An article published by CounterPunch yesterday, “Inconvenient Truths about Tar Sands Action,” argues that the grassroots campaign targeting the Keystone XL pipeline was nothing more than “a manipulated charade, funded and run with loads of money from pro-Obama Democrats through non-transparent organizations like the Tides Foundation.” It follows, then, according to the article, that the real goal of Tar Sands Action “was to manufacture Obama a ‘green victory’ during his first term in the run up to the 2012 election.”

In short, for those thousands of you who participated in the White House sit-ins or encirclement and became “True Believers in the mission,” you were duped. What you took part in “was not social change, nor was it grassroots empowerment.” You became nothing more than a name on an email list. You were “converted into clicktivists who will hopefully contribute money to the Obama ‘I’m In’ 2012 Presidential campaign, ecological landscape be damned.”

I’d ask you how it feels, but I should know. I’m one of you. The article mentions Waging Nonviolence along with the socialist group Solidarity and author Naomi Klein as being among the “principled radicals” who “drank the kool-aid.” So how do I feel? Well, for someone who has supposedly been drugged, I feel remarkably sober and unconvinced.

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Photo by Alex Fradkin.

Sometimes justice requires a little imagination. On Saturday, when much of the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York was loudly denouncing police violence against minorities and protesters, a small group of environmentalists dreamed up a way to get the police to focus on the crimes of the 1 percent, to the point of arresting five corporate suits on United Nations property.

Granted, those five were actually members of the OWS affinity group Disrupt Dirty Power, which used Saturday’s action (billed as a “mock’upation”) to launch a month of actions targeting the “corrupt partnership between Wall Street, politicians and the business of pollution.” Police officers seemed thrown for a loop as they tore down tents bearing corporate logos and cuffed people who claimed to be from Bank of America and ExxonMobil. Compared to the rowdy anti-NYPD march earlier that afternoon, this time, the cops had more of a chance to think about what side they’re really on.

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• Tens of thousands of students protested on Thursday against a 75 percent tuition hike at universities in Canada’s mostly French-speaking Quebec province, bringing downtown Montreal to a standstill. Since mid-February, nearly 300,000 students have boycotted classes, blocked bridges and held smaller protests around the province.

• More than 1,000 indigenous protesters reached Ecuador’s capital Thursday after a two-week march from the Amazon to oppose plans for large-scale mining on their lands. The protesters were joined by thousands of anti-government protesters in Quito.

• Hundreds of farmers gathered in the Vietnamese capital on Thursday to demand the return of rice fields they say were confiscated by heavily armed police just days after receiving an eviction notice.

• More than 1,000 people gathered in a downtown Brattleboro park on Thursday to call for the closure of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. It was the first day of the plant’s operation after the expiration of its 40-year license. Over 130 protesters were arrested for unlawful trespass as part of a civil disobedience action.

• More than a thousand people rallied in New York City’s Union Square on Wednesday evening with the parents of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager who was shot dead in Florida in late February.

• Portuguese workers halted trains, shut ports and paralyzed most public transport in the capital Lisbon on Thursday to protest austerity measures and labor reforms imposed as a condition of a 78-billion-euro ($103 billion) bailout.

• Three Tibetans who have been on hunger strike outside the UN headquarters for the past month ended their protest Thursday after the UN said investigators would look into events in Tibet.

• Several people were arrested on Tuesday after a rally in a Phoenix intersection to protest immigration policies of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

• Several hundred Tibetans have protested against Chinese rule in the western province of Qinghai since a monk there set himself on fire earlier this week. The advocacy group Free Tibet has posted what it calls “unprecedented footage” of this highly restricted and restive part of western China.

• Between 5,000 and 7,000 Chilean high school students marched down Santiago’s main avenue on Thursday to demand free quality education and protest the expulsion of about 100 students who joined last year’s protests. Police broke up the march with water canons after a few hundred students crossed a police barrier and tried to march to the education ministry.

• Thousands of union workers gathered across Illinois on Thursday to protest Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed budget cuts that include mass layoffs and the closure and consolidation of several state facilities, including prisons.

• Hundreds of people gathered in the Rotunda of the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City on Thursday to urge Gov. Gary Herbert to veto a bill that would forbid school districts to teach use of contraceptives.

• Russian opposition activist Sergei Udaltsov started a hunger strike on Thursday after being sentenced to 10 days in jail for disobeying the police following a rally against Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

• Afghans took to the streets on Thursday to demand a U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 civilians be prosecuted in Afghanistan as word spread that the American military moved him out of the country.

• A group of about 75 demonstrators assembled at LOVE Park on Wednesday to support immigrant rights. Two college students were arrested after blocking traffic with banners and refusing to move

• As part of a campaign to fight violence against women, pictures of victims were hung on walls in the Cerro Gordo neighborhood of Ecatepec, outside Mexico City on Wednesday.

• Tens of thousands of South Africans marched peacefully through their main cities Wednesday to demand the governing African National Congress do more for the poor.

• Hundreds of native Ecuadorans began a cross-country march Thursday to protest policies by President Rafael Correa they say will result in more mining in the Amazon region and threaten the environment and their way of life.

• Hundreds of Saudi women took part in a protest against discrimination and mismanagement at the King Khalid University, in Abha, on Wednesday. At least 50 women were reportedly injured when security forces and religious police moved in to break it up.

• South Korean female workers performed in penguin costumes in Seoul on Wednesday to protest growth in temporary employment.

• Thousands of Taiwanese farmers took to the streets Thursday, staging the nation’s biggest demonstration in years against the government’s plan to allow U.S. beef imports.

• With elaborate make-up depicting bodies bruised, bleeding and burned by acid, four FEMEN activists were arrested in Istanbul on Wednesday to protest domestic violence in Turkey.

Students protesting in Valencia. Photo by Nicholas Hegel McClelland for TIME.

• Thousands of demonstrators turned out in European cities on Wednesday to protest against austerity measures. In Spain, students across the country staged sit-ins and noisy demonstrations over crisis spending cuts, labor market reforms and recent police violence against protesters. Meanwhile, unions staged demonstrations in Paris, Athens, Lisbon and Brussels.

• Several thousand supporters of two-time President Jean-Bertrand Aristide filled the streets of Haiti’s capital Wednesday on the eighth anniversary of his ouster, accusing the country’s current leader of not doing enough to improve their lives.

• Students, educators and Occupy Wall Street activists held demonstrations Thursday across California to protest state budget cuts to education, partially shutting down at least one campus, the University of California, Santa Cruz.

• Some University of Florida students gave low grades Thursday to faculty member and state Senate President Mike Haridopolos, filling out evaluations criticizing his support of university budget cuts and taping them to the front of UF’s administration building.

• Dozens gathered outside the Timms Centre at the University of Alberta on Thursday where Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe was being awarded an honorary degree to protest the company’s efforts to privatize water.

• More than 100 Ohio State students held a protest on Thursday against growing college costs and what they say is increasing administrative pressure to run the university like a business.

• About 200 Arcelor Mittal workers from across Spain protested on Thursday against a decision by the company to close its steel factory in Madrid.

• Around 200 residents of Kenya’s coastal island of Lamu protested on Thursday against a planned huge port to be constructed near the UNESCO-listed isle, accusing the government of ignoring their concerns.

• About 10,000 demonstrators took to the streets Thursday in northern Azerbaijan to protest alleged corruption by a district official.

In the midst of the excitement that continues to surround the Occupy movement, it can be unfortunately easy to forget that occupations tend to be anything but empowering. Creativity and imagination often fall by the wayside when the struggle of daily life becomes the main focus of thought. Yet it is those very positive traits that lead to liberation.

Last summer, while traveling in Paris, I met a Palestinian playwright named Abdelfattah Abusrour, who has made it his life’s mission to inspire the imaginations of the young people living in refugee camps in the West Bank. He runs a cultural center in Bethlehem’s Aida Camp called Al Rowwad (which is “pioneer” in Arabic), where children are taught, what he calls, “beautiful acts of resistance.”

Shortly after seeing him perform with his adult troupe–several members of which have been with Al Rowwad since they themselves were children–I sat down with Abusrour to get more of his story, which can now be read in the current issue of The Progressive. Here is just a quick excerpt:

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• Hundreds of thousands of people, many waving red and white union flags, protested across Spain on Sunday against sweeping labor market reforms that make it easier to slash pay and lay off workers.

• Hundreds of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators and prison reform activists joined forces outside the gates of a prison in San Quentin, California on Monday to protest high incarceration rates and harsh living conditions.

• Several thousand banner-waving protesters staged rallies in Athens and Thessaloniki to protest budget cuts as Eurozone ministers prepare to approve a new 130-billion-euro bailout for debt-crippled Greece.

• Thousands of Puerto Ricans marched to La Fortaleza, the governor’s residence in San Juan, on Feb. 19 to protest rightwing governor Luis Fortuño’s plan for a 92-mile, $450-million natural gas pipeline cutting through the island.

• Hundreds of Russians protesting against Vladimir Putin drove through Moscow Sunday ahead of the March 4 presidential election expected to seal his grip on power. Meanwhile, Russian protesters set up plastic elephants, toy tigers and Lego men carrying banners against Vladimir Putin’s 12-year rule in the Siberian city of Barnaul, where demonstrations have been banned ahead of the March 4 presidential election.

• A 27-year-old convicted murderer has died while on a hunger strike to protest restrictions on access to health, good food, legal services and other amenities in a segregation unit at a California prison, prison officials said on Friday.

• Some 200 workers at an idled steel plant in northeast France occupied the site Monday, seeking to put their plight on the political map ahead of a presidential election where industrial decline is a central theme.

“I think we just won!”

That’s what Zack Malitz said, looking rather bewildered, when he got off the phone with New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s office earlier today. The crowd of no more than a hundred activists gathered behind him in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza—just blocks away from Schumer’s office—did not yet know the news. But it seems their plan to march to his office and demand that he work to block an amendment to the Senate’s transportation bill forcing approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would run from Canada’s tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico, scared the senator straight.

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Egyptians took to the streets on Saturday to mark the one-year anniversary of Mubarak’s fall and launch a new campaign of civil disobedience aimed at bringing down the military rulers now in power. But a poor turnout exposed the country’s lingering divisions and left many wondering whether the revolution will ever be completed.

The answer might be found thousands of miles away, in the Maldives—a small Muslim nation in the middle of the Indian Ocean. This tropical tourist destination for the rich and famous has seen a week of turmoil, after its only democratically- elected president was forced out of office on Tuesday in what he says was a coup by supporters of the deposed dictatorial regime.

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