Chilean art collective Casagrande brought its “Poetry Rain” project to Berlin last weekend, dropping 100,000 poems over the city as a protest against war. Casagrande has done this several times since 2001, focussing on cities that have been bombed during actual warfare, such as Santiago de Chile, Dubrovnik, Guernica, and Warsaw. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any video of the drop, just the perparation for it. But if it was anything like the one they did in Warsaw, it was no doubt a spectacle to behold.
Organisers say that just as wartime bombings were intended to “break the morale” of the inhabitants of a city, so the poetry bombing “‘builds’ a new city by giving new meaning to events of her tragic past and therefore presenting the city in a whole new original way”.
The Berlin project, for which Casagrande worked with Literaturwerkstatt Berlin as part of the Long Night of Museums, took place in the city’s Lustgarten, where a crowd of thousands had gathered to hear readings and performances by Latin American artists.
Poems dropped from the helicopter circling the area were by poets including Ann Cotten, Karin Fellner, Nora Gomringer, Andrea Heuser, Orsolya Kalász, Björn Kuhligk, Marion Poschmann, Arne Rautenberg, Monika Rinck, Hendrik Rost, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Tom Schulz, Thien Tran, Anja Utler, Jan Wagner, Ron Winkler and Uljana Wolf, according to Lyrikline.org, one of the organisations supporting the project.
Four Greenpeace activists breached a 1,650-feet security perimeter around an oil rig off western Greenland yesterday. They then climbed up the rig and fastened themselves to it, effectively forcing it to stop drilling. As of this morning, they were still suspended 15 meters above the frigid Arctic waters of Baffin Bay.
The Mobilization for Climate Justice West turned out 150 people on Monday afternoon in San Francisco’s financial district for a march on the offices of Chevron, the Environmental Protection Agency and BP. Their message was for Big Oil to stop harming our environment and communities and to pay for the damage they’ve caused.
Honduran police arrested some 150 people while using tear gas and water cannons to disperse a demonstration by teachers, students and others in Tegucigalpa on Aug. 27, the 23rd day of a strike by teachers over their pension fund and other issues.
The Climate Camp currently set up on the grounds of the Royal Bank of Scotland corporate headquarters in Edinburgh has received some strong criticism from The Guardian in a couple recent pieces. On Tuesday, environment page editor James Randerson documented how Climate Camp organizers let Twitter get the best of them during a day of mass action against RBS and its funding of the fossil fuel industry.
Climate Camp had its own Twitter feed of course, but anyone browsing through the #climatecamp hashtag would probably not have got the impression of the day’s events that the spinsters at Climate Camp wanted. Supportive texts were swamped by tweeters ridiculing the activists or even pretending to be them.
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It is surprising that an organisation that puts so much emphasis on the art of manipulating the media (according to the Climate Camp media pack journalists are “weak and cowardly” and “astoundingly unimaginative”) did not think harder about how to use a medium that cuts out the peaky middlemen altogether.
While Climate Camp should have been a little more savvy about maintaining its Twitter feed, it’s not exactly a big deal that some people made fun of them on a social networking site. Far more important to Climate Camp’s success is the effectiveness of its on-the-ground actions. That’s why this next Guardian criticism, from photojournalist Marc Vallée, is more hard-hitting.
The eight-foot-long Norwegian electric car Buddy may not be most people’s idea of a perfectly sized car, but it is the perfect size for blocking train tracks, as the activist group Neptune Network recently proved, when it managed to block shipments from a mine that was polluting a nearby salmon-fjord. According to Sami Grover at Treehugger:
Whether not the blockade was successful remains a little unclear at this stage—my rudimentary understanding of Norwegian tells me that the blockade of Sydvaranger Mines has been called off, and that discussions are ongoing both with the mine owners and the Climate and Pollution Control Directorate (KLIF) to ensure that the company follows the necessary permits.
It’s certainly an innovative method of protest, and one that manages to both draw attention to the specific problem at hand, and also points a finger to one part of the solution to the myriad of environmental crises we face. I’m not sure the tactic would work everywhere—it wouldn’t take many police officers, or mine workers, to move a car that size (read more about the Norwegian-produced Buddy here). But it looks like in this part of Norway at least they manage to handle such matters with civility and restraint from all sides.
While I agree with Grover’s analysis, a highly visible and metaphorical stunt such as this would still be effective (on a PR/awareness-raising level) even if it didn’t block shipments for very long. Unfortuantely, we won’t be able to see this action replicated in America, as the Buddy car is only available in Norway.
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 climate activists cut through a perimeter fence and occupied land at the Royal Bank of Scotland’s headquarters on Wednesday to protest its multi-billion pound loans to the oil and mining industries. They expect at least 500 activists to gather for a day of direct action against RBS on Monday.
Some 600 demonstrators blocked the main highway linking the Afghani capital of Kabul and the eastern city of Jalalabad on Wednesday to protest the mounting civilian death toll in US-led raids in the war-torn country.
Nearly two dozen people, some in wheelchairs, blocked a major intersection in front of the California Capitol in Sacramento for several hours on Wednesday afternoon to protest proposed budget cuts to in-home health care services. They were subsequently arrested.
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.
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.
About 50 people turned out Saturday for a protest of the new Target store in Chicago, on Broadway just north of Montrose. They were calling for a boycott of the store because of a recent $150,000 contribution to a fund, Minnesota Forward, that in turn gave that money to right-wing conservative Republican candidate Rep. Tom Emmer in his race for Minnesota governor.
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.
A crowd of about 300 villagers in Kabul blocked a main road in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday to protest the killing of three innocent villagers by US Forces. In the first six months of this year, 386 civilians were killed by NATO or Afghan government forces.
Police arrested five of about 100 protesters gathered outside a Minneapolis hotel yesterday, trying to deliver petitions to commissioner Bud Selig to move the 2011 All-Star game out of Arizona because of that state’s new immigration law.
Expatriate Kashmiris and Pakistanis from different parts of the United Kingdom staged a big demonstration in front of 10-Downing Street on Thursday to protest against British Prime Minister David Cameron’s remarks on issues of Pakistan and Kashmir.
Former workers of the Vestas wind turbine manufacturing plant on the Isle of Wight gathered last month outside the building they occupied for 19 days last summer to mark the one year anniversary of their struggle. TheSave Vestas Jobs! blog described the reunion as short-lived due to “the familiar faces of the old Vestas security team” arriving on the scene within a matter of minutes, “looking very concerned.”
Such fear on the part of a company that for all intents and purposes “won” the struggle would be unwarranted if not for two factors. First and foremost, many grievances among the workers remain standing. According to the campaign blog, “… the occupiers have still not been reinstated and a tribunal that was to be held last week for some of the occupiers ended prematurely when ex-workers were threatened with full and crippling costs by Vestas and forced to withdraw their case.”
The second reason Vestas has legitimate reason to fear continued protest is that many people were energized by the events of last summer to the point of feeling involved in something magical. The very site of the reunion, for example, was known as the “Magic Roundabout” because it was where campaign supporters gathered during the occupation and then for several months thereafter. It was a place made by the coming together of people for a united cause and gave empowerment to folks who likely didn’t have much before.
Men wearing face masks of British Prime Minister David Cameron gathered in London on Friday to call for a ban on the cloning of cattle for human consumption, following the discovery of a cloned U.S. cow that was slaughtered and eaten in Britain.
Two members of the environmental group Six Degrees climbed onto the roof of Queensland parliament house in Australia last week to display an anti-coal mining banner that read: “Don’t undermine our farms.” Meanwhile, hundreds of farmers and green activists staged a peaceful protest outside parliament.
Some 150 protesters gathered outside a federal prison farm in Kingston, Ontario this morning to protest its closure. They say the government is ignoring the rehabilitative and healing effects that farming offers low-risk inmates.
Up to 60 people have been camping out in front of the county government building in Santa Cruz since July Fourth to protest the city’s camping ban, which prohibits sleeping on public or private property from 11 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. But deputies rousted the homeless protest camp just after midnight Saturday, arresting five people and handing out 17 other misdemeanor citations.
Baristas and community supporters shut down a Starbucks in Omaha last week demanding that management reverse all cuts to healthcare, staffing, and benefits that have been imposed during the recession. The baristas claim that executives have no justification to squeeze working families with Starbucks raking in profits of $977.2 million in the past four fiscal quarters.
Through a series of well-choreographed steps, a tiger-themed flash mob called “Freeze Tiger Trade” spearheaded by WWF-Malaysia turned heads and attracted attention on the status of our Malayan tigers here in Kuala Lumpur.
In Turkey, nongovernmental organizations in the eastern province of Batman held a silent march and sit-in demonstration yesterday in protest of a mine explosion that claimed the lives of four people on Monday.
On Wednesday, unionized workers of the West Indies Paper Products Limited in Jamaica walked off the job to protest against what they claimed was the failure of the management to improve wage and fringe benefits.
More than 100 people at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in England went on hunger strike on Wednesday.
In Azerbaijan, ten opposition activists jailed for participating in an unsanctioned rally calling for free elections in central Baku on July 31 have declared a hunger strike.
Around 120 Chinese seasonal berry pickers in northern Sweden went on a 15-kilometre (9.3-mile) march overnight to Friday to protest their salaries
Last month, the Feminist Initiative (FI), a feminist party in Sweden, lit a barbecue and proceeded to publicly burned 100,000 kronor ($13,087), to protest the wage gap between men and women in the country.
As FI leader Gudrun Schyman explained to Swedish public radio:
“One hundred thousand kronor is the amount women lose each minute when we have the system we have now, where salaries are set according to gender,” she said.
“It’s not funny to set fire to money. I know it’s a lot of money. It’s a lot of money for me, and it’s a lot of money for many others,” Schyman told a radio reporter, adding she realized there was a long list of deserving charities the money could have gone to instead.
“But Feminist Initiative is a political party. We are not a charity, we work to change reality.”
The move provoked criticism, but also generated significant media coverage, both nationally and internationally, leading some to declare it a success.
When there are so many people in need, however, is burning money an ethical tactic? My gut reaction to this story was critical. But how different is physically burning money from spending the same amount on a 30-second political ad on television or a half-page ad in a national daily newspaper?
Hundreds of Afghans have taken to the streets in the southwestern Helmand province to voice their anger at the killing of a 65-year-old man by US troops. Another demonstration was held in the southern Oruzgan province over the alleged desecration of Islam’s holy book, the Quran, by US forces.
Two men carrying Mexican flags in protest of Arizona’s immigration law ran onto the outfield during the seventh inning of the New York Mets’ game against the Arizona Diamondbacks Friday night at Citi Field. Prior to the game, about 40 people across the street from the ballpark chanted “Oppose racism!” and “Boycott Arizona!”
Advocates for New York City’s community gardens delivered fresh produce to the steps of city hall Monday to protest the expiration of the Garden Settlement of 2002, which protected community gardens from real estate developers.
About half the detainees at the 216-bed Campsfield House immigration centre in Oxfordshire Britain are refusing meals to protest their prolonged detention and treatment, which has caused many to suffer from mental health problems.
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.
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.
Last month, the Feminist Initiative (FI), a feminist party in Sweden, lit a barbecue and proceeded to publicly burned 100,000 kronor ($13,087), to protest the wage gap between men and women in the country.
