An article published by CounterPunch yesterday, “Inconvenient Truths about Tar Sands Action,” argues that the grassroots campaign targeting the Keystone XL pipeline was nothing more than “a manipulated charade, funded and run with loads of money from pro-Obama Democrats through non-transparent organizations like the Tides Foundation.” It follows, then, according to the article, that the real goal of Tar Sands Action “was to manufacture Obama a ‘green victory’ during his first term in the run up to the 2012 election.”

In short, for those thousands of you who participated in the White House sit-ins or encirclement and became “True Believers in the mission,” you were duped. What you took part in “was not social change, nor was it grassroots empowerment.” You became nothing more than a name on an email list. You were “converted into clicktivists who will hopefully contribute money to the Obama ‘I’m In’ 2012 Presidential campaign, ecological landscape be damned.”

I’d ask you how it feels, but I should know. I’m one of you. The article mentions Waging Nonviolence along with the socialist group Solidarity and author Naomi Klein as being among the “principled radicals” who “drank the kool-aid.” So how do I feel? Well, for someone who has supposedly been drugged, I feel remarkably sober and unconvinced.

To believe that the Democrats mobilized thousands of people to get arrested as part of an effort to manufacture an environmental win for Obama is to ignore the fact that he rejected this gift-wrapped, hand-delivered win. He never fully acknowledged the claims of the campaign, and has recently spoken positively of the pipeline, thereby ensuring neither an environmental win nor the support of environmentalists.

Despite the joyous rhetoric  (“BIG NEWS: We won. You won.”) that emerged from the campaign after Obama’s November announcement that he would be delaying a decision on the pipeline until 2013, excitement has waned in the months since. More recent emails from organizer Bill McKibben have focused on the hard realities of the pipeline — for instance, Obama’s recent trip to Oklahoma, where he “lauded his administration’s fast-tracking of the southern leg of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.”

That doesn’t exactly sound like a campaign or a president working in cahoots. Yet, according to the author of the CounterPunch article who goes by the pseudonym The Insider, the two have been in lock-step, tricking environmentalists into doing the Democrat’s bidding. Never mind that the president hasn’t kept up his end of the bargain; the evidence of deception is clear to The Insider. For starters, there’s the fact that tar sands oil will be flowing into this country with or without the Keystone XL. So, since Tar Sands Action (TSA) is not targeting all entry points at once or trying to smash the whole industry at once, it is clearly just a sham. From The Insider’s perspective, TSA’s effort to build a mass movement from scratch through a series of concrete victories is irrelevant. What’s important is ideological purity.

This is where the Tides Foundation conspiracy comes in to play — which is where the article starts sounding like a Glenn Beck rant. While neither TSA nor its organizational affiliate 350.org received any Tides money (at least according to the document cited by The Insider), many of the groups that supported it did — for instance, the Sierra Club, NRDC and Friends of the Earth. Why does that matter? It boils down to Tides having “Democratic allied funders.” That’s the smoking gun. And apparently we can just take it on good faith that anyone who accepts money from Tides is actively working to reelect Obama. The proof is in the fact that some people showed up at the White House sit-ins and encirclement wearing Obama pins and shirts.

The Insider draws out this idea of co-optation further. “Tar Sands Action was a sophisticated, extremely well-funded model for creating the illusion of movement building, complete with mass civil disobedience,” the article contends, “but the real goal, mirroring its cousin, ‘The 99 Spring,’ was (and is) to hammer Republicans and fire up grassroots enthusiasm for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.”

Co-optation is always a legitimate and serious concern, but as Nathan Schneider noted in regards to the 99% Spring, it’s important to ask, “Who’s co-opting whom?”

The logic of a civil resistance movement is always to co-opt the existing structures of the society around it, to radicalize them, to drive them away from the status quo and into doing something truly revolutionary. And it is precisely by co-opting these institutions that the movement is generally able to build enough capacity to make real change.

That’s how I’ve always seen Tar Sands Action: as a campaign that recognized the power of grassroots action but knew it needed the reach of the big green NGOs to be effective. As Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, authors of the 2011 book Why Civil Resistance Works, point out, “The tactical and strategic advantages of high levels of diverse participation explain — in large part — the historical success of nonviolent campaigns.” So, to ignore the big greens and their massive base of supporters is to make your job as an organizer much harder. But to co-opt them, their email lists and their political influence is to give your campaign a huge boost.

Of course, doing so is not easy, despite what The Insider thinks about the Tides money that somehow made all the pieces fall into place. I recently spoke with Linda Capato, who handled recruitment for TSA, and she explained just how much the big green groups had to move outside their comfort zone to support the two weeks of civil disobedience.

We’ve always been told don’t do something that’s too nuts. Mass civil disobedience in front of the White House gates for two weeks, that’s crazy. Sierra Club isn’t going to sign on because of course they can’t. They have those mandates. NRDC isn’t going to be supportive. All these big greens are not going to come to the table and it was like okay, we can do it without them. And so it was this moment of let’s try. And then, as it was happening and as we were organizing, everyone was jumping onboard because it was a smart idea, it was the time to do it, it was the right target, the right strategy, and the right tactic.

That, ultimately, is what The Insider is overlooking. The Keystone XL was a strategic target which had a major leverage point in the president, since the decision was his alone to approve or reject. It was not meant to bring down the tar sands industry. To fault it for not doing so is like faulting the lunch counter sit-ins for not ending segregation. Furthermore, to say that “Martin Luther King must be turning in his grave,” is to deny that King not only appealed to the moral rhetoric of Lyndon Johnson but also met with him.

The TSA sit-ins and encirclement of the White House were hardly Obama campaign rallies. They were strategic actions meant to draw in a diverse crowd. A few radicals on tripods or in armlocks are wonderful, but to succeed, the effort needed a much broader coalition. Make no mistake, though, most of the organizers who helped guide TSA come from radical organizing backgrounds; for them, using the Obama rhetoric was a way to underscore the gap between the president’s lackluster record and his inspiring rhetoric.

That kind of messaging has far more potential to stimulate a mass movement than the kind of angry screaming that often takes place at protest and is why McKibben at one point said, “We are not going to do President Obama the favor of attacking him. We are going to hold the Obama campaign to the standard it set in 2008. Denying this pipeline would send a jolt of electricity through the people that elected this president.” That, to me, sounds like an attempt by TSA to co-opt one of the largest political movements in recent years and galvanize it into acting for the environment. But all The Insider hears is “well-funded, political theater and public relations.”

The problem with conspiracy theories in general is that they dismiss the contributions of ordinary people. Instead of giving credit to the participants in TSA for shaping their own campaign, which involved significant sacrifices both of time and body, the conspiracy theorist disparages those who took part as “rank-and-file day-to-day worker-bees.”

That’s simply not the case for Tar Sands Action. The reality is that as much as the campaign was about bringing thousands of people to the White House, it was also about empowering local communities to take their own action against the pipeline. ”A lot of the communities along the pipeline route are working together that haven’t before,” Linda Capato told me. “Folks in Nebraska who have been dealing with imminent domain are working with folks in Texas on the same issue. If the zombie pipeline does come back, at least we’ll have a lot more power and part of that power is these communities are talking to each other.”

The Insider concludes by quoting activist John Stauber, another skeptic of TSA, who says, “I would love to see the real people who have bought the hype and taken these civil disobedience trainings, and who have gone through the arrests, rise up and seize control of their own movement.” Perhaps he just needs to open his eyes.

The short-lived occupation of Duarte Square in New York City on December 17, 2011.

I’ve lately been getting the feeling that Occupy Wall Street’s past successes are starting to go to the heads of some people in the movement. There were, of course, the glory days of Liberty Plaza, and now also the spurt of momentum during and following the brief March 17 six-month-anniversary reoccupation there. But as the NYPD and police departments across the country make it quite clear that occupations of any kind will not be tolerated, the mood has gotten sour. The good old days, it seems, are not coming back.

For lots of organizers, I’ve noticed, the operating presumption is that occupation — something comparable to last fall but somehow surely better — constitutes a prerequisite to further political action. Consequently, a considerable amount of the energy of the most talented organizers in New York (as well as, evidently, in Oakland and San Francisco) has been directed toward failed reoccupation attempts. Or else the movement is celebrating its own anniversaries, not making occasions for new ones. The more conversations I have with listless, frustrated organizers, though, the more I start to feel that right now this occupation-first logic is exactly backwards.

This is a new time; the movement and people’s perspectives on it are in a totally different place than they were last fall. Potential allies expect more from the movement, I’d say, and so they should. People I know who were wholeheartedly behind it a few months ago seem to think it’s over, or it should be. The encampments, which Occupiers know as well as anyone sometimes turned into rather unsafe spaces, lost much public support. YouTube clips and statistics of Occupiers behaving badly in them have become fodder for a right-wing smear campaign that is gearing up for any possible resurgence. This matters; in some sense, an occupation must always be earned with public support, support which makes the cost in legitimacy too high for the state to mount an eviction.

Remember the early morning that so many remember as the climax of OWS’s whole story? It was October 14, when thousands of people turned out before dawn to keep the paws of Mayor Bloomberg’s cleaning crews off of the park. The moment those crews were routed, when the announcement came to everyone through the people’s mic — that was amazing. But it took a lot of committed allies to make it happen, beyond the usual characters you’d see around all the time. And right now, apparently, that support simply isn’t there, because evictions keep happening and there isn’t much of an outcry.

So how can the movement recapture that support? How can it, even more than before, light up people’s imaginations and make them want it to stick around? Here’s a modest proposal (modest because this is not a movement that tends to take or need advice): Challenge the power that affects lots and lots of people’s lives.

Right now, there are a bunch of smart projects starting up in the movement, each addressing core issues directly related to why so many thousands of people began Occupying Wall Street to begin with. There’s Fight BAC, a project with the (not at all modest) goal of taking down Bank of America. There’s the effort to fight foreclosures and evictions through occupations, auction blockades or eviction defense. There are groups like Disrupt Dirty Power aimed at finally halting the corporate machine that’s driving climate change. How about a massive student debt strike?

All of these are already in the works in the Occupy movement, but they tend to attract relatively small numbers of people compared to re-occupation attempts and rowdy marches. What if these, for a while, were the main business of the movement and the main outlet of its huge creativity? What if the first thing people thought of when they heard the word “Occupy” was, “Oh, those are the kids trying to take down the most dangerous bank in America and who saved my friend’s home from foreclosure”? Do stuff like this, and you’re creating a dilemma for the whole society. You’re asking everyone to choose sides — not about a little occupation, but about major features of everyday economic life. Do I want Bank of America to foreclose on my neighbor or not? Do I want my kids to spend their post-college lives enslaved by debt or not? These are serious political questions, which will easily eviscerate the nonsense the presidential candidates keep spouting on the news. Suddenly the question of letting the movement have an occupation somewhere seems comparatively small.

In the meantime, and in the process, it’s hugely important to keep the spirit of occupation alive — though not necessarily in tents. Union Square in New York is serving that purpose right now (especially when Occupiers there sleep on sidewalks in front of banks), as are the occasional afternoon Occupy Town Square events. May Day might be a great moment for rallying along these lines. This sort of thing is really important, because it’s constructive rather than just disruptive, and it points the way toward a new, revolutionary society. Lots of people in the movement talk about wanting to see these occupations eventually evolve into sustainable worker cooperatives and serious, large-scale mutual aid networks. But what if it were all in the context of making unmistakable the most egregious, fundamental crises in the fabric of our society — in the banks, in the schools, in politics, in how we treat our planet?

Compared to those sorts of things, I bet, encampments in parks will seem like no big deal. Maybe the movement might even start getting them again without really trying. At the very least, there will be a whole lot more people standing up against the forces of repression for the right to occupy. Hey, they’ll say, we’re changing the world with this movement — why not let it have a park or a building somewhere if we can do some good with it?

In 2009, Mohamed Nasheed, the president of the Maldives (before being overthrown in a recent coup), held a cabinet meeting underwater. He sat at a table anchored to the ocean floor, wearing a wetsuit and oxygen tank, and signed a law meant to make the country carbon neutral within a decade.

The Maldives is the lowest-lying nation on the planet, with 400 miles of coastline and one of the world’s most densely populated capitals. It is, according to Rob Nixon, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an “invisible nation of no apparent consequence,” and as sea levels rise due to climate change, it may well be the first nation whose entire population becomes climate refugees. President Nasheed’s underwater meeting was a desperate attempt to catch the world’s attention, to add dramatic urgency to a process that, however disastrous, occurs over a period of decades.

The Maldives are far from alone: 43 island states have announced that, without swift global action against climate change, they face “the end of history.” From far away on a bright spring morning, this statement could easily seem hyperbolic — if it were heard at all. But for those at risk, it’s the frightening truth. And therein lies the challenge.

In Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Rob Nixon writes pragmatically about the difficulties in fighting what he calls “spectacle deficient” environmental crises like climate change, compromised ecosystems and toxic waste, whose victims are spread over place and time; the Maldives’s plight is only one of countless examples, and perhaps even more evident than most. These processes, Nixon says, are “slow violence”: pervasive, devastating — and unnoticed.

Just as slow violence is made invisible by its subtle pace and scattered impacts, its victims themselves are invisible, at least in the tiny and shifting lens of the world media. These are the micro-minorities, the shantytowns downriver from the manufacturing plant, the marginalized women in an already-marginalized society. Often, slow violence “occurs in the passive voice”; the suffering is a shame, of course, but it comes as a side effect rather than through the immediate action of any responsible party, leaving a convoluted trail of excuses and denial. Whose fault is it when a child goes hungry because his region has lost its topsoil and his family cannot grow food? Whose fault is a leukemia cluster that comes 10 years after and 100 miles away from any sort of disaster? I don’t know, but it’s not mine.

Each chapter in the book profiles a writer-activist who uses his or her writing to memorialize and call attention to a case of slow violence. In contrast to scientific or political reports, which are often written with such opaque language that they are inaccessible to both the victims they describe and to potentially-sympathetic outsiders, these writers use their work to build connections between their communities and the outside world, to make accessible that which is hidden.

We see Ken Saro-Wiwa, an Ogoni writer whose homeland in Nigeria was exploited for crude oil extraction, and who led a nonviolent campaign for environmental rights before he was put to death by the state. We see Wangari Maathai shaping Kenya’s Green Belt Movement as a feminist response to militaristic, male-dominated ideas of national security: “Losing topsoil,” she wrote, “should be considered analogous to losing territory to an invading enemy.” Nadine Gordimer’s short story “The Ultimate Safari,” about a group of refugees slipping through South Africa’s Kruger National Park, is read as a commentary on conservation refugees, the illusion of authenticity and the legacy of racism in South Africa’s tourist-oriented game reserves. The books and writers that Nixon profiles become opportunities for reflection, as he contextualizes each topic — dams, fossil fuels, depleted uranium — in terms of its global significance.

Nixon and the stories he tells also cast light on the differences between top-down and bottom-up environmental movements. “Full-stomach” environmentalism in rich nations, for instance, has tended to focus on the preservation of charismatic megafauna and majestic landscapes, often to the exclusion of the people native to those landscapes. This is the environmentalism of Priuses, debt-for-nature swaps, recycling campaigns and dreams of going “off the grid.” Poor-nation, “empty-belly” environmentalists, by contrast, “experience environmental threat not as a planetary abstraction but as a series of inhabited risks.” Although Nixon doesn’t address the environmental justice movement among poor and minority communities in the U.S. as an example, the principle is similar: environmental justice advocates, like poor-nation environmentalists, are often spurred to action by a direct threat to which the larger society — itself the perpetrator — pays little attention. There’s power to be gained by the two sides coming together, by environmentalists embracing the diversity of their causes alongside activists for women’s rights, minority rights and other rights discourses. If, as Maathai writes, “Poverty is both a cause and symptom of environmental degradation,” then each movement can be strengthened by joining forces with the other.

I thought the book was worth buying for its introduction alone, which presented the idea of slow violence and the practical and political challenges behind fighting it. The chapters that follow are a gallery of horrors: one scene of violence after another, each seemingly insurmountable and somehow less surprising than the last. Yet, remarkably, this is the least depressing environmental book I’ve read in years. By presenting these disasters alongside the writer-activists working to counteract them, Nixon leaves no room for despair. Instead I’m left buoyed, hopeful and — after 300 pages — impatient to learn more.

Photo by Alex Fradkin.

Sometimes justice requires a little imagination. On Saturday, when much of the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York was loudly denouncing police violence against minorities and protesters, a small group of environmentalists dreamed up a way to get the police to focus on the crimes of the 1 percent, to the point of arresting five corporate suits on United Nations property.

Granted, those five were actually members of the OWS affinity group Disrupt Dirty Power, which used Saturday’s action (billed as a “mock’upation”) to launch a month of actions targeting the “corrupt partnership between Wall Street, politicians and the business of pollution.” Police officers seemed thrown for a loop as they tore down tents bearing corporate logos and cuffed people who claimed to be from Bank of America and ExxonMobil. Compared to the rowdy anti-NYPD march earlier that afternoon, this time, the cops had more of a chance to think about what side they’re really on.

As the action began around 5 p.m., the police presence was focused on the small group of OWS protesters gathered in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, a few blocks away from U.N. headquarters. The officers must have noticed the signs and banners, heard the people’s mic, observed the silly improv performance skewering corporate polluters and thought they were in the right place. But if they had paid closer attention, they might have seen where things were going.

At one point, a couple of “representatives” from Bank of America addressed the crowd, satirizing the bank’s all too real connection to the U.N. and its upcoming Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro this June. One of them announced:

The most exciting news of the day is that we have accepted U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s invitation to permanently occupy the U.N. climate conference. Our hats go off to the Occupy movement for this concept of occupation, and we feel that we at Bank of America are well-equipped to realize the full free-market potential.

After wrapping up their discussion of the many ways Bank of America metaphorically occupies the U.N. to build a consensus around deregulation as the main vehicle for international development, the “representatives” invited the crowd to visit their physical occupation. As if that wasn’t quite enough to tip off the police, an OWS organizer then belted out the day’s objective:

Today when we march, we are not going to get arrested. We want the 1 percent to get arrested. We’re going to have fun and we’re going to put pressure upon this great institution. … And we’re going to be peaceful and jubilant to show just how peaceful we can be as opposed to this violent system.

Police officers then processed along with the protesters toward United Nations Plaza. But as soon as the march turned the corner, and the corporate tents came into full view, the officers took off, leaving the protesters in the dust. Within minutes the suit-wearing culprits were arrested beside their tents. Not having planned for this, however, the police had nowhere to put them. So while they waited for a van to arrive, the handcuffed 1 percenters stood and shouted to the protesters still marching peacefully across the street.

Bloomberg is in our pocket! … We control everything! … We have PR companies, the media, Obama, Congress! … I just invested $5 million in a Super PAC, I’m good! … We will be released soon, don’t worry! … Those are the occupiers you should be arresting!

Rebecca Manski, who helped organize the action and was among the five arrested, said the police really didn’t get that she and the others were just pretending to be corporate executives. “They were totally fooled by 1-percent appearance,” Manski explained. “They thought we were of a different class — maybe not the 1 percent exactly — but their perception was challenged of what a protester looks like.”

Rebecca Manski. Photo by Jim Lafferty.

Seeing the protesters in different clothes seemed to make a big difference. Some of the officers had just come from Union Square, where the situation was tense after a long, angry march from Zuccotti Park. Manski actually overheard her arresting officer talk about being called “a goon” earlier in the day. The officer could hardly believe that Manski and the other suits were from the same protest movement.

OWS legal consul typically advises protesters not to speak with police officers once they’ve been arrested, but Manski decided to bend the rules. She apologized for the name-calling and was treated so gently that she wasn’t even sure where she was supposed to go. Eventually, she found her way into the police van, where an officer actually told her, “I’m sorry we had to arrest you today. We support what you are doing.”

Once at the station, the arrestees continued to be treated well. Manski reports that when one officer began complaining that they were to blame for him having to work overtime on a Saturday night, another corrected him, saying, “No, it’s the banks’ fault.” The first officer ended up agreeing, and he added, “It’s the banks’ fault and the 1 percent’s fault.” Both officers then worked to get everyone released that day, when originally it seemed that some were going to have to spend the night in jail.

“They were getting the connection between the banks and abusive power,” says Manski. Much to her relief, the day’s action had brought attention back to the issues and those who need to be held accountable. She couldn’t help but wonder about possible next steps: “Wouldn’t it be great to have a whole march on Wall Street with everyone dressed as bankers?”

Photo by Jim Lafferty.

• About 20,000 Russians angry over an election campaign slanted in Putin’s favor and reports of widespread violations in Sunday’s voting rallied in Moscow on Monday. Riot police quickly moved in, dispersing the crowd and detaining hundreds of demonstrators.

• Lakotas on Pine Ridge Indian land in South Dakota were arrested as they blockaded tar sands pipeline trucks from entering their territory on Monday.

• Thousands of students and activists marched on the California State Capitol in Sacramento Monday to protest cuts in higher education in an action dubbed “Occupy the Capitol.”

• As U.S. President Barack Obama met with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington Monday, over 100 protesters converged at a park in front the White House, urging the United States not to support a potential Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

• A dozen female environmental activists in Ecuador were detained inside the Chinese embassy Monday for protesting Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa’s decision to sign a deal with a Chinese firm to open a massive copper mine in the Amazon.

• On Saturday, over 100 Bulgarian environmentalist staged a protest rally against looming amendments to the Forestry Act.

• On Friday, thousands of Bahrainis launched what they said would be a week of daily sit-in protests in a Shiite village to commemorate an uprising crushed a year ago.

• On Friday, over twenty-five hundred students protested the possible deportation of 18-year-old student and valedictorian Daniela Pelaez at the North Miami Senior High School.

• Several hundred public school students rallied in support of teachers at the offices of Premier Christy Clark at the World Trade Center in Vancouver on Friday.

“I think we just won!”

That’s what Zack Malitz said, looking rather bewildered, when he got off the phone with New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s office earlier today. The crowd of no more than a hundred activists gathered behind him in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza—just blocks away from Schumer’s office—did not yet know the news. But it seems their plan to march to his office and demand that he work to block an amendment to the Senate’s transportation bill forcing approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would run from Canada’s tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico, scared the senator straight.

After slapping high fives with a few of his fellow organizers, Malitz turned to the crowd and announced the good news in proper “people’s mic” fashion.

I just got off the phone with a representative from Chuck Schumer’s office… The senator is currently working with Harry Reid to put together a coalition to defeat the legislation the Republicans have attached the pipeline to. He told me that the senator stands with President Obama. We won!

The cheers gave way to an announcement that the protest had just turned into a “thank you” rally and people started signing a poster-sized Valentine for their new favorite New York Senator. At least one person questioned the rush toward optimism, asking the group, “Don’t we still have to protest against the pipeline? Is Schumer really the one who determines if this thing gets passed?”

The question of whether to celebrate has come up a lot for tar sands campaigners. And perhaps it’s a sign of their effectiveness thus far. As one organizer noted today, “This is our third victory.” The other two came when Obama effectively rejected the pipeline—first in November, when he announced that he would not make a decision on it until 2013, and again in January, when he said no to big oil and their allies in Congress after they pushed through legislation forcing him to decide within 60 days.

Nevertheless, the president did not name the specific environmental and societal threats posed by the pipeline—and raised by the activists—as his reason for postponing it, which has made these victories somewhat precarious. And that may be part of the reason for the push against outright celebration. But if there is any question as to whether the campaign has softened since its inaugural two weeks of civil disobedience in front of the White House last summer, one need have only seen the phone numbers scrawled in marker on Malitz’s left forearm to know otherwise—his jail-support contacts. Had Schumer’s office not called, Malitz and others were prepared to stand outside his office until the senator listened or had them carted away in a paddy wagon.

Instead, a staffer came down and greeted the protest, graciously accepting their valentine. The relative ease and success of the protest seemed to surprise everyone. Last week, when news broke that the Senate might vote to push the amendment through as soon as noon today, organizers were scrambling to pull something together. In just the last two days, Malitz and other tar sands activists in New York organized the protest targeting Schumer, while Tar Sands Action—which is now officially a campaign of 350.org—initiated an email blitz on the Senate. With the help of MoveOn.org and CREDO Action, they managed to generate more than 700,000 messages and get top spokesperson Bill McKibben to appear on The Colbert Report last night.

So, as much as today’s victory in New York is about showing the campaign’s ability to pressure key senators into supporting their cause, it’s equally about their ability to mobilize a growing base of supporters in a pinch. Unfortunately, that may be something they need to do on a regular basis. As Julia Walsh with Frack Action (a group that has also worked in concert with Tar Sands Action), told the crowd before it dispersed, “No victory is final. We have a long road ahead.”

Egyptians took to the streets on Saturday to mark the one-year anniversary of Mubarak’s fall and launch a new campaign of civil disobedience aimed at bringing down the military rulers now in power. But a poor turnout exposed the country’s lingering divisions and left many wondering whether the revolution will ever be completed.

The answer might be found thousands of miles away, in the Maldives—a small Muslim nation in the middle of the Indian Ocean. This tropical tourist destination for the rich and famous has seen a week of turmoil, after its only democratically- elected president was forced out of office on Tuesday in what he says was a coup by supporters of the deposed dictatorial regime.

President Mohamed Nasheed came to power in 2008, when he defeated the autocrat Maumoon Abdul Gayoom—who ruled the Maldives for 30 years—in a free election he helped force into existence by leading a massive popular campaign of nonviolent resistance. Prior to his victory, Nasheed had been a longtime pro-democracy activist, spending six years in jail and nearly two more in exile forming an oppositional party.

During his presidency, Nasheed became an internationally-recognized advocate for the climate movement—famously holding an underwater cabinet meeting to draw attention to the rising sea levels threatening his homeland. He also pledged to make the Maldives the first carbon-neutral country by 2020 and urged thousands of demonstrators at the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009 to continue protesting and the “process of movement building.”

Despite such noble efforts, however, Nasheed’s presidency was, like any fledgling democracy, plagued with strife and shortcomings. As a Wikileaks cable revealed, Nasheed ultimately signed on to the controversial Copenhagen Accord in exchange for development aid after publicly criticizing the wealthy nations that drafted it. Meanwhile, at home he came under fire for selling off a lot of the country’s assets to foreign corporations, such as the only hospital and international airport.

The opposition, comprised of Gayoum supporters and Islamic extremists upset with Nasheed’s moderate outlook, capitalized on the public discontent by gaining more seats in parliament in 2010—with the goal of impeaching Nasheed. But he held strong for nearly two more years, until he was forced out of office at gunpoint last week.

The impetus to remove Nasheed from power by such force seems to have come from his decision to have the military arrest a judge, whom he accused of blocking multimillion-dollar corruption cases against members of Gayoum’s dictatorship. The opposition claimed that Nasheed had overstepped his powers and months of street protests followed, with Gayoum loyalists in the police force and military taking part. Not surprisingly, in the wake of all this, Nasheed’s vice president—who is now the president and likely conspired with the opposition—appointed leaders from Gayoum’s party, as well as several Islamists, to his cabinet in an effort to create what he calls a “unity” government.

The United States and Britain spent the weekend calling on Nasheed to join the proposed coalition, but he rejected the offer, insisting instead on early elections. “Only an early election will stabilize the country,” he told journalists on Saturday, promising that his party would emerge victorious.

Mohamed Nasheed, greets his supporters after Friday prayers in Malé.

Given the clear divisions in Maldivian society, it may be hard to say whether such an outcome could be expected. But the past several days have seen thousands of people voice their support for Nasheed in the streets of the capitol city, Malé. The outpouring may have even been enough to convince the United States to back off initial support of the coup and instead push for an independent investigation into the transfer of power, which the new government has now agreed to.

This small victory is a sign that the people still have the power, as they did in 2008, when they brought democracy to the Maldives. But of course many concerns linger, including ones that have implications for those countries that rose up during the Arab Spring.

One person who can speak to these concerns is Srdja Popovic, whose Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) in Belgrade worked with pro-democracy activists in the Maldives in the lead-up to the 2008 elections. According to Popovic, the role of the international community is hugely important.

“If they praise the new government based on police mutiny, the seizing of national television by police forces and the likely armed ‘persuasion’ of the president to step down, that will become the model for the future and send a powerful message to rest of the Muslim world,” he said. “If the Maldives couldn’t make it—Sunni moderates who rely on tourism—what might one expect for Egypt or Syria?”

Should, however, the international community broker some kind of deal between the two sides that includes early elections, it will be, as Popovic described it, a “blood transfusion for democracy in the Maldives—regardless of whether or not Nasheed wins the election.”

Getting to that point, will take the renewed commitment of Maldivians and continued pressure on international powers along the lines of what transpired over the weekend. But as Nasheed wrote in a New York Times op-ed last week, “let the Maldives be a lesson for aspiring democrats everywhere: the dictator can be removed in a day, but it can take years to stamp out the lingering remnants of his dictatorship.”

A view of Alberta's tar sands, which were once covered by lush boreal forests

In a statement released this afternoon, President Obama rejected the Keystone XL oil pipeline that would have linked Canada’s tar sands to Texas’s refineries. Obama had already effectively rejected the pipeline in early November, when he put off a ruling until after the 2013 elections. But the fossil fuel lobby and their allies in Congress pushed through legislation in mid December that forced the president to make a decision within 60 days. The White House seems to have taken such bullying as an opportunity to reiterate its earlier point: a decision will not be made this year.

While environmentalists should be excited that their efforts played a clear role in making the pipeline a complex campaign issue, there is no indication that Obama won’t eventually allow a tar sands pipeline, if reelected. Congress gave the Obama administration a huge out by allowing him to  reject the pipeline on procedural grounds, which he more-or-less noted in his statement today:

“This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people,” Obama said. “I’m disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced this decision, but it does not change my administration’s commitment to American-made energy that creates jobs and reduces our dependence on oil.”

Had he been forced to reject the pipeline on the sole basis of environmental concerns, the news today might be very different. Obama can’t be seen as too anti-pipeline these days–even though it has been proven to be a jobs bust.

The 234 Congress members who voted to expedite the pipeline, however, won’t be so generous (or shortsighted) in the future, which is why tar sands activists have made them their next target. On January 24, the day after Congress returns to Washington, tar sands opponents will be converging on Capitol Hill and processing to the headquarters of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s #1 lobby, dressed as referees.

As organizer Bill McKibben explained in an email earlier this week:

We’re going to call penalties—forget facemasking, this is vote-buying. Forget unsportsmanlike conduct—this is undemocratic conduct.

This time we plan to get up close and personal with some of the worst folks on Capitol Hill. Not only will we be sending an unavoidable message (I don’t think a gaggle of refs is a common sight in DC), we also hope to make a media stir that will be a counterbalance to the flood of ads and propaganda unleashed by the industry over the past two weeks.

Warning: it won’t work right away. These guys have been having their way for so long that it won’t dawn on them quickly that the game is us. We’ll have to fight them all spring long to prevent Keystone, and to take away the billions in subsidies that they present each year to the oil industry (with our money). But if we’re going to take back our country we’ve got to start somewhere, and January 24 is the day.

For more information on the action visit 350.org.

Way back in 2000, author Malcolm Gladwell published The Tipping Point, a book that explains how ideas and messages spread like viruses. With catchy phrases of its own, like “the law of the few”–which attributes the success of any social epidemic to 20 percent of the population–The Tipping Point led to an explosion in the pop science genre.

While Gladwell’s work has been greatly debated, scientists working far from the literary spotlight have produced complex, but no less compelling, findings in the realm of tipping points. The latest came out this summer when scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York published a paper with findings that truly trump Gladwell’s assertions. They found that when 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, the majority of the society will eventually adopt it.

Here’s their prophetic equation in all its mathematical glory:

p<p_c, T_c~exp[α(p)N], whereas for p>p_c, T_c~lnN

That, in a very calculated nutshell, is what explains the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and other such global phenomenons. Don’t ask me to explain it, though. I can only assume it means what they say it means.

“When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority,” said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer. “Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.”

Gladwell might be wrong about the 20 percent figure, but he’s probably right about the types of people who make “the law of the few” possible. You need connectors, mavens and salesmen to spread the idea. Perhaps that’s why it’s taken me six months to even hear about this fascinating new study. After all, scientists aren’t exactly socialistas in the Gladwell sense.

It was Grist columnist David Roberts who alerted me to this fascinating 10 percent figure in a recent piece where he argues for being a climate hawk.

There’s long been an obsession among climate/energy folks with finding a message that appeals to to the “middle” (about which myths abound, but that’s a subject for another time) or the climate undecided/uncommitted/skeptical. Since honest (read: terrifying) talk about the severity of climate change doesn’t win over the uncommitted or disinterested, it is deemed unhelpful to that effort and scolded whenever it pops up.

As I’ve said so many times, though, what drives social change and shifts politics is not broad-based support but intensity. An intensely committed minority can act as a lever that moves larger populations.

According to a Yale study, 12 percent of Americans are “alarmed” by climate change. If that’s the case, why hasn’t it invoked a tipping point?

What complicates matters, of course, is that there’s a roughly equally sized (but vastly better funded and organized) cadre of people who are passionately intense about spreading doubt and blocking action. I’m not sure what the Rensselaer researchers would say about the spread of ideas in the face of concerted opposition, but I imagine it requires clearing a higher hurdle.

Roberts goes on to argue that because of these “two opposing camps battling it out,” the vast majority of “Normal People” don’t know what to think. This, he says, “explains why public opinion is shallow and fickle on the subject.”

Ironically, the right wing once stood in this position of trying to push its views through to the mainstream.

Forty years ago, supply-side economics and opposition to basic social safety net protections were crank, extremist views held by a small minority of hardcore conservatives — the folks who rallied behind Goldwater in 1964 and lost. But as historian Rick Perlstein recounts in Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, they didn’t stop. They kept organizing and pushing, organizing and pushing. Then came Nixon, Reagan, GW Bush, Sarah Palin. Now extremist conservative views are part of the mainstream fabric.

What if they’d given up after 1964? What if they’d looked at surveys, concluded the American middle didn’t favor their views, and spent the next decades trying to tone down and soften those views?

Are you starting to see the potential for climate activists?

That’s where climate hawks are — their own 1964. Surely one of their most important tasks is to grow and support the committed minority of people who have absorbed and understood the severity of the climate crisis. From this perspective, it doesn’t matter if climate truth initially fails to reach the mushy middle. What matters is that the committed minority grows.

There are plenty of signs of that happening, from 350.org to Tar Sands Action to the grassroots movements against mountaintop mining and fracking. Action–particularly that which is honest and unmediated in regards to the threats we face–is the key ingredient.

There’s no reason that intensity, activism, protest, and agitation — “alarmism,” as they’re snottily called by Very Serious People — need to be seen an alternative to pragmatic, incremental process pushed by moderate insiders. They are not mutually exclusive; indeed, they ought to be mutually reinforcing. At the very least, less infighting would be nice.

But everyone, it seems to me, no matter what role they play, could stand to push the edge a little bit occasionally, reminding their audience, whatever audience, that climate change is some genuinely dire sh*t and that now is the time for ambition and courage.

If 2011 was the year of the protester, 2012 may prove to be the year of nonviolence. What’s the difference? It’s as great as between yes and no. A crucial awakening that envelopes humanity’s collective struggle for justice, peace and democracy is happening; it is an awakening that clarifies the circumstances we embrace with a yes and those by which we respond with a vehement no. Like many I know, I often teeter between despair and hope–stuck in a kind of uncomfortable tension resembling Wendell Berry’s poetic instruction to “be joyful though you have considered all the facts” –grasping for some measure of sanity to make sense of all that is happening.

It is tempting to succumb to despair, what with the onslaught of major media coverage telling us all the bad news, dismissing the promising news, and ignoring the good news. Consider the challenges: the unraveling violence of the Egyptian revolution, the 5,000 killed in Syria, climate change and the instability and disasters brought by extreme weather patterns and an ill-equipped global populace with inadequate leadership, the threat of random violence and terrorist activity–Norway, Belgium, India, the US, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq–and state and cultural violence against immigrants, women, refugees, the poor, GLBTQ persons, and people of color. So where is the hope? Well, in 2011, the fires of our hope were stoked by the global protest movements–the Arab Spring, the Indignados, Occupy Wall Street–of millions of people rising up to say: كفاية …Basta…Enough!
Resistance was in the streets and occupations in city squares. A resounding “no” echoed around the world–what Bernard Harcourt has perceptively termed “political disobedience”–signifying contempt, dissatisfaction, and rejection of entrenched governments and status quo economics. Dictators were ousted in Egypt and Tunisia. Revolutionary fervor was sparked by nonviolent action in Libya, Syria and Yemen. South Korean activists are poised to possibly shutter the building of a controversial US naval base with profound geopolitical implications. Afghan youth are getting organized–an incredible feat considering all the challenges they face. Palestinian nonviolent resistance and the Free Gaza movement is growing as are Israeli protests for social justice. In the US, activists and organizers in Wisconsin and Ohio occupied their state capitals to protest budget cuts and GOP anti-unionism. Undocumented students–DREAMers–took it to the streets and Senators’ offices. Environmentalists, farmers, ranchers, students and citizens staged sit-ins at the White House to protest the Keystone XL Pipeline–whose fate is still TBD but the resistance is growing. And then there was Occupy Wall Street. The movement propelled American activism back into public purview and is proving to be the era where a generation of young people–equipped with the tools, knowledge and experience of the civil rights and anti-war generations–are cutting their teeth in nonviolent social change. We are telling ourselves that there is reason to hope because we incarnate it.

The protests of 2011 are the harbinger of what we’ve already known–what we’ve been waiting and working for–that neoliberalism’s carte blanche as signed by the Washington Consensus is on the way out. The days of political regimes that are not truly democratic (and, apparently, equitable) are–at the very least in ideological terms–numbered. In the 00s, there was an explosion of social commentary on globalization: Thomas Freidman, Naomi Klein, Paul Hawken, Vandana Shiva. Paul Kingsnorth, a British journalist, penned a book whose title has stayed with me: One No, Many Yeses. The catchy, chant-like title offers a simple way to reflect on the the historical moment we are experiencing. As symbolized by Time‘s “Person of the Year,” there is a global “no!” to anti-democratic governments and unfettered capitalism. But at the same time, that singular no of protest is united by the multitude of “yeses” whose global resonance signifies the arrival of a comprehensive vision of nonviolence.

This yes to nonviolence signals the awakening consciousness that summarily connects us to that which is most important in our lives and our communities: the desire to be connected, to live without fear, to be healthy and be in healthy relationships, to be free to have self-determining and mutually-supporting ways of living, working, parenting, learning, teaching, creating, and, yes, even dying. Never before have we witnessed the acute, raw, powerful desire for life in such a way that so many diverse peoples are willingly struggling for that way of being.

Nonviolence–however broadly we choose to define it, whether that be strategically, principally, as a communication technique, as a tactic, as a religious commitment, as a process–has inspired hope, awakened creativity, and substantially changed, once again, the world. Gandhi’s term, “satyagraha,” contains a meaning so varied yet concrete and so distinct yet common that “nonviolence” left lacking. Satyagraha is means and ends. It is an effective tactic of protest, a viable social program and an eternal, utopian hope. The nonviolence in 2012 is shoving the nonviolence of protest into the “constructive program” that rejects the there-is-no-alternative to global capitalism. The nonviolence of 2012 will continue to hold up the alternatives to violence, oppression, and injustice by being the vision it seeks. Democratic participation, consensus-based decision-making, decentralized leadership models, shared responsibility, and economics of common wealth and individual affirmation of uniqueness are being experimented with across the world in thousands of different contexts–and with success! “General assembly” being a household word, the lack of charismatic leadership and establishment confusion over what protesters demand all confirm that nonviolence is more than just protest.

Despairingly, I don’t have much hope in protest alone any more; many of us do not. The record-breaking millions who protested the 2003 Iraq War and the continued political impotence on climate change–like in Copenhagen, 2009, and Durban, 2011–show that the “system” is incapable of responding to genuine democratic sentiments. But the hope of nonviolence, besides having some ability to shake the system into response, is in its birthing new paradigms that are more about praxis and participation than they are about ideology. Through these protests, power is in the process of being fundamentally redefined as something to be shared. Political systems and social relationships–having been more or less stagnant since political liberalism first appeared on the Enlightenment scene and later re-affirmed post-Cold War–are showing early signs of social evolution, an indicator that we are not yet at the end of history. Nonviolence, then, as a common denominator in politics, economics, relationships, and resistance movements can be a guiding–and deciding–force for local and global solutions that are democratically-directed and people-powered. I have hope in 2012!

Methane is bubbling up from the bottom of Alaskan lakes–the result of ancient organic matter thawing and decomposing from its once icy chamber in an ever warming climate. This is just one of several ways the melting of Arctic permafrost could create a precipitous increase in greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere and speed up global warming. As the New York Times noted in a recent feature on this foreboding phenomenon, “researchers are worried that the changes in the region may already be outrunning their ability to understand them, or to predict what will happen.”

As complex as this unraveling chain of events may seem, it’s not nature, but politicians–particularly those in Washington–who have made it so. Although they exhale the same amount of carbon dioxide as the average human being, theirs is just as potent and polluting as the gas bubbling out of that lake. The latest example of this can be seen in the Senate’s passage of a bill that requires the president to make a decision within 60 days on the Keystone XL pipeline–which would link Canada’s tar sands to Texas’s oil refineries or, more accurately, the dangerous melting of Arctic permafrost.

The bill is a rather duplicitous effort by Republicans to link an issue the president would prefer not to deal with (Keystone XL) to one that’s close to his heart: payroll tax breaks. As Grist explained, “They have nothing to do with tar sands. But the president wants them, so the House [and now the Senate] is taking them hostage and using them to bargain for the pipeline.”

What does this mean for Tar Sands Action, the campaign that raised the pipeline issue to a national level and pushed the president to initially delay a decision until after the election? It means the gears are churning among the organizers. They’ve been on a week-long retreat to figure out the next moves for this campaign–after a month of local and regional brainstorming–but were no doubt caught by surprise with the quick emergence and passage of this bill.

In an email to Tar Sands Action campaigners yesterday, Bill McKibben did his best to outline immediate steps to be taken:

Our hope — and what you should ask the President for when you write him — is that when he signs the bill he will say the obvious thing:

“Two months is not long enough to review the pipeline. The Canadians themselves have just delayed review of their tar sands pipelines over safety concerns, and we’ve just come through a year that set a record for billion-dollar climate-related disasters; I’m not going to do a rush job just to please the oil industry lobbyists. So this pipeline is dead.”

Since the State Department has already, in essence, said two months is not enough time, this should be straightforward.

We should know how it’s going to play out within 48 hours or so. We’re of course ready to fight like heck.

But for this weekend? If you haven’t gotten through to the White House, or you think you can round up some friends, you can send them a message here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments (the switchboard is now closed for the weekend) – and click here to spread the word on Facebook and Twitter.

Even if the president says the right thing, it seems inevitable that TSA will have to get back out on the streets. If discussions over the past month from the local level on up are any indication of what’s to come, possible courses of action include targeting Obama campaign centers as sites for protest and civil disobedience, starting divestment campaigns against the banks that finance the pipeline project, and occupying the pipeline’s endpoints in Texas and Alberta.

Washington may be far removed from the chain of events it’s facilitating up in the Arctic, but climate activists and the broad range of other folks opposed to this pipeline–including Nebraska farmers and Texas ranchers–are already catalyzing another chain of events that politicians will have a much harder time ignoring.

• South Korean protesters calling attention to the women forced into sexual slavery during WWII reached their thousandth weekly demonstration on Wednesday. Marking the occasion, a statue honoring the victims was erected in front of the Japanese embassy.

• Chicago activists progressively interrupted a school board meeting on Wednesday in an act of nonviolent resistance—eventually forcing the board members to retreat out of the room—in protest of proposed changes to low-income schools.

• Demonstrators opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline staged a ‘human oil spill’ in front of Speaker John Boehner’s office in Washington D.C. Wednesday.

• Portugal’s top trade union confederation CGTP on Monday launched a week of protests against the government’s austerity policies.

• Employees of the Lahore College for Women University in Pakistan held a boycott of classes for the second day on Tuesday, demanding better terms for school workers.

• Thousands of taxi drivers in Guinea Bissau went on strike Tuesday to call for an end to police extortion.

• Disabled persons in Athens held a rally on Tuesday to oppose further austerity measures being considered by the Greek government.

• Inmates at seven Kyrgyzstan prisons coordinated a hunger strike on Tuesday to agitate for better living conditions and meals.

• Around 200 Los Angeles high school students walked out of classes on Tuesday and marched several miles to stage a sit-in at district board meeting, decrying cuts to school budgets.

• Thousands of public sector workers in Cyprus staged a three-hour stoppage Tuesday in protest over government moves to freeze salaries for two years as part of an austerity drive to avoid an EU bailout.

• A network of progressive South Korean Christian groups began a four day hunger strike on Monday to protest vote buying and corruption in the country’s largest Protestant association.

• Arab and Bedouin Israelis held a state-wide general strike on Sunday as several thousand demonstrators gathered at the Prime Ministry to express their outrage at a government plan that would relocate Negev Bedouins out of their homes into impoverished townships.

• In cities all across Russia, unauthorized demonstrations were ongoing Sunday after anti-Putin protesters escalated their dissent in Moscow at a massive rally on Saturday as tens of thousands marched for free elections.

• On Sunday, Syrians in some regions observed the opposition’s call for a general strike, despite reports that police in the capital forced shop owners to reopen.

• After leading scores of protesters inside of Durban climate talks on Friday, Greenpeace activists posed as representatives of wealthy corporations on Sunday to call attention to the beneficiaries of failed action at the ICC.

• Bangkok, Thailand saw a rare second rally in two days Saturday as a throng of marchers engaged in a ‘fearlessness walk’ reiterated their objections to laws that punish those who speak out against the monarchy.

• A flash mob erupted in a Pittsburgh Target on Saturday as Occupy organizers briefly flooded the store in protest of the company’s hiring policies.

• For the second day in a row, hundreds of Indian teachers in Bangalore boycotted classes on Friday in protest of low wages.

• Demonstrations condemning the NATO airstrike in Pakistan have been ongoing for two weeks across the country, and were sparked anew after prayers Friday.

• Tens of thousands of Yemenis took to the streets again Friday chanting ‘no partnership with the murderers’ after a new Cabinet—half filled with pro-regime politicians—was announced.

• In the Dominican Republic on Thursday, hundreds of activists rallied against the government’s practice of confiscating or annulling birth certificates for those of Haitian descent.

• Building on the largest opposition rally in years Monday, Russian protests spread to more cities on Tuesday as demonstrators denounced federal election results—resulting in hundreds of arrests.

• On Tuesday, thousands of young Yemenis in Sanaa continued their sit-in, despite President Saleh’s signed agreement that he would step down, declaring that their revolution is far from over. This followed demonstrations which erupted on Sunday, as residents of Taiz marched in protest of immunity provisions given to the outgoing President.

• Greenpeace activists infiltrated a French nuclear plant Monday and hung a banner on a reactor building in an attempt to expose nuclear national security weaknesses.

• Dozens of Occupy D.C. members were arrested late Sunday in an act of civil disobedience when they refused to dismantle a structure that they were building for shelter.

• Thousands protested at the UN Climate Conference in Durban, South Africa on Sunday, calling for a strong international plan to address climate change.

• Animal rights advocates in Taipei, Taiwan gathered by the hundreds on Sunday, condemning the conditions of animal shelters throughout the country.

• In India on Sunday, thousands marched and several began a hunger strike to show their support for the decommissioning of a damn in the interest of protecting local farmers.

• Kashmir witnessed protests and sit-ins on Saturday as residents of Srinagar decried the police’s use of pepper guns in breaking up demonstrations the day before.

• On Saturday, secular Tunisians held a counter-rally in front of Parliament, opposing a group of Islamists who were calling for female university students to wear a full-face veil.

• Thousands in India blocked train tracks Saturday, agitating for compensation to be given to victims of the industrial accident at Bhopal in 1984.

• Protests were ongoing Sunday in Tahrir Square after thousands of protesters rallied on Friday for an end to the Army’s rule in Egypt.

• Despite strict controls on public speech, Singapore saw a rare public demonstration on Sunday as hundreds of activists participated in the global “Slut Walk” movement, calling attention to violence against women.

• Jordanian environmentalists staged a sit-in Saturday at the Prime Ministry, objecting to the country’s atomic program.

• Friday marked the seventh day of protests in Pakistan as demonstrators decried a NATO airstrike in Pakistani territory which killed 24 soldiers.

• On Wednesday, a mass rally took place in Bulgaria as thousands demonstrated against austerity measures, including a government plan to raise the retirement age.

• In India, several fired workers agitating for their union’s recognition were arrested Wednesday after protesting in front of a Hyundai plant’s gate.

• Millions of shop owners in India closed their doors on Thursday, striking and marching in protest of a bill which would allow foreign superstores like Walmart to have greater access in their country.

• In the United Kingdom, Wales was the center of one of the largest public sector strikes in a generation Wednesday as around 170,000 workers—including teachers—abandoned their posts in ongoing protests against government pension reforms.

• In the Philippines, hundreds of inmates continued a hunger strike Thursday, instigating noise barrages to agitate for faster case disposition, the release of political prisoners, and to address other grievances.

• Thousands of Greek workers participated in this year’s seventh general strike on Thursday, continuing their calls to end government austerity programs.

• Students from three high schools in Seattle staged a walk out on Thursday to gather at City Hall in protest of a Washington state proposal to fill budget holes with cuts to education funding.

• Building on a series of protests this month against Bank of America’s poor environmental record, a Thursday rally in Asheville, NC culminated in the arrest of several nonviolent resisters who wanted to call attention to BOA’s support of the coal industry.