• On Saturday, more than 100,000 turned out in the pale winter sunshine for a march in downtown Moscow against election fraud and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s plan to return to the presidency next month.

• Over 10,000 Bahrainis gathered on Sunday to begin a week-long sit-in protest in Meqsha, north of Bahrain, ahead of the one year anniversary of the revolution.

• Hundreds of flights in France were cancelled today, including 40 percent out of Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport, as unions ratcheted up pressure on day two of a strike over labor rights.

• Antiwar groups held rallies on Saturday in about 80 cities across the United States protesting a possible strike on Iran.

• In Singapore, two hundred foreign workers staged a sit-in on Monday morning in protest over unpaid wages.

• At least one activist died, and another 39 were injured on Sunday after police tried to break up a protest by indigenous groups—who have blockaded the Pan-American Highway for days—against the recent approval of mines and reservoirs in their region.

• In Canada, close to a thousand people marched through Prince Rupert’s streets on Saturday as part of a rally hosted by local first nations against Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline and the oil tanker traffic it would generate on British Columbia’s northern coast.

• At least 11 Occupy D.C. protesters were arrested Saturday just blocks from the White House as the U.S. Park Police evicted activists who had been sleeping in McPherson Square since October 1. On Sunday, police also cleared a second encampment at Freedom Plaza.

• In one of more than a hundred protests planned across Europe on Saturday, about 2,000 people marched in the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

• Some 20 residents of Khirbat al-Tawil village, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, went on a 24-hour hunger strike on Friday to protest against Israel’s occupation of their lands.

Egyptian protesters participating in a silent stand on June 6, 2011, at Kasr Al Nil bridge. By Zeinab Mohamed, via Flickr.

The starting point for a movement of mass action usually cannot be pinpointed to a single moment or person. This is true of the 2011 Arab Awakening, despite the temptation to credit Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunisia or Wael Ghonim’s prowess on Facebook in Egypt; such struggles defy simplistic explanations of origin.

“I don’t want to take much credit; the revolution was leaderless,” Wael told 2.8 million listeners on BBC’s Radio 4 recently. Encircled in a tight studio in London’s Portman Place BBC headquarters, along with Paul Mason, economics editor for the BBC program Newsnight, newscaster Andrew Marr had convened the three of us to discuss the topic of “Revolution.” Egypt’s revolution, our conversation made clear, was far from spontaneous. For years, Egyptian activists were sharing knowledge, organizing and learning to think strategically.

Wael is a 31-year-old Google executive in charge of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa who helped to catalyze the movement centered in Tahrir Square last year. On June 8, 2010, he saw a photograph of a young Egyptian who had been, in his words, “horribly tortured.” The visual proof of Khaled Mohamed Said’s atrocious June 6 fatal beating by secret police in Alexandria struck a chord throughout the  country, in part because the 28-year-old was middle class. Weeping over “the state of our nation and the widespread tyranny,” Wael saw the image as representing “a terrible symbol of Egypt’s condition.” He decided to create a page on Facebook called “Kullena Khaled Said,” or “We Are All Khaled Said.” Some 36,000 joined the page on the first day, many writing comments, and thus a conversation began to occur that could not otherwise have taken place under Hosni Mubarak’s regime.

Explaining that he had never been an activist before, Wael wrote in the first person and in colloquial Egyptian dialect, rather than classical Arabic, with “a lack of conspiracy.” He avoided using political phraseology and wrote personally as “an ordinary Egyptian devastated by the brutality inflicted on Kahled Said and motivated to seek justice.”

Wael credits Mohamed Eisa with sending to the page’s email account the idea for the “Silent Stands,” a critically important tactic used in the build-up to what would eventually become a national movement. The concept was that individuals would stand in a human chain for one hour, wearing black and carrying a Qur’an or a Bible for quiet reading. “We wanted to send out a clear message that although we were both sad and angry, we were nevertheless nonviolent,” Wael writes in his new book, Revolution 2.0. Reckoning that they could not be arrested for wearing black, they started their first single-file stand at 5 p.m. on June 18, 2010, calling it “A Silent Stand of Prayer for the Martyr Khaled Said along the Alexandria Corniche.” Purposely designed to circumvent physical confrontation with the security apparatus, Wael writes, “The goal was for members to summon the courage to take positive action to the street.”

The next stand was in Cairo. They carried out this type of vigil five times, with participants turning their backs to the street, sometimes with three or four kilometers of silently praying Egyptians. A thousand people took part in Khaled Said’s public funeral. The April 6 Youth Movement also organized an event to denounce Said’s murder in Cairo, and Wael’s hopes rose.

The April 6 movement had been launched in 2008. Among its Internet-savvy organizers was Ahmed Maher, a 30-year-old civil engineer, who, in March of that year, urged young Egyptians to support the 26,000 textile workers planning to strike on April 6 in the town of Mahalla al-Kobra. For more than a year, workers had been striking across Egypt, protesting high inflation and unemployment, but their actions were not coordinated. When the Mahalla strikes were violently repressed in March, with police killings of strikers, Maher and his allies called a nationwide general strike for April 6. Maher was brutally tortured by the police a few weeks after the strike. “Security forces were in disbelief,” Wael says. “How had opposition youth groups emerged without any political affiliations, Islamist or other?”

Naming themselves after the April 6 action, members of the movement participated in online tutorials with organizers of Otpor! (Resistance!), the Serbian student movement that unified 18 competing political parties and the general population to bring down Slobodan Milošević in 2000. The April 6 movement even sent one of their group, Mohamed Adel, to Belgrade in 2009. Learning from Otpor trainers about how they had organized, and why it was critically important to avoid violence, Mohamed came back talking about “unity, discipline, and planning,” carrying films and teaching aids. The April 6 movement modeled its logo after Otpor’s and adopted Otpor’s organizational approach, in which all were equal, making it harder for authorities to pick off so-called leaders. By 2009, some 76,000 were involved and posting on its Facebook page.

Practical and tangible lessons came into Egypt over a period of years through a variety of channels. The Otpor leaders had formed a network of activists that included experienced veterans from nonviolent struggles in South Africa, the Philippines, Lebanon, Georgia and Ukraine. The Egyptians tapping into Otpor were therefore learning from a global interchange. Scholars Maria Stephan and Stephen Zunes visited Cairo in 2009 to work with liberal academicians and reform-minded civil-society actors. For five years, some Egyptian activists and bloggers had been meeting with people central to nonviolent movements across the world, comparing notes. This is how they met the Serbian veterans.

Seeing Tunisia’s success, the April 6 movement sought to capitalize on Egypt’s annual Police Day—a January 25, 2011, holiday that would commemorate a police revolt suppressed by British colonial authorities. Wael Ghonim used Facebook to marshal support. If 50,000 people were willing to commit to march on the day he posted, the demonstration would be held. More than twice that number signed up. On January 25, the numbers turning out in Alexandria, Cairo, and Suez took police by surprise. April 6 made common cause with Mohamed ElBaradei’s supporters, some liberal and leftist parties, and the youth wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Wael Ghonim tweeted:

Pray for #Egypt. Very worried as it seems that government is planning a war crime tomorrow against people. We are all ready to die #Jan25.

On January 28, the Day of Rage, Mubarak’s regime blocked the Internet for five days. Egyptians outwitted this measure by relaying through other outlets. A print shop reproduced a 26-page pamphlet for instant circulation. As police used tear gas and water cannon against demonstrators, the pamphlet, “How to Protest Intelligently,” warned people not to disseminate the plan through Facebook or Twitter, because both were monitored by the Interior Ministry. Listing the democracy movement’s demands and calling for tactical unity, it asked for “strategic civil disobedience” in winning over of the police and army “to the side of the people.” It called for disciplined, positive slogans and language. As demonstrations spread across the country, some of the biggest rallies occurred when the Internet was down.

Social media alone are not causative. Nonviolent movements have always appropriated the most advanced technologies available in order to spread their messages. When fighting with the force of ideas, rejecting violence or militarized methods, the reframing of old grievances as wrongs that might now be  corrected requires argumentation and teaching. People must be helped to see that deep-rooted predicaments can be amenable to direct action. Wael agreed when I made this point on the BBC: “We’re trying to give too much credit to social media, because it’s a new thing,” he said.

Indeed, far more important than media, pre-existing conditions or the political culture in the Arab rebellions were two other factors that helped give rise to revolt: 1) The existence of a civic capacity for sustained action and protracted long-term resistance—mosques, churches, labor unions, networks of professional and other organizations, and groups that have gone underground. 2) The sharing of lessons and knowledge from other movements, and the dissemination of historical insights among guiding activist intellectuals. Political thinking affects strategic planning. Both of these forces involve human agency—individual and collective.

On the 17th day of protest in Tahrir Square, the waves of strikes that had been ongoing since 2006 widened. They spread throughout all of Egypt.  After 18 days—January 25 to February 11—Mubarak resigned from the presidency, his legitimacy destroyed.

Egyptians had been organizing themselves long before they would fill Tahrir Square. Enough of them in sufficiently dispersed centers of society had obtained the knowledge and a level of preparedness to build a national mobilization of noncooperation. This included the country’s dispirited civil-society groups. It included young activists, some of  whom had been learning from experience abroad and organizing through online social networks. It included working-class people who had been trying to improve their lot by striking. Ultimately, the refusal of laborers to show up for work in the days just before the Mubarak resignation was the last prop to be pulled away from Mubarak’s regime. Working in diffuse groups, Egyptians knew how to organize, how to withdraw cooperation and how to handle the unexpected. As they confront Mubarak’s successors, they will need this knowledge for their continuing struggle.

A checkpoint run by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) at Baba Amr, a poor district in the southwestern part of Homs. Photo from Der Spiegel.

Say the words, “Free Syrian Army” in nearly any gathering of Syrian expatriates lately, and their faces break into wide smiles of appreciation. Say the same words to people in Syria, and they say, “They will liberate us.” This sentiment is growing all over Syria, as the defected soldiers that make up the FSA wage battle against their pro-regime counterparts. But will such optimism last?

Nearly 11 months into the Syrian uprising, ordinary civilians, once certain of the effectiveness of civil resistance, are losing hope. They turn to the FSA for protection. The world has been in awe of the Syrian revolution and its peaceful activists (“How brave!” “Such tenacity!”), who vow to oust the Assad regime once and for all, and the peaceful protests continue daily. However, many of these demonstrations are protected from Assad’s army and snipers by the FSA, where and when possible. The presence of the FSA at protest sites has re-energized protesters, who are coming out in increasing numbers even as the regime escalates its violence against them.

Given the FSA’s popularity in some communities, many argue that the full-scale militarization of the Syrian conflict is inevitable. But FSA successes in Zabadani, the eastern belt of the Damascus suburbs, and Homs, among other areas, have given Syrians renewed hope. Their hope stems not from the thought that military help is coming from the West or NATO, but that it comes from home-grown forces: brothers and fathers and uncles who could not face the thought of shooting at their own unarmed people, and who defected. As of this writing, FSA soldiers in Zabadani are facing a massive assault by regime forces, and the FSA has vowed to fight back until “we are all free or we are all dead.” Its determination has inspired others to go out and protest despite the fighting.

Is this the end of peaceful resistance in Syria? Does the emergence of the FSA mean that nonviolence is a thing of the past? Apparently not. Protesters now seem emboldened by their protectors, and have engaged in ever more creative forms of peaceful civil disobedience.

Today, the city of Hama commemorated the massacres of 1982, in which Hafez Al-Assad, Bashar Al-Assad’s father, killed as many as 40,000 people in just over a week. (It’s a sad irony that over the past year, more than 1,000 people have been killed in Hama alone by the junior Assad, including more than a dozen today; more than 6,000 more from around the rest of the country have died as a result of the continuing crackdown.) In preparation, the entire city of Hama shut down on Thursday as security forces descended upon the city to thwart any commemorative demonstrations. Much to the surprise of Assad’s security forces, residents observed a general strike throughout the city—but not before painting streets red and throwing dye into the famous water wheels on the Orontes River. Activists spray-painted graffiti on the walls: “Hafez died, and Hama did not. Bashar will die, and Hama will not.”

In Daraa, another flashpoint city (aren’t they all, at this point?), protesters clapped in union and chanted, “He who kills his people is a traitor.”

All over Syria, in virtually every city, town and village, pro-democracy activists distribute leaflets, create new anti-regime songs, draw caricatures and stage plays to voice their opposition to the Assad regime. The nonviolent part of the movement is still very much alive.

Across continents and oceans, Syrian activists in Toronto, London and Vienna are staging flash mobs in public spaces to let the world know what is happening in their homeland. In Manchester, England, nonviolent activists created a video, “The Whole World Supports Syria,” which shows young people from around the world holding up signs of city names, victims’ names or inspirational messages.

In Washington, D.C., Ottawa, Berlin, Cairo and other world capitals, Syrian activists are doing sit-ins at Russian embassies and consulates to protest Russia’s staunch support of Assad in the United Nations Security Council. Detroit, Chicago and LA are holding sing-alongs and fundraisers to buy and deliver medical supplies.

Another form of nonviolent resistance are the Twitter campaigns designed to stretch the Friday protests in Syria into the weekend, worldwide. One of them is directed by the Free Syrian Twitter Army against the “minhibakjis,” the pro-Assadists who like to intimidate and harass Syrian activists around the world. The FSTA focuses on the minhibakjis by sending targeted messages just to irritate and annoy the enemy. The FSTA has simple rules: no profanity, no personal attacks and tag all tweets with #FSTA.

For now, at least, the nonviolent movement remains alive and thriving. Scholars of civil resistance understand full well that short-term gains by the FSA today do not necessarily mean a democratic Syria tomorrow. And while the FSA enjoys popular support in certain cities now, many activists—especially those watching events in Egypt—wonder whether they might be trading one military dictatorship for another. Historically, an armed revolution tends to lessen popular participation; however, thus far in Syria, that hasn’t been the case.

• About 20 people gathered on Thursday outside the Ritz-Carlton in New York City—where the Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was said to be staying—to protest his trip to the United States for medical treatment and a deal he received that granted him immunity from prosecution for  crimes against protesters during uprisings last year.

• Thousands of Bahrainis held a peaceful anti-government protest in a suburb of the capital on Friday, demanding the release of political prisoners and political reforms in the troubled Gulf Arab state.

• Protesters defied a heavy security presence across Syria on Friday to commemorate the 30th anniversary of a deadly crackdown on Islamist opposition in the city of Hama, but were effectively prevented from turning out in the capital, Damascus.

• Several thousand people rallied in Bratislava and seven other Slovakian cities Friday to demand that early elections planned in March be postponed to allow a thorough investigation.

• Poland’s prime minister says he is suspending the ratification process for an international copyright treaty after widespread protests and attacks on government websites.

• Members of an Indian tribe in Panama are blocking roads in two provinces on the border with Costa Rica in a dispute over mineral exploitation on their lands.

• Cambodian police violently dispersed a group of around 150 women protesting forced evictions in the capital Phnom Penh on Thursday.

• Around 300 people gathered outside Budapest’s New Theater on Wednesday to protest its new director, an actor with links to far-right parties.

• Hackers associated with the activist group Anonymous posted a protest against Greece’s EU and IMF-inspired austerity policies on the website of the country’s justice ministry Friday

A policeman fires tear gas toward Bahraini anti-government protesters in Sitra, Bahrain, Jan 30. The US decided to sell military equipment to Bahrain.

After a $53 million arms sale to Bahrain was delayed this fall following widespread criticism from human rights groups and some in Congress, it was revealed last week that the Obama administration is now moving forward with a new arms deal to the country, without any formal notification to the public. As The Cable reports:

Our congressional sources said that State is using a legal loophole to avoid formally notifying Congress and the public about the new arms sale. The administration can sell anything to anyone without formal notification if the sale is under $1 million. If the total package is over $1 million, State can treat each item as an individual sale, creating multiple sales of less than $1 million and avoiding the burden of notification, which would allow Congress to object and possibly block the deal.

We’re further told that State is keeping the exact items in the sale secret, but is claiming they are for Bahrain’s “external defense” and therefore couldn’t be used against protesters. Of course, that’s the same argument that State made about the first arms package, which was undercut by videos showing the Bahraini military using Humvees to suppress civilian protesters.

The hypocrisy of it all is not lost on Bahrainis, or likely another other people struggling for democracy in the region or around the world. As Nada Alwadi, a journalist from Bahrain who was jailed for covering the uprising last spring, said in an email interview:

Many Bahrainis were really shocked by the latest news that the Obama administration is going to go ahead with the arms deal with the Bahraini government, especially since the oppression against protesters in several areas in Bahrain has never stopped, if not become more serious. Bahrainis feel that by going ahead with this deal the United States is sending a message to the Bahraini government that they support them on using these weapons against their own people, which has huge implications on how the United States is perceived. The outcome of such a development, if proven right,will result in growing the frustration towards the United States as a super power which supports its allies even when they are killing their own people.

The Bahraini government seems to have gotten this message loud and clear as well. Only days after the news broke, Bahraini police fired tear gas into the cells of protesters who were on hunger strike to protest their detention.

Despite the lack of support from the U.S. or attention from the mainstream media, Alwadi insists that:

the movement is still alive and active either on the streets or on social media. Since the Saudi troops entered the country and cracked down on the protesters last March, it was impossible for tens of thousands of people to gather on the main streets again. However, protesters managed to be creative and find other ways to maintain their visibility. Over the past few months, and since the release of the BICI report, several events have been organized by protesters, such as “Occupy Budayie Road,” which resulted in the arrest of many protesters and the killing of young boys… And many Bahrainis expect serious developments on the first anniversary of the uprising on Feb 14.

• Egyptian activist groups on Thursday launched an open-ended strike in Cairo to pressure the country’s military rulers  to expedite the transfer of power to an elected civilian  administration, a day after 100,000 Egyptians came out to Tahrir Square to mark the anniversary of the first massive protest that led to the overthrow of dictator Hosni Mubarak.

• Activists linked to the global ‘Occupy’ movement used giant red weather balloons to stage a flying protest over the venue of the World Economic Forum on Wednesday.

• Nearly 7,000 prisoners were on a hunger strike Wednesday in Kyrgyzstan with more  than 1,000 sewing shut their lips with staples and thread to protest jail  conditions

• On Tuesday, demonstrators with ACTA stickers on their mouths protested against Poland’s government plans to sign international copyright agreement ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement), in front of the European Union office in Warsaw.

• Dozens of teachers turned out at six events across Seattle on Tuesday to protest and rally against budget cuts that are hurting education.

• Nepalese students chanted anti government slogans during a torch rally to protest against Nepal Oil Corporation’s decision to hike prices on major petroleum products, including petrol, diesel, kerosene and LPG in Kathmandu on Tuesday.

• On Tuesday, Cambodian victims held a demonstration to mark the third anniversary of a forced eviction in the Dey Krahorm community.

• Hundreds of Tibetans carried out day-long protests and candle light vigils in Ngaba on Monday calling for the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama from exile and demanding freedom in Tibet.

• Thousands of Yemenis protested on Sunday against an immunity law protecting  outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh from prosecution and demanded he be put on  trial for offences they say he committed during his 33-year rule.

• More than 50 students from Tuscon High School walked out of class on Monday and marched toward Santa Rita Park in protest of the recent ban on Mexican American studies at TUSD schools.

• In Egypt, dozens of employees at the state-run Nile News TV Channel started an open-ended strike Sunday at the Maspero building, as they protested policies still in place since Mubarak’s rule.

• Malawi lawyers across the country Monday protested in their court regalia to pressure the governement to act on the ongoing judiciary strike.

• Truck drivers across Italy went on strike on Monday against increased fuel prices, while taxis also held a national protest over government reforms to increase competition, causing disruptions nationwide.

• Scores of protests were held across the country on Friday to protest the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which ruled corporations have a right to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns. A dozen demonstrators were arrested on the U.S. Supreme Court steps.

• In Lebanon, severe electricity cuts fueled several protests Friday as residents and  lawmakers staged a sit-in in the mountain town of Aley and small groups of protesters blocked roads in the south of the country.

• Several women and children staged a sit-in outside the Karachi Press Club (KPC) on Friday to protest against the kidnapping of Baloch youths and the dumping of their bodies in different parts of the province.

• Protests in two West Bank universities have shut down classes in recent days, as students call for easing of tuition fees amid financial crisis in Palestine.

• Beginning last Tuesday, about 100,000 teachers from 24,000 non-government primary schools in Bangladesh held a three-day strike to demand that they be brought onto the government’s payroll.

The initial chapters acquaint the outsiders among us with a gist of what it’s like to be an urban, educated and hopeless young Egyptian in the early 21st century. It doesn’t sound very appealing. Indeed, Khalil’s chief explanation for what drove so many young males over the edge was the pent-up anxiety that they’d never get to have sex; low job prospects meant low prospects of leaving their parents’ houses and low prospects of getting married. Fair enough. To an ignorant reader like myself, Khalil gives the impression that he has spent enough time haunting Cairo’s cafes to have quite fully plumbed the souls of this restive demographic. Which is illuminating. But sexual frustration alone does not make a revolution.

As he brings us up to January 25, Khalil makes some seemingly dutiful nods to the April 6 movement and Kefaya, the youth organizations that ultimately provided the framework for what would follow. He does helpfully describe scenes from much smaller, earlier protests, which the author seems to have made a habit of attending, and at which he became accustomed to tear gas. But the narrative mainly sticks to general cultural trends, especially the lightning rods around which public opinion rallied: Khaled Saieed, the young man brutally murdered by police outside an Internet cafe, and Mohammed ElBaradei, pre-revolutionary Egypt’s possible messiah. Much is said about the club of international reporters who hang around Cairo, which sometimes affords a perceptive look at the manufacture of media. There are few glimpses, however, into how the marvelous energy conjured in public opinion was actually marshaled by determined organizers into what would become a highly effective movement.

For the bulk of the book, Khalil plays the war correspondent, reporting from the front lines where protesters battled with police, venting their rage from years on end of abuse. (It’s a useful reminder, for all those who complain about the evolving messaging of other movements, that the revolution which eventually called for Hosni Mubarak’s departure began as a protest against police brutality.) He gives little credence to the conventional wisdom—which we at Waging Nonviolence have been eager to uphold, of course—that this revolution was a nonviolent one. We follow him through scene after scene of carnage. There are detailed accounts of crowds moving through the streets of Cairo, outmaneuvering and beating back police and other Mubarak goons. Almost absent, though, are the images we saw constantly during those days of a spirit of nonviolence infusing the life of those in Tahrir—unarmed people crowded around military tanks, showing their power not by threatening harm but through the utopian encampment they created there.

The endgame, from Khalil’s vantage point on the streets of Cairo, is almost entirely mysterious: “a coup.” That’s about it. We watch among the protesting hordes as Mubarak comes on TV promising to be good, after which the hordes throw their shoes. What we don’t see are the coordinated labor strikes that were taking place around the country, threatening to further debilitate its economy; we don’t gain any new insight into the almost certainly crucial role of the United States in the Egyptian generals’ decision to depose their longtime patron; nor do we, therefore, really understand why exactly the thousands upon thousands of people who wouldn’t leave Tahrir Square were able to change at least part of the structure of power in their society.

This is fine, I suppose. Khalil tells a good story, and I enjoyed reading it. But he doesn’t really capture or explain what moved the Egyptian people from simple frustration to the competence and capacity to build a movement capable of actually expelling a dictator, or how that movement finally proved decisive. What we have instead is a sometimes thrilling account of what it is like to be a relatively well informed participant-observer on the ground during an important protest. This book reveals one part of what exploded onto the streets of Egypt last year on January 25, but it shouldn’t be mistaken for the whole.

• Thousands of Zimbabwean civil servants conducted a one-day strike Thursday to protest low wages.

• Some 40,000 people were out on the streets on Thursday in various provinces across Turkey to commemorate Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, who was shot dead outside his newspaper’s office in Şişli on Jan. 19, 2007.

• Air traffic controllers in Cyprus walked off the job for four hours on Wednesday to protest a two-year government worker wage freeze and other deficit-reduction measures.

• Inmates in 13 Kyrgyz jails started a mass hunger strike on Wednesday to support inmates in detention center No. 1 in Bishkek, where security troops violently quelled a prisoner riot on January 16.

• On Tuesday, about 6,000 workers began an indefinite strike for higher wages at a $5.25 billion project to widen the Panama Canal to accommodate larger ships.

• Dozens of orphans in Jordan on Tuesday staged a sit-in in front of the Royal Court in downtown Amman demanding better services.

• A new anti-austerity 24-hour strike and protest hit Athens on Tuesday, as auditors of international creditors returned to Greece for talks on the release of a second aid package.

• Women employees at the Palestinian Women’s Affairs Ministry began a “hunger strike till death” on Tuesday to protest against corruption and harassment.

• The teaching fraternity in Ranchi, India carried out a sit-in rally on Tuesday, to protest Maoist atrocities against them.

In the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh a conflict has been escalating in recent weeks, as ultra-Orthodox men have moved to segregate and exclude women from public spaces, having created men-only sidewalks and seperate seating on buses for women.

In response to an incident in December, where an 8-year-old schoolgirl was taunted and spat on by ultra-Orthodox men for dressing “immodestly,” thousands of Israelis came out to protest this rising extremism.

Ten days later, some 250 women in Beit Shemesh decided to voice their dissent in a more creative way. They organized a flash mob dance to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now,” that has taken off on YouTube—racking up close to 150,000 views in less than two weeks.

Despite receiving overwhelmingly positive coverage in numerous media outlets inside Israel and around the world, +972 writer Roee Rutenberg called the dance “both antagonistic and counter-productive.” Since there is nothing in the religion that forbids women dancing with women, he argues that had they really wanted to make a statement, there:

• Cairo and Alexandria witnessed a fresh wave of strikes and protests on Sunday, blocking roads and causing disruption to the work of the Ministry of Transport.

• On Monday, a week-long nationwide strike in Nigeria ended, after Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan announced in a televised address that fuel will be reduced in price.

• Kuwaiti riot police on Saturday used tear gas and batons to disperse hundreds of stateless demonstrators for the second day in a row and arrested dozens.

• About 4,000 Chinese workers protested over compensation and job security at a Sanyo plant in southern Shenzhen over the weekend in the latest outbreak of labor unrest in China’s manufacturing hub.

• In Oman, thousands of expatriate laborers working for one of the Muscat International Airport projects who have been on strike since Thursday protested in front of their company premises in Azaiba on Sunday. The government’s decision to ban the export of Omani fish to the UAE was “revoked” after over 400 fishermen held a sit-in at Khasab demanding the reversal of the decision on Saturday.

• Activists from a local peace group blocked entry to the main gate at the Navy’s West coast Trident nuclear submarine base Saturday for nearly a half hour in an act of civil resistance to nuclear weapons.

• Police detained a liberal opposition-party leader and another activist Saturday at a rally protesting alleged vote fraud in Russia’s parliamentary election.

• In Pennsylvania, nearly 300 students from two Chester high schools walked out of classes Friday, demanding an end to the financial crisis jeopardizing their school year.

• After five days of a sit-in protest, workers at a lingerie store in Ireland have won their battle for back pay.

• A flash mob of youngsters performed at the crowded Model Town market on Friday afternoon in Delhi as a way of celebrating Lohri with a message against corruption.

• Dozens of cars manned by Palestinians from the West Bank tried to leave Jericho on Tuesday morning in a non-violent protest action to protest and challenge the system of Israeli-only roads throughout the West Bank, but were stopped by Israeli forces, who blocked the four lanes entering and exiting the Palestinian city.

• On Monday, survivors of the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy staged a protest at a park as part of the international campaign to demand that the Organizing Committee of the London Games set to begin from July 27, cancel the sponsorship by Dow Chemicals.

• Workers at consumer goods giant Unilever staged a noisy protest outside the firm’s London offices in a dispute over pensions which is set to escalate into a series of strikes starting next Tuesday.

• More than 9,000 lawyers boycotted court proceedings in Pakistan’s major cities on Tuesday in protest of a senior attorney’s slaying outside his home in Lahore.

• Workers at a Freeport McMoran mine in Indonesia on Tuesday halted their gradual return to work one day after gunmen shot two contractors dead on the road to the Grasberg mine.

• As many as 231 Air India flight attendants refused to work on Tuesday, which delayed four international flights, to protest non-payment of salaries and sustenance allowance since August.

• A national strike paralyzed much of Nigeria on Monday, with more than 10,000 demonstrators swarming its commercial capital to protest soaring fuel prices and decades of government corruption in the oil-rich country.

• Tensions flared at the American Licorice factory Monday as protesters associated with the Occupy Oakland movement joined the month-old factory workers’ strike, blocking entrances and turning away delivery trucks.

• Over five hundred people in the French city of Clermont-Ferrand attended the silent march on Saturday, to show their support for Wissam El-Yamini, a thirty years old man who went into coma following his violent arrest on New Year’s Eve.

• Tens of thousands demonstrating in Yemen’s capital Sanaa on Friday chanted “freedom to the detainees,” a slogan chosen by protest organizers for demonstrations in 18 cities across the impoverished nation.

• Around ten thousand people blocked railways and the Aswan-Cairo highway in the Upper Egyptian City of Nagaa-Hammadi, Qena, late on Friday, to protest the results of the ongoing parliamentary elections in their constituency.

• More than 20 Omanis continue their prison hunger strike, which began in mid-December, in protest at what they say are unfair sentences for taking part in demonstrations last year.

• In Turkey, police dispersed scores of anti-NATO activists in the southern city of Adana on Friday as they were setting up tents to stage a three-day hunger strike to show their opposition to the NATO missile system that will be established in the eastern province of Malatya.

• On Friday, thousands of shopkeepers in the Indian portion of Kashmir went on a daylong general strike to protest the killing of a student and frequent power cuts.

• A group of parents whose children attend Chicago Public Schools slated for “turnarounds,” closures or other adjustments protested the plan with a sit-in at City Hall Thursday, where they vowed to stay until Mayor Rahm Emanuel granted them a meeting to discuss alternatives.

• Dozens of street dance enthusiasts in Hangzhou, the capital of east China’s Zhejiang Province, participated in a flash mob activity advocating environmental protection last Tuesday.

• In the largest protests Syria has seen in months, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets Friday in a display of defiance to show an Arab League observer mission the strength of the opposition movement. Despite the monitors’ presence, forces loyal to President Bashar Assad still killed at least 22 people.

• Thousands of Hungarians took to the streets yesterday to protest a new constitution which critics say increases the power of the government over previously independent institutions, ranging from the church and media to the courts and even the central bank.

• Russian police arrested at least 60 people in the capital of Moscow on Saturday during anti-government protests.

• Thousands of protesters converged on a train station in central China, angered over collapsing illegal investment schemes that residents said the government had failed to staunch.

• As part of an action called Occupy the Caucus, 12 protesters, including a 14-year-old girl, were arrested for blocking the doors to the Iowa Democratic Party headquarters on Thursday. Eighteen more arrests followed on Saturday and one on Sunday.

• A dozen anti-Wall Street protesters who had taken over a foreclosed home in Oakland to house formerly homeless individuals were arrested on Thursday.

• More than a dozen Muslim community leaders boycotted an interfaith breakfast organized by Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Friday to protest reported police surveillance of Muslim areas since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

• Large crowds of Yemenis rallied in major cities Sunday, demanding the outgoing president be put on trial for the deaths of protesters.

• Dozens of activists against gender segregation boarded buses serving Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox Jews on Sunday to protest the unwritten rule that women sit at the back.

• Thousands of angry Shia protesters staged a sit-in outside the Sindh Governor House in Karachi, Pakistan on Sunday night to protest the targeted assassination of their community leader.

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!