• Syrian security forces shot dead at least 20 protesters today as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across the country in the biggest protests so far against President Bashar al-Assad.

• Thousands of demonstrators have rallied across Egypt’s major cities to  protest against what they say is the slow pace of justice and reforms since the  military took control of the country in February.

• On Wednesday in Belarus, police detained dozens of people in the capital Minsk and other major cities during a weekly protest organised through the Internet by a group called “Revolution through the Social Network”.

• On Thursday, a crowd of protesters gathered outside Rupert Murdoch’s Central Park home in New York City to urge a Congressional investigation into News Corp.

• A group of climate activists calling for a change from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources led a protest at the gates of the Bridgeport Harbor Power Station in Connecticut on Wednesday.

• Cabin crew with Algeria’s state-run airline were on strike for a fourth day on Thursday, forcing the cancellation of flights and leaving thousands of passengers stranded on both sides of the Mediterranean.

• In Namibia, production at the Rio Tinto Rössing Uranium Mine remained at a standstill on Wednesday, after workers downed tools on Tuesday morning as a result of a dispute with management over production bonuses.

• Journalists in the Kerala capital Thursday took to the streets to protest assaults on three of their colleagues and staged a sit-in outside the state assembly to demand immediate action.

Unfolding this month at the Boston Review is “China’s Other Revolution”—an essay by MIT political scientist Edward S. Steinfeld and a series of responses, all on the subject of whether and when real democratic reform will happen, or is already happening, in authoritarian, oligarchic China.

Steinfeld is mostly dismissive of the ongoing “Jasmine Revolution,” which Ayushman Jamwal writes about today at Waging Nonviolence, claiming (incorrectly in past tense) that it “drew small crowds and little energy.” Nevertheless, he urges us not to interpret the recent spate of crackdowns and arrests by the government—including the arrest and subsequent release of the artist Ai Weiwei—as indicative that the regime’s hold on power is especially strong. On the contrary:

Those who doubt that profound change and harsh repression can coexist in China should look to the history of South Korea and Taiwan. In January 1987, just seven years after a democratic uprising was crushed in the South Korean city of Gwangju and a few months before the military-backed regime would yield to popular demands for open elections, student protestors were being summarily rounded up by the police. At least one of the students died during interrogation. That same year Taiwan’s Kuomintang government announced the end of 38 years of martial law, a key step toward the establishment of democracy there. But in the months before the announcement, dissenters were still being shipped off, often by secretive military tribunals, to the notorious gulag on Green Island. Crackdowns on opponents, extrajudicial detentions, and violence are often the last-ditch efforts of authoritarian regimes.

He goes on to detail the ways in which China’s many economic and educational reforms are pointing toward inevitable political change in the next generation or so, which is already be in the works.

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Student protester arrested at a "strolling" action in Shanghai.

Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. built movements strong enough to confront hostile, often violent governments. While the world reveres their contributions to peace and justice, however, those working for democracy and human rights in China are envious. Both leaders, compared to their counterparts in China today, had far more political space to gather, strategize, and communicate with the masses. But even under their own difficult circumstances, Chinese activists have devised novel civil-resistance campaigns, both in cyberspace and in the streets, fomenting what has come to be called the “Jasmine Revolution.”

One of the leading figures in this struggle is 28-year-old Gaius Gracchus (as he is known online). After being imprisoned in China for speaking out and seeking asylum in the United States, Gaius studied classics at Columbia University. He’s now president of the Chinese Youth Foundation (CYF), whose members are located both in China and internationally—in Paris, Seoul, Hong Kong, Australia, and the United States. At his apartment in New York, Gaius and I talked about what he’s doing to stay one step ahead of a government determined to stop him.

“I want to promote social justice and community cohesion, and prepare the next generation of intellectuals who can champion human rights in China,” he explains.

The social conditions in China are rapidly deteriorating. “People in my generation cannot find jobs, mortgages, or housing,” says Gaius. “Inflation is very high. Prosecuted people appeal in vain. Very few have access to good quality education and healthcare, and the state security apparatus is violently repressive. A culture of ‘you get it if you can pay for it’ is dominant in China.” People across the country yearn for change and are constantly venting their anger. Gaius has learned that, in 2010 alone, there were over 320,000 incidents of civil unrest across the country. Security forces often subdue such unrest violently.

In the city of Guangzhou this past May, for instance, after three people were killed by local police, three days of mass protest ended when the army killed over 100. Around the same time, in the Inner Mongolia, peaceful protests against the exploitation of natural resources were also brutally suppressed by the army.

Gaius has no confidence that scattered protests like these can deliver real change. “The random incidents exhibit no holistic strategies in tackling with the Chinese government, only a concern for personal and communal welfare,” he believes. “It highlights the fragmented nature of Chinese society across cultural, regional, and class lines, which is a major challenge to any strategic disobedience initiative.”

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Tina Rosenberg, whose recent book Join the Club is a must read for activists, had a piece on the New York Times’ Opinionator blog yesterday criticizing the importance of social media in social movements. In keeping with the thesis of her book—that peer pressure is the driving force behind social change—Rosenberg argues, much like Malcolm Gladwell, that “the idea of Facebook Revolution has been a great example of wishful thinking by the digerati.” She does cite, however, one recent event that gave her some second thoughts.

On Friday, I wrote about Friendfactor, an organizing tool used in the successful battle for gay marriage in New York State.  Friendfactor combines social media and real-world friendship to motivate people to get active.  Instead of getting an e-mail from a group asking you to support a political goal, you get one from a close friend or family member asking you to “help me get my full rights.”    Friendfactor is particularly interesting because it seems to offer a solution to one of the biggest obstacles in using social media for political change:  people need close personal connections in order to get them to take action — especially if that action is risky and difficult.

The Friendfactor story is an interesting one in its own right and worth a read. But despite the promise it offers for strong-tie building, Rosenberg still concludes that social media are nothing without “careful strategy, meticulous planning, strict nonviolence, unity.”

David Faris took exception to this belittling of digital activism in a blog post for the Meta-Activism Project:

What I would love is for Tina Rosenberg to find someone who studies digital media and thinks that street tactics were unimportant in the Egyptian revolution. My own interviews with activists and planners suggest that at least 10 days of careful on-the-ground planning – including timing how long it would take to march down certain streets as well as producing tactics to produce the illusion of greater numbers – went into the Tahrir protests. I don’t think any rational person would argue that the “digerati” put out the call on Facebook and then magically there were a million people in the streets.  Why must these two things be mutually exclusive? Egyptian organizers also learned a great deal about protest tactics from their Tunisian counterparts – and much of this learning took place with online exchanges, including back-and-forth exchanges on, yes, Facebook. This rigid demarcation between “on-the-ground” and “digital” simply does not square with the reality of today’s organizers.

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After months of good-faith reforms and patience, the drama is back in Egypt’s Tahrir Square as protesters are preparing for a potential showdown with the state’s military rule.  The movement, among other things, is demanding an end to military rule – a more radical call that reflects both the frustration with the status quo and the hope for a better way.  Last Friday, at the “Day of Persistence,” Egypt saw its largest resurgence of public protest since former President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February.  The nation-wide protests are now in their sixth day as Egyptians are camping out in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, staging sit-ins and blocking traffic in Alexandria, and threatening to shut down Suez’s tunnel access to Sinai.  So why are the people confronting – albeit nonviolently – an interim government that has promised elections and a new constitution?  A glance at the collective demands drafted in Tahrir Square make clear that the movement’s demands – both political and economic – have not progressed much under the military rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

The political demands involve fair, civilian trials for the hundreds of #Jan25 supporters who are imprisoned and/or sentenced by military courts post-Mubarak.  Related is the demand for accountability for police-sponsored murders of activists, indictments of the Mubarak regime’s leadership, and the replacement of current key political leaders with civilians.  Less politically-oriented – but garnering more attention despite its lack of specificity – is the demand for economic reform.  Central to the importance of new economic policy, no doubt, are Egypt’s vibrant labor unions that have found themselves under increased scrutiny and criticism by government officials and members of the Egyptian liberal class.  The Mubarak regime lost its grasp when a general strike swept across Egypt.  Egyptian workers were celebrated for their part in the movement to topple Mubarak.  But now Egypt’s workers are catching heat from some compatriots for their continued protests that demand economic justice and workers’ rights:

“There is total class warfare going on in Egypt right now that I don’t even think [the liberal movements] can see,” says Joshua Stacher, a political scientist and Egypt expert at Kent State University. “If middle upper class, urban people in Cairo and Alexandria get some of their demands met, they could care less about minimum wage, or the fact that the healthcare system is complete crap,” he says of the competing array of post-revolutionary demands. “The dominant discourse that’s coming out on TV is that it’s not the right time to protest for these things. Like ‘You shouldn’t have a living wage right now, you’re being greedy.

There is little debate that Egyptian workers – both organized and unorganized – wield tremendous power for the political and economic future of the country.  The Christian Science Monitor reports that:

The labor movement, at a time of populist economic anger and, could become one of the most influential forces during this critical period of transition in Egypt. ‘The labor force is the only social force acting on a daily basis,’ says activist and journalist Hossam al-Hamalawy. “You can bomb Tahrir Square if you want to, but if there’s a general strike, what can you do?”

Such a perspective highlights the importance of the mainstream workforce to join in nonviolent social change.  While the history of nonviolent social movement has been politically successful in bringing down dictators, throwing out occupiers, and gaining political rights, the struggle for economic justice has been one where nonviolent action has lagged behind – particularly after a revolutionary victory.  It is clear that there remain class divisions in Egypt – splitting the country into those who demand political reform as the urgent need while disregarding those  who see the prescient reality of low (and in some cases no) pay and high unemployment suffered by the poor and the working class as fundamental to a New Egypt.  Jadaliyya‘s Hesham Sallam, in his article “Striking Back at Egyptian Workers,” offers an in-depth look at the different narratives playing out in this struggle between the workers and Egypt’s political elite and interim government.  Workers, activists, organizers, and bloggers have clearly defined the movement for a people’s Egypt to not be over, but it remains uncertain how their demands and desires will materialize into a constructive paradigm of new economic policies, laws, and social welfare programs when the political process itself remains tenuous at best.

• More than 100 environmental activists from across the country descended on Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s office Tuesday to demand that he rescind his support for the Keystone XL oil pipeline and the ExxonMobil megaload transportation project. Six of the activists are occupying the lobby of the governor’s office indefinitely.

• Thousands of Egyptians marched on the cabinet headquarters in central Cairo on Tuesday to demand the removal of the ruling military council. Meanwhile, in Alexandria, hundreds of demonstrators cordoned off the stock exchange building, posting a sign that reads, “Closed until all revolution demands are met!”

• Hundreds gathered outside the White House on Monday to protest the Colombia free trade agreement, which they say will kill jobs here, and threaten communities in Colombia.

• Thousands of Greek Cypriots have marched on the presidential palace in Nicosia to protest the deaths of 12 people in a blast at a navy base.

• Several dozen union workers gathered at a downtown state office building yesterday to protest Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn’s decision to block raises for 33,000 employees.

• Opponents of Senate Bill 1070, Arizona’s immigration law, marched to Chase Field Tuesday afternoon to picket outside Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game.

• Workers at state-owned Corporacion del Cobre de Chile, the world’s biggest copper producer, went on strike Monday to protest a modernization plan they see as a step toward privatization.

• South Korean female activist Kim Jin-Suk began the 188th day of a sit-in on Tuesday atop a giant crane to protest major layoffs at a South Korean shipyard.

• Hundreds of Afghans took to the streets Monday to protest cross-border shelling from Pakistan that has killed dozens of people in recent weeks.

• More than a hundred people gathered in Morris Cove—New Haven, Connecticut’s easternmost area—last weekend to protest the Army Corps of Engineers’ plan to dump 250,000 cubic yards of toxic dredging waste in New Haven Harbor. They were joined by a flotilla of 43 kayaks and power boats, which processed around the dumping site.

The Israeli government passed a law yesterday that allows for any Israeli person or organization calling for the boycott of Israel or the settlements to be sued by the boycott’s target without having to prove any damage was sustained. While members of the opposition party Kadima have rightfully slammed the law as outrageous and shameful, the greater point seems to be that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is having an effect. Palestinian BDS National Committee Coordinator Hind Awwad explained just that in a press release today:

This new legislation, which violates international law, is testament to the success of the rapidly growing global BDS movement and a realisation within political elites inside Israel that the state is becoming a world pariah in the way that South Africa once was.

In addition to proving the effectiveness of the movement, the law itself seems rather impotent. Since it can’t physically prevent people from not buying things, the law can only target people calling for it. And since the only people who can be subjected to the law are Israelis, there’s likely only a handful of organizers who could actually be sued. And those people are probably the type of principled activists who would be only too happy to challenge the law as a form of civil disobedience. In the end, the law may just backfire and only serve to underscore the poor state of democracy and free speech in Israel.

It seems the law has already inspired greater support for the boycott. As Haaretz reported:

Peace Now movement announced Monday it opened a Facebook page calling for a boycott of products that come from the settlements. On Tuesday it plans to launch a national campaign, with the aim of convincing tens of thousands of people to support the boycott.

If you are looking for a solid, in-depth analysis of the situation in Syria right now, I’d recommend a recent piece in the Economist, which has some great insights into the protest movement and the strength of Assad’s regime. While the article concludes that it is unlikely that Assad will fall, at least any time soon, it goes on to paint a picture of a pro-democracy movement that is strong and growing.

…Syria’s opposition has gone from being a few scattered groups holding spontaneous, isolated protests in March to become a nationwide force.

More than 100,000 people now demonstrate every Friday and the regime cannot rein them in, though it has closed roads to restive towns, reinforced the borders and restricted access to the internet. Demonstrations have been held in at least 150 towns and villages in all corners of the triangle-shaped country.

[...]

…Syria’s opposition is becoming more coherent, as well as more widespread. It is centred on a youth movement based outside the capital. Its detractors are right when they say that few articulate leaders have emerged, no formal structures exist and many of the demonstrations have taken place outside big cities.

But this is no peasant revolt. It has the support of large parts of the Sunni Muslim clergy. University graduates and longstanding dissidents, on the fringes at first, now march alongside day labourers.

The article goes on to argue that many of the regime’s traditional pillars of support – from the economic elite and Assad’s own Alawite minority to the Christian and Kurdish populations – are beginning to wobble, at least in part because the uprising has done significant damage to the Syrian economy. Apparently, business is down by about half, unemployment is up by fifty percent, and billions of dollars have left the country.

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I’ve been watching with fascination and delight the “Welcome to Palestine” action and the reaction by the Israeli government, security apparatus, and press. Why delight? Because I am one of those people who have arrived and departed Ben Gurion Airport—eight times so far—and understand the harassment one can face if “confessing” to be en route to or from occupied Palestine. Some of my most shameful moments as an educator, workshop facilitator, and writer/blogger have taken place at Ben Gurion Airport.

“What is your purpose in Israel?” the passport control agent asks. “To visit friends in Israel,” or, “For tourism in Tel Aviv,” or, “To attend a  conference in Israel.” Upon departing, I lied as well, as many of us who stand in solidarity with Palestinian nonviolent activists often do. The lies expedite our exit, protect our friends and colleagues, and safeguard the truth (through photos, videos, interviews, and stories) that we intend to release once we’re home.

The “Welcome to Palestine” campaign and conference confronts a deception. It exposes the control that Israel has had over our right to freedom of assembly and association, and to Palestinians’ right to those basic universal human rights. More importantly, it directly challenges the status quo, particularly the Israeli travel tradition and policy imposed on activists, educators, filmmakers, and citizen journalists for too long. The campaign is about truth, as the organizers and participants state in one of their objectives: “refuse to lie about the reason we have come or to sign illegal commitments not to enter the Palestinian territories. We will not hide the fact that we have come to visit our Palestinian friends.”

From a theoretic and strategic perspective, the action undertaken by those foreign activists is selective resistance, highlighting a specific, limited issue or grievance that symbolizes general oppression. This nonviolent tactic (arriving at the airport and being forthcoming with one’s intention to visit Palestine) is a form of noncooperation. Although international solidarity activists have participated in campaigns and nonviolent actions for years in occupied Palestine, what we witnessed this weekend is a unique action that openly defies a policy directly targeting those of us who have supported Palestinians for years, but who could not be truthful even though we broke no laws.

“Welcome to Palestine” has incrementally raised the cost of a repressive policy. But for Israel the cost is more than just financial. Not only was the government forced to mobilize hundreds of additional security forces at the airport, it also had to work overtime on a public relations campaign, negotiate, coax, and perhaps coerce particular international airlines, and then manage its domestic press as well as international media coverage. The noncooperation campaign cost the opponent time, money, resources, reputation, and legitimacy. Upon arresting the activists detained at the airport, the Israeli government will also bear diplomatic pressure. It will have to manage and repair its self-image, as independent journalists on the scene portray bullies or a mobocracy. This is a very different picture than the state’s traditional portrayal of its citizens as victims. That narrative is now being turned inside out.

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• Tens of thousands of Malaysian protesters ignored police warnings and descended on the capital Kuala Lumpur to attend a banned rally on Friday, demanding electoral reforms. Police arrested almost 1,700 people, fired rounds of tear gas and used toxic-laced water cannons to disperse the crowds.

• Thousands of Moroccans staged protests on Sunday, the latest in a series of peaceful demonstrations by a youth-led movement to demand reforms that go beyond constitutional changes crafted by the palace.

• Members of the 6 April Movement in Egypt and others who have been staging a sit-in at Al-Mansheia Square in Port Said declared Saturday that they have started a hunger strike at 2pm that will last until all their demands are met.

• Israel has begun deporting activists attempting to enter the occupied West Bank as part of a so-called “flytilla” operation. Thirty-six people were deported from Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport to Frankfurt, Germany, Sunday. Another group is expected to be deported on a Geneva-bound flight today.

• On Friday, there was a demonstration in the northern city of Tripoli in support of  the uprising in Syria.

• In Iraq, at least seven anti-government protesters were arrested and beaten by Iraqi security forces as hundreds of angry demonstrators gathered Friday in central Baghdad.

• Over the weekend in California, about 1,600 inmates continued to take part in a hunger strike protesting conditions in the state prison system’s maximum-security isolation units.

• Standard Chartered bank’s South Korean unit said Monday it would temporarily shut dozens of offices due to a strike by workers, which started more than two weeks ago, protesting at attempts to adopt a performance-based pay system.