Aung San Suu Kyi waves to the crowd in Burma, with her party celebrating a major victory in the by-elections. Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images

The excitement on the streets of Rangoon is palpable, and who can deny their right to celebrate this moment? When I arrived on the Thai-Burma border four years ago, Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest, and over 2,000 political prisoners were behind bars. This week’s by-elections in Burma brings Daw Suu, as she is respectfully called, and 42 other members of her until-recently-banned party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) into the belly of the beast — Burma’s fledgling parliament.

There is real cause to celebrate — not in Burma’s apparent democratic transformation (which, for the record, remains to be seen), but in the very climate of public engagement in politics. The significance here is not the now 5 percent presence of the NLD in an otherwise military-dominated parliament, but the potential for people to move the political conversation from hushed whispers in a teashop corner to the classroom, the streets, and at the ballot box in 2015′s general election.

Read the rest of this article »

Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions.
Paul Mason
Verso Books (2012)

Seasoned activists from many of this country’s 20th century movements gathered for an extraordinary weekend in Birmingham with Narayan Desai — a prominent biographer of Gandhi who spent decades living with him in the ashram before going on to become a leader in Gandhian nonviolence in his own right.

In the midst of such widespread protest I thought it odd that, of the sixty or so participants, more youth were not attracted to this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn, nearly firsthand, the spirit, tactics and strategy that was able to liberate India from the British Empire. We enjoyed the privilege of experiencing the spirit of Gandhi from one of the last living practitioners of satyagraha who knew Gandhi intimately. But, I wondered, what is the relevance of their weathered experience for today’s unfolding global revolutions?

The scale and depth of the worldwide protests of the past few years — with 2011, in particular — are unprecedented. Paul Mason, in his new book Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions, details the arrival of these global uprisings that are youth driven — and, in many places, prominently nonviolent.

Read the rest of this article »

• In a march themed with fanciful allusions to Little Red Riding Hood, thousands of protesters swarmed Hong Kong’s streets on Sunday in the first large display of protest since the city’s elite tapped a Beijing ally to become the Chinese territory’s next leader.

• In the Dakotas, members of the proud Lakota Nation began a 48-hour hunger strike on Sunday in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline — and all tar sands pipelines — they say will destroy precious water resources and ancestral lands in the U.S and in Canada.

• Jordanian authorities arrested more than two dozen political activists during protests Saturday critical of King Abdullah II that called for a change of government.

• An estimated 800,000 homeowners in Ireland joined a tax boycott by refusing to pay a new flat-rate $133 property tax by Saturday’s deadline.

• On Saturday, nearly 100 people wore hoodies in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to protest the killing of Trayvon Martin.

• Thousands of Palestinians protested on Friday against Israeli policies of land seizure and control of Jerusalem, leading to clashes with Israeli troops in which a 20-year-old was killed and scores of others were injured.

• Three protesters were arrested Thursday at the UC Board of Regents meeting, when a few dozen activists, some stripped down to swimsuits, called for more transparency in state funding talks and an end to tuition hikes.

• On Thursday, hundreds of Bahrainis staged a sit-in outside the offices of the United Nations in Manama demanding action over the “excessive” use by police of tear gas against protesters.

• Some 50 students at the all-boys Frederick Douglass Academy in Detroit were suspended Thursday after walking out of classes in protest of absent teachers, inconsistent classroom instruction and other issues.

Chilean arpillera. Photo by Colin Peck.

The earliest proponents of the growing field of peace studies were well aware that their work had as much to do with provoking creative nonviolent conflict as with conflict resolution. That spirit of resistance was alive and well at the University of Massachusetts Amherst last month for the traveling international exhibition “Transforming Threads of Resistance,” which brought together the weavings and stories of women from Chile and close to a dozen other countries throughout Latin America, Europe, and Africa.

Exhibition coordinator Leah Wing introduced curator and activist Roberta Bacic by noting that it is not unusual for “conflict resolution scholars and practitioners to view resistance as a barrier to conflict resolution.” This dynamic can be doubly the case after a peace accord has been reached or a dictator overthrown — when resistance “can be seen as contributing to the perpetuation of the conflict rather than to peace.” Wing argues that this narrow approach “contradicts the wisdom and life experience of most people who themselves have suffered from state violence and who have used resistance to survive and attain their freedom.”

Read the rest of this article »

A child sitting on an army tank in Tahrir Square, with a banner that reads "Egypt is free" on January 29, 2011. By Hossam el-Hamalawy, via Flickr.

Nearly all successful movements need to attract allies in order to win. The U.S. Occupy movement in its first few months attracted widespread sympathy and support in opinion polls; but the function of allies is to translate favorable opinion into active support.

Some movements realize this and craft their messaging and tactics in order to expand their base and win active allies. They avoid what might be called “shrinking messages” that emphasize what happens to them (i.e. the latest police repression), and instead put out “expanding messages” that emphasize how the system oppresses other people — thereby giving reasons for other people to join them. This isn’t easy. What’s more natural than to become self-absorbed, especially when taking punishment? The advice commonly used in the civil rights movement, which took much more punishment than many U.S. movements do, was to “keep your eye on the prize.” When we remember the prize, we know we need to expand beyond our ranks and win allies.

Read the rest of this article »

Click here to read the comic.

Senegalese and Malian soldiers train with U.S. special forces in Mali. By Staff Sgt. Michael R. Noggle, via Flickr.

People took to the streets in Dakar, Senegal, yesterday, celebrating what many had feared would never happen: opposition leader Mack Sall gained around two thirds of the vote in the second round of the presidential elections, and incumbent Abdoulaye Wade accepted defeat, personally calling Sall to congratulate him.

Meanwhile in Bamako, the capital of Senegal’s neighbor Mali, people were slowly starting to venture out to the streets again after a sudden coup d’état brought normal life to a standstill for several days.

Why did democracy prevail in Senegal and not in Mali? Why were people in one country able to express the need for change at the ballot box, while in the other weapons had to speak?

Read the rest of this article »

• Russian police arrested nearly 100 people on Sunday for picketing Moscow’s TV tower over footage that accused the opposition of paying anti-government protesters.

• On Sunday, after more than 150 protesters carrying signs calling for nonviolence and the rule of law began to chant the slogan that has echoed throughout the Arab revolts — “The people want the fall of the regime” — uniformed officers and men in plain clothes beat them with sticks and began making arrests.

• Argentina’s truckers called an indefinite strike on Monday to demand higher pay rates, parking their rigs in protest just as exporters were counting on them to haul freshly harvested soybeans to port.

• Thirty Palestinian prisoners have joined the hunger strike of Hana Shalabi, who was hospitalized on Monday evening after consuming only water for 33 days.

• In Cuba, three dozen members of the Ladies in White opposition group were detained on Sunday before their weekly march to press the government to free prisoners jailed for politically motivated  crimes.

• George Clooney was arrested for civil disobedience in Washington on Friday alongside his father Nick and other  protesters after a demonstration outside the Sudanese Embassy aimed at drawing  attention to the country’s president, Omar al-Bashir, and his government for provoking a humanitarian crisis and blocking food and aid from entering the Nuba Mountains from South Sudan.

• Some 200 Moroccan women staged an angry protest Saturday outside parliament a week after the suicide of a 16-year-old girl who was forced to marry the man who raped her.

• The April 6 Youth Movement declared on Saturday the start to an open-ended sit-in in front of Parliament’s offices, in which the group will demand the release of detained member George Ramzy.

• Several hundred Tibetans have protested against Chinese rule in the western province of Qinghai since a monk there set himself on fire earlier this week. The advocacy group Free Tibet has posted what it calls “unprecedented footage” of this highly restricted and restive part of western China.

• Between 5,000 and 7,000 Chilean high school students marched down Santiago’s main avenue on Thursday to demand free quality education and protest the expulsion of about 100 students who joined last year’s protests. Police broke up the march with water canons after a few hundred students crossed a police barrier and tried to march to the education ministry.

• Thousands of union workers gathered across Illinois on Thursday to protest Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed budget cuts that include mass layoffs and the closure and consolidation of several state facilities, including prisons.

• Hundreds of people gathered in the Rotunda of the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City on Thursday to urge Gov. Gary Herbert to veto a bill that would forbid school districts to teach use of contraceptives.

• Russian opposition activist Sergei Udaltsov started a hunger strike on Thursday after being sentenced to 10 days in jail for disobeying the police following a rally against Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

• Afghans took to the streets on Thursday to demand a U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 civilians be prosecuted in Afghanistan as word spread that the American military moved him out of the country.

• A group of about 75 demonstrators assembled at LOVE Park on Wednesday to support immigrant rights. Two college students were arrested after blocking traffic with banners and refusing to move