A 150-strong group of Belgian firefighters sprayed foam from 20 trucks over a main road in central Brussels, blocking traffic in an effort to press for speedier promotions. Government buildings, including the Minister President’s office, were targeted.
Police and a specialist evictions team began a major operation to end a six-month occupation of an opencast mine site in Scotland this morning by arresting 10 Climate Camp protesters chained to tree houses and make-shift forts. There are about 40 climate campaigners now occupying tunnels, tree houses, and homemade barricaded huts.
About 2,000 photographers gathered in London over the weekend to protest stop and search methods by British police. The photographers say they’ve been unduly targeted by Section 44 of Britain’s Terrorism Act 2000, which was designed to give police greater powers to fight terrorism.
Hundreds of protesters in southern China donned masks to protest a planned incinerator plant, the latest grassroots initiative to target polluting projects in the region.
Greek farmers have been blocking roads in Greece for more than a week to protest the government’s current agricultural policy, which threatens to put 50 thousand people employed in agriculture and livestock out of work.
About 200 people gathered for the kickoff of an 11-day series of events in Washington DC om Monday to raise awareness about the Guantanamo situation. About 100 people nationwide will participate in a liquids-only fast, while others planned to join in prayer and reflection through Jan. 22, the one-year anniversary of Obama’s executive order.
Around 150-200 inmates at Stillwateter Correctional Facility in Minnesota refused to return to their cells after a meal on Sunday afternoon to protest the operational rules of the unit, such as the amount of time they are allowed out of their cells. After almost two hours they complied with orders to return to their cells peacefully.
Dockworkers at France’s top container ports in Le Havre and Marseilles staged the second 24-hour strike in as many weeks to protest government reforms.
The New York Times ran this ridiculous photo last week with a story about a protest by European dairy farmers at the EU’s headquarters in Brussels. Apparently more 5,000 people showed up to demand better prices. Many brought their tractors, cattle, milk and eggs to create a messy, but effective blockade of an agriculture ministers meeting.
I would have posted this earlier, but I’ve struggled with what I want to say. On the one hand, it would be good to point out, as Gandhi would have, the importance of not humiliating your opponent. But damn if this photo isn’t hilarious.
Some 10,000 high school students here formed a human peace symbol during a mammoth rally held Wednesday in support of the call for world peace and non-violence. Meanwhile,more than 2,000 students, soldiers from the Philippine military, government officials and NGO workers joined the colorful World March for Peace and Nonviolence in Manila’s Malate district.
1,700 employees of Iran’s Pars Wagon Company, maker of freight wagons and passenger coaches, went on hunger strike yesterday to protest delays in salary payment.
Argentine farmers marked the end of an eight-day sales boycott on Friday with rallies and marches promising to “keep fighting” in support of aid for peers suffering from the worst drought in decades and to eliminate the current export tariffs system which distorts production and threatens several crops.
Within 300 feet of the Massey Energy’s Edwight mountaintop removal blasting site, two protesters scaled massive trees and unfurled banners from their 80-foot-high platforms to call on federal agencies to crack down on the scandal-ridden West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WV DEP) and stop the unsafe and reckless blasting in the area.
On Monday, hundreds of Zelaya supporters rallied near the hotel where an OAS delegation is holding talks with the coup government in an effort to seek the return of the ousted president.
The Federation of Workers’ Unions of Niger, which represent the country’s seven trade unions, and an opposition coalition plan a three-day general strike starting today. The strike is in support of a demand for a 50 percent increase in the salaries of government workers and a 50 percent increase in the state’s contribution to their pensions.
Argentine farmers will launch a seven-day strike starting on Friday that will freeze grain and beef sales from one of the world’s biggest suppliers of corn, beef and soybeans, to protest the government’s farm policy.
Rainforest Action Network (RAN) activists staged a die-in yesterday at the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC)’s newly opened downtown banking centre to protest its continued financing of Alberta tar sands production.
In Gibraltar, workers with a subcontractor on the Waterport Terraces estate walked out yesterday in protest at not being paid for three months.
Around 100 employees of the cash-strapped public carrier Air India joined their counterparts from other parts of the country yesterday on a three-day hunger strike over delay in payment of salaries.
Various campaigners have united to oppose plans for a partially constructed dump site in the Canadian Township of Tiny, just north of Toronto, in Simcoe County. The campaigners who are opposing these landfill site plans have focused on the water contamination that would result from dumping waste on an underground aquifer that runs into the Great Lakes.Provincial and county officials have situated the dump site on the Alliston Aquifer—which otherwise would serve as an exceptionally clean water source. The indigenous inhabitants at three nearby reservations are among the potential victims whose water would be contaminated if the landfill site is completed and used.
The Native Women’s Association of Canada has stressed how the potential dump site “is in close proximity to three First Nations reserves; Rama, Georgina Island and Beausoleil, and it is also the traditional harvesting area of the Métis Nation. Aboriginal peoples have not been consulted about the development of this garbage dump site.” In May, Vicki Monague—an indigenous campaign leader—wrote that:
We have been receiving the support of well over 40 non-native local community members all weekend long who have taken part in our Water Ceremonies and our Songs from the Drum. To my knowledge, this is the first time in Canada that the Non-Native People and First Nations have taken a stand in this region, side-by-side, against the levels of Government. We will continue to stand unified with our White Brothers and Sisters against Site 41.
Our voices have also been heard by Native Elders in Utah and California and we are quickly gaining support from other First Nation communities. Our Sacred Fire has been lit and will continue to burn until our demands are met. We are now inviting all First Nations People in Canada to come and take part in our Peaceful Protest of Site 41. Your First Nations Women need your support. We are going to protect our Heritage Land! Read the rest of this article »
About 400 people marched outside the North American Leaders Summit in Guadalajara, Mexico on Sunday to protest the negative affects of free trade and to demand benefits for retired Mexican laborers who worked in the US.
The sit-in at the Vestas wind-turbine plant on the Isle of Wight came to an end on the 19th day when bailiffs arrived to evict the six remaining workers on Friday. A day later, workers took part in a rally outside the factory gates as part of their pledge to continue fighting for their jobs.
A dozen state workers in Oakland, California marched in front of the state house to protest a budget cut known as “Furlough Fridays,” which is forcing them to take off three Fridays a month without pay for the rest of the fiscal year.
[Editor's note: Here's a new feature we're trying out in hopes of giving notice to nonviolent actions we may have missed or following up on ones already mentioned in the daily "Experiments with truth" posts. --BF]
An officer who is not displaying badge numbers holds a protester's face for the camera during last year's Climate Camp in Britain.
Environmentalists and Indigenous peoples of Guatemala have been protesting a proposed mining law that doesn’t provide for community consultation, provides tax breaks for mining companies and sets royalties payable to the state at too low a level.
Many adoption and foster care advocates have been protesting the new horror film Orphan over fears that it will further add to the negative stigma attached to adopting older children. They’ve already succeeded in persuading the studio to remove the following line from an ad: “It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own.”
Plans to mine for coal in Australia’s prime agricultural region have been met with protests—particularly in the form of blockades—from farmers and rural folk, who aren’t typically known for their interest in green issues. They fear contamination of aquifers and the loss of valuable grain production at a time of world shortage.
Voters angry at the scandals surrounding Brazilian Senate President José Sarney have turned to a bizarre form of online protest: posting pictures of themselves wearing their own version of his trademark moustache.
Three kiss-ins have been held since the July 9th arrest of a gay couple kissing on Mormon temple property in Salt Lake City. A movement is beginning to take shape, in which organizers are stressing dialogue with church leaders and peaceful confrontations with anti-gay objectors (as opposed to the shouting matches that took place at the first kiss-in). A nationwide kiss-in is being scheduled for Aug. 15.
Daily protest rallies in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi by a group of opposition parties demanding President Mikheil Saakashvili’s resignation ended last week after 107 days. Some have only called this the first stage of protests, while critics say the opposition is too split and rife with infighting to mount a serious campaign.
Indian Country Today reported on the near two-month standoff between Canadian Mohawks and the Canadian government over the arming of border guards stationed on reservation land, which has caused serious economic issues for all parties involved (click photo to read more).
The Nation published an essay by Huwaida Arraf of the Free Gaza Movement in which she reflects on her group’s most recent failed attempt to enter Gaza and the general plight of the Palestinian people.
openDemocracy says the recent victory of Chinese internet users over a government plan to monitor access is a sign of their emerging political power.
NACLA Report on the Americas has a great piece about Peruvian president Alan García’s continuing war against the indigenous people, despite the recent revocation of his decrees to open Amazonian land to development.
ABC News in Australia reported on a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory, where 150 people have been protesting poor housing conditions in their government-owned and overcrowded homes, as well as federal intervention in matters such as income management.
Inter-Press Service reported on a movement made up of 25 international, national and local groups calling on the Colombian government to halt the gold exploration activities of the South Africa-based mining giant AngloGold Ashanti.
Nigerian newspaper This Day says the country is gradually being shut down by perpetual industrial actions from nearly every sector.
The Socialist Worker has a piece explaining how the LGBT people and their allies managed to build one of the largest civil rights movements in San Diego, one of the most conservative cities in the state.
Global Voices examined the persecution of bloggers in Honduras by hackers and the complicity of internet giants Google.
This afternoon, before a torrent of rain cascaded down from the heavens, my hands were deep in dark soil and a gaggle of worms. I could have kept them there for hours but there was hard ground that needed to be tilled, plants that needed planting, a garden in the making. Still, I wanted to linger amidst the sound of bird call, the conversation with Ludmilla, a young student volunteer (and expert gardener!), the interplay of sun and cloud, which seemed to waltz together through the afternoon. And then there was the trash, so much of it: Chinese food containers buried in leaves, plastic bags hanging from tree limbs, candy wrappers fastened on the back fence and beer cans which had been flung over the fence.
The sight of the trash was jarring; it awakened me to how the earth is violated even in just the small act of dropping of litter. The practice of gardening, much like Zen meditation, is all absorbing and encourages a stillness within the mind. While I was raking a pile of dead leaves, questions started to emerge: Where does my body begin and end in relation to the earth’s body? Am I breathing in what the trees are breathing out and vice versa? Are we, in other words, breathing together? In light of such porosity, how can I treat the earth with such indifference?
150 protestors marched outside an East Texas courthouse on Monday to demand that the Department of Justice look at a case involving two white men accused of dragging a black man to death that was dropped by local authorities on lack of evidence.
A rally for Iran’s leading presidential challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi surrounded and overmatched a simultaneous rally for current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, bringing Tehran to a standstill on Monday.
Somali journalists went on strike today to protest the recent assassination of a colleague, while also demanding protection from the international community.
200 farmers in Australia rallied outside Parliament in Sydney to support a bill that would stop mining on prime agricultural land, an issue they feel government has overlooked for too long.
Hundreds protest a proposed granite quarry in Southwest California over fears that it would desecrate tribal land, pollute the air, destroy wildlife habitats and increase truck traffic.
Many Chinese internet sites forced to shut down by the government crackdown on the Tiananmen Square anniversary are staging a inconspicuous protest by saying they are closed for “Chinese Internet Maintence Day” rather than simply have their site fail to load.
