It was the afternoon of November 30, 1999 and the “Battle of Seattle” was on. Tens of thousands of people had traveled from across the globe to the Northwest United States to protest the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference, which was on track to reinforce the injustice of corporate globalization and the perils it posed to indigenous societies, labor standards, human rights, civil liberties and the environment.

I had been asked by Global Exchange (a San Francisco-based organization that has long been a proponent of fair trade) to join in as a peacekeeper during the multi-day protest. Moving through the increasingly chaotic streets, I spotted the woman with her conscripted newspaper box and, just before she hoisted it through the glass, I trotted over and asked her what she was doing.

For the next half-hour, we had a heart-to-heart.

She shared her anguish at the violence of Indonesian sweatshops that produced Nike shoes. In the light of that injustice, smashing a window counted as nothing. In fact, from her perspective, it was a good thing—it would directly identify the company as a human rights violator and would challenge business as usual. Most of all, it would help panic the powers that be into changing things in the face of this growing unrest.

It has been over a dozen years so I don’t remember verbatim everything I shared with my impromptu conversation partner, but it was something like this.

I let her know that the two of us were in agreement about this injustice and that it must be challenged and stopped. This is why I had traveled to Seattle—and why, for 15 years, I had been part of movements working for justice. To me, though, there was a better way than property destruction to achieve this goal—and the 70,000 people marching that week in Seattle were illustrating it.

Gathered from around the planet, they were dramatizing a growing movement for change using nonviolent people power. These thousands were alerting and educating the public in a way, from my perspective, that violent action would not. Violent action will not panic the power-holders but it will push away the general populace. Power-holders, in fact, love it, because it gives them an excuse to delegitimize and destroy movements. In the end, social change depends not on creating the sense of chaos and social disorder, but on mobilizing the populace to remove its support for such injustice and to exercise people-power for change.

As we talked, she put down the box. She did not hurl it through the window and eventually she melted back into the crowd. Then, when I went off to engage another person poised to hurl a different newspaper box through a window further down the block, someone else scooped up the first one and pitched it through the window.

Bandana-clad activists (estimated at only 100 to 200 people) managed to break enough windows and spray-paint enough buildings to dislodge the primary focus from the police rampage in the morning to the image of marauding anonymous activists wreaking chaos throughout downtown Seattle in the afternoon.

The criminal behavior of the police—in which thousands of peaceful protesters, sitting in the streets outside the convention hall where we engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience, were shot indiscriminately at close range by rubber bullets and blinded for a time by relentless waves of tear-gas (for which the City of Seattle years later paid out financial settlements to some protesters)—exposed the violence that the state will inflict to protect injustice. Now, however, this narrative had to share the stage with a competing one. Hence the frame that ultimately prevailed: “The Battle of Seattle.” After all, it takes two sides to make a skirmish.

In Seattle, an ambiguity was built into the action itself. We were told at a pre-action gathering the night before that the organizers had just decided that the nonviolence guidelines would be in force only until 2:00 p.m., after which they would not apply. And almost to the minute, this is what transpired: the window smashing, the spray-painting, and the clashes with the police began like clockwork in the early afternoon.

The WTO protest was a watershed event, which was immediately noticed by the press. “Protest’s power to alter public awareness,” read the December 3 headline of the San Jose Mercury News, while the December 5 edition of the Los Angeles Times declared, “WTO is Humbled, Changed Forever by Outside Forces.” It definitively put the hazards of globalization on the social radar screen.

This success was due predominantly, from my point of view, to the nonviolent and creative people power of the mobilization and not to the attention-getting property destruction of a handful of activists. In fact, had the police not engaged in their even more media-genic violence (made all the more glaring by the fact that it was launched, not as a reaction to protest violence, but as a first-strike against peaceful demonstrators), the WTO protest would have likely been assessed very differently.

Unfortunately, though, the wrong lessons have often been drawn from the Seattle mobilization. In the anti-globalization and other movements since then, Seattle has often inspired strategies that provide ample wiggle room on property destruction and even what amounts to street-fighting, enshrined in the now famous “diversity of tactics” principle.

Which brings us to the conversation we are having in 2012 about violence and nonviolence in the Occupy movement.

In sorting out the two tendencies at the heart of the present discussion—“nonviolent people power” and “diversity of tactics”—it is helpful to see how they share at least three points of agreement:

• Social change is imperative
• The goal is justice
• Powerful action is key

They diverge, however, on the question of how each of these is achieved. From my perspective, enduring social change does not flow most effectively from violence-generated social disorder. Such action is typically seized on by power-holders to destroy movements and it often frightens or alienates the public. This seems to be borne out by much of the recent work of Erica Chenoweth and others that quantify how violent campaigns are often much less successful than nonviolent ones.

Instead, social change (as social movement activist and theorist Bill Moyer writes in his book Doing Democracy) flows from social movement that builds nonviolent people power. “Social movements,” according to Moyer, “are collective actions in which the populace is alerted, educated, and mobilized, over years and decades, to challenge the power-holders and the whole society to redress social problems or grievances and restore critical social values.” In short, this means removing the pillars of support for injustice, including the direct or indirect support of the populace and often other economic, political, cultural, or media pillars. Nonviolent action is more likely to nurture this process because:

• It maintains a focus on the issue rather than the violence/counter violence cycle (e.g., the Occupy Oakland action on January 28);
• It is more likely to raise the visibility of both the injustice being challenged and the justice that it seeks. Violent action is more likely to obscure the issue and the outcome it is working for; and
• When nonviolent action is met by violence, the focus is likely to remain both on the issue and on the violence of the state (e.g., the police attack on Occupy at UC Davis on November 18), which can increase rather than decrease public support for change.

But the effectiveness of such nonviolent action often depends on the third point of agreement: the need for powerful action.

Those supporting violent tactics often feel that nonviolent action is not powerful—and, truth be told, it is often not as powerful as it could be. Nonviolent action needs to be commensurate with the injustice one is struggling to change—which means that it needs to powerfully accomplish its goals, including dramatizing the fundamental need for change; illuminating a vision of the alternative; inviting the public to re-think this issue; and offering concrete steps for people to withdrawing consent from the status quo and to support a more life-giving alternative.

The good news is that it can be this powerful.

This power depends on creativity, clarity, strategic planning, training, discipline, execution, interpretation, and follow-up. Occupy itself is a good example of this. When it has maintained a nonviolent spirit, it has been an effective and historic force for highlighting the problem of inequality and laying the groundwork for being a force for change. Its scattered violent actions, however, have been less powerful than its nonviolent ones, because they have often muddied the issue and reframed the conversation from inequality to the violence of Occupiers. This has likely cost support for the movement within Occupy and among the larger populace.

For those of us who are committed to nonviolence in challenging massive and structural inequity, the answer (as George Lakey so eloquently stressed on this site) is not to demonize those who are committed to a variety of approaches, including violent ones. We are called to relentless dialogue with those with whom we disagree—as I attempted to do on the streets of Seattle twelve years ago. Most importantly, we are called to build a movement that demonstrates the power and effectiveness of nonviolent people power.

In the end, this will be more effective than all the arguments in the world.

Mosaic on Bamako, Mali's Martyrs Monument, commemorating the 1991 protests. Click for source.

As the one-year anniversary of the Arab Spring is being celebrated in the media, some journalists have asked, “What about the rest of Africa?” Lisa Mullins of PRI’s The World put it this way on January 24: “The pro-democracy revolts of last year … got people in sub-Saharan Africa wondering if they’d ever see an African Spring. That hasn’t happened.”

Yet it has happened before, as my research assistant Max Rennebohm recently reminded me, and it could happen again. There was a startling wave of pro-democracy struggles in Africa—seven countries with mass people-power campaigns—around the early 1990s. All seven were sub-Saharan: Benin, Madagascar, Cameroon, Mali, Togo, Malawi and Kenya. As with the Arab countries currently in the headlines, the seven from the early ’90s had varying outcomes. What is striking is that, on our Global Nonviolent Action Database’s success scale of 0 to 10, while one was rated 4 and another 7, the rest scored 9 or 10.

Following through

Benin was one of the most successful among the seven. High school and college students launched the campaign there with a student strike in January of 1989. The dictatorial government immediately tried to crush the campaign with troops and arrests. Rennebohm describes what motivated the students to act; the economy had been failing and the government wasn’t paying out student scholarship money—nor salaries to teachers and civil servants.

Inspired by the students’ bold action, the teachers and civil servants themselves began striking. The campaigners attracted allies despite—or because of—government repression; the broader movement added a demand for democracy to their economic grievances. By the end of a 15-month struggle, the government yielded on both counts: the economic demands that began the campaign and the demand for a democratic election that arose during it.

In Madagascar, the ruler Didier Ratsiraka had been in office for 15 years, and in the late 1980s the economy was going from bad to worse. Researcher Elena Ruyter writes that a broad coalition of opposition groups launched a general strike in May 1991, followed by mass demonstrations. They demanded that Ratsiraka step down in favor of free elections.

The government responded with guns and grenades. When the National Council of Christian Churches failed in its mediating attempt, many churches threw their support behind the campaign. The military began to back away from Ratsiraka, which forced him to accept a transitional government and free elections.

Madagascar illustrates a general strategic principle of any struggle: a campaign’s success may be only temporary unless campaigners take additional steps to defend the victory. Although Ratsiraka was ousted—he ran for president in the free election, lost and went into exile—he returned to the country in 1997 and resumed the presidency.

Women holding up more than half the sky

In both Mali and Kenya, women played important leadership roles in successful struggles. In the Malian case, as Aly Passanante and Max Rennebohm tell us, repression escalated soon after the campaign’s start, even though 100,000 people joined the initial demonstration on March 17, 1991. Days later, troops opened fire on students and other protesters and killed at least 22 people.

Women then stepped up, taking a highly visible role in demonstrations because of cultural taboos against killing women. Even though the women didn’t quench the violence fully—soldiers did kill five of them—they had an impact.

As a result, the Malians regained their momentum and mounted a general strike. Many soldiers put down their weapons and joined the protesters. In that atmosphere, a group of military officers arrested General Moussa Traoré (just a week and a half after the campaign began!) and promised free elections. A national congress of civil and political groups soon drafted a new, democratic constitution, and Malians democratically elected a new president.

Kenyan mothers between 60 and 70 years old launched a direct action campaign with a public hunger strike in 1992, camping in Freedom Park across from the parliament building. They demanded that the dictator release their sons who had been detained as political prisoners. Researcher Aden Tedla explains that the women, led by Wangari Maathai—who later received a Nobel Peace Prize—rapidly gained public support. Police beat up and tear-gassed the women. Three of the mothers stripped off their clothing, shook their breasts, and shouted “What kind of government is this that beats women! Kill us! Kill us now! We shall die with our children.” The police retreated.

The movement grew rapidly as the news spread, and many kinds of nonviolent methods, as well as riots, were tried. There was a general strike. The mothers continued to occupy the moral high ground through the growing tumult, and their sons were finally released to them. It would take more extended struggle to democratize Kenya, though; conditions were not as ripe as in Mali. But the 1992–93 campaign initiated by the bold mothers gave Kenya an important step forward.

General strikes: the downside

In the African pro-democracy wave, the campaigns in Mali, Togo, Madagascar and Benin all included general strikes, as did Kenya’s—although it’s unclear how widespread Kenya’s strike was. As anarchists and socialists have long claimed, the general strike can be a powerful nonviolent method. Cameroon, however, reveals a downside of the general strike, which seems to be related to timing.

By April 1991, pro-democracy organizers had managed to gain a rough unity of many political parties who opposed the authoritarian government of the Cameroonian People’s Democratic Movement. The stage was set for a direct action campaign. Sachie Hopkins-Hayakawa tells us that students were among those taking the initiative, and the government didn’t hesitate; in five days, eight demonstrators were killed and several were wounded.

The movement responded by declaring an immediate general strike across Cameroon: “Operation Ghost Town.” The plan was to strike from Monday to Friday, giving the people a chance to restock on weekends.

The government responded by creating a new organization to act as the enforcer, sometimes even outstripping the military in authority and violence. The government also began a crackdown on mass media. It asked for and received international aid, evidently having decided to wait out the campaigners.

This strategy worked. By October, the strain of the strike on the population was too great; too many people were suffering without enough signs of progress. The coalition splintered, and many of the factions agreed to a negotiating conference with the government. The conference failed to achieve their hopes.

The fact that the Cameroon campaign started with a general strike at the beginning—while the other campaigns relied on multiple tactics early on, saving “the big one” for later—raises a strategic question for further study: is the timing of a general strike critical to its success?

The embedded dictator: a contrast

Dictatorships can have remarkable staying power; Togolese President Gnassingbe Eyadema was in power for 23 years by the time the 1990 pro-democracy campaign started. Malawi’s President Hastings Banda had been ruling for 30 years when the 1992 campaign began.

Rennebohm tells us that the Togo campaigners had two goals: a national conference to set the stage for democratic reform, and the resignation of Eyadema. A ten-day campaign was initiated by students and shortly blossomed into a general strike. The organizers quickly gained such wide participation that Eyadema announced the legalization of political parties in addition to his own, and he accepted a national conference. Once the pressure of direct action was off, however, the dictator was able to outmaneuver the campaigners and remained strong enough to defeat several military coups. He remained in power until his death in 2005.

The Malawi campaigners also wanted to legalize political parties and end single-party rule; in the short term, they wanted to release political prisoners. Their campaign went from March 1992 to June 1993, GNAD researcher Lindsay Carpenter writes. In Malawi, the leadership was taken by Catholic bishops rather than students and opposition politicians, and the bishops leaned hard on the church’s infrastructure and support from the pope to build their campaign.

That didn’t stop Banda from arresting the bishops, nor did it keep the university students from joining the struggle. In this context the army decided to stay neutral; junior officers even protected the students from the police and encouraged them to protest. When tapes were discovered in which government members discussed assassinating bishops, the people responded with even larger demonstrations.

Three thousand textile factory workers went on strike, demanding democracy. The Presbyterians and other Protestants, as well as Muslims, joined the campaign. Because Banda wasn’t getting support from his army, he organized his own enforcers, the Young Pioneers, to beat and intimidate protesters, supplementing his police. Later in the campaign, however, the army intervened to disband the Young Pioneers.

Banda realized he was finished and a free election was set. His own party, in control for thirty years, was defeated, and democracy came to Malawi.

Even while the Global Nonviolent Action Database includes dozens of cases of sub-Saharan African nonviolent action going back to 1906, we realize that there are thousands of cases we haven’t yet researched. But there is at least enough to know that the common assumption that Sub-Saharan Africans don’t do nonviolent struggle is just an unfounded stereotype.

• On Saturday, more than 100,000 turned out in the pale winter sunshine for a march in downtown Moscow against election fraud and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s plan to return to the presidency next month.

• Over 10,000 Bahrainis gathered on Sunday to begin a week-long sit-in protest in Meqsha, north of Bahrain, ahead of the one year anniversary of the revolution.

• Hundreds of flights in France were cancelled today, including 40 percent out of Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport, as unions ratcheted up pressure on day two of a strike over labor rights.

• Antiwar groups held rallies on Saturday in about 80 cities across the United States protesting a possible strike on Iran.

• In Singapore, two hundred foreign workers staged a sit-in on Monday morning in protest over unpaid wages.

• At least one activist died, and another 39 were injured on Sunday after police tried to break up a protest by indigenous groups—who have blockaded the Pan-American Highway for days—against the recent approval of mines and reservoirs in their region.

• In Canada, close to a thousand people marched through Prince Rupert’s streets on Saturday as part of a rally hosted by local first nations against Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline and the oil tanker traffic it would generate on British Columbia’s northern coast.

• At least 11 Occupy D.C. protesters were arrested Saturday just blocks from the White House as the U.S. Park Police evicted activists who had been sleeping in McPherson Square since October 1. On Sunday, police also cleared a second encampment at Freedom Plaza.

• In one of more than a hundred protests planned across Europe on Saturday, about 2,000 people marched in the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

• Some 20 residents of Khirbat al-Tawil village, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, went on a 24-hour hunger strike on Friday to protest against Israel’s occupation of their lands.

A checkpoint run by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) at Baba Amr, a poor district in the southwestern part of Homs. Photo from Der Spiegel.

Say the words, “Free Syrian Army” in nearly any gathering of Syrian expatriates lately, and their faces break into wide smiles of appreciation. Say the same words to people in Syria, and they say, “They will liberate us.” This sentiment is growing all over Syria, as the defected soldiers that make up the FSA wage battle against their pro-regime counterparts. But will such optimism last?

Nearly 11 months into the Syrian uprising, ordinary civilians, once certain of the effectiveness of civil resistance, are losing hope. They turn to the FSA for protection. The world has been in awe of the Syrian revolution and its peaceful activists (“How brave!” “Such tenacity!”), who vow to oust the Assad regime once and for all, and the peaceful protests continue daily. However, many of these demonstrations are protected from Assad’s army and snipers by the FSA, where and when possible. The presence of the FSA at protest sites has re-energized protesters, who are coming out in increasing numbers even as the regime escalates its violence against them.

Given the FSA’s popularity in some communities, many argue that the full-scale militarization of the Syrian conflict is inevitable. But FSA successes in Zabadani, the eastern belt of the Damascus suburbs, and Homs, among other areas, have given Syrians renewed hope. Their hope stems not from the thought that military help is coming from the West or NATO, but that it comes from home-grown forces: brothers and fathers and uncles who could not face the thought of shooting at their own unarmed people, and who defected. As of this writing, FSA soldiers in Zabadani are facing a massive assault by regime forces, and the FSA has vowed to fight back until “we are all free or we are all dead.” Its determination has inspired others to go out and protest despite the fighting.

Is this the end of peaceful resistance in Syria? Does the emergence of the FSA mean that nonviolence is a thing of the past? Apparently not. Protesters now seem emboldened by their protectors, and have engaged in ever more creative forms of peaceful civil disobedience.

Today, the city of Hama commemorated the massacres of 1982, in which Hafez Al-Assad, Bashar Al-Assad’s father, killed as many as 40,000 people in just over a week. (It’s a sad irony that over the past year, more than 1,000 people have been killed in Hama alone by the junior Assad, including more than a dozen today; more than 6,000 more from around the rest of the country have died as a result of the continuing crackdown.) In preparation, the entire city of Hama shut down on Thursday as security forces descended upon the city to thwart any commemorative demonstrations. Much to the surprise of Assad’s security forces, residents observed a general strike throughout the city—but not before painting streets red and throwing dye into the famous water wheels on the Orontes River. Activists spray-painted graffiti on the walls: “Hafez died, and Hama did not. Bashar will die, and Hama will not.”

In Daraa, another flashpoint city (aren’t they all, at this point?), protesters clapped in union and chanted, “He who kills his people is a traitor.”

All over Syria, in virtually every city, town and village, pro-democracy activists distribute leaflets, create new anti-regime songs, draw caricatures and stage plays to voice their opposition to the Assad regime. The nonviolent part of the movement is still very much alive.

Across continents and oceans, Syrian activists in Toronto, London and Vienna are staging flash mobs in public spaces to let the world know what is happening in their homeland. In Manchester, England, nonviolent activists created a video, “The Whole World Supports Syria,” which shows young people from around the world holding up signs of city names, victims’ names or inspirational messages.

In Washington, D.C., Ottawa, Berlin, Cairo and other world capitals, Syrian activists are doing sit-ins at Russian embassies and consulates to protest Russia’s staunch support of Assad in the United Nations Security Council. Detroit, Chicago and LA are holding sing-alongs and fundraisers to buy and deliver medical supplies.

Another form of nonviolent resistance are the Twitter campaigns designed to stretch the Friday protests in Syria into the weekend, worldwide. One of them is directed by the Free Syrian Twitter Army against the “minhibakjis,” the pro-Assadists who like to intimidate and harass Syrian activists around the world. The FSTA focuses on the minhibakjis by sending targeted messages just to irritate and annoy the enemy. The FSTA has simple rules: no profanity, no personal attacks and tag all tweets with #FSTA.

For now, at least, the nonviolent movement remains alive and thriving. Scholars of civil resistance understand full well that short-term gains by the FSA today do not necessarily mean a democratic Syria tomorrow. And while the FSA enjoys popular support in certain cities now, many activists—especially those watching events in Egypt—wonder whether they might be trading one military dictatorship for another. Historically, an armed revolution tends to lessen popular participation; however, thus far in Syria, that hasn’t been the case.

It has been three weeks since the protests in Romania started. For the moment they have quieted down, as bad weather is keeping a lot of protesters in their homes. The most determined of them remain to shout in the streets, especially those fighting to protect the Rosia Montana area from mining, one of the longest activism campaigns in post-communist Romania; about 30 people invaded the environment minister’s office on Tuesday. There is also a small crowd of middle-aged and elderly people, who have been organizing themselves and are present in the streets day after day.

The goals of the protests appear to be the fall of the current government and a renewal of the political class. Claudiu Craciun, a lecturer at the National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, is one of the people who has been leading the crowd in University Square, and the speech he recently made in the European Parliament presents what the people hope for. “We want to trust politicians,” he said. “We want to trust democracy. We want to trust public institutions.”

People have called upon union leaders, also, to renounce their political affiliations, end their corrupt management and start representing the people whose dues support them.

There have been some difficult times for the protests. The 15th and 19th of January were the most violent. This was when a small group of protesters started throwing rocks, bits of smashed pavement, and fireworks. The ruling politicians responded by calling the protestors different names—like ”worms,” “oxen,” and “o mahala inepta si violenta,” meaning a stupid and violent mob—trying to attract the media at their side and to make the protests look ridiculous. They almost succeeded.

That is, until the riot police began to take center stage. Thinking that the media was backing them, the police turned against all of the protestors. The law states that the riot police are meant to ensure order, discipline and safety of a demonstration. If violent actions occur, they should intervene to stop the persons responsible. But this is not what happened.

Numerous videos uploaded on the Internet show the abuses that ensued. Some of them document riot police hitting women and children; others show protestors being dragged up to police wagons and beaten until they couldn’t get up anymore.

After these incidents, Bucharest began to feel like a police state. The center of the city was encircled by police wagons, checkpoints with attack dogs, and riot police carrying guns with live ammunition. To get to the protests, you had to pass through various checkpoints. Anyone looking suspicious would be stopped and searched—as I found out for myself. At one point some police officers took me off the street, led me to a tent near the protest zone, and started to search and interrogate me with verbal and physical abuse. After they videotaped me, and saw they had no excuse to take me to a precinct, I was let go. These riot police seem to be doing everything in their power to intimidate people into not joining the protests.

The situation started to change when the media turned against the police, especially after videos appeared on the Internet showing riot police targeting journalists who were on duty. Meanwhile, groups of activists began encouraging one another to protest nonviolently. They started to hand out brochures enumerating the rights of free expression they have as citizens. Given Romania’s repressive history, many people aren’t aware of this. “It’s good that people are in the streets,” says organizer Mihai Bumbes. “Now they must learn to protest.”

Several symbolic, nonviolent actions were orchestrated to show that the intentions is not to fight the police but to protest peacefully. People informed international human rights organizations of the police abuses, and Amnesty International decided to respond to their request by submitting a letter to the minister of the interior.

The riot police have suffered a serious blow to their legitimacy, as the media and much of the Romanian population looking at their behavior with fear and disgust. This constitutes a major win for Romanian human rights groups, which managed to publicize the true nature of the riot police, a state institution that only activists and certain football fans have had firsthand experience with. These groups’ efforts may lead the way for an accurate and just investigation that could compel the ministry of the interior to change its policies.

Above all, these demonstrations have sparked a change in the way Romanians understand values like solidarity, democracy, civic participation and freedom of speech—each of which are rights that they have possessed for more than 20 years but have not been accustomed to exercising. Perhaps the police will learn, too.

• About 20 people gathered on Thursday outside the Ritz-Carlton in New York City—where the Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was said to be staying—to protest his trip to the United States for medical treatment and a deal he received that granted him immunity from prosecution for  crimes against protesters during uprisings last year.

• Thousands of Bahrainis held a peaceful anti-government protest in a suburb of the capital on Friday, demanding the release of political prisoners and political reforms in the troubled Gulf Arab state.

• Protesters defied a heavy security presence across Syria on Friday to commemorate the 30th anniversary of a deadly crackdown on Islamist opposition in the city of Hama, but were effectively prevented from turning out in the capital, Damascus.

• Several thousand people rallied in Bratislava and seven other Slovakian cities Friday to demand that early elections planned in March be postponed to allow a thorough investigation.

• Poland’s prime minister says he is suspending the ratification process for an international copyright treaty after widespread protests and attacks on government websites.

• Members of an Indian tribe in Panama are blocking roads in two provinces on the border with Costa Rica in a dispute over mineral exploitation on their lands.

• Cambodian police violently dispersed a group of around 150 women protesting forced evictions in the capital Phnom Penh on Thursday.

• Around 300 people gathered outside Budapest’s New Theater on Wednesday to protest its new director, an actor with links to far-right parties.

• Hackers associated with the activist group Anonymous posted a protest against Greece’s EU and IMF-inspired austerity policies on the website of the country’s justice ministry Friday

A policeman fires tear gas toward Bahraini anti-government protesters in Sitra, Bahrain, Jan 30. The US decided to sell military equipment to Bahrain.

After a $53 million arms sale to Bahrain was delayed this fall following widespread criticism from human rights groups and some in Congress, it was revealed last week that the Obama administration is now moving forward with a new arms deal to the country, without any formal notification to the public. As The Cable reports:

Our congressional sources said that State is using a legal loophole to avoid formally notifying Congress and the public about the new arms sale. The administration can sell anything to anyone without formal notification if the sale is under $1 million. If the total package is over $1 million, State can treat each item as an individual sale, creating multiple sales of less than $1 million and avoiding the burden of notification, which would allow Congress to object and possibly block the deal.

We’re further told that State is keeping the exact items in the sale secret, but is claiming they are for Bahrain’s “external defense” and therefore couldn’t be used against protesters. Of course, that’s the same argument that State made about the first arms package, which was undercut by videos showing the Bahraini military using Humvees to suppress civilian protesters.

The hypocrisy of it all is not lost on Bahrainis, or likely another other people struggling for democracy in the region or around the world. As Nada Alwadi, a journalist from Bahrain who was jailed for covering the uprising last spring, said in an email interview:

Many Bahrainis were really shocked by the latest news that the Obama administration is going to go ahead with the arms deal with the Bahraini government, especially since the oppression against protesters in several areas in Bahrain has never stopped, if not become more serious. Bahrainis feel that by going ahead with this deal the United States is sending a message to the Bahraini government that they support them on using these weapons against their own people, which has huge implications on how the United States is perceived. The outcome of such a development, if proven right,will result in growing the frustration towards the United States as a super power which supports its allies even when they are killing their own people.

The Bahraini government seems to have gotten this message loud and clear as well. Only days after the news broke, Bahraini police fired tear gas into the cells of protesters who were on hunger strike to protest their detention.

Despite the lack of support from the U.S. or attention from the mainstream media, Alwadi insists that:

the movement is still alive and active either on the streets or on social media. Since the Saudi troops entered the country and cracked down on the protesters last March, it was impossible for tens of thousands of people to gather on the main streets again. However, protesters managed to be creative and find other ways to maintain their visibility. Over the past few months, and since the release of the BICI report, several events have been organized by protesters, such as “Occupy Budayie Road,” which resulted in the arrest of many protesters and the killing of young boys… And many Bahrainis expect serious developments on the first anniversary of the uprising on Feb 14.

During Argentina’s dirty war in the 1970s and 1980s, in which the military government assassinated thousands of citizens, a group of determined women who had lost their sons and daughters to this tsunami of political repression stood up. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo did what few others were willing to: publicly defy this state-sponsored reign of terror by breaking the silence and challenging the chilling paralysis that kept it stolidly in place. They did this by using the most powerful symbol at their disposal, their own vulnerable bodies, as they marched over and over again for years at great risk in front of the presidential palace with their implacable message: “You took them away alive—we want them returned alive.”

Governments quite easily take life. No government, however, has yet discovered how to return it.

The mothers named this state-sponsored killing “assassinations” and the killers “assassins.” The murders were politically motivated, carried out in secret, and covered up. In addition, they bore another important connotation of “assassination”: prominence. To their mothers, these women and men were as eminent and distinguished as any public figure—and only grew more so in death.

This immense violence is unspeakable. This is true not only because words fail to convey the horror of this particular case of terrorism, but also in the sense that theologian and activist James W. Douglass (drawing on the American monk Thomas Merton’s notion of The Unspeakable) means: “an evil whose depth and deceit seemed to go beyond the capacity of words to describe… a systemic evil that defies speech.”

Since the mid-1990s, Douglass has peered clearly into the void of The Unspeakable by making a protracted study of assassination and its meaning. His raft of books on the power of nonviolent action that preceded this focus—including Resistance and Contemplation and The Nonviolent Coming of God— prepared him to unearth the place of premeditated, targeted killing in the maintenance of the state; in the reinforcement of a culture rooted in the saving power of violence; and (as Douglass brilliantly and soberly illuminates) in the attempt by systems of domination to suppress and extinguish the nonviolent option.  For fifteen years he has been engaged in a long-term research and publishing project focused on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Robert F. Kennedy.

The first book that appeared was JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. This carefully researched study, published in 2008, tracks President Kennedy’s gradual shift from a traditional Cold Warrior to a covert peacemaker who was engaging with his putative enemies to defuse volatile international crises and to attempt to build a more enduring peace on the major fronts of his day, including Vietnam, Berlin, Indonesia, Cuba, and the barreling nuclear arms race. Douglass assembles convincing evidence that Kennedy was assassinated because of this pursuit of the nonviolent alternative.

Before completing his next projects on King and Malcolm X, though, Douglass began researching the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi. As he explained in a 2011 talk at Marquette University, it increasingly became evident to him that what he was discovering about Gandhi’s assassination could shed light on the dynamics of the assassinations that took place in the U.S. in the 1960s.

This week—as we marked the sixty-fourth anniversary of Gandhi’s death on January 30—Douglass published the fruit of this research: Gandhi and the Unspeakable: His Final Experiment with Truth (Orbis Books). This summary highlights Douglass’s findings:

While researching [the Kennedy assassination], Douglass learned from Arun Gandhi, grandson of the Indian liberation leader, that his grandfather had been killed by a conspiracy involving powerful nationalist forces within the Indian government—not a lone gunman. This led to Douglass’s rigorously investigating thousands of documents on Gandhi’s 1948 murder. He now provides readers with a slim, elegant volume containing explosive insight into who conspired to assassinate the father of modern nonviolence and why. “Gandhi’s murder, followed by the repression of its truth,” writes Douglass, “forms a paradigm of killing and deceitful cover-up that U.S. citizens would soon have to confront in our own government.” No other contemporary writer is exposing the mechanics of assassination as methodically and bravely as Douglass. But because he is a Catholic independent scholar and activist most well-known for his writings on nonviolence and suffering, this book is more than a fresh look at historical circumstances: it’s spiritual spelunking into the depravity of unchecked political power.

Douglass has devoted his life to illuminating the potential of nonviolent action to create options in a world caught in a web of violent and unjust forces—especially by engaging with, having faith in, and loving the enemy. He has done this through his writing, but even more importantly, he has done this by pursuing his own Gandhian experiments with truth. Here are two examples.

In 1979 Douglass, Rosemary Powers and John Clark engaged in nonviolent action at Naval Submarine Base Bangor, the Pacific homeport for the U.S. Navy’s Trident submarine fleet in Washington State. They scrambled over a security fence with the hope of making their way to the Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific (SWFPAC), a nuclear weapons storage area at the center of the base. As Douglass wrote in “Pilgrimage to Ground Zero” in Sojourners magazine (March 1980):

Our plan was to walk through Bangor’s woods, crossing six roads patrolled by naval security, and eventually climb over SWFPAC’s two high security fences in order to pray at “the physical site of an evil we all refuse to see, and thus refuse to take responsibility for”—as we put it in our advance leaflet to the Marines, passed out at the base three weeks earlier.

In the course of our pilgrimage to SWFPAC we spent 12 hours undetected on the base, continuously pursued by helicopters, civilian security guards, the Naval Intelligence Service, and hundreds of Marines as we climbed fences and crawled through the brush… We were finally arrested near a conventional weapons site just short of the high-security fences of SWFPAC.

In meditating on this anti-nuclear pilgrimage, Douglass noted the urgency of finding a way to “break the hypnotic spell nuclear weapons have over America.” He explained that:

After reflecting on the absurdity of the situation—what does one do in the presence of an H-bomb?—we decided that the only thing we could do was to go to SWFPAC, in a pilgrimage to that point of responsibility. Once there, we could only ask God’s forgiveness and mercy for our responsibility in creating such weapons, and pray for the power to be transformed in our collective conscience to a responsible, loving people capable of disarmament.

The following year—on January 6, 1980, the Feast of the Epiphany—Douglass and Clark again made their way inside the base. After not being detected on the grounds of the 7,000 acre facility the first day, they spent an all-night vigil in the woods in preparation for the next day’s events:

The next morning we used stepping stools and rug remnants to climb over the 12 foot-high double security fences enclosing SWFPAC… We walked alone and unimpeded to the first nuclear bunker. It was like a tomb—huge sliding concrete slabs shut under a small mountain of earth. We stood in silence for several minutes on the concrete entry, joined hands, and said aloud the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary. Then we walked on to the next bunker, and prayed there in the same way. We continued our nuclear Stations of the Cross for six bunkers before we were arrested.

The spirit of this Gandhian nonviolence is also conveyed in the text of the leaflet distributed to the Marines at the base beforehand:

We know that it is your responsibility to guard these nuclear sites. We ask you to consider carefully in advance our attempt to join you there. We know that by government regulations you are “authorized to use deadly force” in protecting nuclear weapons. Brothers, we ask instead that you lay down your arms, for the sake of all our lives. We know that you are good people, and that you love and respect life.

Like the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo—whose courageous vulnerability contributed significantly to the nonviolent struggle for the eventual restoration of democracy in Argentina—James W. Douglass in these and many other actions has communicated his hope for profound social transformation in his own vulnerable body. And like Gandhi—whose vision and embodiment of soul-force continues to challenge and change our world—his hope has been enduringly vested in a transformed relationship with the enemy.

In this time of a growing national security state which increasingly depends on the proliferation of “targeted killings”—one of the faces of The Unspeakable today—may each of us be inspired by Douglass’s words and deeds to take nonviolent action to transform our lives and our world.

• Just after the National Park Service’s noon deadline Monday, by which protesters in Washington’s two Occupy D.C. camps were required to decamp, protesters fought back by stringing up a giant blue tarp in the middle of McPherson Square, which they called the “tent of dreams.”

• Belgium’s first general strike in almost two decades brought parts of the country to a halt on Monday in an anti-austerity protest aimed at the new government and at EU leaders meeting in Brussels.

• Hundreds of Romanians protested on Saturday against a plan to set up Europe’s biggest open-cast gold mine in a small Carpathian town, joining a wave of anti-government rallies.

• Three topless Ukrainian protesters were detained Saturday while trying to break into an invitation-only gathering of international CEOs and political leaders to call attention to the needs of the world’s poor.

• Thousands of cars flying white ribbons or balloons circled central Moscow on Sunday in a show of protest against Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

• Argentina’s powerful truck drivers’ union blocked postal distribution centers in several cities on Monday to protest the firing of 200 workers.

• About 200 Indonesian Christians held a prayer vigil in Jakarta on Sunday urging President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to re-open their church and stop intimidation by Muslim hardliners.

• Last Sunday, dozens of Detroit’s undertakers drove a motorcade of hearses through the city’s most violent neighborhoods to protest the high murder rate.

The photo from Occupy Oakland used to advertise "Solidarity Sunday" on OccupyWallSt.org.

Occupy Oakland got rough on Saturday night, when an attempt to occupy a vacant convention center resulted in police using tear gas and other weapons, as well as, reportedly, protesters throwing rocks back at them. Some of the most widely-circulated photos depicted the burning of an American flag that had been removed from Oakland’s City Hall. On Sunday, other Occupy groups around the country took to the streets in solidarity marches. In New York, there were reports of potentially dangerous actions, including a bottle being thrown. Entrepreneurial live streamer Tim Pool, as The New York Observer anxiously reports, noted that there was more of a black bloc presence than usual. The night before, an OWS-er allegedly used pepper spray on a police officer.

Those who had been at the afternoon’s Occupy Town Square beforehand might have seen this coming. Members of OWS’s Direct Action Working Group—which oversees the planning of most marches and other actions—gave an impromptu teach-in about the idea of “diversity of tactics,” which was in many respects insightful, but ultimately became an apologia for undertaking, or at least tolerating, what might be construed as violent actions. The villains of the presentation, perhaps even more so than police, were those within the movement who denounce or try to stop others who want to do such things. They were described as likely to be sexist and racist for trying to insist on nonviolent discipline.

The teach-in also revealed a misunderstanding. Several participants indicated that they thought Occupy Wall Street had a statement of nonviolence, and that there was an underlying presumption that all movement actions would operate under such an assumption. (Hence the often-heard chant, “This! Is! A peaceful protest!“) To an extent, this is true; just about every major document passed by the General Assembly includes some mention of nonviolence. Many other Occupy groups have issued much more explicit commitments to nonviolence, and the Alliance of Community Trainers has eloquently called for the movement as a whole to do so more. But New York’s Direct Action group has in its GA-passed guidelines a nod to respecting “a diversity of tactics”—which opens the floodgates. It means that, effectively, in an Occupy Wall Street action, you can’t assume that nonviolent discipline will be maintained by everyone in the movement. And this teach-in was a reminder that nonviolent tactics are not favored by some of those most influential in Direct Action.

A diversity of tactics can be a good thing. A lot of the movement’s success stems from creating a framework that smaller, autonomous sub-groups can fill with their own creativity and instincts, as well as their sense of what tactics are appropriate. Gandhi would be the first to add that willingness to fight violently is preferable to mere passivity. And to the credit of their common sense, Occupy protesters have overwhelmingly left the violence to the police.

But the diversity of tactics framework might have other consequences as well. For a movement that still hasn’t managed to mount a demonstration in New York as well-attended as a single sold-out game at Yankee Stadium, the prospect of vigilantes doing dangerous things on behalf of a larger crowd could make even fewer people feel safe taking part. Such a framework can also mean that the media attention is unduly monopolized by a violent few, rather than the effect of a peaceful—even militantly peaceful—many.

When the afternoon teach-in was over, a small group of participants stuck around, many of whom seemed to be concerned about what they’d just heard. (The demographics among these stragglers would have deflected accusations of racism or sexism.) Some were coming to terms with the realization that Direct Action, as it stands, is not planning its marches and demonstrations with nonviolent discipline in mind. And they knew that truly nonviolent action and destructive tactics don’t easily mix.

Therefore, if people in the Occupy movement want to infuse their resistance with a fuller spirit of nonviolence, they will have to organize new kinds of direct actions themselves, whether within or alongside the Direct Action group, and ask outright that those who take part in these particular actions do so nonviolently. All the better if trainings can be provided in advance. Those who believe that nonviolent force is really more powerful and more revolutionary than hateful or destructive force should find ways to prove it. The burden, as it stands, is on them to carve out new space even within the diversity of tactics framework—as well as on their comrades respect these tactics in turn.

• Egyptian activist groups on Thursday launched an open-ended strike in Cairo to pressure the country’s military rulers  to expedite the transfer of power to an elected civilian  administration, a day after 100,000 Egyptians came out to Tahrir Square to mark the anniversary of the first massive protest that led to the overthrow of dictator Hosni Mubarak.

• Activists linked to the global ‘Occupy’ movement used giant red weather balloons to stage a flying protest over the venue of the World Economic Forum on Wednesday.

• Nearly 7,000 prisoners were on a hunger strike Wednesday in Kyrgyzstan with more  than 1,000 sewing shut their lips with staples and thread to protest jail  conditions

• On Tuesday, demonstrators with ACTA stickers on their mouths protested against Poland’s government plans to sign international copyright agreement ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement), in front of the European Union office in Warsaw.

• Dozens of teachers turned out at six events across Seattle on Tuesday to protest and rally against budget cuts that are hurting education.

• Nepalese students chanted anti government slogans during a torch rally to protest against Nepal Oil Corporation’s decision to hike prices on major petroleum products, including petrol, diesel, kerosene and LPG in Kathmandu on Tuesday.

• On Tuesday, Cambodian victims held a demonstration to mark the third anniversary of a forced eviction in the Dey Krahorm community.

• Hundreds of Tibetans carried out day-long protests and candle light vigils in Ngaba on Monday calling for the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama from exile and demanding freedom in Tibet.

The Romanian people have been asleep for quite some time now. After more than 20 years since the end of Communist rule, Romanians have decided to wake up, to wake up and see that the faith they put in their elected officials has not brought them the life they wished for. The current economic crisis, the austerity measures implemented by the government, the corruption among the politicians, the undemocratic way in which laws are implemented by the executive branch, poor living conditions and other interrelated grievances have brought Romanians into the streets.

It started about two weeks ago when the president, Traian Basescu, wanted to remove a highly esteemed medic from his job as an official in the Ministry of Health because he did not support the new healthcare law that was drafted by the president. This official, Raed Arafat, is a Palestinian who came to Romania and built the most advanced ambulance service the country had ever seen. For almost 15 years it has been the pride of the Romania healthcare system. But with the new law, this life-saving service would disappear.

That was the spark which ignited the fire inside the hearts of Romanians. First, 500 people protested after several NGOs and activist groups, like Active Watch Romania and Militia Spirituala, posted a call on Facebook and other social media networks. After just three days, people from around the country started to gather in squares, especially University Square in Bucharest. The number of protesters throughout these two weeks of demonstrations has varied, from the 500 on that first day to more than 20,000 after only a few days.

Nobody seems to have had a concrete plan for what has happened. The important thing was that the crowd was mixed—the elderly, students, activists with different causes and ordinary working people fed up with their living conditions—not just party or syndicate activists. People decided to bear fiercely cold weather in order to show their discontent to those in power.

During these days of protest, some people took to violent tactics. Clashes erupted between the riot police and a group of football fans supporting the protesters, which resulted in injuries among some who had been protesting peacefully. Naturally, the media focused on these incidents, putting the entire protest in a bad light. However, other protesters have managed to turn the mood around, recognizing that nonviolent discipline would be vital to their cause. This kind of understanding isn’t something many Romanians have, though that may be changing.

Most days, the young activists leading the protests in University Square have been instructing the crowd to protest nonviolently, and that is what happened for most of the days. They also surprised the media with tactics meant to show the world that they were not there to fight the riot police: offering flowers, big plastic hearts, tea and free hugs to police officers standing a few feet away from them; blocking traffic around the square while offering hot chocolate to people who got out of their cars and inviting them to participate; making snowmen and putting protest signs in their hands. Most importantly, they showed their determination to hold the line and maintain their presence despite the abuses inflicted by riot police. In recent days, a fierce snow storm struck Eastern Europe, but people, although smaller in number, are still going out into the square and protest.

Already, this wave of protests has brought about results: the healthcare law, which was about to privatize the entire medical system and put thousands of medics out of work, did not pass and will probably not get into parliament any time soon. Raed Arafat has been asked to take up his old post, which he did, and the foreign minister, Theodor Baconschi, was demoted after he called the protesters “maggots.” The Constitutional Court also declared that the law to merge local and parliamentary elections of 2012 was unconstitutional—perhaps after hearing how many of the slogans shouted in University Square were against that law.

Overall, these protests show that a new way of thinking has emerged among the population of Romania. People are tired of the way things are going and have decided to do something about it—largely in a nonviolent manner. Whatever comes of the protests, they seem to be on the way to helping build a stronger civic society for in Romania the future, showing politicians that the people will not be ignored any longer.

A march in Ådalen, Sweden, in 1931.

While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different. Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.” Neither country is a utopia, as readers of the crime novels by Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell and Jo Nesbø will know. Critical left-wing authors such as these try to push Sweden and Norway to continue on the path toward more fully just societies. However, as an American activist who first encountered Norway as a student in 1959 and learned some of its language and culture, the achievements I found amazed me. I remember, for example, bicycling for hours through a small industrial city, looking in vain for substandard housing. Sometimes resisting the evidence of my eyes, I made up stories that “accounted for” the differences I saw: “small country,” “homogeneous,” “a value consensus.” I finally gave up imposing my frameworks on these countries and learned the real reason: their own histories. Then I began to learn that the Swedes and Norwegians paid a price for their standards of living through nonviolent struggle. There was a time when Scandinavian workers didn’t expect that the electoral arena could deliver the change they believed in. They realized that, with the 1 percent in charge, electoral “democracy” was stacked against them, so nonviolent direct action was needed to exert the power for change. In both countries, the troops were called out to defend the 1 percent; people died. Award-winning Swedish filmmaker Bo Widerberg told the Swedish story vividly in Ådalen 31, which depicts the strikers killed in 1931 and the sparking of a nationwide general strike. (You can read more about this case in an entry by Max Rennebohm in the Global Nonviolent Action Database.) The Norwegians had a harder time organizing a cohesive people’s movement because Norway’s small population—about three million—was spread out over a territory the size of Britain. People were divided by mountains and fjords, and they spoke regional dialects in isolated valleys. In the nineteenth century, Norway was ruled by Denmark and then by Sweden; in the context of Europe Norwegians were the “country rubes,” of little consequence. Not until 1905 did Norway finally become independent. When workers formed unions in the early 1900s, they generally turned to Marxism, organizing for revolution as well as immediate gains. They were overjoyed by the overthrow of the czar in Russia, and the Norwegian Labor Party joined the Communist International organized by Lenin. Labor didn’t stay long, however. One way in which most Norwegians parted ways with Leninist strategy was on the role of violence: Norwegians wanted to win their revolution through collective nonviolent struggle, along with establishing co-ops and using the electoral arena. In the 1920s strikes increased in intensity. The town of Hammerfest formed a commune in 1921, led by workers councils; the army intervened to crush it. The workers’ response verged toward a national general strike. The employers, backed by the state, beat back that strike, but workers erupted again in the ironworkers’ strike of 1923–24. The Norwegian 1 percent decided not to rely simply on the army; in 1926 they formed a social movement called the Patriotic League, recruiting mainly from the middle class. By the 1930s, the League included as many as 100,000 people for armed protection of strike breakers—this in a country of only 3 million! The Labor Party, in the meantime, opened its membership to anyone, whether or not in a unionized workplace. Middle-class Marxists and some reformers joined the party. Many rural farm workers joined the Labor Party, as well as some small landholders. Labor leadership understood that in a protracted struggle, constant outreach and organizing was needed to a nonviolent campaign. In the midst of the growing polarization, Norway’s workers launched another wave of strikes and boycotts in 1928. The Depression hit bottom in 1931. More people were jobless there than in any other Nordic country. Unlike in the U.S., the Norwegian union movement kept the people thrown out of work as members, even though they couldn’t pay dues. This decision paid off in mass mobilizations. When the employers’ federation locked employees out of the factories to try to force a reduction of wages, the workers fought back with massive demonstrations. Many people then found that their mortgages were in jeopardy. (Sound familiar?) The Depression continued, and farmers were unable to keep up payment on their debts. As turbulence hit the rural sector, crowds gathered nonviolently to prevent the eviction of families from their farms. The Agrarian Party, which included larger farmers and had previously been allied with the Conservative Party, began to distance itself from the 1 percent; some could see that the ability of the few to rule the many was in doubt. By 1935, Norway was on the brink. The Conservative-led government was losing legitimacy daily; the 1 percent became increasingly desperate as militancy grew among workers and farmers. A complete overthrow might be just a couple years away, radical workers thought. However, the misery of the poor became more urgent daily, and the Labor Party felt increasing pressure from its members to alleviate their suffering, which it could do only if it took charge of the government in a compromise agreement with the other side. This it did. In a compromise that allowed owners to retain the right to own and manage their firms, Labor in 1935 took the reins of government in coalition with the Agrarian Party. They expanded the economy and started public works projects to head toward a policy of full employment that became the keystone of Norwegian economic policy. Labor’s success and the continued militancy of workers enabled steady inroads against the privileges of the 1 percent, to the point that majority ownership of all large firms was taken by the public interest. (There is an entry on this case as well at the Global Nonviolent Action Database.) The 1 percent thereby lost its historic power to dominate the economy and society. Not until three decades later could the Conservatives return to a governing coalition, having by then accepted the new rules of the game, including a high degree of public ownership of the means of production, extremely progressive taxation, strong business regulation for the public good and the virtual abolition of poverty. When Conservatives eventually tried a fling with neoliberal policies, the economy generated a bubble and headed for disaster. (Sound familiar?) Labor stepped in, seized the three largest banks, fired the top management, left the stockholders without a dime and refused to bail out any of the smaller banks. The well-purged Norwegian financial sector was not one of those countries that lurched into crisis in 2008; carefully regulated and much of it publicly owned, the sector was solid. Although Norwegians may not tell you about this the first time you meet them, the fact remains that their society’s high level of freedom and broadly-shared prosperity began when workers and farmers, along with middle class allies, waged a nonviolent struggle that empowered the people to govern for the common good. Correction: In an earlier version, Henning Mankell was mistakenly referred to by the name of Kurt Wallender, the protagonist in several of his books.

The coalition awarded the golden toilet to Terrence Duffy, Chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), as a way of protesting the CME’s recent gift of $109 million from Illinois taxpayers. Close to a hundred Chicagoans—each representing one of the millions that the CME received from city and state tax breaks as well as TIF funding for bathroom renovations, a new fitness center, a cafe, and state-of-the art audio-visual conference room at the Chicago Board of Trade—presented Duffy with the gift and asked for a meeting with him.

Shani Smith, a working-class mother from the Calumet Heights neighborhood of Chicago, was one of the spokespersons at the event. In an interview with her afterwards, Smith said that she finds herself “between unemployment and under-employment” while social services and education services are being cut in her neighborhood. “Meanwhile, [the CME] is recording record profits at the expense of the taxpayer. We want to send a message: We want some of our money back! Our neighborhoods desperately need it.” Smith, whose home teeters on foreclosure, thought the action was spectacular and had powerful visuals. Indeed, the toilet is a creative and humorous piece of protest—reminiscent of Otpor’s famous Milosevic whack-a-barrels.

The diverse group, representing neighborhoods all across Chicago, was unable to meet with Duffy, but the golden toilet—complete with a big red bow—was left in the lobby with the hopes that it would be installed as part of the luxurious renovations and used by the executives. Catherine Murrell, an organizer with Stand Up Chicago, does not think their chances of getting a meeting with Duffy are high. “The CME is not concerned with us,” she added.

The golden toilet action is one of many that Stand Up Chicago has organized in the past years to draw attention to corporate welfare. Murrell also said future actions were being planned around April 17—tax day. But Stand Up Chicago is doing more than just raising awareness. The coalition, together with Chicago Political Economy Group (CPEG), commissioned and published a jobs plan—”Investing in Chicago Communities: A Jobs Fund for a Future That Works“—that could create up to 40,000 Chicago jobs. And where would the $1.4 billion needed for these jobs come from? Well, by asking the CME to pay $0.25 per transaction on high risk speculation on derivative trading. The average worth per trade: $233,000. That’s right, a mere .0001% per derivative transaction—twenty-five cents—holds the potential to transform the prospective outlook for one in every six of Chicago’s unemployed.

These kind of protests, which capture the attention with dramatic and humorous action, open space for more serious kinds of conversation. Stand Up Chicago is doing just that. Their Chicago Community Jobs Plan is meticulously well-researched and comes out of grassroots canvassing of various Chicago neighborhoods to find out what the struggles and needs of ordinary Chicagoans are. While City of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the State of Illinois legislature continue to provide corporate welfare at the expense social welfare, the mysteriousness of corporate finance is being demystified and made digestible to the people by civic action and popular education. The solutions are out there and more and more activist groups are beginning to grasp and promote them with real authority and with expanded partnerships, like that between Stand Up Chicago and CPEG, and the excellent, and realistic, report they produced.

UPDATE: Some good news!  Protest works.  A week following Stand Up Chicago’s creative “golden toilet” action protesting controversial tax breaks and TIF funding awarded to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) for luxury renovations, the CME–along with two other companies (CNA Group and Bank of America)–have agreed to give back $34 million in tax breaks to the City of Chicago.

Both the CME and Bank of America have been targets of political and economic protests in Chicago in past months.  While it is difficult to substantiate quantitatively this victory for people’s movements, it is certainly worth celebrating and should be considered an affirmation of Stand Up Chicago’s work (as well as their allies like Occupy Chicago and others).

A couple weeks ago, a group of activists working with Rainforest Action Network’s Energy and Finance campaign hit the streets of San Francisco to bring a little truth about Bank of America’s misdeeds to its customers—not in the lobbies of the bank’s local branches, but at its ATMs throughout the city.

The group designed special non-adhesive stickers that looked exactly like Bank of America’s ATM screen, but with a few important differences, that were then put on all 85 of the bank’s ATMs in San Francisco.

Rather that offering the standard options, the sticker’s new menu options allowed customers to select whether they wanted their money to be invested in coal-fired power plants, foreclosures on homes, bankrolling climate change or padding executive bonuses. At the bottom, there was also a button that said, “Stop doing business with Bank of America until they start behaving responsibly,” and offered the URL of a new blog, Bankrupting America, that is targeting the bank.

Given the positive response to the action, RAN online organizer Mike Gaworecki wrote on The Understory that they have now “made the design available as a high-res PDF. It’s available here. We ARE NOT suggesting you do anything with it.”