How is it that despite thousands of people in the streets of Sanaa, Casablanca, Bissau and Rangoon, the top protest story of the past day is Rupert Murdoch getting a pie in the face? On the one hand this News Corp. scandal is justifiably a big deal and the kind of public scrutiny foisted upon Murdoch has been a long time coming. But on the other hand, does a pie in the face really deserve top billing and constant replays on CNN, MSNBC and surprisingly even Fox?

After my initial frustration at the second-class news status given to people risking their lives to end oppressive regimes, I realized that there might be something to the whole pie-in-the-face protest—something that we often talk about on this site as a successful strategy: humor. Not only does the action lend itself to such irresistible headlines as “Just Dessert” and “Humble Pie,” but it dissolves a quiet tension that might allow for greater public outcry.

Perhaps going a bit over the top, the Vancouver Sun interviewed a sociologist at the University of British Columbia on this point:

Pieing someone in the face is a form of protest that is relatively harmless and gets people’s attention quickly, said Christopher Schneider, a sociologist at the University of British Columbia.

“By the very nature of its definition, a protest is supposed to be disruptive,” Schneider said. It should get people’s attention without being harmful, he said.

At a time when protests are scripted, require permits and are confined to special protest zones, slapping a pie in someone’s face gets a lot of media attention. It’s also funny.

“It conjures up these images of silliness, clowns, cartoons, children, carnivals, comedy,” Schneider said.

“It’s very difficult with all of that (symbolism) to redefine the pie as being a harmful, dangerous assault.”

The public will usually dismiss it, even when criminal charges are laid.

Before anyone thinks I’m advocating a pie-in-the-face as a legitimate protest tactic, let us now consider its shortcomings—of which there are many.

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• Tens of thousands of anti-regime demonstrators marched through Yemeni streets on Tuesday to condemn what they said were government attacks on protesters the day before.

• Thousands of demonstrators, including Islamists, held peaceful rallies in Rabat, Casablanca and Tangiers Sunday to demand greater political reforms and social justice in Morocco.

• Syrian troops and militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad killed 16 people in attacks in the city of Homs on Tuesday, residents said, an escalation of a crackdown against a focal point for pro-democracy protests.

• The Israeli navy intercepted a French boat carrying pro-Palestinian activists as the vessel attempted to breach Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.

• Thousands took to the streets of Bissau Tuesday for the second rally in five days to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior, accused of hindering an assassination probe.

• More than 3,000 democracy supporters led by Aung San Suu Kyi marched Tuesday in Myanmar’s biggest city in honor of her father, the nation’s independence hero. The short march was the biggest public demonstration since 2007, when the military junta launched a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

• Over the weekend, residents of Southwest Ranches, Florida protested the proposed construction of a privately run immigration detention center.

• In the Philippines, college students in Manila and Quezon City walked out of their classes on Tuesday to protest what they called the Aquino administration’s neglect of the education sector.

• Dozens of Romanians protested Tuesday against a Canadian company’s plans to open a gold mine in Transylvania and called on the culture minister to resign over his support to this project.

• The two-week strike by 120,000 members of the National Union of Metalworkers’ of South Africa (NUMSA) ended over the weekend when union members accepted a three-year contract from the Steel and Engineering Federation of South Africa (SEIFSA), the main metal employers’ federation in South Africa.

As part of its upcoming Love Your Enemy campaign during the lead up to September 11, the Metta Center for Nonviolence is hosting a webinar on Wednesday, July 20 from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. PDT. According to the release:

The Metta Center for Nonviolence is launching a campaign to counter the violent, dehumanizing messages of the corporate mass media as we prepare for the 10th year since September 11, 2001, with a call to “reclaim human dignity through nonviolence.” Join this webinar to learn more about the other September 11—1906–when Gandhi launched his first Satyagraha campaign in South Africa; and explore its importance for us inour on-going struggle to replace the war system with nonviolence.

To reserve your space for the webinar, register here.

With the scandal around Rupert Murdoch growing by the day, a full-fledged boycott of News Corp. has been launched on the internet. According to the Washington Post:

Boycottmurdoch.com was registered Sunday, with a plan to convince readers “that Murdoch’s tabloid news media … propagate a false image of the world, exaggerate news stories, and spin an agenda which fits Murdoch’s business interests and highly conservative political outlook.”

Boycott Murdoch Facebook and Twitter pages sprung up, garnering hundreds of followers within days.

While the boycott has recieved coverage on many mainstream news outlets, it has yet to gain much traction. The Facebook page has less than 700 fans and the Twitter page is approaching only 1,000 followers. To make even a small dent in Murdoch’s bottom line, the boycott will need to metastasize and quickly.

One thing that makes a complete boycott of all things Murdoch difficult, is the breadth of his holdings. As NPR explains, if you don’t want any of your money going to Murdoch, here are a few things that would be off limits:

• You couldn’t go see Brad Pitt and Terence Malick’s new, critically acclaimed art house film The Tree of Life. It’s distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures, a subsidiary of Fox Filmed Entertainment and NewsCorp. (That means you couldn’t watch Natalie Portman in Black Swan either.)

• You couldn’t watch any of your favorite sitcoms on the online video site Hulu.com, which is a NewsCorp joint venture with NBC Universal and Disney.

• You couldn’t watch Dog Whisperer on the National Geographic Channel. (Fox owns a majority share of the network.)

• You couldn’t read the Wall Street Journal or the New York Post.

• You couldn’t attend a Los Angeles Lakers or New York Rangers game, since Murdoch has partial ownership in both of those major league sports teams. (He also owns parts of the Staples Center and Madison Square Garden; so no Lady Gaga concerts in the Big Apple either.)

• You couldn’t watch American Idol on Fox or buy any albums or singles by the winners and contestants of the show. That means you, Crystal Bowersox fans.

• You couldn’t buy any book published by HarperCollins since NewsCorp owns that company as well. So forget picking up an extra copy of a J.R.R. Tolkien book.

• If you’re Australian, you couldn’t attend a National Rugby League game, or read GQ Australia.

While this list is only partial, boycotting Murdoch’s empire is far from impossible. It simply would mean making some sacrifices, which is necessary for all nonviolent action, and choosing more carefully which news, entertainment and sports to watch or read.

Last week, the Telegraph ran this great video of protesters in Yemen dancing, which reminded me of Emma Goldman’s famous quote: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”

One thing that’s painfully clear in watching this video, however, is the complete absence of women.

The protests have continued this week, as has the crackdown by government security forces. There was a report on NPR yesterday that cited activists who claimed at least 30 protesters were killed over the previous night.

Nevertheless, the protests continued yesterday. As the video below shows, despite hugging and kissing soldiers at a demonstration in Sanaa, the troops still opened fire, killing at least one person and injuring eight others.

Pelican Bay State Prison, with its infamous x-shaped Security Housing Unit section.

On the first day of this month, inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison, joined by inmates in other prisons around the state, began a hunger strike to protest “inhumane and torturous conditions” in the Security Housing Unit, which holds inmates in solitary confinement for decades at a time. They’re still at it; the state has admitted that as many as 6,600 inmates around the state have participated in the strike. On Saturday, corrections officials offered the prisoners a proposed deal, which they unanimously rejected.

This comes after a Supreme Court decision in May that ordered California to reduce its prison population, as overcrowding was causing “needless suffering and death.”

Part of what’s making the standoff worse is the belief that the strike is, in essence, a form of gang activity. For one thing, as Colin Dayan noted in passing in a New York Times op-ed, “How they have managed to communicate with each other is anyone’s guess.” The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), though, isn’t so stumped. Reports the San Francisco Chronicle:

Prison administrators said the 676 remaining inmates who have refused meals since the strike began July 1 probably synchronized their statewide effort through organized criminal networks.

“This goes to show the power, influence and reach of prison gangs,” said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. “Some people are doing it because they want to do it, and some are being ordered to do it.”

Advocates for the prisoners deny that the strike is a gang-related power-play. Continues the Chronicle:

“I don’t think this is something that represents gang control,” said Carol Strickman, an Oakland attorney who is working with the hunger strikers. “This was an unusual example of unity among groups within the CDCR, and that’s knocked them back in a way. Here, the CDCR has managed to unite the groups—inmates are seeing their enemy is not the brown person across the way.”

It stands to reason that the same criminal networks used to carry out crimes could be repurposed for organizing an act of nonviolent resistance. Such networks are not unlike the improvised channels of communication used by so many civil resistance movements—from secret codes, to smuggled letters, to Twitter. But, as Strickman says, carrying out a nonviolent campaign like a hunger strike can transform those networks from the inside. It unifies them, strengthens them, and trains them in modes of empowerment other than killing.

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• Hundreds of thousands of protesters flooded the streets across Yemen on Sunday to demand the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh on the anniversary of his rise to power in  1978.

• Dozens of tents have been erected in Tel Aviv, with plans for further encampments in other Israeli towns and cities, to protest high house prices.

• Several Indian and Pakistani citizens Saturday gathered near Rajghat, Delhi and formed a human chain on Saturday to protest the July 13 Mumbai blasts that left at least 19 people dead and injured 130.

• Journalists at the BBC walked off their jobs Friday to protest planned job cuts as a result of lower government funding.

• Greenpeace activists dressed as polar bears occupied the Edinburgh offices of Cairn Energy on Monday as the environmental group stepped up the pressure on the company over its Arctic exploration plans.

• Around 2,000 farmers, backed by student groups and academics gathered in front of the presidential office in Taipei late on Saturday to protest government proposals that would make it easier for farm land to be forcibly turned over to developers.

• Around 200 people gathered at the Jordan Press Association headquarters earlier today to denounce an attack on journalists by riot police on Friday.

• Greek taxi drivers blocked roads to Athens’ airport and main harbor today, holding up thousands of tourists at the start of a two-day protest against plans to liberalize their trade.

• Several hundred people attended a protest march against the EU-IMF austerity programme in Dublin on Saturday.

• A small group of mass transit activists against freeway expansion unfurled a banner overlooking the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles on Sunday that read “L.A. Beyond Cars.”

On July 13th, I attended an event at the New America Foundation: How to Ignite, or Quash, a Revolution in 140 Characters or Less, which looked at the promise and limitations of technology in spreading democracy. July 13th also happened to be my birthday, and one of the most special messages I received that day came in the form of a tweet from Ghada Shahbender (@ghadasha), an Egyptian human rights activist and one of this year’s winners of the James Lawson Award.

The coolness of this moment immediately hit me. As I sat in this event—crammed into a corner of a crowded room, head buried in my laptop, tweeting take-aways on the role of internet and technology in social movements—an activist in Tahrir Square was also following the event’s Twitter hashtag (#140rev), saw that I was participating in the conversation, found out it was my birthday (presumably via Facebook), instantaneously sent me a message directly to my phone, and then followed up with a photo of her view of Tahrir Square at that very moment.

It’s cool not just because an amazing activist like Ghada Shahbender, whom I had recently met for the first time at the Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict, would think to send me a birthday message, but also because this short 140 character or less digital exchange, encapsulated what is, for me, the power of social media—the connections it can help sustain, the conversations it can create across great distances, and the ability it gives people to instantly share and document key moments.

The birthday tweet from Ghada was not the only cool thing about this event, however. I also got to hear from some of leading thinkers, scholars, and activists in this field like, Rebecca McKinnon (@rmack), Senior Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, Sami Ben Gharbia (@ifikra), co-founder of Nawaat.org and Advocacy Director at Global Voices, Michael Posner (@State_DRL), Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Ahmed Al Omran (@ahmed), blogger and creator of saudijeans.org, and Merlyna Lim (@merlyna), professor at Arizona State University, among others.

You can see my curation of key tweets and resources by checking out this Bundle I put together. But in this post I will just focus on what I consider to be the top five insights from this event.

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Last week, from July 4-8, some 50 people travelled to Queenscliff, Victoria, as part of the Swan Island Peace Convergence to enter into a week of protest and nonviolent civil disobedience to the war in Afghanistan. They came from as far away as Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane and as close as the small, sleepy seaside town of Queenscliff itself. The nonviolent resistance focused on hindering the operations of the Swan Island military base, a facility from which the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) operates, and one which trains the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR), the elite fighters playing most of Australia’s combat role in Afghanistan.

Our goal was total Gandhian transparency – as we said at our first meeting together, we didn’t know if there would be police present, but if they were they would be welcomed as we had nothing to hide. Plans and reflections were put up on our website. We had been liaising with police for weeks beforehand, telling them everything we knew, which precipitated what they called “Operation Swan 2,” a containment force of approximately 180 police members including water police, the dog squad and mounted police. Given there were never more than 20 of us at the gates at any one time, this amounted to a serious overreaction on the part of the state, a trust deficit we were keen to undo.

Part of the reason for transparency was reduced fear – on the part of the participants (many of whom were attending their first “resistance” action) and on the part of the base staff and police. It is only in the context of reduced fear that people are open to changing their minds, and build the trust which is essential for working together and building an inviting movement.

Another factor was honesty and truth – if nonviolence is “truth force” then the force of truth must be given a chance to win the day. If as Gandhi said, “we each have a piece of the truth and the untruth” then it is only in putting our truths together that we both discover a larger truth, and discern the untruth.

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The year 2011 of the “Spring of the Peoples” has already made history in so many ways that it will probably become an essential benchmark in future textbooks—maybe as much as the year 1789, exactly 222 years ago. Here in Paris, I found myself revisiting the classics on the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille—the first massive expression of people power in modern history, a tipping point that changed the face of the world.

Walking on the cobblestones of Place de la Bastille, this ancestor to Tahrir Square, I couldn’t not feel a little bit like the melancholic hero of “Midnight in Paris,” Woody Allen’s latest comedy. If by magic, a time traveling carriage were to go by, I certainly would not resist jumping in it to have a glimpse at Mirabeau, Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre and the others—probably to try to convince them to maintain a strict nonviolent discipline among the people of Paris. Quite an anachronistic dream indeed!

But my reverie is short lived as I am thrust back into present time by the songs and slogans of today’s disobedient citizens of the City of Lights.
It is not uncommon to see demonstrations in La Bastille, the historical rallying point of all expressions of social and political discontent in France. But yesterday the two groups that joyously and noisily took the stage represent quite a new phenomenon in the world of civil disobedience à la française.

On one side, facing the façade of the Opera Bastille and spread on its giant staircase, were “les indignés.” On the other, in rue de la Roquette, were the French activists of the “Mission Bienvenue Palestine,” who were supposed to spend the week July 8-16 in the West Bank visiting various cultural and humanitarian Palestinian organizations, but instead have spent those last few days either in the Israeli jails (from which they were just released on Tuesday and Wednesday) or demonstrating in various key spots in Paris (from Charles de Gaulle airport, which they were not allowed to leave, to the Eiffel Tower). Both of these groups are comprised of people who, less than a year ago, were not engaged in any kind of activism. In the last few months, a new form of globally and locally engaged citizenry was born on the land of liberté égalité and fraternité.

The profile of les indignés, like their Spanish counterparts, is largely made of young people, who are increasingly seeing themselves as a lost generation, a “precarious generation”—the name adopted by one of the leading groups in the movement (Génération Précaire). Those young people are unemployed for the most part, without any real perspective of ever finding a solid job—bouncing from short term internship to short term internship. In the best case scenario they are paid at the level of half the minimum wage—making them youth trapped in an endless roundabout of frustrating job hunting experiences, locked in a no exit, no future depressing scenario. Outside the framework of political parties, these young people came together to express, beyond their anger at not finding jobs or housing, a much bigger agenda, fueled by an idealist vision of the world, where the values of justice and solidarity are high priorities.

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