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.

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On Tuesday, WNV editor Nathan Schneider was a guest on Al Jazeera’s Inside Story, where he discussed his recent article on the question of co-optation and Occupy.

The "Dog" nuclear test during Operation Buster-Jangle at the Nevada Test Site on November 1, 1951. It was the first U.S. nuclear field exercise conducted on land; troops shown are a mere 6 miles from the blast.

It remains the most bombed real estate on the planet. The Nevada Test Site — recently renamed the Nevada National Security Site — is 1,360 square miles of sprawling desert north of Las Vegas. A nuclear weapon was detonated there on average every eighteen days from 1951 through 1992. In the 1980s the spiritually-rooted Nevada Desert Experience (NDE) launched a campaign with the audacious goal of ending this practice. For the next decade its effort gained traction, with thousands of people from across the U.S. and around the world converging on the site’s southern gate to protest, pray and engage in nonviolent civil disobedience. Other organizations, including the American Peace Test (APT) and Greenpeace, joined NDE in this struggle. In 1988, three thousand people were arrested in a ten-day action organized by APT at the Nevada Test Site.

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When the Egyptian Revolution began, Sharif Abdel Kouddous was at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, covering independent film for Democracy Now!, where he was a producer. Four days later, Kouddous was in Cairo, where much of his family lives, documenting the unpredictable twists and turns of the occupation of Tahrir Square. Day after day, Kouddous returned to the square, reporting from the heart of the action, often amidst outside skepticism about the movement and its strategies.

By early March, Kouddous had left Democracy Now! and was reporting on the revolution for various news outlets as a freelancer. Being a reporter for alternative media, free from the corporate media’s expectations of what he calls a “false sense of objectivity,” has been crucial to his success in telling the story of the uprising from close up. Additionally, Kouddous’ Egyptian roots — though he has lived most of his life in the States — not only helped him connect to people in Tahrir but also gave him insight into the way the revolution in Egypt was reshaping class boundaries, as people from diverse backgrounds came together to bring down a dictator.

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“The Tombs” is the less-than-endearing nickname for New York City’s Central Booking, the jail you get sent to if you are arrested in Manhattan and set to be arraigned before a judge. This spiraling dungeon below the courthouse at 100 Centre Street is about as ominous as it sounds. Above, the court itself is pristine and immaculate, adorned in mahogany and full of quiet, proper, well-dressed people. But all you have to do is open a door to the back of the courtroom to reveal an underground complex made up of filthy jail cells, violent correctional officers and hundreds of (mainly) poor people (mainly) of color, awaiting their arraignment for anywhere between 10 and 72 hours.

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The 2011 Freedom to Love celebration called Pink Dot, which is held annually at Speaker's Corner in Singapore.

Singapore, a “sunny island set in the sea,” is known for many things: economic prosperity, air-conditioning, malls and underground malls linking to more malls. What it is not known for, though, is a stellar human rights record or an active citizenry willing to take to the streets.

In October 2011, a Facebook page for Occupy Singapore sprung up, asking Singaporeans to gather at Raffles Place in the heart of Singapore’s Central Business District on October 15 as part of the Global Day of Action. The movement called for more accountability and transparency in the running of government-linked corporations, particularly the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation and Temasek Holdings. In recent years, these two corporations had made huge losses on bad investments made with public money.

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In central San Salvador this morning, members of three organizations representing veterans of the historic FMLN guerrilla forces and labor rights leaders handed over the Metropolitan Cathedral after three months of occupation, in exchange for assurances that sincere dialogue addressing the groups’ demands with the Salvadoran government will begin immediately. Their struggle will continue at the negotiation table, mediated by a permanent commission promised this morning by the director general of human rights for the Salvadoran government, Oscar Luna, who will serve as a mediator along with representatives of civic and faith-based organizations.

While in El Salvador last month on an election observation mission arranged by the Episcopal Church, I hardly expected to find myself sitting across the table from three former guerrilla fighters in the crypt where Archbishop Oscar Romero lies entombed. I had wanted to visit the tomb during my first trip to the country, but I soon learned that the Metropolitan Cathedral had been nonviolently “taken” in January by a group of former FMLN combatants and labor rights activists, and they were not permitting the public to enter the grounds. Days after learning of the occupation, though, I was invited to hear their story.

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Photo by Marcus Demery, all rights reserved.

Eager Occupiers — with flowers, signs, costumes and high spirits — descended into downtown Chicago from all directions of the city and suburbs for the April 7 Chicago Spring kickoff. The Occupy Chicago event marks the re-emergence of the economic and political justice movement that was mostly dormant over the winter. On Saturday, though, Chicagoans came out in droves for speakers, workshops, concerts, teach-ins and community-building events that took place all over the city.

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Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions.
Paul Mason
Verso Books (2012)

Seasoned activists from many of this country’s 20th century movements gathered for an extraordinary weekend in Birmingham with Narayan Desai — a prominent biographer of Gandhi who spent decades living with him in the ashram before going on to become a leader in Gandhian nonviolence in his own right.

In the midst of such widespread protest I thought it odd that, of the sixty or so participants, more youth were not attracted to this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn, nearly firsthand, the spirit, tactics and strategy that was able to liberate India from the British Empire. We enjoyed the privilege of experiencing the spirit of Gandhi from one of the last living practitioners of satyagraha who knew Gandhi intimately. But, I wondered, what is the relevance of their weathered experience for today’s unfolding global revolutions?

The scale and depth of the worldwide protests of the past few years — with 2011, in particular — are unprecedented. Paul Mason, in his new book Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions, details the arrival of these global uprisings that are youth driven — and, in many places, prominently nonviolent.

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