As we’ve discussed on several occasions before on this site (here, here and here), managing the appearance or attire of those participating in nonviolent action is an important strategic consideration that is too often overlooked. Some movements are thankfully catching on.

At the Tar Sands Action, which I participated in back in August, the organizers wisely called on those planning on risking arrest to come “dressed as if for a business meeting,” because as they explained “this is, in fact, serious business.”

Now, in an effort to counter depictions in the mainstream media of those occupying Wall Street as dirty hippies, a group called Suits for Wall Street—with the tagline “Subversive Business Outfits as Tactical Camouflage”—is raising money to provide suits for the 99 percent. (They are also accepting used suits, which they’ll personally deliver to occupiers.) On their IndieGoGo page, which has already raised far more than their initial goal (but could still use your support), they explain:

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Our good friends at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict are once again teaming up with the U.S. Institute of Peace to offer an eight-week, professional level course called “Civil Resistance and the Dynamics of Nonviolent Confict,” which will run from October 20 through December 8. According to the announcement:

This course is designed to provide an in-depth and multi-disciplinary perspective on civilian-based movements and campaigns that defend and obtain basic rights and justice around the world, and in so doing transform the global security environment.

The course will examine such questions as: What is civil resistance? What determines the success or failure of a civil resistance movement? How can professionals in the field better understand and analyze what elements are at work when civilians use nonviolent tactics? How and when should external agents—governments, NGOs, media, business—act or not act when civil resistance is gaining momentum? How can the dynamics and history of civil resistance better inform the fields of conflict management, development, diplomacy, and peacemaking?

The class will be taught by Dr. Maciej Bartkowski, Daryn Cambridge and Dominic Kiraly. The registration fee is $345 and participants (pending approval) will be able to receive one graduate credit for the course from Rutgers University that may be transferable to their academic institution. To learn more about the class or sign up, click here.

• Chicago police arrested 21 people protesting against economic inequality on Tuesday at two rallies. The arrests came a day after thousands of people including teachers, religious leaders and union workers marched in downtown Chicago to voice mounting anger over joblessness and economic woes in protests that snarled rush-hour traffic.

• In New York City, some 500 supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement marched through the neighborhoods of some of the city’s wealthiest residents on Tuesday.

• Police in Boston raided the “Occupy Boston” encampment early yesterday morning, arresting about 100 peaceful protesters in the latest crackdown on protests linked to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

• Approximately 100 protestors, affiliated with October2011  Stop the Machine, and some from the Occupy D.C. movement, showed up at the Hart Senate Office Building yesterday morning for a “flash mob” protest, chanting phrases like “End War Now” and “The People United Will Never Be Defeated” and “We Are the 99 Percent.” Six were arrested.

• New strikes hit Greece on Tuesday as the government finalised talks with its EU-IMF creditors on additional spending cuts to secure payment of a bankruptcy-saving loan.

• Chanting “This has to change,” some 200 Haitians marked World Day for Decent Work on Friday with a march to the National Industrial Parks Company (Sonapi), where most of Port-au-Prince’s low-wage assembly plants are located.

• Strikes disrupted some French trains and schools on Tuesday as unions across France protested government austerity measures.

• Workers for Bosnia’s Republika Srpska (RS) state company “Railway RS” have been on strike for the last two days and are asking management to  fulfill their requirements for improving the collective agreement.

• Palestinian officials said Tuesday that around 2,000 prisoners held by Israel have joined a hunger strike demanding better conditions behind bars.

• Algerian police on Sunday arrested roughly 25 unemployed people as they prepared to rally against joblessness near the presidential compound.

People applaud as they participate in a peaceful protest in Minsk, September 21, 2011. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko

Last week, the parliament of Belarus outlawed silent protests, which had sprung up in the country after the government devalued its currency in May. As Reuters reports:

Amendments to the law approved on Wednesday classify any “mass presence of people in a public place agreed beforehand … aimed at performing actions agreed beforehand or inaction … to express political views or protest,” as picketing which requires official approval.

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, who is often described as Europe’s last dictator, said that the protests, which took place at least once a week this summer, were part of a plot to overthrow his government.

The timing of this move is interesting. With the silent and clapping protests apparently dying down in recent weeks, it’s hard not to see how this move will only backfire—reinvigorating the opposition.

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When is a Person not a Person?

Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PSR) recently answered this absurd question with the obvious and embarrassing answer: when it’s a corporation. According to PSR’s statement, in case anyone is confused, a human being:

is a complex organism with capacities for joy and pain, reflection, and the compassionate appreciation of others. Mature persons are expected to display reasoned judgment, and are personally responsible for their own actions (our emphasis).  Human beings live, breath, think, experience emotions, and internalize values such as empathy and caring for others. Like all sentient beings, they suffer, and die.

Corporations possess none of these functions, which make being human sacred, valuable and worthy of dignity. As the Occupy movements grow in remarkably inspiring ways, they have a unique opportunity to raise the human image from the slander and propaganda of the corporate media—where our capacity for consumption defines us and our desire for wealth drives us—to a more promising, and far more accurate conception of what makes us truly human: our capacity for nonviolence, motivated by our most precious desire for freedom. As Gandhi put it, “Non-violence is the law of the humans…”

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Police officers and a detective watch Occupy Wall Street's first weekday march on Wall Street, September 19, 2011. Photo by author.

Today marks two significant milestones in one for the ever-growing occupation movement. Concerning the flagship site, Liberty Plaza near Wall Street, Mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed his willingness to allow the protest to continue as long as it needs to. “The bottom line is—people want to express themselves,” he’s quoted as having said in The Wall Street Journal. “And as long as they obey the laws, we’ll allow them to.” Then, in the late afternoon in Washington, D.C., Park Police officials made an offer to the October 2011 movement now occupying Freedom Plaza along Pennsylvania Avenue, which seemed both shocking and inevitable: a four-month permit to stay, subsequently accepted by consensus by the occupiers’ General Assembly. The officials reportedly even expressed to the occupation’s organizers their personal support for the movement.

“Would it be helpful for you to have arrests?” they asked. Nudge, wink.

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Thanks to his near-comprehensive reporting on Occupy Wall Street for Waging Nonviolence these past three weeks, editor Nathan Schneider has become an authority on this emerging movement for major progressive and mainstream media outlets. Here is a quick roundup of Nathan’s key appearances:

• In an article for The Nation, Nathan reports on the start of the Freedom Plaza occupation last week and its significance in light of Occupy Wall Street.
• As part of a discussion for the New York Times opinion page, Nathan calls attention to the power of sustained occupation, the danger of disorganized civil disobedience tactics, and the threat of co-optation.
• Writing for Harper’s, Nathan explains the origins of the General Assembly.
• Nathan wrote what has become the definitive Occupy Wall Stret FAQ for The Nation. Ezra Klein of the Washington Post called it “the single best place to start.” It was also republished in the occupation’s own Occupied Wall Street Journal.
• After The New York Times published a rather insightful and negative piece, Nathan wrote a letter to the editor, defending OWS from the dismissive attack.
• Nathan has been quoted by the New York Observer, The Week, MSNBC, Slate and others.
• As for television, Nathan has been on New York 1 and Al Jazeera (unfortunately, no video for the former has surfaced yet online).
• Nathan’s been on countless radio shows, the biggest being NPR News, CBC’s The Current and WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show.

• Thousands of Malaysian protesters rallied on Sunday against plans by an Australian mining company to open a rare earth processing plant in an eastern resort town, saying they fear it will harm the environment.

• In one of the largest rallies in years in Mogadishu, thousands of Somalis packed into a stadium on Sunday to denounce the Shabab Islamist group for the suicide bombing last week that killed scores of people, many of them students.

• More than 2,000 people protesting potential cuts to the national health care system staged a sit-in on Westminster Bridge in London on Sunday afternoon, blocking traffic on one of the city’s busiest bridges.

• Dozens of preachers from mosques across Morocco protested Monday in the capital over tight controls on their preaching, the first time such a demonstration has been allowed to go forward.

• Bulgarian protesters marched on the nation’s capital, Sofia, on Sunday, chanting slogans against the government’s plans to start exploiting shale natural gas deposits.

• WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and socialite Jemima Khan led a protest in London Saturday against the start of the 10th year of war in Afghanistan. Organizers of the Stop The War Coalition claimed 5,000 people attended the protest in central London’s historic Trafalgar Square.

• Thousands of women gathered in the southern Yemeni city to celebrate Tawakkol Karman, the first Arab woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Demonstrators also called on the international community to support a revolution in Yemen. At least 38 women were injured by rocks and batons when pro-government gangs attacked Sunday’s march.

The people who’ve come from around the country to occupy Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. helped fulfill their promise to “Stop the Machine” by entering, and ultimately closing down for the day, the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum. They chose the museum for its glorification of weaponry in general, its special exhibit on unmanned flying drones in particular, and the tribute it pays to the arms industry by naming its IMAX theater after Lockheed Martin.

Today’s action was proposed at Friday night’s General Assembly meeting on the plaza, most vocally by David Swanson—creator of, as well as much else, WarIsACrime.org. Some initially objected that its meaning might be lost on onlookers, but the idea prevailed.

The march itself—or “stroll,” as it was called, to avoid militaristic jargon—started around 2 p.m. today and reached the museum about half an hour later. Swanson was leading the march, together with members of Code Pink and a contingent of young Wisconsinites. (Also in the lead was confessed agent provocateur Patrick Howley, one of the “hundreds of earnest and principled reporters” whose careers The American Spectator claims to have launched.) Several protesters made it inside and, from the second floor, dropped a pink banner that said, “NO DRONES / END AFGHAN WAR.” But when as many as 500 “strolling” people surged up into the museum carrying signs and chanting, guards used pepper spray to repel them as they got just inside the doorway.

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