Meg Pedersen graduated from Barnard College and is currently based in Washington, DC. She has lived in Denmark and Chile and focuses her work on writing and feminist advocacy.
Articles by Meg Pedersen
Experiments with truth: 5/28/10
- At their commencement ceremony last week, University of Maryland graduates held signs above their caps to protest the BP oil spill and demanded clean energy now.
- Thousands of French workers marched yesterday in Paris and other cities to protest planned pension reforms.
- Dozens of teachers rallied in Karachi, Pakistan yesterday to protest delays in certain allowances. After police charged at them with batons, they held a sit-in.
- Last week, art activists entered the London Tate Museum and filled an exhibit with oil and dead fish to protest BP sponsorship as they labeled the Gulf oil spill “the largest oil painting in the world.” The exhibit had to be closed for cleanup.
- A hundred people protested outside the courthouse in El Paso, Texas against Obama’s plan to deploy the National Guard to the US/Mexico border there.
- Several dozen people gathered in front of the Chevron building in Houston on Wednesday to protest the connections between oil and war. A few were arrested for trespassing on private property.
- 400 employees of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago walked out on Wednesday to protest poor working conditions.
- A hundred people protested at a Toronto Gay Pride conference on Tuesday against the decision to ban the term “Israeli apartheid” from upcoming pride events.
- Activists mass-purchased an acre of land in Scotland near Donald Trump’s planned golf resort to prevent and protest the development of the land.
Experiments with truth: 5/26/10
- Workers gathered and made traditional Chinese funeral offerings yesterday at Foxconn headquarters in China after a series of suicides and suicide attempts. Protesters say the company, which makes Apple’s iPad, has unhealthy working conditions.
- Members of the Fishermen Cooperative Society in coastal Pakistan gathered yesterday to protest recent police actions against villagers protesting the occupation of an ancient graveyard.
- On Monday off the Louisiana coast, seven Greenpeace members boarded an offshore drilling support ship and painted anti-drilling messages in oil on the side of the ship. They have since been arrested and charged with unauthorized entry.
- Thousands of people marched in Switzerland on Monday to protest the building of nuclear power stations in the country.
- Members of the group Manchester Plane Stupid chained themselves to the wheels of a plane on Monday to protest the expansion of the World Freight Centre at Manchester Airport, which they say will be an environmental disaster.
- The Kayapo indigenous group in Brazil continues their month-long blockade of an Amazon highway to protest the building of a dam they say will destroy their communities and livelihoods.
Experiments with truth: 5/24/10
- Hundreds of public sector workers marched to protest right-wing President Sebastián Piñera’s first state of the union address in Valparaíso, Chile, where the national Congress is located.
- An estimated of 30,000 to 35,000 people gathered Saturday near New Jersey’s Statehouse to protest Gov. Chris Christie’s proposed budget cuts.
- Environmental activists gathered in California yesterday to protest the removal of a moratorium on whaling.
- Warehouse workers marched through Boston yesterday to protest unfair contract practices at Shaw’s supermarkets.
- 70 employees at a Fabco plant in Windsor, Canada walked off the job in a wildcat strike last Wednesday to support a colleague who was abruptly suspended the week before.
- Victims of landslides by Attabad Lake in Pakistan ended their sit-in on Saturday after reaching a relief-package compromise with the government.
- A hundred Greeks living in Brussels demonstrated outside the EU and IMF last week to oppose the proposed rescue plan of Greece’s economy.
- Hundreds protested the screening of a film at the Cannes Film Festival in France on Friday. “Outside the Law” depicts French atrocities against Algerians and is alleged to be ‘anti-French.’
Experiments with truth: 5/21/10
- Activists have put up tents and opened a protest camp they are calling Democracy Village in London. They are mainly protesting problems with the recent election, as well as the war in Afghanistan and British capitalism, but the police have told them to leave before Parliament opens next week.
- Greenpeace activists climbed BP’s London headquarters yesterday to hang a flag accusing the company of polluting the environment. The flag read, “BP: British Polluters,” a play on British Petroleum.
- 20,000 Greeks marched to parliament in Athens yesterday in continued protest of severe austerity measures.
- Tens of thousands of people gathered in Bucharest, the Romanian capital, on Wednesday to protest incipient wage cuts planned by the government.
- Thousands of nurse-anesthetists staged a sit-in at a Paris train station yesterday and demanded greater professional recognition and higher salaries. The blockade halted rail traffic.
- 250 students and workers at the University of Illinois in Chicago protested high administrative salaries and tuition increases as they gathered outside a Board of Trustees meeting yesterday.
- 160 United Steelworkers members gathered in Washington, DC yesterday to protest Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s visit to the U.S. Ralliers denounced Calderón’s treatment of workers in his country and referred specifically to the Cananea mine workers, who have been on strike since 2007.
- Dairy farmers gathered with milk cans and cows in towns across Colombia on Wednesday to protest a new trade accord with the EU; they say they cannot compete with subsidized European farmers.
- Inmates of a Japanese immigration center have been on hunger strike for more than a week after recent deaths of fellow residents. They are also demanding to be released.
Experiments with truth: 5/19/10
- More than a thousand people affiliated with labor groups marched in Washington, DC on Monday to protest Wall Street lobbyists.
- Coal miners and other union workers protested in Richmond, Virginia on Tuesday against the Massey Energy company’s environmental record and treatment of workers.
- Residents of Madrid demonstrated on Monday in support of workers who are hurt by cyclical economic downturns. They used the slogan, “Against the Europe of Capital, War, and Crisis.”
- People planted 6,000 hands marked “1000″ on a Rio de Janeiro beach in Brazil this past weekend in commemoration of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. The planter-protesters are asking Brazil’s president to discuss human rights when he meets with Iran’s president, a Holocaust denier, later this week.
- Five students wearing caps and gowns staged a sit-in protest at Senator John McCain’s office in Tucson yesterday to protest the Arizona immigration bill and to ask specifically for a path to citizenship for young immigrants. At least one of the protesters has been jailed.
- Last week, Mexicans in the town of Apaxco demonstrated against a toxic waste processing plant built in their town a year ago.
- Several groups have recently gone on strike in Bolivia, calling for pay increases higher than President Evo Morales proposes.
Experiments with truth: 5/17/10
- Thousands of people formed a human chain in Okinawa, Japan yesterday to protest the movement of a US military base there.
- 500 Afghan villagers demonstrated outside their governor’s office on Friday to protest a recent US-backed raid that killed civilians.
- Thousands of villagers in India facing displacement by steel giant POSCO are staging sit-in protests during what they have dubbed “resistance week,” which lasts through May 21.
- Communications worker union members marched through Johannesburg, South Africa demanding wage increases.
- Women vendors in Nagamapal, India staged a sit-in yesterday to protest continued price hikes. The sit-in condemned a government official’s visit to the region and shops and businesses were also closed in protest
- 160 Russian tractor factory workers have begun a hunger strike after not being paid for five months. They are also fundraising for a plane ticket for President Medvedev to come and mediate.
- A gay pride parade meant to protest rights violations against sexual minorities was violently disrupted by police in Belarus on Saturday.
- People gathered in the Maldives last week, clad in red shirts, to protest rising electricity tariffs.
- Saturday was International Day of Protest for Lolita’s Retirement, in support of an orca whale at Miami’s Seaquarium, who lives in the smallest whale tank in North America and possibly the world.
- Gun control activists protested outside an NRA conference in Charlotte, NC, saying discussion of gun violence was missing from the conference.
Experiments with truth: 5/14/10
- Thousands rallied at the Victoria legislature in Canada last week called for greater protection of wild salmon and friendlier aquafarming methods.
- 15 protesters were arrested during a sit-in against the Arizona ban on ethnic studies classes on Wednesday.
- Thousands of Afghans protested in the eastern city of Jalalabad against the alleged executions of a number of Afghan refugees in Iran.
- About two hundred protesters marched through Reno, Nevada against what they say is an epidemic of local jobs going to out-of-state workers. Nevada’s unemployment rate is 13.4%, the second highest in the country.
- Protesters gathered in twenty cities throughout the U.S. on Wednesday against the BP oil spill. They called for the government to seize BP’s assets in order to pay for the damage of the Gulf Coast spill.
- Hundreds of protesters marched through Sulaimaniyah, Iraq this week to protest the murder of Kurdish journalist Sardasht Othman.
- Dozens of people rallied in front of the Irish parliament on Tuesday, clashing with police as they protested bank bailouts.
- Disabled athletes protested in New Delhi Wednesday, calling for better management and training facilities for the upcoming Commonwealth Games in India.
Experiments with truth: 5/12/10
- Protesters draped large black tarps that represented oil spills over beachgoers in Miami Beach yesterday to demonstrate the negative effects of offshore drilling.
- Two thousand people gathered in front of the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti yesterday to call for the resignation of Rene Preval after his ineffective handling of the February earthquake.
- Opposition groups continue to sit-in in front of the Cairo parliament against the emergency law in Egypt, even as politicians say they will not remove the decree.
- People marched through Paris and demonstrated in front of the Iranian Embassy there on Sunday to protest the five executions in Tehran that day.
- Colombian presidential candidate Robinson Devia chained himself to a statue and declared a hunger strike in Bogotá yesterday to protest biased media coverage of his campaign.
- Laotians demonstrated in front of the embassy in DC this week for the release of political prisoners and refugees in detention.
- A hundred protesters marched from the Department of the Interior to the White House today to protest government support of fossil fuels. They carried a banner that read, “Obama: This is your crude awakening.”
- Parent protesters succeeded in lowering the jail bond for a group of Detroit teenagers from $25,000 to $500 yesterday after picketing the courthouse.
Experiments with truth: 5/10/10
- Producers of a documentary in Malaysia held a silent protest today to highlight media censorship. They read newspapers upside down while they marched through Kuala Lumpur.
- Lecturers and Muslim students at northern Iraq’s Mosul University staged a sit-in on Friday to protest deadly attacks against Christian students.
- On Saturday a spirited protest action was held in front of the Department of Labor, in Washington, D.C. Its purpose was to demand the creation of a federally-mandated public jobs program, similar to the WPA, which was launched by FDR’s administration back in the middle of the Great Depression.
- Thousands of people protested in Taipei on Saturday to call for the release of former president Chen Shui-bian and to support the Taiwanese independence movement.
- Several hundred people gathered in London on Saturday to call for electoral reform. They wore purple and chanted “Fair votes now!”
- A state senator is walking across Michigan to call attention to and protest child abuse.
- Tucson high school students protested a proposed bill that would ban ethnic studies programs in Arizona.
- Plus-size models protested outside the Australian Fashion Week last week after they were excluded from the show.
Experiments with truth: 5/7/10
- Hundreds of librarians protested in Trenton, New Jersey yesterday against a $10 million proposed budget cut, stressing the importance of public book-sharing.
- Six Greensboro, NC ministers were arrested Tuesday night for blocking the entrance to the local police department. Their action protested the subculture and double standards of the police.
- Multiple sclerosis patients held a protest march on Wednesday at the Alberta, Canada legislature to demand funds for research.
- Samajwadi activists demonstrated in Allahabad, India yesterday to protest the privatization of a hospital there.
- 60 members of a steelworkers union picketed outside a Sunoco meeting yesterday to protest cuts in retiree health benefits.
- 600 students walked out of a California high school yesterday to protest the transfer of several teachers from their school.
- A group of parents and bus drivers protested yesterday outside the Michigan governor’s office in Lansing against a new school bus contract they say is illegal.
