As U2 took to the stage at the Glastonbury festival last Friday, activists with Art Uncut – an offshoot of UK Uncut – inflated a 9ft-wide, 20ft-high balloon that carried the message: “U Pay Tax 2.”

Despite having permission from the festival’s organizers for the creative protest, security used excessive force, including breaking a finger of one of the activists involved, as they quickly brought down the balloon.

Nevertheless, the protest was widely covered in the mainstream media, with images of the action appearing on the BBC and many national newspapers. In the Guardian, Art Uncut founder and co-organizer Philip Goff explained the purpose of their protest:

The narrower point was to raise concerns about the irresponsible way U2 arrange their tax affairs. In 2006 U2 Ltd moved most of its tax affairs to Holland, seemingly in response to the Irish government’s decision to cap the tax-free exemption on royalties at €225,000 (before this, artists in Ireland were not obliged to pay any tax on royalties). Our concern is that when individuals and corporations “shop around” different countries for the best tax deal, this puts pressure on governments all round the world to lower their tax rates, which results in an ever-dwindling proportion of profits going to governments to spend on schools, hospitals and public services. Given the financial difficulties in the group’s native country right now, any tax revenue denied to Ireland hurts badly.

The broader point of the protest was to raise awareness of the connection between tax ethics and development. Christian Aid estimates that $160bn, more than the global aid budget, is lost every year to the developing world from multinational tax dodging. It’s clear that if we’re serious about making developing countries richer, we need individuals and corporations to take a much more ethical and responsible approach to their tax affairs.

Art Uncut aims to bring about a culture shift, to create a world where people automatically and instinctively think about tax ethically. We’re not claiming that individuals have a duty to pay as much tax as possible. Rather each of us has a duty to think about tax in an ethical context, to ask questions such as: what’s my fair share? What do I owe to the country that paid for my healthcare and education? What’s the spirit as well as the letter of the law? What effect does how I arrange my tax affairs have on the globe?

[...]

Second, we want to encourage consumers to make tax one consideration in their choice of which artists to support, or which companies to buy from; just as environmental considerations already figure in these decisions. We want to see a world in five years’ time when credible musicians just don’t do what U2 Ltd did, because they know the public won’t support it.

It was just announced that Egypt has, at least for the time being, turned down the offer of billions of dollars in loans from the IMF and World Bank. While Issandr El Amrani is perplexed by the decision and seems quite critical of it, as I’ve argued before on this site, I think it extremely wise to steer clear of those institutions.

Moreover, this turn away from the IMF and World Bank should be recognized as an important victory for the pro-democracy movement in Egypt that continues to struggle to make real its vision for the country. According to a report by Heba Saleh in the Financial Times, Samir Radwan, Egypt’s current finance minister:

…said the decision to scrap the loans was in response to public opposition. He  said the military council, in power during the current transition to elected  rule, had decided “not to burden” those who take over from them with heavy  loans.

As Saifedean Ammous, a visiting scholar at Columbia University’s Center for Capitalism and Society, argues in another piece for the Financial Times:

A better approach would be for assistance to wait until elections are completed,  and elected governments are formed. Even better, donors should be willing to put  the question of funding to the public in a referendum, allowing the people to  choose whether they really want projects today and then debt tomorrow. Indeed,  given the strong relationship between donors and the deposed regimes, it is not  impossible to imagine free elections producing new leaderships that reject new  funding, aiming instead to reduce or eliminate foreign aid and debt.

In Indian society, corruption has become a norm. According to Indian journalist Dipankar Gupta, “Fear stalks most homes for nobody is sure when the next bribe will have to be given and to whom and for what. You have to bribe to get a ration card; you have to bribe to ply your wares on a push cart; you have to bribe to get your child to school or your mother to hospital… They do this not to become rich or powerful, but just so they can be left in peace.”

A string of corruption scandals have been coming to light in the Indian media which have caused outrage across the nation. In February 2011, the telecommunications minister, Andimuthu Raja, was arrested for allegedly selling mobile phone frequency licenses for a fraction of their values, which cost around $40 billion in lost revenue. It was only a few months earlier that Ashok Chavan, the chief minister of Maharashtra, one of India’s most prosperous states, was forced to resign over his alleged role in a housing scam, where senior armed forces officials and politicians have been accused of allowing relatives to move into apartments meant for war widows. The 2010 Commonwealth Games in India were marred by financial irregularities and incompetence, and many officials were arrested on corruption charges.

On the 5th of April 2011, a prominent Gandhian activist named Anna Hazare went on a hunger strike in the Indian capital of New Delhi demanding stronger anti-corruption laws. Hazare’s fast was aimed towards the passage of the Jan Lokpal—or “Civilian Ombudsman”—Bill for the creation of an independent corruption watchdog, a piece of legislation which has been stalled in the Indian Parliament since 1969. He also demanded that a joint committee of civil activists and government representatives strengthen it further.

While thousands of Indians rallied with him in the capital, he was supported by the mainstream Indian media and millions across the nation through online social media campaigns. The national media told stories of people smarting under spiralling prices, being robbed of their hard-earned money by the political class, and of their resolve to teach them a lesson. The online India Against Corruption movement garnered 60,000 fans on Facebook and over 3,300 followers on Twitter in support for Hazare. After four days of sustained protest, the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance government accepted Hazare’s joint committee demand and agreed to introduce the new bill in the monsoon session of Parliament in August 2011.

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The fight for a free Palestine is being fought on many fronts right now. There’s an ongoing debate taking place about what will work and what won’t—everywhere from the United Nations to the streets of the West Bank, where teenagers argue about whether to throw rocks at Israeli Defense Forces soldiers. The question that remains, though, is whether what’s happening now is bringing the cause together or pushing it apart.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, is in the Netherlands lobbying for UN recognition of Palestine’s independence, while the US Senate has threatened to cut off aid to the territories if they continue pursuing the measure. But even Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is doubtful that the measure would accomplish anything, other than further disappointing his people and antagonizing their opponent. Israel, he insists, needs to be involved for any real change to take place. “Unless Israel is part of that consensus,” he says, “it won’t.”

Meanwhile, the latest Freedom Flotilla remains stuck in Greece, while Israel has been doing all it can to discredit it and prevent the intended voyage from happening. (See Kathy Kelly’s dispatch from Greece here at Waging Nonviolence.) The US has apparently pre-approved a violent reaction on the part of Israel against American citizens. Even some Gazans are concerned that the Flotilla won’t do them any good. Gazan media activist Mohammad Abu Asaker recently told me that actions like these might only be strengthening the hand of Hamas and its violent, failing tactics. “It is only the government in Gaza that gets the advantage of the media coverage from the Flotilla,” he said. “The people remain under the blockade, suffering.” Instead, he thinks, ships should be sent to the Knesset, and to the Capitol in Washington, DC, where policies are being made.

Back in the West Bank, thanks to peaceful protest, the IDF has finally begun rerouting the wall at Bil’in, which cut off the people who live there from their farmland. But in Bil’in, where nonviolent methods won a local victory, the Australian National reports that there’s no consensus:

Mr Abu Rahme admits that not everyone believes in the usefulness of peaceful marches. Many youth protesters throw stones at Israeli soldiers, provoking barrages of rubber-coated bullets, tear gas and a foul-smelling chemical spray called Skunk. “People have different opinions about non-violence but now, non-violence is important,” he said. “It’s our only option.”

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Wouldn’t it be great to have a United Nations of resistance—a place where resisters around the world can come together and compare notes about their campaigns? Or maybe there already is one. Just look at the flags above.

We wrote not long ago about the young bloggers who are quietly fomenting a Jasmine Revolution in China. The one that The New York Times featured in its article, a 27-year-old in New York who writes under the aliases Gaius Gracchus and Hua Ge (“Flower Brother”), has been doing his homework. At Boxun.com, China’s popular (and banned) alternative news website, he interviews Ivan Marovic, one of the leading minds behind the nonviolent Serbian student movement that brought down Slobodan Milošević in 2000.

Do you have a message to the Chinese authorities who are still in power? Did you have a message for Milosevic when he was in power?

Yes we had a message for Milosevic when he was in power, and I think the same message can work for the Chinese authorities. That is, is it impossible to prevent people when they wish to be free. That is just not going to work because you can only spend more and more effort, more and more energy in preventing them, but eventually they will prevail. And this was what happened in Serbia. He had finally to step down. There was no way he could avoid that. So that would be my message. [Some corrections made.]

A large part of Gracchus/Hua’s strategy is turning the Chinese regime’s overreactions against Jasmine Revolution activities into an advantage. It’s quite amazing, and a bit pathetic; the word “jasmine” has been banned from Chinese social media, and a festival dedicated to jasmine flowers has been cancelled. Even a video of Hu Jintao singing about jasmine flowers has been pulled from the internet. Reports the Japanese paper Asahi:

Despite the heightened Internet activity, any hint of protests within China are quickly clamped down on by the authorities.

Hua said, “A major motive among young people who want to take part is making fun at how very sensitive the authorities have become.”

Sound familiar? Remember the now-renowned “barrel of laughs” action that Marovic and his friends used to help their fellow Serbians lose their fear of the dictator:

China is a very different place than even Milošević’s Serbia, with a much more repressive, reactive state, which has a lot more money and guns behind it. But there’s no need to confuse firepower with political strength. When the people start believing that the regime is a joke, that’s the beginning of the end.

Tomorrow, Nadine Bloch, a wonderful artist and nonviolent practitioner and facilitator, will be leading a webinar, hosted by ICNC, entitled “The Arts of Protest: Creative Cultural Resistance.” According to the announcement:

Some of the most impactful and memorable moments from civil resistance and nonviolent movements are sung by the masses, printed by the thousands, enacted through craft, painted in vivid color, or performed in traditional dress. This webinar will take a critical look at Creative Cultural Resistance: the broad use of arts, literature, and traditional practices in the service of protest and political and social actions.

[...]

Through compelling examples this talk will cover the immense diversity of methodologies that have been employed in resistance, from 2-D and 3-D arts, to sound/music and theater/movement arts. From literature and crafts, to documentation and delineation of space, as well as rituals and language preservation, we will look at the power of cultural work in organizing, mobilizing and grounding actions.

I had the opportunity to get to know Nadine and participate in a small group session with her last year at the Fletcher Summer Institute and can vouch for the fact that she is a lot of fun and really knows from experience what she’s talking about.

The webinar will run from 12-1pm EDT. To reserve your place, click here. And if that time doesn’t work for you, ICNC will post the video of the presentation on their website afterward.

When the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict’s week-long Fletcher Summer Insitute (FSI) at Boston’s Tufts University came to end last Friday, several members of the ICNC team traveled to Strasbourg, France for an entirely different kind of educational conference. While the focus in Boston was on empowering activists from conflict regions around the world, the meeting in Strasbourg—the seat of European Parliament—is all about government power and its responsibility to uphold democratic values.

The Summer University for Democracy (as it’s called) brings together several hundred young public sector leaders from across Europe to discuss what it describes as “the challenges of our times.” This is now the sixth such annual gathering organized by the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, which is one of the oldest international organizations promoting human rights and democracy. The focus changes every year; this time it’s on ethics in politics, the media, and business.

ICNC president Jack DuVall took part in one of the first breakout sessions of the day on Monday, titled “Ethics in the Heart of Democratic Reforms.” Flanked by two ethics professors, whose talks dwelled mainly in the broad and theoritical realm, DuVall delivered a far more urgent message, underscoring the basic dynamics of nonviolent struggle for an audience that—unlike the participants at FSI—was less directly engaged with political action in the streets.

Here is the audio of DuVall’s speech, followed by his answers to several common questions surrounding nonviolent action:

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What makes an action nonviolent? Can’t blocking a road be considered violent if it impedes the freedom of another?

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Can a protests be over-used to the detriment of its effectiveness?

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• Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets across Yemen on Sunday, demanding that a transitional presidential council be created to replace embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh and that his sons and relatives leave the country.

• Thousands of Greek demonstrators have begun gathering in front of the parliament in Athens at the start of a 48-hour general strike to protest against deep budget cuts demanded by international lenders as the price for more financial aid.

• Spain’s “indignant” activists began their last and longest protest march on Saturday, leaving from the northeastern city of Barcelona to cover 650 kilometres on their way to a major Madrid rally on July 24.

• Tens of thousands of people demonstrated around Morocco both for and against a proposed new constitution on Sunday, just a week before it is to be voted on in a referendum.

• About 3,000 people marched through downtown Montreal on Saturday to call for an end in Quebec to shale gas exploitation and a technique known as “fracking” that has triggered strong opposition from environmental groups.

• Thousands of people joined hands on Saturday across beaches from Florida to California to form a human chain to protest offshore oil drilling and promote clean energy.

• Police arrested 12 D.C. voting rights activists in front of the White House Saturday afternoon.

• Hamas prisoners being held in Israeli jails on Monday began a hunger strike after seven of their number were put in solitary confinement.

• Seoul National University student council members ended their 28-day sit-in against the university’s privatization plan on Sunday after 40 of 61 students voted to accept a tentative agreement between the council and the university.

• Russian police have arrested and charged up to 14 LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans) activists who were attempting to hold a demonstration in St Petersburg.

• Last Wednesday, Zimbabwe’s public workers began an indefinite strike to press the cash-strapped coalition government of President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to more than double wages.

James Lawson (right) and Nathan Schneider. Photo by Cynthia Boaz.

Over lunch last week, during the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict’s Fletcher Summer Institute, I had the chance to talk with civil-rights movement leader James Lawson with a recorder on. It wasn’t hard to get him going; he had been talking about these things the whole week. Lawson, who organized the decisive Nashville lunch-counter sit-ins, is above all a strategist. He insists on the need to develop long-range strategies, not just short-term tactics. But, as he showed during the ceremony for the first James Lawson Awards, he is also a theologian.

NS: For activists trying to reclaim people’s power among all the powerful corporations at work today, what do you think can be learned from the civil-rights movement? What are the lessons from your experience?

JL: Well, I think that the main thing that activists must learn is nonviolent philosophy, methodology, techniques, and strategy. They need to work from an investigation and assessment of their local base, determining thereby the skills and techniques that will organize and mobilize people in that local scene. No social movement is going to take place if it doesn’t have roots in what’s going on in Cleveland, Ohio, or Washington, DC, or way across Georgia. That’s how movements take place, and that’s how movements have taken place in the United States—not by national policy, but by local groups assessing their own scene and trying to be real about how to start working.

At the local level, people need to get some processes going that will cut down the sales of certain companies and corporations and begin to send a mighty message. It may not be possible to do that in the first year, but I’d be willing to wager that steady organizing around something specific would begin to have an impact. That’s the first task.

I maintain that we have more than enough activists and activism in our country. What we do not have is a unity of understanding about how you go about putting that activism to work. We’re all over the ballpark. Very few people are playing the nine positions of the ball team that you’re going to need to defend, or have an offense.

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BBC’s Reith Lecture series with Aung San Suu Kyi won’t be aired until tomorrow, but already there is a flurry of discussion about whether she is changing her renowned position on non-violence. The lectures were secretly recorded in Burma and then presented before a studio audience this past week before they air for the general public. The Nobel Laureate stunned the audience when she implied “it’s possible” she would not rule out violent resistance as an effective way of creating change in Burma. She later expanded on her position and said, “I have said in the lectures I do not hold to non-violence for moral reasons, but practical and political reasons.”

This may seem shocking coming from the woman who is viewed as the Gandhi of Burma, but the reality is that she is not changing her position. She has always held a view of resistance that centrally values the process of the struggle, “the revolution of the spirit.” However, by saying she doesn’t rule out violent struggle, she is being honest and, importantly, not discrediting the ethnic armed resistance occurring in Burma at present.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s father was the respected military leader Aung San who was the main instrumental leader in bringing an end to colonial rule in Burma. He worked to unite groups across the country and prepare for democratic change, but was assassinated before his vision could be fulfilled. Coming from this background, she has an understanding that military use in and of itself is not wholly corruptible; it is the mindset about military use that is important. She said in her 1991 essay “Freedom from Fear”:

The words used by Jawaharlal Nehru to describe Mahatama Gandhi could well be applied to Aung San: ‘The essence of his teaching was fearlessness and truth and action allied to these, always keeping the welfare of the masses in view.’

Aung San Suu Kyi’s goal is very similar to her father’s. She wants to bring all ethnic groups and sectors of society together to find a peaceful means of reconciliation with which to build a democratic society. Aung San Suu Kyi, even though she is a proponent of non-violence, cannot dismiss the efforts of Burma’s armed ethnic resistance. Whenever she is free she works to reach out to Burma’s ethnic communities. In response to this attention, many ethnic leaders say they heartily support and share Aung San Suu Kyi’s vision of peaceful national reconciliation.

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