Throughout history, South American nations have had their futures decided by a small number of people. It began with the Spaniards, who, as soon as they touched ground, let two or three religious and political authorities rule from 5,000 miles away. Sadly, little has changed since then, except now the ruling few are the corporate elites, empowered through government deals like the recently ratified free trade agreement between Colombia and the United States, NAFTA, and thousands of illicit licenses given to multinational companies. But this trend is beginning to change, as protests in Peru over the last month have challenged the country’s largest mining project.

The story of this ambitious and dangerously exploitative project dates back to 1993, when the US company Newmont Mining Corp. arrived in Peru to open the Yanacocha gold mine in Cajamarca, a region located in the North of the country. Using a process called “micro-mining,” which requires large quantities of a dilute cyanide solution to capture minuscule pieces of gold, Yanacocha ended up contaminating the region’s water sources–a fact overloked by then-president Alberto Fujimori and his intelligence strongman Vladimiro Montesinos.

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Environmental victories are so rare that apparently even environmentalists don’t quite know how to kick back and rejoice. At a rally in Trenton, New Jersey on Monday, discussion veered between joyous celebration of Friday’s announcement by the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to indefinitely postpone a vote that would have paved the way for 20,000 natural gas wells in the region and serious preparation to one day block their construction through nonviolent direct action.

These activists can be excused, however, for mixing business with pleasure because even more rare than an environmental victory is one that’s complete and total. Much like the recent announcement by the Obama administration to delay a decision on the KeystoneXL pipeline that would transport tar sands oil from Canada to Texas, the DRBC vote delay was hardly an indictment of extreme carbon-based extraction that poisons water and the atmosphere. If anything, it’s a temporary roadblock to something government seems all too happy to allow.

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• A few hundred protesters marched on Waikiki Saturday as leaders of Pacific Rim nations gathered for a summit to discuss free trade agreements and other issues. During the gala dinner, renowned Hawaiian guitarist Makana spent almost 45 minutes repeatedly singing his new protest ballad “We Are the Many” instead of the expected instrumental background music. Over a dozen heads of state, including President Obama, heard Makana’s message that included lines such as “The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw…. And until they are purged, we won’t withdraw.”

• Police confronted an estimated 1,000 protesters in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday after clearing parks occupied by demonstrators for weeks. 50 were arrested after refusing to leave one of the parks. The demonstrators regrouped in the streets, blocking traffic for hours.

• Twenty-seven “Occupy St. Louis” protesters were arrested early Saturday morning after defying an existing park curfew.

• Portuguese civil servants and soldiers staged an anti-austerity protest in Lisbon on Saturday, a sign of the rising social tensions in debt-hit Portugal over deep cuts in spending.

• Thousands of demonstrators rallied in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday against oil legislation that could cost the port city and surrounding state billions of dollars in revenues.

• Angry over a range of environmental issues, about 250 protesters erected a mock coal-fired power station on the steps of Australia’s Parliament House before marching backwards to Treasury Gardens, arguing the government’s policies have taken Victoria backwards.

• More than 350 people linked arms to form a “human chain” on the Stirling Bridge in Fremantle, Australia on Sunday to protest the live animal export trade.

• About 100 peaceful marchers sent a clear message Sunday to vandals who torched cars and scrawled Nazi swastikas in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Brooklyn. The march included about 25 people from the Occupy Wall Street movement in Manhattan, which put out a statement condemning the vandalism.

• More than 2,000 students marched through London last week to protest cuts to public spending and a big increase in tuition fees.

• Hundreds of thousands of protesters flooded the streets across Yemen on Sunday to demand the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh on the anniversary of his rise to power in  1978.

• Dozens of tents have been erected in Tel Aviv, with plans for further encampments in other Israeli towns and cities, to protest high house prices.

• Several Indian and Pakistani citizens Saturday gathered near Rajghat, Delhi and formed a human chain on Saturday to protest the July 13 Mumbai blasts that left at least 19 people dead and injured 130.

• Journalists at the BBC walked off their jobs Friday to protest planned job cuts as a result of lower government funding.

• Greenpeace activists dressed as polar bears occupied the Edinburgh offices of Cairn Energy on Monday as the environmental group stepped up the pressure on the company over its Arctic exploration plans.

• Around 2,000 farmers, backed by student groups and academics gathered in front of the presidential office in Taipei late on Saturday to protest government proposals that would make it easier for farm land to be forcibly turned over to developers.

• Around 200 people gathered at the Jordan Press Association headquarters earlier today to denounce an attack on journalists by riot police on Friday.

• Greek taxi drivers blocked roads to Athens’ airport and main harbor today, holding up thousands of tourists at the start of a two-day protest against plans to liberalize their trade.

• Several hundred people attended a protest march against the EU-IMF austerity programme in Dublin on Saturday.

• A small group of mass transit activists against freeway expansion unfurled a banner overlooking the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles on Sunday that read “L.A. Beyond Cars.”

On Saturday, rallies against genetically modified food were held in cities across the United States. The Millions Against Monsanto campaign, which is organized by Organic Consumers Association, is now planning on taking their effort to the next level. On World Food Day, October 16, they are calling for a million people to come out in a nationwide day of action.

While mobilizing a million people sounds like a daunting task, they have broken it down in a unique way. They are forming 435 local chapters, one for each congressional district, and are seeking to attract 2,300 supporters in each location. If they can reach this goal, they will have a million people in the streets.

I like this approach in that it reminds me of the way that military contractors influence legislators. Boeing for example manufactures the F-22 in 44 different states, which had made it next to impossible to muster the votes to cut its funding.

The Millions Against Monsanto campaign is not calling to make these genetically engineered foods illegal, but simply to make GMO labeling mandatory by law. They believe that if people knew which foods were genetically modified they would buy less of them and instead go organic. This is apparently what has happened in Europe, where there are almost no genetically modified foods in grocery stories because labeling is required.

The above video lays out the group’s strategy and also gives some advice on how to start a chapter in your area. To sign their petition click here and join a local chapter if one already exists.

Over at UN Dispatch, Mark Leon Goldberg has an interesting post on how world food prices, which reached an all-time high in December and could be at a similar level for January, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), are a contributing factor in the protests in Tunisia, Egypt and beyond. As Goldberg explains:

So what does this chart have to do with the riots in Egypt?  Several commentators have noted that the high price of food staples contributed to the overall feeling of discontent in Tunisia.  There have already been protests over the sharp increase in food prices in Jordan earlier this month.  Reading the writing on the wall, the Algerian government even put in a huge rush order of wheat.This is not to say this is the cause of the civil unrest in Egypt today. But these questions of political economy really cannot be ignored when trying to understand the protests across the Middle East and North Africa.  If this trend in the Food Prices Index continues, it is not unreasonable to expect that civil unrest will spread to several other countries.

And at Climate Progress, Joe Romm has an interesting piece looking at how this rise in food prices is connected to climate change.

President Obama and the State Department are considering the permit for a 2,000-mile dirty tar sands oil pipeline, known as the Keystone XL, that would run from Canada through six US states to refineries along the Gulf Coast. With 900,000 barrels of dirty oil flowing across the heartland every day, public water supplies, crops, and wildlife habitats will be at great risk.

Opposition to the pipeline has already begun to take shape, with protests, town hall gatherings and press conferences taking place in Detroit, Chicago, Lincoln, Houston and Missoula. There’s even a TV ad (shown above) calling on President Obama to “prevent the next oil disaster” that’s set to air on CNN, MSNBC, and Comedy Central.

For more information, check out the No Tar Sands Oil campaign website.

• Tens of thousands of union members, social activists and students gathered in Seoul Sunday to protest the Group of 20 economic summit meeting that begins on Thursday.

• Tens of thousands of government employees marched in Portugal’s capital on Saturday to protest an austerity budget that would slash their salaries.

• Thousands of protesters in France and Germany have attempted to block a train carrying nuclear waste. Some protesters chained themselves to the train tracks while others drove trucks on to the tracks. Hundreds of protesters have been detained.

• On Sunday, Cafe de Coral, Hong Kong’s biggest fast-food chain, said it had ditched plans to scrap paid lunch breaks for its employees after a public and Facebook campaign was mounted boycotting its restaurants.

• Hundreds of gay and lesbians protested the Church’s position on gay marriage by kissing publicly as the pope passed by on his way to the  Sagrada Familia in Barcelona on Sunday.

• In Oakland, police arrested 152 protesters who streamed through the streets Friday after a white ex-transit officer received the minimum two-year prison sentence for fatally shooting an unarmed black man on a California train platform two years ago.

• A group of 400 survivors of the Bhopal disaster have been protesting Obama’s visit to India. In addition, the cotton growers of Vidarbha, who are suffering immensely due to the prevailing agrarian crisis, staged candlelight protests ahead of US President Barack Obama’s India visit on Friday.

• Hundreds of people convened in downtown Pittsburgh on Tuesday to protest the development of “fracking,” a new and untested method of natural gas extraction that is threatening to take over Pennsylvania and neighboring states.

• More then 4,000 BBC employees started a 48-hour strike over pensions today, forcing the state-funded broadcaster to curtail programs and run pre-recorded shows.

• Concerned residents of the Navajo Nation, along with activists, constructed symbolic black crosses in front of Kayenta Mine in Arizona, which was named last spring as one of the most dangerous mines in the nation.

• About 40 North Carolina State University students painted the school’s “Free Expression Tunnel” black overnight to protest racist and homophobic graffiti.

• 11,000 London Underground staff began a 24-hour walkout on Tuesday night to protest job cuts.

• Hundreds of people in India’s Amritsar City gathered for a sit-in early Wednesday morning to protest the federal government’s delaying of justice to the victims of the 1984 Anti-Sikh riots.

• An extremely frail 38-year-old woman dubbed “The Iron Lady” marked 10 years without voluntarily taking food or water Thursday — a hunger strike launched to protest an anti-terror law that grants Indian soldiers sweeping powers to crack down on rebels.

Two weeks ago, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers signed workers’ rights agreements, included a promise to pay farm workers a penny more per pound of tomatoes that they pick, with Pacific Tomato Growers and Six L’s Packing Co., the first deals that have ever been struck by the organization with major tomato growers themselves. As Kari Lydersen explained at Working In These Times:

These back-to-back victories show that when confronted with social and economic pressure and a nationwide grassroots movement that refuses to back down, even the seemingly worst employers can do an about-face. Both Six L’s and Pacific Tomato Growers, which signed the agreement with the CIW last week, were responsible for cases of modern-day slavery which the coalition had worked with the Department of Justice to expose and prosecute in recent years.

Knowing they’d be hard-pressed to get results from the growers themselves at the start of their campaign a decade ago, the coalition targeted high-profile buyers, starting with Taco Bell and later McDonald’s, Burger King, Whole Foods, Sodexo and others with the idea they would pressure growers to do the right thing.

The fact that growers are in quick succession now signing on with the coalition shows an historic sea change in farm worker-employer relations – even as the coalition and their allies continue to target tomato buyers including the Florida-based supermarket Publix, Kroger, Trader Joe’s and Quiznos.

Paying a penny more per pound could raise farm workers’ income from about $10,000 to $17,000 a year. And perhaps even more importantly, the agreements signify that farm workers are indeed human beings with human rights and dignity whose labor is crucial to feeding the country and making possible the nation’s massive restaurant industry.

This campaign for worker justice, however, is not the work of these farm workers alone. Over at God’s Politics, Brigitte Gynther writes of several easy steps that we can all take:

As people of faith, and as consumers, we can ask major supermarkets to do their part in ensuring that the people who pick our tomatoes are treated with the dignity they deserve as God’s children.  Send an e-mail to Kroger, Stop & Shop/Giant, Publix, and Trader Joe’s asking them to work with the CIW to implement a code of conduct for farmworker rights and pay an additional penny per pound of tomatoes to improve farmworkers’ wages.

You can also deliver a letter to the manager of a supermarket near you next time you go grocery shopping and ask the manager to pass it on to corporate headquarters.

And, of course, if emails and letters don’t work, which they rarely do by themselves, protests and other forms of nonviolent action can create more pressure on these corporate holdouts.