As protesters busily cleaned up Zuccotti Park last night in their successful effort to prevent an eviction due to “sanitation” reasons, this is as good a time as any to remember that popular perception is paramount—even over issues as seemingly mundane and inconsequential as hygiene and apperance. During the 1989 Tiananmen protests in Beijing, one of the primary demands of the students was that the government rescind their classification of the protests as one of “turmoil,” and thus legitimize it among the general populace. Here’s a passage from Zhang Liang, Andrew Nathan and Perry Link’s The Tiananmen Papers, recounting the scene at the square on May 17, a month into the protests (and two weeks before the crackdown), about how the protesters sought to achieve this:

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• Hundreds of Afghans have taken to the streets of Kabul to condemn the recent shelling of border towns by Pakistan’s army and accusing its powerful spy agency of involvement in the killing of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the country’s influential former president.

• Corrections officials in Sacramento said Thursday that they would discipline inmates who participated in a renewed hunger strike to protest conditions in the state’s highest-security prisons, where some prisoners have been held in virtual isolation for decades.

• Hundreds of people filled a small town gymnasium in Nebraska on Thursday to protest at a State Department hearing on the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to Texas. Residents fear it will pollute the Ogallala Aquifer, a major U.S. drinking water source.

• Tens of thousands marched in Lisbon and Porto on Saturday to protest austerity measures imposed under the terms of an EU/IMF bailout, the first major rallies since a center-right government took power in Portugal in June.

• U.S. actor Sean Penn joined thousands of Egyptian activists who packed downtown Cairo on Friday demanding that military rulers speed up the transfer of power to civilians and end emergency laws once used by Hosni Mubarak against his opponents.

• Hundreds of indigenous Bolivians angry at plans to build a highway through an Amazon nature preserve resumed their protest march Saturday after a violent police crackdown a week ago.

• Thousands of Syrians took to the streets on Friday in demonstrations against the regime. Human rights activists said that at least 13 people were killed when troops opened fire.

• More than 1,000 people gathered in Savannah, Georgia on Saturday to attend the funeral of Troy Davis, the recently executed death row inmate many believe was innocent. They pledged to keep fighting the death penalty.

• Dutch police forcibly dispersed around 200 squatters in the center of Amsterdam on Saturday during a protest on the first anniversary of the introduction of a law formally outlawing squatting.

• Thousands Hungarians rallied in central Budapest against the measures of Prime Minister Viktor Orban at a demonstration organizers dubbed “D-Day.” Their demands included “fair” taxation, the constitutional protection of early retirement, the restoration of the right to strike, social dialog and the scrapping of retroactive laws.

• More than 200 Tibetans, including monks, protested in a tense area of southwestern China on the country’s 62nd National Day after a Tibetan flag and a photo of the Dalai Lama were torn down, a news report said Sunday.

• British unions organized a rally of 35,000 protesters against government budget cuts Sunday in Manchester where the Conservative Party opened its annual conference.

Al Jazeera has just a launched a new program called Activiate which anyone interested in nonviolent action will want to keep their eyes on. The show is described as, “Telling the stories of activists around the world as they challenge authority and stand up for what they believe in,” and the first episode looks at Debby Chan and activists with Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) who are campaigning for better working conditions at Foxconn, one of Apple’s main suppliers based in China.

The documentary follows Chan as she puts herself in harm’s way to collect evidence against Foxconn, and has great footage of protests against the company both in the streets and at its shareholder meeting. Chan also talks with one former employee who is suing Foxconn and travels all the way to Apple headquarters in California to share her findings with company executives.

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• At least 26 protesters were killed and more than 550 were injured, hundreds by gunshot, when security forces fired live bullets and tear gas at a massive demonstration in Yemen’s capital Sanaa on Sunday.

• At least 3,000 Moroccans demonstrated on Sunday calling for greater political freedoms, as the country’s pro-democracy movement attempted to regain momentum lost over the summer.

• Environmental activists gathered in Hartmann Park in east Houston Sunday to protest the Keystone XL pipeline, which they say will lead to more pollution in smog-filled Houston.

• About 50 women in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, donned miniskirts to protest remarks by the Jakarta city governor who blamed a recent gang rape on the victim’s choice of clothing.

• In Poland, a mass anti-austerity protest called by unions took to the streets Saturday, as EU ministers cut short talks on the eurozone debt crisis a day after Washington told them to end their bickering.

• In a fresh indication of growing public anger over pollution, hundreds of demonstrators in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang on Sunday were camped outside a solar panel manufacturing plant that stands accused of contaminating a nearby river.

• Men, women and children from Somalia’s Saydika displaced camp took to the streets to protest the lack of basic necessities like proper shelter, food and water.

• Friday Prayer in northern Paris drew a small but angry protest against a ban on street prayer.

• About 10,000 people marched through a restive village near the capital of Bahrain on Thursday for the funeral of a 14-year-old boy killed during a protest against the government the day before.

• At least 11 people were shot dead by Syrian security forces, backed by the army, when thousands demonstrated across the country today against the Baathist regime’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy activists.

• Another 137 people were arrested yesterday in the rolling sit-in outside the White House against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would carry oil from Canada’s tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries. Thus far, 843 people have been arrested since August 20.

• Hundreds of Australians and New Zealanders in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Wellington have taken part in protests against deteriorating human rights in Fiji today.

• A strike in provinces close to Metro Manila that was launched on Wednesday to protest continuing increases in oil prices was successful in paralyzing transportation routes in many parts of two regions—Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon) and Bicol.

• Kurds in Turkey, which number around 20 million, have taken to the streets in Istanbul and elsewhere in the country to protest against political repression, cultural suppression, discrimination and a decision by Turkey’s election board to ban prominent Kurdish politicians from upcoming elections.

• Hundreds of relatives and family members of those who went missing over the period of 20 years of unrest in Indian-controlled Kashmir staged a sit-in protest in Indian Kashmir’s summer capital on Tuesday demanding the whereabouts of there loved ones.

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

• Thousands of residents of the Northeastern Chinese port city Dalian took to the streets on Sunday to demand the relocation of a petrochemical plant that threatened to spill toxins into the city last week when a typhoon breached a nearby dike. Chinese authorities have complied and ordered the closure of the plant.

• Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis poured into the streets of major cities and towns across the country on Friday, keeping the pressure on the nation’s embattled president to step down.

• About 100 people participated in a two-mile march in Santa Cruz, California on Sunday to demand a halt to construction of 32 homes on what is believed to be a 6,000-year-old Native American burial site.

• More than 1,000 people led by the poet turned activist Javier Sicilia have joined a march in Mexico City to protest the government’s strategy in the fight against drug gangs.

• Tunisian security forces used tear gas and truncheons Monday to disperse several hundred protesters in the capital demanding that the government step down for failing to prosecute supporters of the ousted president.

• Thousands of people turned out at rallies across Australia on Sunday to call on federal MPs to support a ban on live animal exports.

• Thousands of people took to the streets of Dublin yesterday to demand civil marriage equality.

• Tens of thousands of people gathered across Israel on Saturday to call for lower living costs in an effort to show the government their protest movement has countrywide support.

• Activists with Rising Tide Australia scaled a 15-metre-high coal conveyor belt this morning at Kooragang and suspended a banner that read: “We’re sorry Somalia. Coal = climate change and starvation.”

• Tens of thousands of Syrians poured out of mosques after prayers on Friday to join anti-government protests, defying the threat of a brutal crackdown to express their rage at the killings by security forces this week in the city of Hama.

• 51-year-old South Korean labor activist Kim Jin-sukis about to enter her eighth month atop a 15-story crane where she has been protesting layoffs at a major shipping company.

• A one-day general strike called in Indian Kashmir by separatists to protest the death of a shopkeeper in police custody Wednesday closed down shops, schools and offices.

• Protesters pitched tents and laid down in the middle of one of the busiest streets in the Haitian capital Monday to protest efforts to remove them from a private lot where they have been living since the January 2010 earthquake.

• More than a thousand workers at a Finnish steel making plant downed tools on Thursday morning for two days to protest low wages paid to Polish bricklayers working at the site.

• Thousands of Chinese taxi drivers in Hangzhou went on strike earlier this week to demand higher fares, pensions and the establishment of a labour union.

• Thousands of human rights defenders gathered in cities across globe on Monday to observe International Day of Solidarity and Support for California Prisoners’ Hunger Strike and to support the strikers’ Five Core Demands.

• Before the debt deal vote was held in Washington on Monday, 22 people were arrested protesting House Speaker John Boehner from the chamber gallery. The protesters unveiled a large banner and shouted chants criticizing Republicans for opposing taxes on the wealthy.

• About 30 demonstrators occupied the Oregon State Department of Forestry office in Molalla on Monday to protest a timber sale in the Elliott State Forest near Coos Bay. Three people were arrested after they locked themselves together inside the office using modified pipes and refused to leave.

• Thousands of BBC radio journalists went on strike on Monday to protest against compulsory redundancies while management enjoy Prime Minister-style salaries and chauffeur-driven cars.

• Unionized concrete laborers without a contract since June stopped work for a second day yesterday at the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan in protest over proposed wage cuts.

• In China, striking cab drivers in Hangzhou denouncing rising fuel prices and demanding the government make good on pledges to raise fares abandoned their vehicles for a second day on Tuesday.

• Striking Greek taxi owners stepped up protests Monday, blockading highways and a busy regional airport, after fresh negotiations with the government on new licensing laws collapsed.

• Four people were killed the morning of July 28 when provincial police forcibly evicted some 700 families from land they had been occupying in the city of Libertador General San Martín in the northwestern Argentine province of Jujuy.

• Hundreds of union members took to the streets Thursday in cities and towns around Swaziland to protest government moves to cut civil servants’ salaries amid a deepening financial crisis.

• Two months after they launched a movement against the economic crisis and soaring unemployment, thousands of Spain’s so-called “indignant” protesters converged on Madrid again on Saturday.

• Several Syrian towns observed calls for a general strike on Saturday, a day after protests in which at least nine people were killed by security forces.

• Ecuador’s largest circulation daily newspaper has run a blank front page to  protest a $40m libel ruling imposed for running a column critical of President  Rafael Correa.

• More than 2,000 workers at the world’s largest private copper mine have gone on strike in Chile to protest reductions in their production bonuses.

• On Saturday, about twenty people rallied and marched in downtown Santa Cruz in solidarity with prisoners at Pelican Bay who have ended their hunger strike and declared it a success

• Thousands of labor activists staged a protest rally in downtown Seoul on Saturday, demanding that strike-bound Hanjin Heavy Industries & Construction Co. withdraw its decision to cut hundreds of jobs.

• On July 20 and 21, 300 workers from the Guizhou Dazhong Rubber Company in China held a sit-in to protest their bosses’ embezzlement of government resources and exploitation of workers’ interests, and to ask the authorities to address the problems.

• Political prisoners around the country started a nationwide hunger strike campaign last Thursday to pressure President Benigno Aquino III to release political prisoners and declare a clear human rights policy.

• In Kenya, hundreds of truck drivers in Kisumu went on strike last Wednesday to protest the increased carjacking incidents.

• In Pakistan, Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VFBP) staged a sit-in demonstration in front of the Commissioner Office on Thursday for the safe and immediate recovery of missing Baloch political activists.

Unfolding this month at the Boston Review is “China’s Other Revolution”—an essay by MIT political scientist Edward S. Steinfeld and a series of responses, all on the subject of whether and when real democratic reform will happen, or is already happening, in authoritarian, oligarchic China.

Steinfeld is mostly dismissive of the ongoing “Jasmine Revolution,” which Ayushman Jamwal writes about today at Waging Nonviolence, claiming (incorrectly in past tense) that it “drew small crowds and little energy.” Nevertheless, he urges us not to interpret the recent spate of crackdowns and arrests by the government—including the arrest and subsequent release of the artist Ai Weiwei—as indicative that the regime’s hold on power is especially strong. On the contrary:

Those who doubt that profound change and harsh repression can coexist in China should look to the history of South Korea and Taiwan. In January 1987, just seven years after a democratic uprising was crushed in the South Korean city of Gwangju and a few months before the military-backed regime would yield to popular demands for open elections, student protestors were being summarily rounded up by the police. At least one of the students died during interrogation. That same year Taiwan’s Kuomintang government announced the end of 38 years of martial law, a key step toward the establishment of democracy there. But in the months before the announcement, dissenters were still being shipped off, often by secretive military tribunals, to the notorious gulag on Green Island. Crackdowns on opponents, extrajudicial detentions, and violence are often the last-ditch efforts of authoritarian regimes.

He goes on to detail the ways in which China’s many economic and educational reforms are pointing toward inevitable political change in the next generation or so, which is already be in the works.

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