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.
Singing choruses of “we shall not be moved” while scattering sunflower seeds, 14 activists were arrested in Kansas City on Monday after blocking an earth moving vehicle on the site of a proposed nuclear weapons manufacturing facility.
German workers on Tuesday protested against what their union says are plans by the country’s central bank to have euro banknotes printed by foreign companies.
Students from various schools and universities in the Philippines traded the four corners of their classrooms for the streets last Friday to join the National Youth Walkout and appeal for more government support for the education sector.
On Monday, hundreds of protesters started a sit-in outside the legislature, fueled by mounting anger over the government’s cross-strait policies and the expected passage of a controversial trade agreement with China later this week.
While protest in China is far more widespread than most people recognize, recent high-profile strikes by workers in China, which we’ve noted on this site, appear to be having an effect, according to The Guardian.
Officials in Guangdong province – for years the country’s manufacturing heartland – are debating proposals which activists say could be a landmark, allowing workers to democratically elect representatives to carry out collective bargaining.
“The pressure of low pay, long working hours and poor working conditions that gave rise to the wave of strikes across Guangdong have elicited a timely and positive response from the government,” said Han Dongfang, executive director of the Hong Kong-based group China Labour Bulletin.
He said it showed an important change in the government’s attitude towards workers’ reasonable economic demands.
According to Chinese media, the revised draft law states that if more than a fifth of the workforce at a factory ask for wage negotiations with management, the trade union branch must organise the democratic election of representatives. If the company does not have a union, the nearest district union must arrange the vote. Union leaders in China are appointed officials and independent unions are not permitted.
Interesting, one economics professor in China interviewed in the piece says that workers are feeling empowered by the internet, where despite of government censorship, they have been able to read about how strikes have successfully won better wages and working conditions in other Chinese factories.
On Monday, hundreds of teachers, councilors and pupils have protested over the axing of England’s school rebuilding programme. Led by trade unions, the Save Our Schools lobby urged ministers to reconsider the move which led to the halting of 735 school projects.
Former employees of the closed Amonsito factory in Cairo have ended their sit-in, following Wednesday’s tentative agreement for overdue early retirement payment to the workers from Banque Misr, the factory’s creditor.
In Chile, more than 20 Mapuche political prisoners began a hunger strike Monday. The prisoners, jailed in Concepción and Temuco, took note of the recent prisoner releases in Cuba and began the strike in hope that President Sebastián Piñera would take notice.
Last Friday, three Christian activists involved with Witness Against Torture – two of whom (Luke Hansen S.J. and John Bambrick) are contributors to this site – traveled to Bermuda to visit with four Uyghur men who were wrongly detained at the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba for more than seven years.
The Uyghurs are a persecuted ethnic minority group from western China. While seventeen Uyghurs have been resettled since a federal judge ordered their release in 2008, five have not been able to leave Guantánamo. According to the press release:
The purpose of the delegation to Bermuda is to build relationships with the Uyghurs, seek their counsel concerning further advocacy for both current and former Guantánamo prisoners, and to bring a message of atonement and reconciliation from the American people to the former prisoners. “In the United States, public discourse on Guantánamo is mainly informed by various perspectives from the military, politicians and the U.S. public,” says John Bambrick, a Chicago youth minister. “We have come to Bermuda to seek the perspectives of men who have experienced Guantánamo firsthand.”
“The Uyghur men in Bermuda, like us, are people of faith,” says Jeremy Kirk, a Ph.D. student in social ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. “We are practicing our Christian faith by seeking connection with our Muslim brothers, in whose detention and abuse we have participated as U.S. taxpayers and citizens.”
On Saturday, the three activists visited the Uyghurs’ apartment, shared a meal and swam in the ocean with the former prisoners, and swapped stories about family and religious faith. The Uyghur men shared some of their experiences of being in Guantánamo and discussed their gratitude for and challenges associated with resettlement. (They are very grateful to the Bermudan Government’s support and hospitality.)
The group returned to the United States yesterday, and I have yet to hear how the rest of their trip went. They were going to meet with the Uyghurs again on Sunday and were expecting to discuss in greater depth what their detention at Guantánamo was like and the conditions that the Uyghurs who are still there currently face. We will hopefully be able to share a reflection from one of the members of the delegation soon.
A strike has broke out at a south China factory supplying parts for Japan’s Honda Motor on Monday, with about 90 of the plant’s 200 workers stopping work to demand a nearly 60 percent pay increase.
PETA, Last Chance for Animals, and other activists were in downtown Los Angeles at the Staples Center Wednesday night to protest the opening of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. They called for a boycott of the circus based on the disturbing photos that had been turned over to PETA by an industry whistleblower.
Workers at Nokia’s Chennai factory in south India went on strike on Tuesday, demanding higher wages. The factory is a key hub for the manufacture of mobile handsets and employs 8,000 workers.
A recently established student movement pushing for reform of Taiwan’s assembly law, which restricts people’s right to demonstrate, announced their plan today to expand their ongoing sit-in protest at Taipei’s Liberty Square that began last Friday.
Thousands of protesters poured into the center of the main city of Indian Kashmir on Thursday after authorities lifted restrictions for the first time in five days. The Muslim-majority region has been wracked by demonstrations since June 11 when security forces were accused of killing a 17-year-old. Since then, another 14 protesters and bystanders have been killed.
Clashes erupted at the Puerto Rico Capitol in San Juan on Wednesday after police forcibly prevented protesters from attending a legislative session on the State budget. Officers used batons, physical force and pepper spray to block a large group that included many students seeking a voice in the Puerto Rican budget. Student organizers say over two dozen protesters were treated for injuries.
A Salvadoran-born clergyman has set up a camping tent in a Chicago public park where he intends to continue the hunger strike he began 16 days ago to demand immigration reform. The protest is part of a series of fasts, hunger strikes and acts of civil disobedience organized in Illinois by groups defending undocumented immigrants to pressure Congress to enact immigration reform.
A strike at Tianjin Mitsumi Electric Co., a Japanese-owned electronics factory in north China, crippled production on Thursday, extending the industrial unrest that has put manufacturers at odds with increasingly assertive workers.
A series of labor strikes pushing for higher wages and better conditions spread through China last week. Some 1,700 workers at a Honda Lock factory staged a march, while 2,000 workers at a Taiwanese computer parts plant walked off their jobs.
Workers gathered and made traditional Chinese funeral offerings yesterday at Foxconn headquarters in China after a series of suicides and suicide attempts. Protesters say the company, which makes Apple’s iPad, has unhealthy working conditions.
Members of the Fishermen Cooperative Society in coastal Pakistan gathered yesterday to protest recent police actions against villagers protesting the occupation of an ancient graveyard.
On Monday off the Louisiana coast, seven Greenpeace members boarded an offshore drilling support ship and painted anti-drilling messages in oil on the side of the ship. They have since been arrested and charged with unauthorized entry.
Thousands of people marched in Switzerland on Monday to protest the building of nuclear power stations in the country.
Members of the group Manchester Plane Stupid chained themselves to the wheels of a plane on Monday to protest the expansion of the World Freight Centre at Manchester Airport, which they say will be an environmental disaster.
The Kayapo indigenous group in Brazil continues their month-long blockade of an Amazon highway to protest the building of a dam they say will destroy their communities and livelihoods.
Around 500 Nigerian youth marched in Lagos yesterday to protest widespread government corruption and insecurity. The marchers demanded a reduction in the amount of kidnappings and assassinations as well as electoral reform before next year’s elections.
Somali radio stations played animal noises yesterday in response to a ban on music set by Islamic extremists. The lighthearted appearance of the protest contrasts with the severe punishments radio hosts could expect if they broadcasted music.
People in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province rallied earlier this week after the government announced it would change the province’s name. While demonstrators protested peacefully, saying a name change would polarize the area, police killed eight.
Students in Long Island, New York marched and staged a sit-in on Monday in response to drastic cuts to the Southampton campus of Stony Brook University.
On Sunday in Zhengzhou, China, zoo workers—and their animals—staged a sit-in in a cycling field protesting the use of zoo land for sports facilities. Zoo officials say they need more space to best care for the animals.
On March 26, several thousand marched in Tegucigalpa to demand an end to the escalation of repression, and against the neoliberal policies of the new government.
On Monday, about 100 trolleybus drivers went on strike in Ukraine because they are owed back pay and are demanding immediate payment. They also protested against the liquidation of bonuses and deteriorating work conditions..
A hunger strike that began on March 18, by several Sahrawi detainees in Moroccan prisons to protest against violations of human rights in the occupied territories of Western Sahara has expanded to 10 other prisons.
The public, including members and supporters of the ruling Frelimo Party, boycotted en masse a rally in the southern Mozambican town of Homoine at which the new governor of Inhambane province, Agostinho Trinta, was to have been presented to protest the chronic shortage of drinking water, lack of rubbish collection, and the poor state of the roads in the town.
More than 3,000 Kyrgyz rallied in the capital Bishkek on Wednesday to express their discontent with President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was hailed as Central Asia’s most democratic leader when he came to power in 2005, but has since tightened his grip on power and jailed political opponents.
The six major Estonian newspapers left one of their pages completely blank today to protest of the source protection act 656 SE, which would make possible to punish with imprisonment journalists in the field of investigating journalism.
For almost a week, a group of around 300 students have been occupying a lecture hall at the University of Sussex in England to protest proposed cutbacks.
Carrefour SA’s 116 stores in Belgium were closed Saturday because of a strike over planned job cuts, said a company spokesman who put the resulting sales loss at the company-owned outlets at 14 million euros ($19 million).
Syrian Catholic Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa of Mosul led over 1,000 Iraqi Catholics in a silent protest on February 28 to demand that the government act to put a stop to violence against Christians there.
Three Chinese death-row inmates who say they were tortured into confessing to crimes they didn’t commit have staged a hunger strike to draw attention to their case.
Thousands of adherents of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) marched in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa Feb. 25 to protest the slaying of civil resistance leaders under what they still consider to be the “de facto regime” of President Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo despite the change in government last month. The rally concluded in front of the National Congress building, where the march was blocked by a military cordon.
On Thursday, protesting Guatemalan teachers in Melchor de Mencos blocked the Melchor Bridge with their bodies to stop vehicular passage through the border between Guatemala and Belize. According to union president Zetina, who spoke on behalf of the teachers, they are demanding a 16% salary increase from their Government, in addition to proper renovation of school buildings.
Thirty-eight Jamaican women — all of them asylum seekers, some of whom have lived in the UK for as long as 10 years — are on hunger strike in holding facilities in the United Kingdom, in protest of their imminent deportation to Jamaica.
Tens of thousands of protesters calling themselves the Purple People took to the streets of Rome on the weekend in a sign of mounting opposition to the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The group, Il Popolo Viola, wore purple sweaters and scarves, Berlusconi masks or striped prison dress to protest against what they say is the undermining of Italian democracy by Mr Berlusconi in his battle with the country’s legal system.
More than 250 Washington State University Vancouver students staged a “mass walkout” to protest budget cuts to academic programs, the elimination of crucial financial aid, and continued tuition hikes.
Canadian anti-Olympic protesters are promising a series of protests starting this weekend, culminating in a march on the opening ceremonies Feb. 12.
A 150-strong group of Belgian firefighters sprayed foam from 20 trucks over a main road in central Brussels, blocking traffic in an effort to press for speedier promotions. Government buildings, including the Minister President’s office, were targeted.
Police and a specialist evictions team began a major operation to end a six-month occupation of an opencast mine site in Scotland this morning by arresting 10 Climate Camp protesters chained to tree houses and make-shift forts. There are about 40 climate campaigners now occupying tunnels, tree houses, and homemade barricaded huts.
About 2,000 photographers gathered in London over the weekend to protest stop and search methods by British police. The photographers say they’ve been unduly targeted by Section 44 of Britain’s Terrorism Act 2000, which was designed to give police greater powers to fight terrorism.
Hundreds of protesters in southern China donned masks to protest a planned incinerator plant, the latest grassroots initiative to target polluting projects in the region.
Greek farmers have been blocking roads in Greece for more than a week to protest the government’s current agricultural policy, which threatens to put 50 thousand people employed in agriculture and livestock out of work.
