Ode Magazine has a great story about three young filmmakers who made a documentary about the thousands of children abducted and enslaved by a Ugandan rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The film, Invisible Children, led to the founding of an organization by the same name, which has gone on to raise some $30 million to help survivors and inspire a movement that has successfully pressured Congress to pass legislation giving President Obama authority to put an end to the LRA’s atrocities.

What’s most impressive, as the Ode piece points out, is how much support, both financially and physically has come from young people here in the States. Some 80 percent of the $30 million collected by Invisible Children came from high school students. And back in 2006, 80,000 young people took part in a 126-city country-wide direct action by lying down and sleeping in the streets in order to call attention to the nightly trek of so many Ugandan children.

The founders of Invisible Children are not so surprised at their ability to get young Americans involved in a battle for social justice in Africa. “I think everyone wants to be swept up by an adventure, a story that gives life a meaning or purpose,” says [Jason] Russell. Surprising or not, it is miraculous. After all, so many things compete for young people’s time and attention that good causes seldom win out.

[...]

They attribute the success of Invisible Children—which works closely with organizations like Resolve Uganda and The Enough Project—to a healthy dose of naïveté. If the friends had known that Congress had passed only 3 percent of all the bills presented over the last six years, they probably would have given up before they started. “We don’t want to be ignorant,” Poole says, his eyes shining, “but there’s definitely bliss in it.”

The whole 52-minute film can be watched online at Google Video.

• Century City’s business as usual came to a standstill Thursday afternoon as the janitors who lost their jobs cleaning JPMorgan Chase-owned Century Plaza towers were joined by 500 janitors, community activists, and union supporters at a march and protest in Los Angeles. Thirteen people were arrested for blocking an intersection in an act of civil disobedience.

• Some 10,000 people gathered outside historic Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. on Saturday for the “Reclaim the Dream” march commemorating the 47th anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I have a Dream Speech.”

• On Sunday, an estimated 80,000 Hong Kongers marched in honor of eight people killed in a bus hijacking in Manila, attacking the Philippine government for botching the rescue operation and demanding justice for the dead.

• Teachers on Thursday staged a 24-hour strike and paralyzed Puerto Rican public education to protest what they say is a general deterioration of the school system.

• On Thursday, two protesters associated with Climate Ground Zero blocked the entrance to the headquarters of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to bring attention to what they believe is the DEP’s failure to enforce the Clean Water Act by permitting mountaintop removal mining.

• A protest of Nigerian women shut down a Shell plant last Wednesday, just one week after a group of Ugborodo women blockaded a Chevron natural gas pipeline.

• Oil workers calling for compensation for recently fired employees maintained a blockade at a storage plant in southern Argentina on Friday.

• Some 2,000 people crammed into a Moscow square amid a heavy police presence for a banned rock concert yesterday to protest plans for the building of a highway through protected forest land.

• A climate change activist was arrested Friday after she glued herself to a desk at the Royal Bank of Scotland’s headquarters. She was among 150 activists who breached the security perimeter separating a climate camp from the bank’s Edinburgh HQ at around midday.

• A group of Nigerian women in the country’s oil-rich south blocked access to a Chevron natural gas pipeline on Friday to protest poor living conditions in their community.

• Hundreds of people showed up for New York gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo’s campaign visit to Ithaca last week to demand that he hold off on supporting hydrofracking in the natural gas-laden Marcellus Shale.

• Dozens of mothers breastfed their infants at a Phoenix McDonald’s on Saturday to protest the eviction of a woman doing the same earlier this month.

• Hundreds of residents of Kaliningrad, Russia’s Baltic exclave, gathered on a central square Saturday to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s government.

• About 100 almost-naked anti-bullfighting campaigners lay down outside the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao on Saturday in a protest coinciding with the start of the northern Spanish city’s annual bullfight festival.

• About a hundred net neutrality activists left their laptops at home Friday afternoon to gather at Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters to protest the search giant’s perceived betrayal of the movement for federal internet openness rules. The protest group’s ranks included eager young activists, long-time technologists, first-time protesters and the ever-present Raging Grannies, who led anti-Google sing-alongs set to classic Americana songs.

• Around 1,000 Senegalese opposition supporters took to the streets on Saturday to protest President Abdoulaye Wade’s regime, saying they were fed up with power cuts, floods, and rising food costs.

• In Haiti, dozens of protesters held a sit-in at the National Palace Thursday to oppose the forced evictions of thousands of displaced residents from makeshift camps. The Haitian government has been urged to issue a moratorium on all forced evictions until alternative shelter options can be provided.

• Two Korean priests are publicly fasting outside a government building in the latest protest against the highly controversial Four Rivers project, which they believe will be detrimental to the environment.

• Iranian opposition members in Germany are staging a two-day hunger strike to demand a stop executions and an international investigation of prisons in their home country. A group of 20 on Friday chanted slogans such as “Stop stonings” and “Free political prisoners” on Berlin’s most prominent public spot at the Brandenburg Gate, two days after the purported TV confession of an Iranian woman facing death by stoning on adultery charges.

• On Saturday, all the taxi drivers in the provincial city of Dégolan‌ in Iranian Kurdistan went on strike parking their taxi cabs by the Bolbanabad terminal to protest a 20 day interruption in the compressed natural gas supplies.

• Sunday’s game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Washington Nationals was briefly interrupted by protesters urging commissioner Bud Selig to move the 2011 All-Star Game from Phoenix because of Arizona’s new immigration legislation.

• Public sector workers went on strike across South Africa Tuesday, closing schools and wreaking havoc on a wide array of public services. As many as 1.3 million people were expected to walk off their jobs. Between 10,000 and 100,000 workers also demonstrated Tuesday across five provinces.

• Dozens of construction workers building a subway in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, have vowed to begin a hunger strike today to demand three months of unpaid wages.

• On Monday, a few dozen Embassy Suites workers who claim they are routinely denied breaks walked off the job in Irvine, California.

• Anti-government protesters in Bolivia tightened their siege of Potosi on Saturday, launching a hunger strike and cutting rail links to Chile, as tourists began negotiating their way out of the mining city, 10 days into the blockade.

• Nine protesters were arrested for blocking the main gate to Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor on Monday. They were among members and supporters of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, which holds an annual vigil at the base on the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

• More than 30,000 truck drivers in the Dominican Republic went on a 24-hour strike yesterday to protest a government proposal to raise the fuel tax.

• Workers at the Post-Gazette walked out at Noon on Monday to protest pending staff cuts the paper says are needed to stay afloat.

• In India, Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev staged a sit-in protest at Haridwar with a demand to halt the hydropower projects across River Ganga and also to protect the river from further exploitation and pollution. Several Hindu monks also accompanied Baba Ramdev in this crusade.

• A three-day strike launched on Monday by customs workers in Ivory Coast over benefits that have been withheld is blocking exports of cocoa from the world’s top grower of the beans.

• This past Friday, in Bryant Park  in New York, Medicare celebrated it’s 45th birthday with a flash mob of over one hundred singing and dancing protesters that warned President Obama’s newly created Deficit Commission to keep their hands off Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

• South African government ministers met with public sector workers’ unions to try to end an open-ended wage strike by 210,000 teachers, nurses and other state employees that began last Thursday and prevent it from spreading.

• Greek truck drivers’ associations say they will continue a protest that has halted fuel supplies across the country and is hurting tourism, despite an emergency order by the government to force them back to work.

• Hundreds of hotel and restaurant employees and supporters were arrested around the US Thursday in coordinated civil disobedience against the Hyatt Corporation. Fifteen cities saw protests.

• A group of families of political prisoners gathered in front of the office of the General Prosecutor to protest the lack of information about the situation of their loved ones, especially those political prisoners who went on hunger strike in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison last week. Meanwhile, it was reported yesterday that anti-riot units and Special Forces barged into the facility  after learning of prisoners’ mass hunger strike.

• More than 200 Afghans participated in a rally in the capital Kabul on Sunday to protest the alleged NATO killing of 52 civilians on July 23, in the Sangin district of Helmand province.

• Some 800 dockers and activists staged a rally in Indonesia on Saturday to demand that a major port operator honor a negotiated agreement.

Over at openDemocracy, Shelley Anderson has written a nice article that explores why nonviolence – which she beautifully describes as “a continuous and radical struggle to stay human by always recognising the humanity of others” – is not better known. She begins by telling a moving story of nonviolence at work:

The scene: several years ago in a Dublin sidewalk café. Two human rights activists, one African, the other North American, are talking at the next table. I sit at another table, an unrepentant eavesdropper.

“I must tell you this story,” the African lawyer said. “Some women from both sides of the conflict had been secretly talking to each other. A message from the other side was smuggled to the wife of a local military commander. The women learned that her husband has been ordered to attack a nearby village. In the message, the women beg her to stop the attack.

“The wife is in a quandary. How can she stop a military attack? Time is running out. Then she has an idea. She goes to her husband and tells him that she must go shopping the next day in that village. Her husband tries to dissuade her but she insists she must go. She knows the attack is scheduled for tomorrow morning. Her husband is in a panic. He calls off the attack. The women succeeded!”

Most nonviolent success stories are similar to this one, she argues, in that they are not written down because they are “anecdotal, anonymous and above all, ordinary.” Many proponents of nonviolence have made this observation. Gandhi perhaps said it best in Hind Swaraj, which he penned in 1909 on a return voyage from London to South Africa:

The fact that there are so many men still alive in the world shows that it is based not on the force of arms but on the force of truth or love. Therefore, the greatest and most unimpeachable evidence of the success of this force is to be found in the fact that, in spite of the wars in the world, it still lives on.

Thousands, indeed tens of thousands, depend for their existence on a very active working of this force. Little quarrels of millions of families in their lives disappear before the exercise of this force. Hundreds of nations live in peace. History does not and cannot take note of this fact. History is really a record of every interruption of the even working of this force of love or of the soul.

Read the rest of this article »

Earlier this month, the Southern African Litigation Centre, based in Johannesburg, posted this video about a wonderful act of nonviolence that took place in April 2008, when dockworkers in South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia and Angola refused to unload weapons from a Chinese ship that were destined for Zimbabwe’s Defense Forces.

To learn more about this great case study, check out this in depth report from the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), which was published last summer.

• Police arrested 37 people for entering a Tennessee nuclear weapons plant on Monday during a demonstration marking the anniversary of the landmark Plowshares protest in 1980 at a missile plant in Pennsylvania, where Dan and Phil Berrigan were able to get inside the General Electric facility, damage a missile nose cone and pour blood on various documents. Four of the original “Plowshares Eight,” each of whom served time in jails or prisons for their actions participated in the protest: John Schuchardt, Molly Rush, Anne Montgomery and Carl Kabat – as well as Liz McAlister, Phil Berrigan’s widow.

• Merchants in Tehran’s main bazaar gathered in protest on Tuesday to protest a government plan to dramatically increase taxes on their businesses. With threats of a general strike looming, authorities were forced to back down.

• Hundreds of people staged a demonstration in Rome on Wednesday to demand help from the government for the reconstruction of places damaged by the April 2009 quake.

• About 1,000 ex-militants in Nigeria, who last year laid down their arms under a government amnesty, drove a convoy of buses towards the Nigerian capital yesterday and blocked the highway for several hours to protest their exclusion from the on-going post-amnesty retraining program.

• Religious and immigrant rights activists gathered outside the White House yesterday to urge the Obama administration to approach immigration reform and voice support for the Justice Department’s recent challenge of Arizona’s hardline immigration policy.

• Four Earth First! protesters were arrested today after they temporarily stopped a semi-truck carrying a 140-foot wind turbine blade to Kibby Mountain in Maine. The protesters oppose alternative energy projects that profit corporations at the expense of sensitive ecosystems.

• The wife of a quadriplegic in Britain has gone on hunger strike to protest the lack of National Health Service care for her husband. She has vowed to starve to death to win the support he needs.

• Thousands of Italian farmers took part in a demonstration on the Austrian border to protest the importation of food with Italian-sounding branding that they feel harms Italy’s reputation for quality food.

• On Friday, a million workers belonging to Italy’s largest union went on strike across the nation to protest proposed austerity cuts by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government.

• Despite some acts of violence, 25,000 peacefully protested the policies of the G20 in Toronto over the weekend amidst a heavy police presence.

• Tens of thousands of opposition supporters marched in Taiwan’s capital Saturday to protest the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, a trade agreement with China opponents said will undermine the island’s self-rule and harm its economy.

• On Saturday, people gathered and held hands to form a symbolic line in the sand for 15 minutes as part of the “Hands Across the Sand” demonstrations organized in the US and abroad to pressure elected officials against any expansion of offshore drilling and to promote “clean” energy. In the U.S. nearly 700 rallies took place in all 50 states.

• Egyptian dissident Mohamed El Baradei led over 4,000 in a protest in Alexandria on Friday demanding an end to police brutality.

• In Michigan, thousands rallied on the state Capitol in Lansing on Thursday to urge lawmakers not to cut funding for public education.

• On Friday, 40 demonstrators greeted Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean at a Melbourne hotel when he arrived at a meeting to approve a deal to export up to 20 million tons of polluting La Trobe Valley brown coal to Vietnam.

• Hundreds of Los Angeles students at Lawndale High School walked out of class Wednesday to protest a controversial decision to transfer the school’s top teachers to a neighboring school.

• Around 3,000 South Africans marched in Durban Wednesday to denounce FIFA and their government for spending 33 billion rands (4.3 billion USD) in preparation for the World Cup while millions live in poverty. Also, dozens of security workers walked off the job hours before the Brazil-North Korea soccer match Tuesday to over a pay dispute.

• West Virgina residents opposed to mountaintop removal mining rallied at the capitol in Charleston on Tuesday. The group, which calls itself  ‘Appalachia Rising’ is attempting to rally Appalachian residents opposed to mountaintop removal to join in a mass demonstration set for Sept. 27 in Washington.

• Protesters gathered outside the office of U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) on Wednesday to demand that Perriello vote against allocating an additional $33.5 billion to fund the war in Afghanistan.

• About a dozen activists rallied on Wednesday in Samara, in central Russia to protest a new law which they say will lead to the commercialization of education in their country.

• In Nepal, indigenous groups, with the backing of  several opposition parties have promised to launch a strong protest movement against the construction a controversial 269 metre dam if surveying and evacuations of villagers go forward. The Sapta Kosi Multipurpose Project dam will submerge at least 50 Nepalese villages.

• Fourteen people were arrested in Denver on Tuesday during an immigration rights protest for kneeling and blocking traffic in front of the Federal Court House.

• On Monday, dozens of Palestinians and international activists held a nonviolent protest in the town of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip against the Israeli-imposed buffer zone in Gaza following an Israeli incursion onto Palestinian-owned farm land earlier in the day.

• A strike over pay by the security stewards at World Cup stadiums spread to half the tournament’s 10 venues yesterday, forcing police to step in and assume their duties.

• Several hundred activists gathered in New York City’s Union Square on Monday at a rally to protect  homeless LGBT youth sponsored by the Ali Forney Center.

• Some 800 Burmese migrants have begun a hunger strike in a Malaysian immigration camp after the UN’s refugee agency stopped interviewing detainees about potential refugee status.

• On Tuesday, a dozen protesters gathered in front of NYPD headquarters to speak out against what they called the misuse of disorderly conduct charges against the homeless.

• In Sweden, around 30 Greenpeace activists broke into the Forsmark nuclear plant on Monday to demand that parliament vote against allowing new nuclear facilities to be built  in the country.

• On Monday, 250 rallied at a University of Illinois Board of Trustees meeting to protest tuition hikes and a concurrent salary raise of approximately $170,000 for University President Michael Hogan.

• More than 3,500 Romanians took to the streets outside the Parliament in Bucharest on Tuesday to protest proposed austerity measures Prime Minister Emil Bloc said must be made to meet the demands of a loan from the International Monetary Fund.

• Four people were arrested Tuesday at a Wake County, North Carolina school board meeting. The group of civil rights activists staged a nonviolent protest against measures they say will lead to re-segregation in county schools.

• Thousands of people formed a human chain in Okinawa, Japan yesterday to protest the movement of a US military base there.

• 500 Afghan villagers demonstrated outside their governor’s office on Friday to protest a recent US-backed raid that killed civilians.

• Thousands of villagers in India facing displacement by steel giant POSCO are staging sit-in protests during what they have dubbed “resistance week,” which lasts through May 21.

• Communications worker union members marched through Johannesburg, South Africa demanding wage increases.

• Women vendors in Nagamapal, India staged a sit-in yesterday to protest continued price hikes. The sit-in condemned a government official’s visit to the region and shops and businesses were also closed in protest

• 160 Russian tractor factory workers have begun a hunger strike after not being paid for five months. They are also fundraising for a plane ticket for President Medvedev to come and mediate.

• A gay pride parade meant to protest rights violations against sexual minorities was violently disrupted by police in Belarus on Saturday.

• People gathered in the Maldives last week, clad in red shirts, to protest rising electricity tariffs.

• Saturday was International Day of Protest for Lolita’s Retirement, in support of an orca whale at Miami’s Seaquarium, who lives in the smallest whale tank in North America and possibly the world.

• Gun control activists protested outside an NRA conference in Charlotte, NC, saying discussion of gun violence was missing from the conference.

• There were more than 100 demonstrations around the United States this weekend to protest the Arizona immigration law.  In DC, thousands of people supported 4 students who marched all the way from Florida, and high-profile activists including Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-Il) were arrested.  Other marches took place in Chicago, Maine, San Francisco, and Denver, as well as many other locations.

• Thousands gathered to march in Havana, Cuba on Saturday for International Workers Day, also known as May Day.

• 200,000 people demonstrated in Istanbul for May Day on Saturday to demand more secure employment and better working conditions.  It was the first approved May Day gathering in thirty years.  Other demonstrations took place in Kolkata, Jakarta, and around the world.

• Teachers picketed in the Philippines on Wednesday to demand a better insurance system.

• Separatists staged a sit-in in India on Saturday to demand the creation of a separate state of Vidarbha.

• About two hundred Socialist lawmakers and supporters began a hunger strike in Albania this weekend to demand a recount of an allegedly rigged election.

• Protests continue in Greece in the face of extreme budget cuts as the economy verges on collapse.

• Italian unions shut down opera houses this weekend to protest an emergency decree that would affect arts funding.

• On Wednesday, scrap metal dealers in Jamaica protested a government decision to shut down the trade.

• 200 people gathered in Montana to protest a pro-Nazi film screened by a white supremacist group.

• An Albuquerque woman was on day 16 of a hunger strike on Friday to raise awareness about refugees who flee violence for poverty in the U.S.

• Teachers, hospital workers, and other public sector employees in Quebec demonstrated outside a community meeting on Friday in support of their new contract demands.

• Thousands of workers and community members participated in a rally Sunday in Chennai, India led by former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa against power cuts and electricity mismanagement in the region.

• 500 women marched in Harare, Zimbabwe on Thursday protesting poor electricity supply and high costs.  Many were arrested, and four remained in custody on Sunday night.

• AIDS activists staged sit-ins in Manipur, India on Saturday after the murder of an HIV-positive youth.  Police broke up the actions; the activists said the denial of their protest applications was discrimination.

• First Nations members in Canada successfully blocked a railway for two hours on Friday in order to raise awareness about community concerns, including land claims and higher taxes.

• Families and friends of Jordanians imprisoned in Israeli jails gathered and staged a one-day hunger strike on Saturday in solidarity with prisoners. The protest took place the day after Raed Abu Hammad died in an Israeli jail, apparently after being denied medications.

• Refugees in a Sahrawi camp in Algeria staged a one-day hunger strike on Saturday in solidarity with political prisoners in Morocco who have been hunger-striking since March.

• 500 people marched through the Ohio State University campus against human trafficking yesterday.  The march was sparked by proposed Ohio laws which will toughen trafficking charges.