenal. And in the meantime check out the above video made by the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. I’m really looking forward to meeting them in a few days!