"Cops like calendar photo"

The saga of our special correspondent Quince Mountain’s stay in the occupied Capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin, continues from yesterday. Today he remained inside; protesters who tried to leave even just for a breath of fresh air were not allowed back in. Authorities are clearly intending to make the protesters will leave, but they have yet to take forceful action to make them do so. Receiving his text messages over the course of the day was surreal as I worked at my computer, and rode my bike into Manhattan, and went to a dental appointment where CNN was reporting that Charlie Sheen is demanding a multi-million dollar raise. Needless to say, I was glad that at least someone was paying attention while history is being made.

Here’s a sampling of Quince’s dispatches over the course of the day.

9:17 am

There is a confrontation? Not clear. A guy in the center is yelling about tension. People are asking cops yelling why aren’t people allowed in?

Use of the word fascist. And peace.

These teachers union guys on the bottom are running a certain part of the show.

But I don’t feel a lot of confidence in a revolution this morning.

Coffee might help.

Now they’re singing “we love u” to the police.

9:45

Guy from fox business network clear to say he’s not fox news network. “we’re straight”

10:01

My friend just texted asking if I’m willing to get arrested.

“Why?” I wrote.

Oh. And now he wrote “jail is awesome for trans folks”. I suppose, huh?

[On what happened last night:] I walked in at this key moment where ppl were almost leaving but didn’t. Just chose not to. And last night so many ppl I talked to attributed that to who got on the mic when. Like these five ppl basically just worked the crowd and were like “we didn’t need to leave”. Like ending exactly when the main push to eject ppl happened. And they just stayed.

10:39

So it’s like… A standoff? 25 cops with dogs at every door and only letting anyone in for each person who goes out?

11:30

[While in the bathroom, he hears a noise.]

Is that a saw or grinder? Or some ocd senators beefcake electric toothbrush?

Oh. the grinder was to grind off the screw heads [to keep people from breaking in with screwdrivers]. They did a nice job. I’d give it a B.

11:50

Hymns.

Or at least hallelus.

12:37 pm

Tmrw at 4 pm the gov reveals probably nasty budget.

So ppl are trying to stay in bldg. Gov trying to “threaten and bully the senators”

People don’t even want to let the gov in the building. Though I’m sure he’ll get in.

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An estimated one thousand Palestinians, joined by Israeli and international activists, took to the streets on Friday to demand the opening of Shuhada (Martyrs) Street, a former thoroughfare in the West Bank city of Hebron. Israeli occupying forces fired foam-tipped bullets, tear gas, and sound grenades resulting in the serious injury of nine protestors, in addition to the many who suffered the adverse effects of tear gas inhalation.

Protestors attempted to reach Shuhada Street but were intercepted by Israeli forces who formed human walls to prevent Palestinians from reaching the street that formerly hosted the city’s main market. The protestors marched towards the line of soldiers, holding signs and chanting, “We don’t want the settlers nor the occupation,” and, “the people want Shuhada Street.”

Israeli forces used riot dispersal methods at multiple locations when they were outnumbered by the protesters who had gathered. The use of these weapons effectively segmented the crowd that was forced to scatter to adjacent streets and alleys to avoid the incapacitating tear gas and the disorienting sound grenades. A small minority of Palestinian youth responded with stone throwing only after Israeli forces had violently suppressed the protesters assertion of their rights to free speech and freedom of movement. (I mention this for the sake of refuting the misleading articles and headlines which parroted the claims of Israeli military spokespersons, emphasizing the injury of five Israeli Border Police while dismissing the history and current political realities of Israel’s colonization of Hebron).

Friday’s protest marked the 17^th anniversary of Baruch Goldstein’s massacre of 29 Palestinians who were praying in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque. Following the 1994 massacre, Shuhada Street – a main artery serving the Old City of Hebron as well as the Ibrahimi Mosque – was closed to Palestinian traffic. No Palestinian cars, nor Palestinian themselves are permitted on Shuhada Street; whereas, Israeli settlers are permitted to travel freely while under the protection of the Israeli military. Many Palestinians whose homes are located on Shuhada Street are not able to use their front doors. Some residents of Shuhada Street are forced to use ladders connected to neighboring roofs in order to leave their homes.

As seen in in Hebron on Friday, the Israeli government continues to suppress Palestinian popular resistance and attempts to paint all Palestinians actively involved in the nonviolent struggle as deviant and violent individuals. The Israeli media predictably reported that stone-throwing troublemakers were seeking to gain access to the “Jewish Quarter” of Hebron, while in fact, the protestors were attempting to access a street, in the heart of an Arab city, from which they have been barred based on ethnic criteria. Contrary to Israeli hasbara (propaganda) claims, the Palestinians in Hebron, and all across the West Bank, who are daily struggling against Israeli’s expanding colonial project are ordinary people, they are people who have been pushed to the brink by Israel’s inhumane occupation.

• On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis took part in the largest anti-government rallies yet in towns and cities across the country, as two powerful chiefs from President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s own tribe abandoned him.

• In Oman, security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters demanding political reforms in Sohar, 200km northwest of the capital Muscat, killing at least one person. Oman’s ruler, Sultan Qaboos bin Said, replaced six Cabinet members in a bid to defuse tensions in the country.

• Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters streamed through Bahrain’s diplomatic area and other neighbourhoods on Sunday. At least three processions yesterday paralysed parts of the capital, Manama.

• Tunisian Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi resigned on Sunday following a wave of protests that demanded a complete break with officials from the previous government.

• In an internet statement, more than 100 leading Saudi academics and activists called on the king to enact sweeping reforms in the oil-rich nation, including setting up a constitutional monarchy.

• On Saturday, upwards of 125,000 Wisconsinites rallied at the state capitol in Madison, as tens of thousands more rallied in communities across the state.

• Dozens of Mauritanian students used Facebook to organize a sit-in on Friday to demand the departure of the president and political reforms. Police dispersed hundreds of protesters early Saturday, but after a few hours the crowd returned to spend the night at Blocat Square in Nouakchott’s city center.

• Nineteen Catholic and Protestant bishops staged a sit-in to protest the findings of a report that cleared Hindu fundamentalists of a series of attacks on Christian targets in southern Karnataka state in September 2008.

On Saturday night, after driving through the snow from his home in rural Wisconsin, Waging Nonviolence special correspondent Quince Mountain arrived in Madison, where for almost two weeks, protesters had been occupying the Capitol building in a historic effort to prevent the passage of Governor Scott Walker’s bid to strip away the collective bargaining rights of many state employees. I couldn’t convince him to sit down in the middle of all the mayhem and write us a regular dispatch, but what he did do was better: a play by play account of what he was seeing over text message.

I first heard from him at 9:15 on Saturday night.

Capitol is on lockdown for the night. How can u lock down an occupation? Protests are so bizarre.

I’ll stay tomorrow. Big bust planned for 4pm.

Then, by 11, I got a disconcerting message.

Texting from cop car

I asked, “Why? What happened?” It wasn’t until almost two hours later that he responded.

No no. I was just hanging out talking w a cop in her car outside the Capitol.

She said there have been zero arrests the whole two weeks. And we hung out in her car and a delivery guy tried to give us pizzas “donated from Washington” but she couldn’t accept them.

The cops have been marching with the protesters twice daily. And I just read some of the cop briefing emails. Which strike me.

Wait, I should be clear. There may have been arrests. Madison pd is NOT the Capitol pd or the state troopers.

Plan for tomorrow according to email I saw is that everyone’s requested to leave the Capitol for cleaning by 4pm but that no one will be forcibly removed. Same as is stated publicly.

Yeah. Egyptians have donated food and pizzas and have sent messages.

Tomorrow breakfast w my cop friend and a state assembly staffer and an in-home therapist in danger of losing his job, among others.

I’m going to sleep I think.

After that, I didn’t hear from him again until 3:40 on Sunday afternoon. That’s only 20 minutes before the big crackdown was supposed to happen.

Trying to get into Capitol. Shouts of “we are all people” w response of “let us all in”

Cold grey afternoon

Air feels wet. State Troopers around. Kid with sign “walker is a turd”. I cringe at that kind.

Madisonians are beautiful.

But my companion rachel says in the last 10 min she’s heard more negative crowd comments than in past 12 days combined. Tense bc of troopers and impending ejection. Some angry/fearful she thinks.

“who’s house?”. “our house”

Husky Dog with placard. Can only see. One side “he sucks”

11 minutes to go.

These people do not seem like they’re leaving. The troopers have backpacks.

Friend sees sign and asks me “what’s a plutocracy?”. We look it up.

Chanting drumming stopped suddenly. Can’t tell what’s up. Some distant cheering?

Hounddog barking w vigor. More drumming.

I keep wondering how many romances were formed in weeks of rotunda sleepover.

And then 4 pm in the afternoon arrived, the time when the police were planning to begin removing protesters.

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It was four in the morning and I was walking in a zombie-like state inside the Capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin. The State Assembly was voting on the Budget Repair Bill at the time, and it was being blasted out through giant loud speakers into the Rotunda, echoing off the cold marbled floors and walls. My earplugs weren’t helping block out the noise one bit, and the lights that surrounded us, which were dimly lit earlier that evening, were brighter than ever before. Some of us questioned if this was being purposely done to make things as uncomfortable as possible. But we knew once you left, you could be locked out in the cold until the next morning.

The few of us that were still awake wandered down the circling hallways, quietly passing the sleeping protesters and their possessions strewn across the floor. I was rereading all of the handmade signs that were taped to the walls that towered over me. They conveyed messages of peace, unity, solidarity and political statements. One read “These Signs Are Our Voices And You Can’t Take Them Away!”

Eventually, I made my way back to the center of the Rotunda, looking down at the empty drum circle below. It was here that the Wisconsin protesters unleashed their frustration and struggles to people they had never met before. This was their most democratic space in the building. Four hours prior, this had been a place where music and protest were married together and people danced to the beat. Everyone was allowed to give a speech on the megaphone or play an instrument if they wanted. One protester told me that a man gave an anti-union rant before, but they didn’t stop him. Instead they let him speak without it ending in a confrontation.

The building has become another home to the Wisconsin people, a makeshift village within a city which not too long ago was used to conduct business as usual among the politicians. But now the community of protesters, mostly young people, occupies the building, the heart of the city, utilizing every section that’s accessible. “This is what this place was meant for. This is why it was built,” said one of the protesters while she talked and mopped the floor in front of me.

The significance of what has been accomplished can not be overstated. In one end of the gallery there was a medic section and around the corner from there was an area called the “child care/family space,” where families could bring their children to do activities or just to get away from the bustling crowds in the Capitol building. Food station tables were located everywhere, covered with donated supplies from around the country. “Charging Stations” were set up for people to plug-in to the internet and send messages to the outside world. There was a Lending Library where political Zines and books could be borrowed and returned after reading. I walked past Lost and Found boxes full of mittens, gloves and hats. It was literally a grassroots movement that had started these.

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Earlier this month, writing for The Nation, Johann Hari talked about building a Progressive Tea Party and highlighted the UK Uncut movement—which has shut down more than 100 stores belonging to tax-dodging companies—as inspiration that such a feat is possible.

Can this model be transferred to the United States? Remember that a few months ago, Brits were as pessimistic about the possibility of a left-wing rival to the Tea Party as Americans are now. Of course, there are differences in political culture and tax law structure and enforcement, but there are also strong parallels. In the United States the same three crucial factors that created UK Uncut are in place… Americans are facing the same cuts as the Brits. They are being ripped off by corporations and rich people just like the Brits. And they are as angry as the Brits. “All it takes,” says Tom Philips [one of the UK Uncut organizers], “is for a few people to do what we did in that pub that night and light the touch paper.”

It seems Hari’s piece may have inspired just that. A little over two weeks ago, Carl Gibson, a 23-year-old former Mississippi Public Radio reporter fired over protesting a pro-BP cover-up, came across Hari’s article. His initial thoughts were: “Dammit, if no else is going to do it, I will.”

Art Levine of the Working In These Times blog explains what happened next:

Beginning with friends in Jackson and his home state of Kentucky, he started a Facebook page and Twitter stream, and borrowed some pointers and a web template from the British organizers for the debut of US Uncut. It’s a loose network that doesn’t depend on top-down leaders and invites activists to create their own protests timed to national days of action. This Saturday, nearly 50 protests are scheduled, targeting primarily the Bank of America, which has paid no income taxes while receiving $2.3 billion from the federal government in 2009, along with other corporate tax dodgers.

While nearly 8,000 people have joined the Facebook page as of today, there’s no telling if tomorrow’s protests will turn out enough people on the streets to call US Uncut a burgeoning movement. For now, though, it’s a sign—as if Wisconsin weren’t enough—that Americans are growing tired of seeing corporations and banks grow rich while their benefits and incomes shrink.

In this short video, Al Jazeera looks at the disappointment that has followed the “People Power” movement, which ousted longtime U.S.-backed dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines in 1986, and suggests that the people of Tunisia and Egypt keep fighting to ensure that the removal of Ben Ali and Mubarak leads to real democratic government that addresses their needs, particularly the poverty and inequality that plague their societies.

And in this new article, the Carnegie Council looks at several important lessons that should be learned from the nonviolent movements in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine, which is really worth the read. The authors argue that the organizations and leaders that are part of nonviolent movements should have concrete goals beyond the removal of the dictator, be wary of getting too close to foreign funders, and resist the urge to enter electoral politics. In Serbia, they contend, when numerous members of Otpor entered government it had:

…decidedly negative consequences for the movement itself and for Serbian civil society more generally. Otpor lost many of the visionaries that once defined its spirit in the run-up to Milosevic’s ouster. Perhaps more significantly, Serbian civil society was deprived of young, vibrant activists, leaving it too weak to convincingly counterbalance the powers of political society.

[...]

More importantly, the transformation into a political party meant that Otpor had to drastically change its structure and methods of operation. Like all political parties, it had to establish clear leadership and a pyramidal structure that ran contrary to the decentralized nature of its revolutionary politics.

In doing so, Otpor sacrificed a major tenet of its struggle against Milosevic: the (seeming) absence of a leader. One of Otpor’s strengths in Milosevic’s Serbia had been its refutation of formal, bureaucratic procedures. This fluidity allowed Otpor to embrace Serbs of all backgrounds and opinions, and is what made it so attractive for Serbia’s youth, so disenchanted by traditional political parties and their corrupt practices. Ironically, however, it is also what delegitimized Otpor the party.

When in 2003 Otpor failed to enter parliament, the organization quickly disbanded.

[...]

The impact of Otpor’s unraveling for Serbia’s youth has been profound. Serbia’s young people lack a stake in the system. They have no effective means to voice their concerns, and no clear instrument through which to channel their discontent. Otpor could perhaps have provided such a vehicle had its leaders made the transition not to politics, but to youth advocacy. Just as they once resisted a dictator, so too might they have resisted the subsequent political disenfranchisement that has afflicted youths across Serbia and the greater Balkans region.

To read the rest of this very insightful piece, click here.

• Tens of thousands of Yemenis took to the streets of the capital today to demand the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

• Security forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi began firing on tens of thousands of protesters across Libya focused their attention on the capital on Friday afternoon, following the midday prayer.  At least six have been killed.

• Tens of thousands of protesters marched in Bahraini capital Manama today to demand the resignation of the cabinet. On Wednesday, the government said it had released 308 political prisoners, many of whom claimed to have been tortured.

• Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in a number of Iraqi cities today for a “day of rage”  to denounce corruption and demand better services.

• In Algeria, the judicial system saw the sixth day of a strike on Tuesday by court clerks, forcing the postponement of many trials, while municipal workers, engineering students and even paramedics also downed tools.

• Tensions are mounting in the Syrian capital, Damascus, after the third peaceful demonstration in three weeks was violently dispersed on Wednesday. Fourteen people were arrested and several people beaten by uniformed and plainclothes police on Tuesday after about 200 staged a peaceful sit-in outside the Libyan embassy to show support for Libya’s protesters.

• Greek police clashed with protesters on Wednesday as about 100,000 workers, pensioners and students marched to parliament to protest austerity policies aimed at helping Greece cope with a huge debt crisis.

• In Indiana, more than a thousand rallied in the capitol building on Tuesday to protest an anti-union ‘right to work’ bill that had been advancing through legislative committees. Workers holding signs reading “Stop the war on workers” also joined a sit-in at the entrance of the state senate chamber.

• On Tuesday, victims of the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy staged a sit-in demonstration outside Parliament house in New Delhi, India. They were demanding adequate compensation, medical care and punishment to the guilty.

• In the UK, more than 3,000 people went on strike and around 1,000 attended a march and rally on Thursday to protest the   Tory-led Nottinghamshire County Council attempt to cut £150 million from the budget that will destroy local services and hurt the most vulnerable people.

On Democracy Now! on Monday, Amy Goodman had an interesting interview with Hamid Dabashi, a professor at Columbia University, on how the nonviolent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt have impacted the Green Movement in Iran.

Dabashi provocatively argues that the recent house arrest of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi will backfire on the regime by creating “the Iranian Mandela.” He also contends that:

The Green Movement went through at least two phases. The first phase was phase of mass street demonstrations that began back in June of 2009 and continued all the way until February 2010. The second phase, when Mousavi began to write a series documents culminating in a charter of the Green Movement which are extraordinary documents in the history of democratic movements in Iran. But in the aftermath of this massive, massive democracy movement in North Africa to Afghanistan, in fact, these events galvanized the Green Movement in Iran. And as a result, we have entered a new phase.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t explain exactly why this should be considered a new phase, separate from the street demonstrations that have taken place in Iran since the elections in 2009. Yes, there have been new demonstrations in Iran since the fall of Mubarak. But in my mind, there would need to be a substantive shift in strategy and tactics used by the Green Movement to consider what has happened a new phase in the nonviolent struggle, which doesn’t so far seem to be the case.

Last week I noted that the nonviolent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, which are now spreading throughout the region, have generated more interest and positive coverage of nonviolence in the mainstream media than I have seen in my lifetime.

Probably the most surprising praise for nonviolent action came last week from Max Boot, who is a hawk and outspoken advocate for military force. In the conservative magazine Commentary he wrote:

It is fair to say that [Gene] Sharp and [Peter] Ackerman have been indirectly responsible for more revolutions than anyone since Lenin or Mao — and, unlike the avatars of “socialist” upheavals, their work made the world a better place, helping to create numerous liberal democracies. It is hard to think of worthier recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel committee should act soon — Sharp is no longer a young man and his work deserves recognition while he is still around to enjoy it.

I wonder how Boot reconciles his appreciation for the power of nonviolence to unseat dictators with his support for the war in Iraq, which has led to such incredible suffering and death. I suppose he would argue that Saddam was a unique case where nonviolence would not have worked.

Nonviolent movements, however, have brought down so many dictators around the world in recent decades that there is no reason why Saddam should be considered an exception. Even academic studies, like “Why Civil Resistance Works,” are beginning to demonstrate from a purely pragmatic perspective – with extensive evidence and hundreds of case studies over the last century – that nonviolent action is simply far more effective than using violence in political struggle.

And regarding the Nobel Peace Prize, my hunch from reading interviews with Sharp is that he would not want to take credit away from the people on the ground who risk their lives in nonviolent struggle. As Sharp rightly told the New York Times last week, “The people of Egypt did that — not me.”