• Russian riot police broke up an Occupy-style protest against President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, forcing dozens of people out of a central Moscow park where they had staged a week-long sit-in and detaining about 20 people. Protesters then moved to Kudrinskaya Square in Moscow, where they remain encamped.

• In Chile, a crowd estimated at more than 100,000 marched through the streets of Santiago on Wednesday to support the demands of the nation’s students.

• Thousands of student protesters flooded the streets in Montreal on Wednesday evening after Quebec Premier Jean Charest announced a proposal for a new ‘emergency law’ in a bid to end the ongoing 14-week-old student uprising and strike.

• About 2,900 Moroccan judges began a week-long strike to protest against judicial corruption and interference by the executive branch that they say undermines their independence.

• Two Greenpeace activists were arrested after being pried from a giant iPod in front of Apple’s headquarters Tuesday during a protest against using dirty energy to power data centers.

• Dozens of Spaniards lined up outside a bank in Madrid on Monday to close their accounts to protest the unfair seizures of homes.

• Israeli and Palestinian officials announced Monday that more than 1,600 Palestinian prisoners had agreed to end a nearly month-long hunger strike in exchange for concessions by Israel, including a modification to its practice of detention without charge or trial.

• A three-week-long protest on UC Berkeley agricultural research land in Albany came to a quiet close early Monday when police arrested nine protesters who had set up an urban farming camp.

London student protest, via Bowalley Road.

For the better part of a century, some visionaries have been trying to break out of the dominant belief that there are only two means of forcing change: reform through elections and revolution through violence. The rigidity of that binary choice still strangles thinking today.

A Norwegian, for instance, once wrote to me that there simply wasn’t enough direct conflict in the country to use the word “revolution”; as I have described in detail before, the Labor Party got enough votes in the 1930s so it could finally create a coalition government. An election seems to have made the change. But that view focuses on politicians and electoral forms and overlooks the main scene of the conflict, which was mass direct action in the economic arena. To say that the change happened through elections is to mistake the effect for the cause.

The Norwegian owning class fought for decades to maintain domination against the rising militancy of workers’ strikes and other forms of direct action. The 1 percent — through its instrument, the Conservative Party government — called out troops repeatedly to keep workers in line. My Norwegian father-in-law refused military service as a young man because he personally might have to shoot fellow workers rather than a national enemy. The owning class also recruited tens of thousands of people into an organization devoted to violent strike-breaking.

The Labor Party was not the polite, consensus-seeking party of today’s Norway; it was the electoral representative of — and controlled by — the workers. One couldn’t even be a member of the Labor Party in the old days if one wasn’t a worker. The action that counted for Norway’s future was not in the Storting (the parliament) but in the deadly fight between the 1 percent and the trade unions. And the stakes were very high: Who would lead Norway, the super-rich and their bourgeois allies or the working class?

The stakes were so high, in fact, that a young Vidkun Quisling tried to put together a military coup against the government that was run by the Conservative Party in an attempt to suspend parliamentary forms and create an efficient dictatorship. After all, the German and Italian 1 percent supported a fascist solution to “labor unrest,” so why not the Norwegian?

One reason, I believe, is that the Norwegian working class, although inspired by Marxism and even Leninism, was not inspired by violence. “Yes” to a workers’ (and farmers’) state, but “no” to armed struggle.

Here’s where we need to open the space to think freshly when we think about power and revolution. Smart nonviolent strategy influences the choices available to ruling class. Nonviolent struggle constrains the options of the opponent.

In Norway, the largely nonviolent struggle of the 1920s and 1930s made it impossible for the 1 percent to go “all the way” with violent repression. In Norway, 1 percenters ruled out — as far as I have found — even considering the option of asking the British 1 percent to intervene in the Norwegian struggle, as it might have had there been an armed conflict. (The British empire was highly experienced in meddling in the affairs of other countries and had sent troops to Russia after its violent revolution. Norway was considered to be in Britain’s backyard.)

The lack of a fascist response by the Norwegian 1 percent in the 1930s to the workers’ prolonged nonviolent direct action doesn’t tell us there was not a revolution. What the workers (and farmers, in their own dimension of the struggle) did was show the 1 percent that it could no longer run the country. If the owners did not make a giant compromise, they might end up without any ownership stake in the country at all.

In light of what happened later, it is to the credit of the owning class and the workers that they made their historic compromise of 1936. But their decision not to go over the brink doesn’t give us reason to paper over the conflict. Labor decided it would not escalate further but instead take the reins of government (postponing the issue of ownership of the means of production) in order to alleviate the worst depression in Europe and set the ship of state onto a new — and fundamentally different — course.

Now we come to the heart of the matter: What defines revolution? The Norwegian Labor Party and its farmer and middle class allies could fundamentally change the country’s course because they forced a power shift. The super-rich no longer ruled, as they had for centuries (sometimes in collaboration with the Danes and Swedes).

That power shift is what didn’t happen in the 20th century in the U.K., in France and in Germany, although the working class in those countries gained more concessions than were gained in the U.S.

How significant was the power shift? The crisis in the financial sector that is still wrecking Europe reveals the difference dramatically. When, in the 1980s, Norway took a temporary detour by flirting with neoliberalism, the economy headed toward the cliff: speculation on housing, a bubble, a crash. But the fundamental power arrangement re-asserted itself: The government seized the three biggest banks, fired the senior management, made sure the shareholders didn’t get a krone and told the other private banks that they could either recapitalize on their own or go bankrupt. No bailouts — period.

The Norwegian bottom line: When the capitalists act out, they must pay for their spree, not the people.

It couldn’t be more different from what we now see in most of Europe (and the U.S.). The 1 percent rule, and the people pay. As the European giants began to totter in 2008, the Norwegian (and Swedish) financial sectors remained secure because they had won their fight with the 1 percent previously. If the Norwegians and Swedes had not fought their nonviolent revolution, they also would have been at the mercy of their 1 percent and in just as big a mess as the rest of Europe.

It thus seems especially wise that Norwegians successfully resisted their own internationalist sentiments when asked to join the European Union. Twice voting “no” for a variety of reasons in national referenda, many realized decades ago that international capital uses the EU for its own agenda. The class struggle continues in Norway, as it must everywhere because it is a fundamental historical reality. But the playing field inside Norway is different because they won their most important battle in the 1920s and 30s — nonviolently.

Labor’s strategy was this: to use widespread direct action, accept compromise, change the union/management rulebook, lead the government, massively regulate capital, redistribute wealth, and take controlling shares of major corporations. It has unmistakably shifted the entire society. In Norway’s political spectrum, a leading Norwegian Conservative told me, Barack Obama would be considered right-wing.

I’ll share two of the more light-hearted signs of the continued hegemony of working class values like solidarity and equality. Poverty has been largely wiped out in Norway, but a bit stubbornly remains; during a recent election the Labor government found that fact being used as an attack by, of all groups, the Conservative Party, under whose rule an estimated majority of Norwegians had once been poor!

The brand-new national opera house in Oslo, an architectural gem built by the government for a traditionally elite art form, has been such a success that seats are often sold out months in advance. Nevertheless, the opera house refuses to put a price premium on its best seats because that “just wouldn’t be the Norwegian way.”

Norway is not a utopia, and in my forthcoming book I’ll share ideas from radical Norwegians as they continue to envision a more carbon-neutral, egalitarian, decentralized and liberated society than the one they have. Whether or not they break new ground in coming decades, Norwegians have already shown us that people power can overcome money power, that the dominance of the super-rich can be overcome through nonviolent direct action and that democracy can flourish. I’m willing to call that a nonviolent revolution.

Protesters in Malaga, Spain, on May 12. By Jon Nazca, via Reuters AlertNet.

Last June, after leaving the encampment in the center of Madrid, people in the 15M movement would say, “We moved from Sol square, but we know the way back.” The day of action on May 12 this year exceeded the expectations of many people who thought the 15M movement was dead, who didn’t recognize that it had only moved to neighborhood assemblies. The one-year anniversary of the movement brought hundreds of thousands people to the streets again in nearly 80 Spanish cities. There were 50,000 in Madrid, 44,000 in Barcelona, 11,000 in Vigo (a northern city with a population of less than 300,000) and many more.

As people from around the country converged on Madrid, various neighborhood assemblies gathered in squares to prepare banners for the demonstration and to share tips for avoiding police repression. At 7 p.m., there were five columns of demonstrators marching toward Sol square, where they planned to arrive at 9 o’clock. But by 8 p.m., the first column had already arrived, filling almost half of the square. Other groups of marchers arrived within minutes, but many people could not enter and had to stay in nearby streets. Sol square was completely full before the meeting time. There, thousands sang “Happy Birthday” to the 15M movement and released balloons.

As Sol square transformed into a party celebrating a year of protest and organizing, the question remained of whether the party could last all night. Some weeks before, the government had announced that it would not allow an encampment in Sol at all, but, last Thursday, it granted the movement a right to stay in the square during “office hours.” When the government’s 10 p.m. curfew came, there were more than 15,000 people in the square, surrounded by about 2,000 police officers.

At 10 p.m., too, the first tent was erected. “Now we have more reason than last year,” said a man named Emilio, the first camper in Sol of the night. “I’m not afraid to be the first one. If the police arrest me, they will have to go through many more people.” A half hour later, above where a dozen police vans were parked, a huge white panel was deployed, on which were projected videos created by the movement.

After midnight, preparations began to hold an assembly. Dozens cleaned the paper and bottles littered across the square, while others placed cardboard on the ground for people to sit on. When the assembly started at 1 a.m., nearly 2,000 participated. “I was worried,” said one of the first people to take the microphone. “This was very much a party, and we have a lot of work to do.” The first question was whether to stay in Sol for the night, and debate continued for more than an hour and a half. Many wanted to remain, but others said that doing so would only be a provocation to the government and that it didn’t make sense.

The assembly ended at 4 a.m., but hundreds of people remained in Sol. An hour later, 30 more police vans arrived, and officers cleared the square. Eighteen people were arrested. Meanwhile, police swept the squares in Valencia, Palma de Mallorca and other cities where activists tried to spend the night. Catalunya square in Barcelona is the only place where the movement has been able to remain, thanks to authorization by the Catalan government.

May 12 was just the first day of mobilization, and the most festive. Leading up to May 15, the movement has planned actions across the country focused on housing rights, employment, economy, democracy and other issues. These are busy days for the movement, and they will certainly be instrumental in shaping its goals and the strategies used to achieve them.

Poster from madrilonia.org.

“We don’t want May 12 to be a celebration of our anniversary, or a one-day demonstration,” one often hears activists in the Spanish 15M movement saying lately. “We want it to be a new milestone.” For months now, many of them have been taking part in local and international meetings to prepare. Through online conference calls using the open-source platform Mumble, organizers from Occupy, 15M and movements all around the world chose May 12 as a day for a global mobilization, leading up to another on May 15.

After its birth with occupations in public squares across Spain last May, 15M has been a model for movements around the world, many of which have reached a critical mass and brought to the fore issues of austerity, wealth inequality and political corruption. Yet, in Spain and elsewhere, governments continue to respond with more budget cuts and increased police repression. Activists hope that this latest round of mobilizations will help turn the tide.

In Madrid, work on mid-May started among the movement’s various collectives in January, and, over the course of weekly meetings, a group was formed to put all their ideas together and coordinate citywide actions. Although the pace was slow during the early months, by April there was a basic outline for the mid-May mobilization. On May 12, Madrid will probably look much like it did last October 15: Four marches will depart from the four cardinal points of the city and join in Sol square at 9 p.m. for a dinner together until midnight. People in cities across Spain will also be in the streets. But, this time, the day of action will be only the beginning.

The night of May 12, or early the next morning, people will move from Sol to 12 nearby squares. Then, until May 15, each square in the center of Madrid will represent a particular issue: education, employment, health care, democracy, economy and so on. The 15M working groups will organize workshops, conferences and assemblies dedicated to sharing ideas and finding solutions related to each issue. The conclusions reached during a given day will be brought to a nighttime general assembly. Other initiatives are being discussed as well, including the formation of a people’s tribunal on May 13 to hear evidence presented by activists who have been collecting data on the practices of the banks. That day, also, housing groups are planning to occupy banks while demanding a collective renegotiation of mortgages.

A big question, however, is whether 15M will be able to camp again in the squares at all. In Madrid, the movement has announced that, from May 12 to 15, Sol square will be the space for a permanent assembly, without using the term “camp.” But news that 15M would be creating another encampment in Sol was quickly announced by the Spanish mass media, and the government responded quickly and firmly that no such thing would be allowed. In Barcelona, the movement secured a permit to camp in Catalunya square from May 12 to May 15, possibly to alleviate the city’s reputation for harsh repression, especially after the police violence of the recent general strike. In Madrid, however, repression against 15M has hardened in the last few weeks, although without physical violence.

After an announcement of further fare increases on public transportation in Madrid, for instance, the collective Yo No Pago organized a new protest in Sol square on April 20. Nearly 200 people marched from Sol, walking through several streets in the city center, until they were surrounded by riot police in Gran Vía. The activists were identified, and all of them may receive a €300 fine. The following week, there were more actions related to public transport, including one in which activists pulled the brake levers of 13 subway trains, causing a halt in service for 10 minutes. Within hours, police had arrested three suspects, who now face five years in prison. Last Friday, hundreds of people went to Sol square to show their support for those who were arrested, and, again, police surrounded the protesters, together with bystanders, identifying them in order to charge them further fines.

These precedents in Madrid are troubling, but if the movement is able to bring hundreds of thousands of people into the streets as it did on October 15, all the police of the city will be not able to prevent Sol square from being reoccupied and turned once again into the space of public debate and resistance that it was a year ago.

Click to enlarge.

Well, it happened — massive protests around the world, strikes across Europe, tens of thousands in the streets of New York City, student walkouts, radical art, banners hanging everywhere, slogans stickered to walls, occupation attempts, dozens of arrests around the country. This was May Day in a post-Occupy Wall Street world, but May Day was only the beginning. Again. Winter has peeled away, and the streets are getting warm.

Between May 10 and May 15, New Yorkers — in solidarity with global calls to action from around the world  — will carry out Another City is Possible, Another World is Possible, a week of actions connecting the city budget to austerity measures around the world, all culminating on May 15 at 6 p.m. in a mass convergence in Times Square.

Here in New York City, we will confront a budget that has stripped our communities of housing, schools, services, jobs and other human needs for decades. We will fight to keep what we have and demand what’s been taken away from working people in the decade of cuts leading up to this. We will connect the struggle here to struggles against austerity-based policies around the world, which demand that working people sacrifice their salaries for basic services in order to protect the profits of the wealthy. We will use the many weapons we have — from teach-ins and flash mobs to mass marches and civil disobedience — to confront the bankers and politicians perpetuating injustice. We will transcend our small niches to bring together the big, broad movement that encompasses many groups and individuals, different methods of struggle with different levels of risk and multiple points of entry, and an array of demands, visions and goals.

We will fight back, but also look forward toward another city and another world. It will be a week full of different actions anchored by diverse groups to achieve a variety of goals, all in solidarity with one another — a week that looks like the movement we are trying to build.

Briefly Back to Bloombergville

Confronting austerity in New York gives me a feeling of déjà vu. In June of 2011, I was part of Bloombergville, a two-week occupation of a street corner outside of the City Council building near City Hall. The occupation was base camp for our resistance against a New York City budget that would cut funding from schools, hospitals, daycare centers, elderly homes, fire-houses, AIDS clinics, homeless shelters, transportation and other vital services, while the big banks and millionaires made record profits from an economic crisis they had caused.

People were fighting back all over the world, from Athens to Wisconsin. On May 12, 20,000 New Yorkers marched on Wall Street. And then we occupied, taking a last stand against the budget. We demonstrated, taught, learned, disrupted City Council meetings and, finally, in a dramatic culminating moment, delayed the vote by staging a sit-in in the lobby of the City Council building. But as we were hauled off to the Tombs in handcuffs, the budget passed with most of the cuts still intact. Bloombergville packed up a few days later, taking many of us back to the drawing board.

In some ways, Bloombergville was about posing a radical challenge to an economic, social, and political system that strips us of the things we need to survive, all in order to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few. In that sense, it was a struggle against capitalism, which has austerity in its very DNA. But it was also a struggle against white supremacy, patriarchy and authoritarianism — because a fight for real freedom must face all of those systems that work in concert with capitalism against us. Like Occupy Wall Street was later on, it was the beginning of a dual power struggle — an attempt to experiment with the values and institutions of the society we are fighting for, while fighting against the oppressive institutions around us. And, of course, it was a struggle to scrape away at the apathy and cynicism that handicaps us every day, an attempt to contribute to the building of a movement and spark an uprising.

But it was also much simpler than that. It was about the issues. It was about austerity. It was about the budget.

It was about homes, about jobs, about Metrocards, about a safety net for the sick, the elderly, the homeless, and about education for all. It was about recognizing MTA fare hikes and tuition hikes at CUNY as nothing other than a tax on the working people who rely on those services. It was about demanding taxes on the rich and insisting that the wealth they generate by exploiting us should serve the city as a whole. It was about approaching these issues as gateways to radical social transformation, about helping people find their way into transformational movements through the issues that have real effects on their lives.

All in all, though, Bloombergville didn’t get much press, and we never had more than a few hundred people at a time. It didn’t spark the uprising we were hoping for. Yet we built important relationships, learned a lot about occupations of public space and experimented with tactics. When Adbusters magazine called for an occupation of Wall Street last July, Bloombergville organizers were among those who organized the assemblies to begin driving it forward. These days, despite its shortcomings, many Occupiers look back fondly on Bloombergville as one of the predecessors to the spark that finally came at Liberty Square.

Another City is Possible, Another World is Possible

Almost a year later, here we are again. The issues we faced during the Bloombergville occupation are the same ones that people around the world are rising up against still. We will confront the budget and austerity again, but this time as part of a global movement. And there is no other way to go; global problems require global solutions.

The week of actions from May 10 to May 15 will provide the space for different groups and individuals to fight around a wide array of interconnected issues in diverse ways. On May 11, we will see a string of actions dealing with housing, jobs and services — the basic human needs under threat in a society dominated by systems of greed and exploitation. On the 12th, we’ll focus on the things we need to have healthy communities — for a city with healthy food for all, a country with justice for its food workers, an ecologically sustainable world. On the 13th, Mother’s Day, we will resist police brutality and mass incarceration, injustices faced by immigrants and war abroad — things that tear our families apart, that take children from their parents, that inflict violence on the most marginalized people around the country and the world. May 14 will be a day to fight for education — for adequate childcare, access to quality public education for all and a world without student debt. On May 15, we will converge on Times Square — that shiny, neon capital of capitalism — to tie the issues together, to reclaim our city, to stand in solidarity with people doing the same around the world in a global day of action.

On one hand, the goals for the week are simple. It will be a fight to win back public schools so that our kids can stand a chance in this society, to keep shelters open for those people the system impoverishes so ruthlessly, to afford the public transportation we need to get to work and feed our families. It will be a fight over the very basics of a good society. But it will also challenge as a whole a system that allows the captains of capitalism to make record profits while we take pay cuts and cuts to services, a system whose very existence is based on exploitation and domination. The week will be diverse and autonomous, but unified and solidaristic. It will be grounded and real, but fierce and visionary. It will be safe and welcoming, but also daring and radical. We will fight about the issues, about the budget, about real human needs and about winning in the here and now, but those fights will become a way to dream another city, another world.

We will do our dreaming in the same place we do our fighting: together, in the streets.

A general strike can be one of the most potent noncooperation methods in the repertoire of nonviolent resistance. It is a widespread cessation of labor in an effort to bring all economic activity to a total standstill. Although it is easy to broadcast the call for a general strike, it is exceedingly difficult to implement for the maximal impact that it potentially exerts. What’s more, a general strike must be called prudently, because it loses its effectiveness if weakly executed.

The Occupy movement’s calls for a general strike in the United States on May 1 make me think of an instance in which a general strike was brilliantly carried out and with great effect, in Czechoslovakia in 1989 — for only two hours.

For years beforehand, the sharing of subversive literature, drama and ideas against the communist regime had been occurring in Czechoslovakia, virtually unseen. In fact, historian Theodore Ziółkowski reminds us that “almost from the moment when the Soviet empire, after Yalta, swallowed up the nations of Eastern Europe, the fight against Communism began.” Thousands of clandestine samizdat (Russian for self-published) publications had been manually typed on onion skin with carbon paper, read, passed from hand to hand and circulated sub rosa. Incarcerated authors and dramatists worked intensively in contemplation and planning from their prison cells. While building strong networks among these civil society organizations in formation, Czechoslovaks considered how to withdraw their cooperation from the communist party-state, and thereby bend it to the popular will.

On November 17, 1989, in Czechoslovakia’s capital, Prague, police brutally interrupted a student demonstration. In response, the Czechoslovak people undertook what came to be known as the Ten Days, as I have recounted in more detail elsewhere. Events seemed to unfold instantaneously, but anyone who has studied nonviolent struggles knows otherwise. Aided by Radio Free Europe and labor unions, Prague’s theatrical circles would become catalytic in organizing a massive national resistance, including major demonstrations against the procedures of the regime. Citizens were emboldened by listening to Radio Free Europe and reading samizdat, and were thus aware of the popular national nonviolent mobilizations already underway in Poland, Hungary and East Germany. The Czechoslovaks also benefited from a more enlightened Soviet policy than during the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968. These relative advantages, and the caliber of leadership emanating from the playwrights and thinkers in theatrical circles, meant that the Czechoslovaks would be able to bring about their 1989 Velvet Revolution with astounding haste and effectiveness, a key element of which was the breadth of participation in a general strike.

Overnight on November 17 — Day One — and into November 18, students became determined to go on strike. They spread word to Prague’s Charles University and other colleges and universities. Although students were the first to call for strikes, by Saturday afternoon the denizens of Prague’s famous theaters had declared their support and were proposing a national general strike for November 27. The students straight away endorsed the proposed general strike and for six weeks would persist in striking on their own, to a great extent backed up by similar noncooperation measures by actors and dramatists. As the students published releases announcing their strikes, the theatrical managers and actors circulated theirs, while Radio Free Europe broadcast texts transmitted by telephone. Official media, having long toed the government line, condemned the officials’ violence of November 17. Employees at television stations denounced biased coverage and disputed untruthful news reports. Broadcasts of the first photographic images of the Prague demonstrations proved to be critical because they disclosed to thousands what was happening in their own country.

On Day Three — Sunday, November 19 — a crowd of 200,000 gathered in Prague for a demonstration to protest the police brutality against the students. That night a citizens’ pro-democracy organization called the Civic Forum (Občanské Fórum) emerged, many of whose members had been persistent critics of the party-state. Over the following three days, throngs occupied Prague. Tens of thousands of young people and students took over Wenceslas Square, carrying flags and chanting slogans: “Freedom,” “Resign,” “Now’s the Time” and “This Is It.”

With playwright Václav Havel as the guiding light, Prague’s Magic Lantern Theater became the nerve center of the Civic Forum, in part because of its proximity to Wenceslas Square. Its wardrobes and changing rooms were assigned to committees, and Havel became the author and mediator for the Civic Forum’s statements and positions. Throughout the Velvet Revolution, the forum would act as the speaker for the Czechoslovak people, while coordinating the collective nonviolent actions of the broad opposition. The Civic Forum encompassed most perspectives and sentiments of opposition, and included some reform-minded communists. A Slovak group, Public Against Violence, acted as partner to the forum.

Prague’s theaters were perfect for hearty political debate. Instead of the curtain rising on productions, the actors would lead audiences in discussions of the situation. Signs instantly appeared in theaters across the country reading “We Strike” or “On Strike,” rousing unity because of the popular esteem for the dramatic arts. Theaters in Bratislava, Brno and Ostrava went on strike the next day. Wherever actors and dramatists gathered, they joined the noncooperation.

On Tuesday, November 21 — Day Five — the Civic Forum and student representatives met officially with Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec, who guaranteed that no violence would be administered against Czechoslovak citizens. The government announced that “socialism was not up for discussion,” but no one missed the meaning of such a meeting in the midst of mounting popular defiance. In Wenceslas Square in Prague and in Hviedoslav Square in Bratislava, mass demonstrations ratified calls for a general strike on November 27. Václav Havel addressed the multitude as the exemplar of the Civic Forum, his speech blunter and less courtly than usual. When he and the respected banned priest Václav Malý spoke, the crowd could hear every word, because rock groups had lent huge amplifiers. A message from the Roman Catholic František Cardinal Tomášek declared, “We cannot wait any more,” stressing that Czechoslovakia was surrounded by countries that “had broken the back of totalitarianism,” referring to Poland, Hungary, and East Germany. Bells rang. One journalist reported 200,000 sets of key rings unforgettably jangling. Throngs chanted “Today Prague, tomorrow the whole country!” and “Time’s up!” Striking students held sit-ins at institutions of higher learning throughout Prague.

On Wednesday, November 22 — Day Six — the Civic Forum formally announced a two-hour general strike for Monday, November 27. The forum and its partner, Public Against Violence, sought an incapacitating general strike with the participation of virtually every citizen to exert sufficient pressure on the government to accelerate a rapid, nonviolent transition of power. A general strike could reduce the threat of reprisals among large numbers of participants, yet many were ambivalent about hurting an already stagnating economy. By limiting the strike to two hours, the effect of a general strike would be wielded while minimizing harm to the economy.

Coal miners in northern Bohemia announced that they would join the work stoppage, but no one knew to what extent laborers in the country’s smokestack industries would join the growing noncooperation action. By Thursday, November 23 — Day Seven — Wenceslas Square saw more than 300,000 marching. The party-state started to split and divide. The ministry of defense that day announced that the Czechoslovak military forces would not be deployed against Czech and Slovak peoples. The Civic Forum issued a statement renewing commitment to a Czechoslovak tradition: “We are against violence and do not seek revenge.”

Striking students insistent on free elections and a change in government then sent hundreds of their numbers into the countryside to visit industrial plants and talk with workers, enlisting their involvement in the general strike. The government raised calamitous warnings of economic breakdown and tried in other ways to frighten the workforce not to join the general strike. Reporters who traveled to machinery works encountered busloads of communist militia members blocking the students from contacting the laborers and sharing handouts. The Reverend Václav Malý, now a spokesperson for the Civic Forum, proclaimed that workers at more than 500 enterprises had pledged to strike.

On Saturday, November 25 — Day Nine — the Civic Forum pronounced the upcoming national general strike as a “referendum” on communist rule. In Prague, 800,000 marched; in Bratislava 100,000 demonstrated. On national television, with Havel announcing that the planned November 27 national general strike would proceed, the forum had become the rudder for the nationwide preparations for the two-hour strike action. The forum encompassed virtually the entire Czechoslovak opposition to the party-state, served as the representative for the Czechoslovak public, coordinated the opposition’s civil resistance and had become a national voice. Comporting itself in a sensible, ethical and deliberately open manner — if a slightly chaotic one — the Civic Forum called its program “What We Want” and concentrated on civil and human rights, a free and independent judiciary, multiparty electoral democracy and political pluralism, economic and free-market reforms, and alterations to the nation’s environmental and foreign policies.

Roughly 6,000 strike committees were at work preparing to bring all economic activity to a halt. As midday approached on Monday, November 27, the population stopped functioning as church bells rang. Minutes before noon, a television broadcaster stated that he was joining the strike and would go off the air. Taxi drivers aligned themselves so as to block Prague’s ring road with a two-mile succession of cabs. This elegantly executed national noncooperation action lasted from noon until two o’clock — during lunchtime, so as not to endanger jobs. The colossal industrial strike reflected no divisions between classes, as laborers, workers of all skills, intellectuals, academicians, students, artist and theatrical personnel together orchestrated the nationwide general strike.

This countrywide, successful act of noncooperation brought the Civic Forum and the government into discussions that would soon lead to a peaceful democratic transition of power. The party-state began to yield. The Civic Forum and the government began discussions. The “leading role” of the communist party, protected in a constitutional clause, was formally rescinded. On December 29, 1989, the Federal Assembly, the communist-dominated national legislature, unanimously elected Havel as president.

The artists, playwrights, academicians, priests and activist intellectuals wanted genuinely revolutionary change that would transform Czechoslovakia permanently and construct a resilient democracy. Years of prudently building the strength of civil society had culminated in the ability to mount a memorable and effective national general strike. With the united voices of the Civic Forum and Public Against Violence, the people had brought about an expeditious transition of power. Czech educator Jan Urban explains the logic of those who were coordinating Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution: “[F]rom the first moment, we wanted to be aggressively nonviolent in our stance — to make a power of our lack of weapons.” He summarized, “In the course of one week, in November 1989, Winter blossomed into Spring in Czechoslovakia. A nonviolent mass movement … triumphed … in transition from the negation of the old to the building of the new.”

• Tens of thousands of Czechs staged one of the biggest protests since the fall of Communism on Saturday, marching in Prague against spending cuts, tax rises and corruption, and calling for the end of a center-right government already close to collapse.

• On Sunday, 150 Palestinian prisoners joined with 1,200 others being held in Israeli jails who started an open-ended hunger strike on Tuesday to protest the conditions in which they are being held.

• In Montreal, 89 people were arrested Saturday after trying to disrupt the second day of a conference on the development of northern Quebec.

• Tens of thousands of Egyptians demanded on Friday that their military rulers stick to a pledge to hand over power by mid-year after a row over who can run in the presidential election raised doubts about the army’s commitment to democracy.

• In Bahrain, tens of thousands people marched along a motorway from Budaiya, an area to the west of the capital, Manama, on Friday to demand an end to the crackdown on dissent, ahead of the Formula 1 Grand Prix on Sunday.

• Thousands demonstrated in the Rome on Friday to protest government plans to introduce legislation that will make it easier for companies to sack employees.

• Less than 24 hours after their release, University of Texas students arrested after staging a sit-in at President Powers’ office gathered with supporters Thursday on the steps of the UT Tower to continue in their campaign against sweatshop labor.

• Tens of thousands of teachers, doctors, police officers and other public workers went on strike on Wednesday in Slovenia over proposed pay cuts under austerity measures to rein in the euro-zone member’s budget deficit.

Woman at a 15M movement protest at the French consulate in Valencia, Spain. By Marc Sardon, via Flickr.

The 15M movement in Spain has faced repression from the very beginning: 24 young people were arrested and beaten by police in the demonstrations organized by Democracia Real Ya on May 15 last year, which is a large part of why several dozen people decided to camp that night in Sol square, turning the demonstration into an encampment. That first night, the Legal Committee of Sol was created by lawyers and laypeople; similar groups emerged in other camps around the country in order to give legal support to the movement. This has never been an easy job, but it has only been getting harder.

Since May 15, the Legal Committee of Sol has given support to more than a hundred arrestees. There have been another hundred arrested in Barcelona and many more in the rest of the country. Activists have been charged with undermining authority (facing one to three years in jail), disobedience and resistance (six months to one year), and disorderly conduct (six months to three years). Most of all, though, 15M protesters are being punished though economic means. There are nearly 70 people with fines in Madrid, according to the Legal Committee of Sol, and in Barcelona, there have been more than 200 people fined, together amounting to more than €40,000.

The repression is getting more and more excessive. Last month in Málaga, five people were charged with electoral offenses for carrying banners with the phrase “Banks always win” in an electoral college during the regional election of Andalucía. Just before that, in late February, nine young people were arrested in a protest against the reform of the labor law and were interrogated by hooded police — a common practice in Spain with terrorists and abertzales (members of the Basque independence movement). But Barcelona is the place where the 15M movement has been most under threat. Two weeks after the violent eviction of Catalunya square, the camp of Barcelona protested in the regional parliament, where the regional budget cuts had been debated. Some activists blocked the entrance of the building and threw paint bombs at members of the parliament. Twenty people are now facing three to five years in jail for their actions that day.

In recent months, repression has been focused on actions related to housing rights. “There is an increased emphasis in pursuing squatting,” says a member of the Legal Committee of Sol, who explains that in Madrid, police are striving to make a census of squatters and have already identified 150 activists. Actions by the Platform of People Affected by Mortgage (PAH) have resulted in five arrests in Madrid, including Chema Ruiz, one of the most active members of PAH in the city. Although the protocol of the platform has always been the same — nonviolent resistance by sitting on the floor — Ruiz testified in February while under allegations of attacking eight riot policemen. “But how could someone as skinny as me beat eight riot policemen?” Ruiz asked. Although the court has opened a criminal case against him, not even he knows what crime he is ultimately being charged with.

Beginning in its first weeks, the 15M movement has been taking basic security measures. Before demonstrations and actions, activists write on their arms or legs the telephone number of the committee of legal support for their neighborhoods or city assemblies, and they memorize the name of the lawyers on duty that day. The legal committees have also organized workshops about demonstrators’ rights and prepared leaflets with basic steps activists should take if arrested: to testify before the judge, not police, and to watch their things to prevent police from putting incriminating objects among them. The leaflets explain, also, what to do if one sees a fellow activist being arrested: ensure that the person knows the name of an 15M lawyer, find out where they will be taken by police, and tell the person’s lawyer and affinity group about the detention. Online tools are another weapon on the side of the movement. In Barcelona, Madrid and elsewhere, media groups are teaching activists how to use their cell phones to shoot and upload videos of police abuse. Twitter and other social networks have also been used to alert fellow activists of police attacks; in Barcelona, for instance, people used the Twitter hashtags #alerta29m and #copwatch during the March 29 general strike.

The cornerstone of the security strategy for 15M activists remains the affinity group. Small groups of close comrades know better than anyone else how to take care of one another. In some sectors of the movement, as in an assembly in a squatted building in Madrid, the first thing people always do is a round of introductions with the goal of avoiding infiltrators: everyone present says who they are and the others who know them raise their hands to express confidence that they can be trusted.

Now, following the general strike on March 29, the repression against 15M and other social movements in Spain appears to be getting tougher than ever. The government announced days before the strike that it has prepared an enormous police force “in anticipation of the picket lines organized by the movement,” and it kept its word. There were nearly 200 arrests that day, half of them in Cataluña, where police used tear gas against demonstrators, as well as rubber bullets, which caused two people to lose an eye. The same day, after a football match, rubber bullets killed a young person. Nevertheless, the image of the strike in the mainstream Spanish media was of a few dumpsters and bank offices burning.

The government has also announced new rules that increase the punishment for disorderly conduct to between two and four years in jail, as well as to punish nonviolent resistance as criminally undermining authority. Dark times are coming to Spain, but people in the 15M movement don’t seem to be afraid. As some of them say, “If protesting becomes a crime, then we will be criminals.”

• On Saturday, thousands of students in Quebec were joined by residents young and old for a protest against planned tuition hikes that coincided with the anniversary marking Premier Jean Charest’s taking power nine years ago.

• In Pakistan, a crippling strike paralyzed life in the provincial capital of Quetta on Sunday as people protested Saturday’s target killings of nine people, including eight Hazaras, and the government’s failure to improve the law and order situation.

• About 30 members of Afghan Young Women for Change staged a protest march in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul Saturday, denouncing violence against women.

• On Saturday, up to 4,000 opposition supporters marched through the southern Russian city of Astrakhan in support of a hunger-striking local politician who says he was robbed of an election victory by vote rigging.

• Police arrested about two dozen people who barricaded themselves inside the Woodlawn Mental Health Clinic on Chicago’s South Side on Friday to protest its planned closing.

• Ten Cuban former political prisoners protesting their “total abandonment” in Spain launched a hunger strike on Friday to press their demands for government assistance.

• Trayvon Martin protesters on Monday blocked the front doors of the Sanford Police Department in Florida for nearly five hours but walked away peacefully after convincing city officials to hold a community forum.

• In Tunisia, police fired tear gas Monday to disperse a rally of hundreds on a central Tunis avenue where demonstrations are banned.

• Pilots for Spanish airline Iberia, part of International Airlines Group, went on strike on Monday, grounding 150 flights in the first of 30 one-day strikes to protest against the start-up of low-cost carrier Iberia Express.

• Egyptian train drivers staged a sit-in in Cairo’s Ramses Train Station on Monday, bringing rail traffic across the country to a halt for more than seven hours, to demand an additional allowance for working on Saturdays, bonus increases and risk allowances.

• Opposition supporters wearing white ribbons walked in a circle during a Red Square protest against the rule of Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Sunday. At least three activists were arrested after pitching a tent near Lenin’s Mausoleum.

• Thousands of Shiite Muslims from Islamabad and Rawalpindi on Sunday participated in a sit-in outside the parliament to protest the killings of Shiite Muslims in Pakistan and government crackdown against the innocent people of Gilgit City.

• Bahraini security forces fired tear gas and water cannons at thousands of protesters marching Friday in support of a jailed human rights activist whose nearly two-month hunger strike has become a powerful rallying point for the tiny nation’s Shiite-led uprising against the Sunni monarchy.

• On Friday, police in India dispersed protesters who staged a sit-in protest against the gang-rape of a woman.

• In a march themed with fanciful allusions to Little Red Riding Hood, thousands of protesters swarmed Hong Kong’s streets on Sunday in the first large display of protest since the city’s elite tapped a Beijing ally to become the Chinese territory’s next leader.

• In the Dakotas, members of the proud Lakota Nation began a 48-hour hunger strike on Sunday in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline — and all tar sands pipelines — they say will destroy precious water resources and ancestral lands in the U.S and in Canada.

• Jordanian authorities arrested more than two dozen political activists during protests Saturday critical of King Abdullah II that called for a change of government.

• An estimated 800,000 homeowners in Ireland joined a tax boycott by refusing to pay a new flat-rate $133 property tax by Saturday’s deadline.

• On Saturday, nearly 100 people wore hoodies in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to protest the killing of Trayvon Martin.

• Thousands of Palestinians protested on Friday against Israeli policies of land seizure and control of Jerusalem, leading to clashes with Israeli troops in which a 20-year-old was killed and scores of others were injured.

• Three protesters were arrested Thursday at the UC Board of Regents meeting, when a few dozen activists, some stripped down to swimsuits, called for more transparency in state funding talks and an end to tuition hikes.

• On Thursday, hundreds of Bahrainis staged a sit-in outside the offices of the United Nations in Manama demanding action over the “excessive” use by police of tear gas against protesters.

• Some 50 students at the all-boys Frederick Douglass Academy in Detroit were suspended Thursday after walking out of classes in protest of absent teachers, inconsistent classroom instruction and other issues.

A child sitting on an army tank in Tahrir Square, with a banner that reads "Egypt is free" on January 29, 2011. By Hossam el-Hamalawy, via Flickr.

Nearly all successful movements need to attract allies in order to win. The U.S. Occupy movement in its first few months attracted widespread sympathy and support in opinion polls; but the function of allies is to translate favorable opinion into active support.

Some movements realize this and craft their messaging and tactics in order to expand their base and win active allies. They avoid what might be called “shrinking messages” that emphasize what happens to them (i.e. the latest police repression), and instead put out “expanding messages” that emphasize how the system oppresses other people — thereby giving reasons for other people to join them. This isn’t easy. What’s more natural than to become self-absorbed, especially when taking punishment? The advice commonly used in the civil rights movement, which took much more punishment than many U.S. movements do, was to “keep your eye on the prize.” When we remember the prize, we know we need to expand beyond our ranks and win allies.

Because the reader will easily think of obvious allies, we decided to stretch our strategic imagination to find unlikely allies that, at a critical moment, appeared and made a difference. Our aim is to push beyond unconscious activist assumptions and suggest that allies may sometimes be found in unexpected places. We’ll start, fittingly enough, with the story of an occupation.

In 1998, students in Indonesia launched a campaign to overthrow the country’s dictator of 30 years. Their numbers quickly grew to tens of thousands, and their street demonstrations outside campuses were greeted with tear gas and live ammunition from the military. That brought more Indonesians into the streets for several months and President Suharto realized he had a real problem on his hands.

Rumors spread of a more drastic military crackdown, but the weakening dictator needed a justification since the movement was largely (although not entirely) nonviolent. At that point, two days of widespread rioting broke out, reportedly instigated by government provocateurs and resulting in over 1,800 deaths. Most of those killed and injured were Chinese, suggesting that Suharto was playing the card of racial division in Indonesia to divert attention from himself.

The students were not deflected, however, and kept their focus on the dictatorship and continued their demonstrations.

The days following the riots revealed splits in the military and rising tension and uncertainty. The students escalated by launching an occupation of the parliament building in Jakarta. Soon after the occupation began, rumors spread that the military would attack the students in the building. To prevent the attack, foreign diplomats and journalists — some bearing video cameras for documentation — joined the student occupiers as third-party nonviolent interveners. They hoped that by showing that, as we now say, “the whole world was watching,” the commanders would hold back. Throughout the night, fear remained high within the parliament building as soldiers remained stationed outside of the gates.

The next morning brought a palpably different atmosphere. Troops that had previously been feared showed thinly-guised support for the occupiers. They allowed more students and guests to enter the parliament, and some soldiers even openly exchanged high-fives with occupiers.

Within two days Suharto had resigned, having lost much of his base in the legislature and military; even his minister of defense finally refused to use violence against the nonviolent protestors. These unlikely allies helped keep student leaders alive in the critical moments.

As extraordinary as the Jakarta spectacle was — diplomats and journalists protecting insurgent students — it’s not the only case in the Global Nonviolent Action Database where friendly interventions came from surprising places. The 1980s was a dramatic decade for South Korea, where the U.S. had backed a series of dictators ever since Korea was partitioned in 1945. The pro-democracy movement had been growing, and dictator Chun Doo Hwan began to try to purge his society of activists.

After several years, the movement’s resilience impressed political dissident Kim Dae Jung, who had been forced into exile in the United States. In 1984 he sensed that it was time to return to offer leadership to the movement, but returning would be highly dangerous. The previous year, Filipino dissident Benigno Aquino similarly tried to return to Manila and was assassinated by the U.S.-backed Marcos regime in broad daylight on the runway at the airport.

Kim was able to gain the protective accompaniment of members of the United States Congress for the flight back to South Korea. With them, in addition to journalists and others, South Korean reactionaries did not take the risk of a direct assassination attempt. Kim was briefly placed under house arrest. Once released he resumed his former role as an opposition politician, eventually becoming elected as South Korea’s president.

Kim’s safe return gave hope to the Korean grassroots movement, which less than two years later brought about democratic reforms through massive nonviolent direct action.

The most unlikely allies are those who were previously enemies, and the civil rights movement produced some of the most dramatic examples of this. Soon after sit-ins began in Greensboro, N.C., on February 1, 1960, students at the nearby historically-black Johnson C. Smith University decided to join the movement. J. Charles Jones, the student government president, later told me (George, that is) this story about a segregationist who eventually did a complete turn-around.

As Jones assessed the situation, he realized that their star football player would want to participate in the sit-in, and also that the man was esteemed partly because he was a warrior: He had led a group of students in fighting off some white hooligans who invaded a campus dance. When the football player came to Jones to volunteer, Charlie explained that the sit-in movement was committed to nonviolence and everyone would have to fit in. “No problem,” Jones said. “If others can do it, I can do it.”

On the first day of the sit-in at the local lunch counter, however, the big football player, once harassed, was barely able to restrain himself to keep from turning around on his stool and knocking a couple of white men out. The second day, he noticed that his student friends on each side of him didn’t seem to be sweating it out as hard as he was, and he began to wonder what they had that he didn’t. He began paying attention to the nightly trainings and mass meetings back on campus.

A couple of weeks later, the football player, once again at his stool at the lunch counter, heard a woman yelling in his direction. He turned just enough to see a white woman, almost hysterical, coming closer while screaming racist insults. She came up to him and, with all her might, pushed him off the stool. He fell to the floor, paused to collect himself, and noticed two stanchions that marked the aisle with a rope connecting them. He stood, reached and unhooked the rope from the stanchion, indicating with a smile and a gesture that she could go.

At first stunned, the woman collapsed in tears and was led from the store by a friend. A week later, the woman joined an informal “white ladies auxiliary” in support of the sit-ins.

Charlie laughed when he finished telling me this story. “Okay,” he said, “I know it’s pretty amazing to see the woman turn around like that, but how about the football player? Now that’s a nonviolent warrior!” Charlie went on to become an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Activists in the organization Otpor!, during the nonviolent overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, deliberately reached out to win unlikely allies among their opposition: the police. The police and military in Serbia were a strong pillar of support for Milosevic’s repressive regime. Otpor’s strategy counted on dividing the security forces when the critical moment came.

As Otpor grew stronger, police forces brutally attacked and arrested nonviolent protestors. Because the repression was so widespread, Otpor required training for all its members, and part of the training was how to handle a police beating nonviolently. They didn’t allow the repression to become the focus of the campaign — their messaging remained on “the prize,” which was the overthrow of Milosevic — but they did use the repression to undermine the morale of the police.

Students with heads bloodied by nightsticks were brought to an apartment by their comrades and photographed. The photos were blown up poster-sized, and then Otpor members went to the house or apartment building of the officer who had done the violence and held up the poster with the question: Why are you beating our young people? The police found themselves trying to justify to family and neighbors their actions, which of course they couldn’t do. Because this and other Otpor measures were so strategic, they didn’t need to pay off immediately. Throughout the campaign Otpor focused on gaining support from youth across a range of societal classes and regions within Serbia. As the movement gained momentum, Otpor also worked hard behind the scenes to cultivate allies within the police force, gaining agreement from large groups of police officers to refuse orders to attack protesters when the campaign reached its climax.

The campaign peaked in October, 2000, when up to a million people gathered in the streets of Belgrade in front of the parliament building. Milosevic was inside, and the police stood between him and the people. This was the moment Otpor had planned for. Milosevic gave the order to the police (backed by troops) to fire and turn away the people. The police refused. They knew that the campaigners’ numbers were overwhelming, and that among those masses of people were their sons and daughters, nephews and nieces. Milosevic was finished.

When Otpor began its campaign, few if any observers would have guessed that police, beating up students on the streets, would end up becoming the students’ allies.

Yet this phenomenon can be witnessed again and again. In 1989, while the Iron Curtain still stood separating the Communist East from Western Europe, previously repressive Hungarian border guards stood aside allowing East Germans to pass safely through Communist Hungary and into Austria — and freedom! An imaginative tactic set the stage.

Human rights activists in Hungary found a weak point in their regime and exploited it to organize a “Pan-European Picnic” on the border between Communist Hungary and neutral Austria. In the meantime, there was a strong build-up of pressure in East Germany both to overthrow the regime and to emigrate to freedom. The Hungarians realized that East Germans wanting to leave could easily cross the border into Hungary, a fellow Iron Curtain country, but not to go farther.

To create their Pan-European Picnic, the Hungarians gained permission for a few hours to cut the fence at the border so Hungarians and Austrians could cross back and forth and socialize while feasting. This was supposedly a restricted, symbolic festivity limited to Hungarians and Austrians, but hundreds of East Germans showed up. Hungarian border guards disobeyed direct orders from their commanders and allowed the East Germans to pass safely into Austria, then closed the fence again behind them.

Finally, Afghanistan gives us a recent, spectacular example of police support for nonviolent campaigners. When, in 2009, Afghan women’s rights advocates began a protest march against a recently passed Shia Personal Status Law, they were confronted by a mob of a thousand people who supported the repressive law.

The counter-demonstrators began peacefully, but then turned to throwing stones at the women’s rights advocates. Female police officers in the area quickly took action, but without responding violently. The policewomen formed a human chain around the original female protestors, facing inwards to protect them from the stones being thrown. With the human wall of policewomen now surrounding them, the women’s rights advocates continued their march safely.

By offering this brief sample of unlikely allies — soldiers, segregationists, border guards, journalists, U.S. members of Congress, police, diplomats — we’re suggesting that a nonviolent campaign can be full of surprises. The willingness of the campaigners to take risks for justice can inspire others also to take risks.

A condition for success, however, is that the central message of the campaign be larger than the campaigners themselves. A campaign that wins unlikely allies is not about victimhood; it’s not “all about us.” The message is expansive, in line with widely-held values, and it’s clear about the goal — in these cases, democracy, women’s rights or economic justice.

A march in Madrid during the general strike, via the FotogrAccion collective.

Last Thursday, people across Spain made a show of force in a general strike, at a scale ranging from the government estimate of 800,000 to the 4 million claimed by the unions. It was timed to challenge new reforms that are expected to make it easier for employers to fire workers, dealing a blow to organized labor.

The 15M movement, which began with occupations in the central squares of cities around the country last year, played an important role in the strike’s success. Despite ongoing conflicts between the largest unions and 15M, several weeks ago the movement’s key organizations — including neighborhood assemblies, Democracia Real Ya, Yo No Pago and the Platform of People Affected by the Mortgage (PAH) — announced their support for the general strike and started working to make it a success.

Early on, there appeared an anonymous blog called 29M sin Miedo (M29 without Fear). It invited workers to speak out against intimidation from their companies about the prospect of the strike, such as threats of dismissal or demands for signed statements about whether they intended to strike or not. The blog, which collected as many as 250 complaints, achieved a double objective: it made these abusive practices visible, and it provided a list of companies to picket on the day of the strike.

The 15M movement’s collectives followed suit with their own initiatives, including leafleting, public meetings about the overhaul of labor rules, caceroladas (the banging of pots and pans) and bicycle pickets. In Barcelona, these were organized through the Acampada BCN website and, in Madrid, through Toma la Huelga (Take the Strike). On Toma la Huelga, too, an independent media team covered the general strike, documenting the movement’s actions minute by minute. This became one of the movement’s major victories that day; Toma la Huelga received more than 150,000 visits, finally prompting RTVE, the Spanish public TV channel, to turn to those working on the site for information.

A bicycle picket in Madrid, via the FotogrAccion collective.

Although the main Spanish newspapers tended to credit the large unions alone, people from 15M played an important role throughout the strike. The night before, in fact, various neighborhood assemblies began picket lines at night spots and transportation centers. By 8 a.m., the picketers were out again and moved through Spain’s main cities all day long, often blocking street traffic.

In most cities, the 15M movement organized their own demonstrations or joined the calls of the smaller unions. In Madrid, at 4:30 in the afternoon, people from the neighborhood assemblies went to centrally-located Cibeles Square and practiced a favorite Spanish pastime: the siesta. Nearly 500 people spent the evening there, enjoying the good weather and causing the area to be closed to traffic for hours. Afterward, several thousand marched to Sol square, followed by the demonstration of the main unions. In this strike, as in other protests before it, 15M and the unions are both in the streets, but it doesn’t mean they get along.

Siesta in Madrid during the general strike, via the FotogrAccion collective.

The day was generally peaceful, but there were some episodes of violence, especially as police cracked down on 15M actions. Before the strike, the government announced that it had prepared a large police force “in anticipation of the picket lines organized by the movement.” In the end, 176 people were arrested, along with more than a hundred injuries. Police repression started the night before, when the 15M picket lines in Madrid arrived at Santa Ana, a square in the city center where foreigners go for the nightlife. The first police charge was there at about 1:30 a.m., with five arrested and several injuries.

Violence was especially notable in Barcelona, where police used rubber bullets and tear gas against thousands of demonstrators in Plaza Catalunya, the same place where Barcelona’s encampment was evicted at the end of May, leaving hundreds injured in one of the most violent episodes of the 15M movement. By evening, some demonstrators responded to the police violence by burning containers, tires, bank offices and Starbucks stores. In Paseo de Gracia, one of the main streets in Barcelona, several hundred demonstrators tried to drive the police away. This fed a media portrayal of the movement as violent and has become an excuse for the government of Catalonia to announce an “anti-guerrilla” plan that would further limit the rights of demonstrators — though the details of it are not yet clear. The use of tear gas against protests is not common in Spain, for instance, but this may change; last December, the Spanish government purchased a $2 million supply of it.

Despite a large turnout for the general strike, the government has already made clear that the proposed labor reforms will go forward. This doesn’t come as a surprise to the 15M movement, which saw value in showing discontent in the streets but didn’t expect the government to alter course. The movement still sees its main objective for now as working locally in neighborhoods to create a system outside the system.

Meanwhile, the main unions have said that they will give the government a month to change its posture. If it does not change, they have threatened a new mobilization in May — a month that will already be full of actions organized by the 15M movement. Once again, these two factions may run into each other in the streets.

• 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.

Initiatives promoting self-management are spreading in Spain. The latest one is ¡Rebelaos! (translated, in the imperative, as “Rebel!”), a small publication that has been flooding the streets since last Thursday and preaching a way of life outside the government and economic system.

“We want to present proposals and strategies for social change,” says Enric Duran, one of the members of the Afinidad Rebelde collective, which is responsible for the publication. “Although there is a lot of information about how to live without capitalism, the information is quite dispersed. We worked to gather these ideas and experiences into a roadmap for generating change.” Afinidad Rebelde grew out of a few dozen people from the Cooperativa Integral Catalana, Derecho de Rebelión and the 15M movement. It was born in mid-2011 to publish ¡Rebelaos!, and it will dissolve after distribution is finished.

This is not the first publication of its kind. In 2008, another temporary collective was formed to publish Crisis, distributing 200,000 copies around the country. In it, Enric Duran explained how he “robbed” almost €500,000 from 39 banks. “I deliberately carried out an individual disobedience action towards banking,” he wrote, “to denounce the banking system and to use the money for supporting initiatives which alert us to the systemic crisis that we are starting to inhabit and which intend to build an alternative society.” The article became known all around the country and earned him the nickname “Robin Bank.”

Now, there’s even more demand for these kinds of ideas. The cuts recently made by the government to health care and education are making Spaniards wonder whether, in the near future, they will still be able to count on state resources to maintain quality public services. In Valencia last month, students demonstrated because they didn’t have heating in the schools for the winter, and they were harshly repressed by police.

¡Rebelaos! has the goal of establishing a communication network among people who are committed to change and ready to act, as well as finding collective solutions to social problems. In thematically-arranged articles, there are proposals relating to labor, housing and education.

One proposal, for instance, is for the creation of cooperatives and citizen job centers, following an initiative of the Economic Group of Sol Camp called Marea Roja (Red Tide), which coordinated unemployed people to create new professional projects together and held monthly meetings at the doors of the official employment offices. ¡Rebelaos! also recommends squatting in unused buildings, collectively purchasing spaces and resettling abandoned villages—which in Spain number in the hundreds. These, then, can then be put to new uses, such as education centers and a self-managed health care system such as the one operated by the Cooperativa Integral Catalana in Barcelona. Since last year, its doctors have been working for and are supported by the local community.

Media is another theme in ¡Rebelaos!, especially in light of the recent closure of one of the main left-wing national newspapers, Público. The newspaper’s employees and readers are starting a campaign to buy it and convert it into a cooperative under the slogan “Más Público.” One of the articles explains, “We have the chance to create truly mass media, which is a critical need of social movements.”

One of the publication’s most controversial themes is economic disobedience. This is also advocated by the collective Derecho de Rebelion, which will launch a handbook in few weeks about tax resistance and insolvency as means of recovering freedom. Other collectives, such as the National Association of Unemployed People, have threatened to promote a massive campaign of fiscal disobedience if the government doesn’t immediately halt home evictions and foreclosures, and guarantee a basic income for all the unemployed.

Afinidad Rebelde has printed half a million copies of ¡Rebelaos! thanks to a crowdfunding campaign. They are being distributed in 320 cities all around Spain with the help of hundreds of local collectives and the 15M movement. Last Wednesday, 55,000 copies of the publication arrived in Madrid, and dozens of volunteers are working to make them reach every part of the city. But the initiative has crossed boundaries as well. Volunteer translators are working to spread the word in Portuguese, English and other languages. A collective in Nantes is preparing a version of it for French readers.

As in Greece, the conjunction of self-management initiatives and economic disobedience is seen by activists in Spain as the best way forward. In the coming months, with May’s tax season, there may be a real chance to push the government to change its policies for the better.