Over two hundred people gathered in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio on Friday for the nation’s first-ever organized mass protest against powerful right-wing think tank ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. Chanting slogans about defending democracy and the priority of people over profit, protesters marched peacefully several times around the block where ALEC was holding its “Spring Task Force Summit” at a Hilton hotel.

ALEC is an elite group of state legislators, corporations, and free market advocates who draft and introduce hundreds of pre-packaged right-wing bills into each state legislature yearly, bills restricting government regulation, encouraging privatization, and promoting (according to their mission statement) “Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty.”

Although ALEC was founded over thirty years ago, it only recently began receiving major public scrutiny.  Last March, University of Wisconsin professor Bill Cronon published a “study guide” citing ALEC’s role in recent legislation in Wisconsin that drastically limits the collective bargaining rights of public employees. (The Republican Party of Wisconsin promptly retaliated by filing a Freedom of Information Act request for e-mails sent from Cronon’s school office computer, a move that only ended up drawing further public attention to ALEC.)

A year before Cronon’s study guide exposed ALEC’s ties to anti-union legislation in the Midwest, NPR explained that ALEC had drafted Arizona’s infamous immigration law, S.B. 1070, which requires local police to enforce immigration laws through racial profiling; the bill sparked outrage, spawning a nationwide campaign to “Boycott Arizona.”

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In a discussion about Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Glenn Beck’s show on Wednesday, Dinesh D’Souza reiterated the myth, believed by almost everyone, that nonviolence simply could not have worked against the Nazis.

DINESH D’SOUZA, KING’S COLLEGE: Well, Gandhi had a different situation. The British were very different than Hitler. They were tyrannical and that they were ruling India. But Gandhi’s strategy, which was non-violence, mass protest, lying in front of the train track, is very dramatic. But if Hitler had been in power, the trains would have kept going.

BECK: Right.

D’SOUZA: One of my professors used to say, if Hitler was in power in India, Gandhi would be a lamp shade. It’s kind of a harsh way of putting it, but he would have dealt with Gandhi…

The problem with this argument is that it is factually untrue. When it was tried during World War II against the Nazis, nonviolence was remarkably successful. As I’ve mentioned on this site before:

I devoted the final chapter of my Masters thesis (which can be downloaded and read here) to stories of the successful use of nonviolence during World War II, of which there are many.

For example, using nonviolent methods, the people of Denmark, Finland and Bulgaria, were able to save virtually their entire Jewish populations from the Holocaust. And then there is my favorite story about the courageous nonviolent resistance mounted by the French village of Le Chambon.

It’s important that we continually challenge this myth, because World War II is time and again used to justify violence and war today, as Glenn Beck is not-so-subtly doing in this segment.

• In Yemen, tens of thousands of protesters rallied nationwide on Thursday to denounce a deadly government crackdown that left 12 people dead and nearly 200 wounded on Wednesday when Yemeni forces opened fire on a crowd of roughly 100,000 protesters in Sana’a.

• Tens of thousands of Syrians demonstrated in urban centers today in solidarity with the besieged city of Deraa and demanding political freedoms, in defiance of heavy army and security forces deployment.

• In Uganda, police were deployed at Tembo Steels Uganda Limited following a sit down strike by workers protesting low pay and poor working conditions on Thursday.

• About 1,300 employees who were on strike at a Taiwan-owned footwear factory in northern Vietnam returned to work Wednesday after the company agreed to increase their monthly salary.

• On Monday, Greenpeace activists wearing yellow hazmat suits and gas masks released orange smoke outside Brazil’s state-run development bank to protest against nuclear energy on Monday, days after it announced it would finance the construction of a third nuclear plant in the country.

• On Wednesday, undocumented college students in Florida held a sit-in in Senate President Mike Haridopolos’s office.

• At a Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission meeting in Pennsylvania on Wednesday protesters rallied outside and repeatedly interrupted presentations to voice their concerns.

As you watch the above video, there is no need to adjust the volume or look for a different version with sound. There is no audio for a reason.

The video is of a flash mob staged at Grand Central Station in New York at the end of March in support of the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sactions (BDS) movement that involved 30 dancers accompanied by the Rude Mechanical Orchestra signing and dancing to a parody of “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey.

As a press release from Adalah-NY, the group that organized the action, explains:

“Don’t stop boycottin’,” they sang, “Think when you’re shopping.” They called out companies benefiting from Israeli occupation, and celebrated Roger Waters, Gil Scott Heron, and Elvis Costello, who are among the many artists to have heeded the Palestinian civil society call to boycott Israel until it complies with international law.

After receiving 30,000 views in just two days, YouTube removed the video after claiming they received notice of copyright infringement. In response, Adalah-NY has posted the above video without sound.

As Adbusters writes:

Activists see it as an example of using selective copyright enforcement for political censorship and argue that a pattern is developing. In January, YouTube removed a Saint Louis Boycott Motorola Flash Mob video that parodied the Beyonce/Lady Gaga song “Telephone” as the video reached 35,000 views. As was the case with the Saint Louis flash mob video, there are tens of parody versions of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” currently posted on YouTube. Others have argued that parody is an activity protected from copyright claims.

With the US now prosecuting three wars abroad, NPR asks why more people aren’t on the streets. In the article, Linton Weeks and the folks he interviews offer several possible reasons, including the lack of a draft, which helped mobilize the peace movement against the war in Vietnam, greater control over coverage of war in the mainstream media, and the fact that the “defense” industry is now such a large part of our economy.

Executive vice president of the CATO Institute David Boaz argues that the movement was deflated and has never recovered from the election of Barack Obama:

To buttress his assertions, Boaz cites a recently published study of anti-war protesters. The research was conducted by Michael Heaney of the University of Michigan and Fabio Rojas of Indiana University. It concludes that the anti-war movement in America evaporated because Democrats — inspired to protest by their anti-Republican feelings — stopped protesting once the Democratic Party achieved success in Congress in 2006 and then in the White House in 2008.

One other factor that has made organizing against war more difficult, but isn’t mentioned in the article, is the dramatic decline in US casualties in war since Vietnam. In Vietnam, more than 58,000 Americans were killed. Thanks to the growing use of robotics, the privatization of war and improvements in medicine, among other reasons, in Iraq and Afghanistan just over 6,000 US soldiers have died – essentially one-tenth the US casualties in Vietnam.

These are the challenges that the antiwar movement faces. Given these changed circumstances, how can those opposed to the ongoing wars still motivate people to take action? In what ways can the peace movement make the true costs of war real to more Americans, who seem to be worried about everything but war?

And perhaps those aren’t even the right questions to be asking. Maybe it’s more a question of creating a new type of activism that is more appealing to folks who have never gotten involved before.

In the UK, four Iranians seeking asylum have sewn their mouths shut with fishing wire and have launched a hunger strike, which has now continued for more than 20 days.

As the Daily Mail reports:

The British government is planning on sending them back to Tehran, but the men claim that their lives would be in danger if that happened, as they all took part in protests against the Iranian regime in 2009 and were beaten, tortured and even raped as a result.

Mahyar Meyari, who is 17, explained how he was arrested and given brutal treatment after taking part in a demonstration.

‘I was blindfolded and taken to an unknown place where I was kept for a week,’ he told The Guardian.’ I was hit on the head by batons many times … and even raped. I prefer to die here than going back to Iran.’

Another protester, Keyvan Bahari, 32, says he feels their actions are a last resort to make the UK authorities take notice of their plight.

He told the paper: ‘We have sewn our mouths because there is no other way. Nobody in the UK hears us or cares what we say so we have no other option but to do this.’

While sewing your mouth shut is clearly an act of desperation and shocking, I question its effectiveness. It seems so gruesome that people’s first reaction may be just to turn away or to think they are crazy. On the other hand, it definitely shows how serious they are.

What do you make of this tactic? Do you think it’s nonviolent? Is it likely to be effective?

• President Ali Abdullah Saleh has agreed to a proposal from Gulf Arab mediators that calls for him to transfer power and resign within 30 days. But thousands of angry demonstrators have rejected the 30-day succession plan, with huge crowds taking to the streets in the capital Sanaa to demand Saleh’s immediate resignation.

• In Syria, at least 20 people were killed yesterday in the city of Daraa after thousands of troops backed with tanks opened fire on protesters. On Sunday, at least 13 civilians were shot dead in the town of Jableh. And at least 112 people were killed in Syria on Friday in the deadliest day since anti-government protests began last month.

• Thousands of demonstrators gathered in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul Sunday to protest any extension of U.S. military presence in the country. The protesters also denounced corruption and pressed for the release of detainees.

• The main supply route for NATO troops in Afghanistan was temporarily closed on Sunday after thousands of people blocked a key highway in Pakistan to protest against US drone strikes.

• Some 3,000 protesters took to the streets after Friday prayers in Oman’s southern port of Salalah in one of the biggest pro-reform demonstrations since scattered unrest began in the sultanate two months ago.

• Senegalese fishermen staged a one-day strike Thursday to protest at a decision by the Dakar government to allow foreign boats to fish in their coastal waters.

• Over 1,500 Armenian-American and anti-genocide activists flooded the streets of Culver City, California on Thursday to protest President Obama’s failure to honor his pledge to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

By Gary Waits, for the Syracuse Post-Standard.

On Friday, during a protest against the use of armed drones at Hancock Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, New York, some activists chose to violate the conditions of their permit and lie down on the road, blocking entrance to the base. 37 were arrested. Syracuse’s YNN network gives just one short paragraph to explain the protesters’ point of view, but it does give considerable space to the military and law-enforcement side of things:

Anthony Bucci, the 174th Fighter Wing Public Affairs Officer, countered, “While it is disappointing because we do think the MQ[-]9 is a great weapons platform, it is part of what we do wearing the uniform is to protect their constitution and their right to do exactly what they’re doing.”

As the permit expired, people refused to leave and began laying down in the street to represent the people killed by [R]eaper drones, blocking the entrance to the Air National Guard Base.

“They were given numerous instructions to get up. They refused to. Again, they were asked to get up. They refused to. At this point, the commanding officer made a decision to arrest them,” said William Gabriel, an Onondaga County Sheriff’s Deputy.

Kevin Walsh, the Onondaga County Sheriff, added, “People want to make a point. Part of making their point is the fact that they’re willing to be arrested. And we accommodated that.”

How accommodating. Read the full text and watch the video at YNN’s site.

Protesters included Retired Colonel Ann Wright and Waging Nonviolence contributor Kathy Kelly. Says Wright, on Democracy Now!:

As a former colonel, as a retired colonel, as a former government official who has been with the government 40 years, I think my greatest public service is now challenging the government and challenging these things called drones. These drones—and you might as well just call them assassination machines, that’s what these drones are used for: targeted assassination, extrajudicial ultimate death for people who have not been convicted of anything.

One person’s “great weapons platform” is another’s “assassination machine.”

I was on Russia Today (RT), Russia’s 24/7 English-language news channel, on Friday to discuss the use of drones in Libya, the growing financial cost of the war and its impact on oil prices.

As Lent ends and the Holy Triduum begins, my mind turns to Resurrection. Perhaps a bit too soon as the Good Friday death of Jesus and his descent into darkness is still impending. But I can’t help myself. I cling to the hope of Resurrection even as I know the death-plunge is imminent – in fact, we live in its midst – in Japan, Afghanistan, the barren deserts of the U.S.-Mexico border, predominantly neighborhoods of color in my own Chicago. Each year, thanks to the good people at the 8^th Day Center for Justice – a splendid, faith-based organization committed to social and environmental justice in our city, nation and world – we gather in the heart of our Sweet Home for the Good Friday Walk for Justice. Modeled after the traditional stations of the cross, community and activist organizations around Chicago present a justice issue facing the city or the wider world. In the past, I’ve participated in stations that drew prayerful attention to the war in Iraq, torture at Abu Ghraib, and the prisoners in Guantanamo.

This year, my community – the White Rose Catholic Worker – has the final station: “Occupation.” The United States is occupying Afghanistan. The stations of the cross culminate in the execution of Jesus by an occupying force. In Afghanistan, innocent children collecting firewood, communities gathered for wedding celebrations, and families headed out for a picnic are executed by drone bombings, night raids, and kill teams. I recently returned from Afghanistan where I met with many young Afghan peacemakers who, in spite of all the risks and threats, are deeply committed to a vision of nonviolence and justice for their communities and country. As a Christian, I am heartbroken that the gift of Christ’s peace that we are given to share is a rare privilege for the wealthy Christians who have grown silent and complicit in the face of injustice. The church, at least in the West, is a far cry from the community of early disciples who, because of their faith, resisted empire by sharing what they had with the poor, promoting a vision – the kin-dom of God – of society without division, and loved each other to the point of death, even death on a cross. In Afghanistan, an overwhelmingly Muslim country, I met young people who experience the reality of Jesus – a peacemaker who loved the poor, shared good news, and was executed by empire because of it.

But as Fr. Dan Berrigan, SJ, reminds us in his short but powerful essay, “The First Nonviolent Revolution,” we have much to rejoice about. “The first nonviolent revolution,” writes Berrigan, “was, of course, the Resurrection. The event had to include death as its first act. And also the command to Peter, ‘Put up your sword.’ So that it might be clear, once and for all, that Christians suffer death rather than inflict it.” If only that was the posture of the United States toward its enemies. Because in that posture, where fear has been overcome and violence defeated, space is created in our lives for us to become the Easter people we are destined to be by the nonviolence of the Resurrection.