• 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.

• Russian police have detained more than 60 people demonstrating at a freedom of assembly rally in Moscow yesterday. The demonstrators chanted “Russia without Putin!” as the police led them away.

• Nearly 100 Afghan asylum seekers broke out of a detention centre in northern Australia on Wednesday to protest the long delay in processing their refugee applications.

• Four tree sitters have created a platform 100 feet up in the redwoods of Jacoby Creek California to prevent loggers from clearcutting the beautiful second growth forest.

• 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.

• A small contingent of super heroes and one Sith Lord assembled outside the steps of City Hall Tuesday to protest the arrests made by LAPD of costumed characters along Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

• 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.

• 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.

• Oil workers calling for compensation for recently fired employees maintained a blockade at a storage plant in southern Argentina on Friday.

• 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.

• Last Friday, around 35 Palestinians demonstrated against Hallamish settlement with around 15 Israeli and international peace activists in the village of An Nabi Salih.

• 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.

• Some Pakistani flood victims blocked highways to demand government help on Tuesday.

• Three television channels in Ukraine went on strike on Saturday in protest of steadily increasing pressure on media in Ukraine, with hundreds of other journalists declaring readiness to join the action.

• 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.

• The 19-day long protest in Bolivia’s Potosi province was finally brought to an end with the protesters lifting the blockade of the airport and major roads after a deal was struck with the government.

• The entire team of Sri Lanka’s government wildlife vets has gone on strike amid mounting controversy over an elephant conservation plan that has led to increased clashes between the animals and villagers.

I couldn’t help but be impressed by the students from Northern Secondary School in Toronto who protested the hiring of a police officer for their school, and wonder why there doesn’t seem to be resistance to such efforts in the US.

One student eloquently argues that there is “no community accountability for the decision” to bring police into the school because it was not democratically made and that students were not consulted. It’s hard for me to imagine many American high school students formulating such an argument or even raising a fuss.

Any thoughts as to why this might be? Is this school unique? Perhaps the students have a great teacher who gave them a sense of their political agency. Has there been more opposition to the increased police presence in our schools in the US that I’m not aware of?

When I went in high school – in a small town in central Illinois – we didn’t have to contend with cops or metal detectors to enter the building, and except in the most extreme circumstances, that’s the way it should be.

• In North Carolina, a thousand marchers from the state NAACP, local churches, student groups and civil rights organizations took to downtown Raleigh streets on Tuesday morning, rallying at the State Capitol to protest the dismantling of a Wake school diversity policy they believe will lead to de facto resegregation. Afterwards, nineteen protesters, including the leader of the North Carolina NAACP, were arrested at Wake County school headquarters in an act of civil disobedience.

• On Saturday, an estimated 2,000 farmers in Taiwan began their protest against government expropriation of their land and spent the night on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office Building. They turned part of the wide road into a field by rolling out patches covered with plants while also paying their respects to farming deities.

• About 150 Jordanian activists demonstrated before the Egyptian embassy in Amman on Tuesday to protest Cairo’s refusal to allow a humanitarian convoy to reach the besieged Gaza Strip.

• 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 Greece, 170 migrants detained in the Samos detention camp started a collective hunger strike in an effort to stop their deportation.

• Starting last Wednesday, thousands of people in eastern China protested for at least five days against local authorities which they accuse of withholding land compensation.

• 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.

• At least 15,000 protesting garment factory workers blocked key roads in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka Wednesday, the latest in a string of protests over poor conditions and low wages, which now average $25 a month to sewing clothes for major Western brands such as Wal-Mart and H & M.

• 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.

• Transport chaos again hit Madrid Wednesday as a strike by 7,500 metro workers protesting a wage cut of around 5 percent decided by the right-wing regional government entered a third day with the system totally shut down.

• 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 protest shutdown has paralysed normal life for a fourth successive day in Indian-administered Kashmir. The strike has been called in protest at the recent killing of unarmed civilians by police and paramilitary troops.

• 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.

• On Monday, four parents occupied the Dunster Fine Arts Elementary School in British Columbia to protest its impending closure.

• A large number of people in Karachi held a sit-in on the main Abdullah Haroon Road on Sunday in protest against the murder of a brother of a gang-rape victim.

• Three former detainees from Guantanamo Bay who were transferred to Slovakia in January will continue their hunger-strike in protest against the allegedly bad treatment they are receiving from Slovak authorities at a detention facility in Medvedov.

• On Friday, a million workers belonging to Italy’s largest union went on strike across the nation to protest proposed austerity cuts by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government.

• Despite some acts of violence, 25,000 peacefully protested the policies of the G20 in Toronto over the weekend amidst a heavy police presence.

• Tens of thousands of opposition supporters marched in Taiwan’s capital Saturday to protest the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, a trade agreement with China opponents said will undermine the island’s self-rule and harm its economy.

• On Saturday, people gathered and held hands to form a symbolic line in the sand for 15 minutes as part of the “Hands Across the Sand” demonstrations organized in the US and abroad to pressure elected officials against any expansion of offshore drilling and to promote “clean” energy. In the U.S. nearly 700 rallies took place in all 50 states.

• Egyptian dissident Mohamed El Baradei led over 4,000 in a protest in Alexandria on Friday demanding an end to police brutality.

• In Michigan, thousands rallied on the state Capitol in Lansing on Thursday to urge lawmakers not to cut funding for public education.

• On Friday, 40 demonstrators greeted Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean at a Melbourne hotel when he arrived at a meeting to approve a deal to export up to 20 million tons of polluting La Trobe Valley brown coal to Vietnam.

Renowned Kentucky farmer, poet, essayist, and environmental writer Wendell Berry is pulling many of his personal papers from the University of Kentucky’s archives to protest the naming of a new campus building. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Berry excoriated his alma matter in a Dec. 20, 2009, letter, saying the decision to name a new dorm for UK basketball players the Wildcat Coal Lodge “puts an end” to his association with the university.

“The University’s president and board have solemnized an alliance with the coal industry, in return for a large monetary ‘gift,’ granting to the benefactors, in effect, a co-sponsorship of the University’s basketball team,” Berry wrote in the typewritten letter. “That — added to the ‘Top 20′ project and the president’s exclusive ‘focus’ on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — puts an end to my willingness to be associated in any way officially with the University.”

Berry is among the most revered writers in Kentucky history and his statement is no doubt a blow to the university, but they’ve dealt with his wrath before:

In an essay published in 1987, The Loss of the University, Berry argued for a college education that would broaden a student’s exposure to a number of disciplines rather than produce the narrow skills of career-minded transients with no sense of a homeland.

At a 2007 commencement address at Bellarmine University, Berry railed against “the great and the would-be-great ‘research universities.’ These gigantic institutions, increasingly formed upon the ‘industrial model,’ no longer make even the pretense of preparing their students for responsible membership in a family, a community, or a polity. … The American civilization so ardently promoted by these institutions is to be a civilization entirely determined by technology, and not encumbered by any thought of what is good or worthy or neighborly or humane.”

While it’s unclear whether Berry’s latest action will have any kind of effect, it is no doubt consistent with his beliefs and will probably have more of an effect in the years to come, lending evermore creadence to his strong sense of respect for humans and nature.

• Anti-BP protesters from Greenpeace disrupted a speech by the company’s chief of staff at a major oil conference in London yesterday, urging the company to change its ways following the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

• Members of an indefinite vigil held in front of the Massachusetts State House have reached their 17th day of protest against the anti-immigrant amendments added to the budget bill.

• More than 100 gay rights protesters marched in Toronto on Saturday to demand greater rights for all minority populations marginalized because of their gender, sexuality or socioeconomic status.

• Students and staff at 100 colleges and universities in Great Britain are protesting funding cuts that could keep 200,000 people out of universities next year.

• Students at the University of Puerto Rico voted to end their two-month strike against massive budget cuts on Monday after agreeing to a package with the administration that includes an extension of tuition waivers, the cancellation of a fee that would have drastically raised education costs, a commitment not to arbitrarily punish strike participants, and rejection of school privatization plans.

• Israeli soldiers injured several protesters on Sunday in an attack on a nonviolent demonstration against illegal settlements and the construction of the Israeli separation wall in the Palestinian village of Beit Jala, near Bethlehem.

• 12,000 Minnesota nurses voted to hold an open-ended strike on Monday following retaliation from employers after a one-day strike on June 10.

Librarians and bibliophiles alike held a 24-hour read-in marathon on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza this past weekend. The action brought 200 volunteer readers together to help raise awareness to the proposed $37 million budget cut to New York’s public libraries, which would result in the closing of at least 10 branches, a reduction in hours of operation (libraries would be open only 4 days a week as opposed to the average of 6 or 7), as well as lay offs of over 700 librarians.

The read-in featured everything from Emma Goldman to James Baldwin, Gossip Girl and Albert Camus, serving as a great testimony of the wide range of library patrons these cuts will affect. As the New York Times reported:

“In the Great Depression, the New York public libraries were kept open seven days a week,” said Aliqae Geraci, a librarian in Queens and a coordinator of the event. “It is a huge support system for the unemployed and the transient”

[…]

The organizers are hoping the City Council will restore financing to avoid the cuts, which they say will particularly hurt the city’s less fortunate, who depend on libraries for Internet access and employment help.

Another large group these measures will affect is children and parents. Libraries offer numerous free programs for literacy, homework help, and after-school activities. Along with school budget cuts which will result in the closure of several schools and teacher layoffs, kids will surely suffer terrible consequences from these actions.

Thanks to websites like Don’t Close the Book on Libraries and Save NYC Libraries, as well as entertaining actions like the Ghostbusters reenactment that Improv Everywhere staged, NYPL has raised over $120,000 in addition to receiving over 100,000 letters of support. But there’s still more work to be done! If you want to help, today (June 17, 2010) is Call In Action Day. If you’re in the New York City area, call 311 (outside New York call (212) 639-9675) and tell them why you think we should continue to fund our libraries.

• On Monday, dozens of Palestinians and international activists held a nonviolent protest in the town of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip against the Israeli-imposed buffer zone in Gaza following an Israeli incursion onto Palestinian-owned farm land earlier in the day.

• A strike over pay by the security stewards at World Cup stadiums spread to half the tournament’s 10 venues yesterday, forcing police to step in and assume their duties.

• Several hundred activists gathered in New York City’s Union Square on Monday at a rally to protect  homeless LGBT youth sponsored by the Ali Forney Center.

• Some 800 Burmese migrants have begun a hunger strike in a Malaysian immigration camp after the UN’s refugee agency stopped interviewing detainees about potential refugee status.

• On Tuesday, a dozen protesters gathered in front of NYPD headquarters to speak out against what they called the misuse of disorderly conduct charges against the homeless.

• In Sweden, around 30 Greenpeace activists broke into the Forsmark nuclear plant on Monday to demand that parliament vote against allowing new nuclear facilities to be built  in the country.

• On Monday, 250 rallied at a University of Illinois Board of Trustees meeting to protest tuition hikes and a concurrent salary raise of approximately $170,000 for University President Michael Hogan.

• More than 3,500 Romanians took to the streets outside the Parliament in Bucharest on Tuesday to protest proposed austerity measures Prime Minister Emil Bloc said must be made to meet the demands of a loan from the International Monetary Fund.

• Four people were arrested Tuesday at a Wake County, North Carolina school board meeting. The group of civil rights activists staged a nonviolent protest against measures they say will lead to re-segregation in county schools.

• 1,000 New York City high school students walked out of classes on Friday to protest the proposed elimination of free student metro cards.

• 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.

• Doctors in Massachusetts protested the use of squirrel monkeys in a NASA-funded experiment to test the effects of radiation in space on June 10.

• Thousands gathered to protest a youth’s killing by police in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

• A rally was held in Sofia, Bulgaria on Thursday to protest Neo-Nazi attacks against a peaceful refugee’s rights demonstration days earlier.

• Tens of thousands of Germans gathered in Berlin on Saturday to protest Chancellor Angela Merkel’s austerity measures.

Cruising down the busy streets of Buenos Aires, Argentinean artist and peace activist Raul Lemesoff has converted a 1979 green Ford Falcon into a moving library with the title “Arma de Instruccion Masiva” (Weapon of Mass Instruction) painted across it. Clambering out of the vehicle, he greets bystanders with a smile and offers them a book.

The Ford that buses him around used to belong to the Argentinean armed forces during its dictatorship. But now covered with over 900 hardcover books, he makes his cross-country trip handing out free literature for people in the cities of Argentina and in remote areas where schools and books are scant. He also accepts donations in order to supply schools in need.

In a recent interview, Raul explains the purpose of his project :

“The Weapon of Mass Instruction is meant to get people to recognize various aspects of life: sharing, education, and also to have a good time. It’s a contribution to peace through literature.”

By taking what was once a symbol of suppression and violence, Raul has transformed it into a peace campaign of communication through recycled books.

I’m not sure if Raul and his artistic rendered Ford Falcon are still traveling (the sustainability of the project depends on donations that can match-up or surpass the handouts). Despite any of these shortcomings, he plans on building more booktanks that will travel to other parts of the world.

Renowned street artist Shepard Fairey—known best for creating the iconic Obama HOPE poster—caused a stir in Covington, Kentucky last week with the unveiling of a new mural, depicting an Asian child soldier brandishing an automatic rifle. The proprietor of the business who offered up his wall was not pleased and quickly covered it in white paint. According to Cincinnati.com, “He didn’t think his location across the street from an elementary school was an appropriate place for an image of a child soldier.”

Fairey, however, was unaware that his mural directly faced an elementary school. Had he known, Fairey said he might have made alterations. Nevertheless, he defended his work saying, “I felt like it was very obvious that it was about promoting peace and discouraging violence but not everybody agreed, obviously…It’s not hurtful so much as it is discouraging that there can’t even be a discussion about it.”

Surprisingly, though, the school and the city seemed just as disappointed by the business owner’s decision to paint over the mural.

No one involved in the mural project wanted to censor Fairey, said Natalie Bowers, Covington’s arts district manager.

She said she wished the mural could have stayed up so teachers could have discussed it with their students, and she stressed that the city of Covington did not play a part in the decision to paint over the mural.

Kudos to Covington for showing that provactive and political art has a place in small-town American society.

Earlier this moth, the LA Times did a story on UC San Diego Professor Ricardo Dominguez, who led what he called a “virtual sit-in” that targeted the university president’s website. According to the Times:

When protesting students spilled into University of California campus courtyards in March, Ricardo Dominguez took to the streets in his own way — digitally — leading a march to the online office of the UC president.

The bespectacled associate professor triggered a software program that continuously reloaded the home page of UC President Mark G. Yudof’s website.

“Transparency,” hundreds of protesters wrote, over and over again, in the search box of the home page.

The jammed website responded with an error message: “File not found.”

The protesters’ message: Transparency doesn’t exist in the UC system.

It was a virtual sit-in, an oft-used tactic from Dominguez’s academic specialty at UC San Diego: electronic civil disobedience.

Dominguez, who was hailed just months earlier by his university and other major institutions for his work creating the immigrant cell-phone, now faces serious disciplinary measures:

According to Dominguez and a faculty group, the university has launched at least two probes: One to determine whether creation of the phone was a proper use of public funds, the other to see if legal grounds exist for filing criminal charges for the virtual sit-in.

The charges, they said, could lead to disciplinary measures and the revocation of Dominguez’s tenure. Dominguez’s salary was $65,000 before furloughs.

He is also facing attacks from Republican congressmen in his county, who feel that his work is a waste of tax-payer money. But beyond that question, and more to the purposes of this site, I wonder what others think of virtual protest tactics. Keep in mind, this is something Dominguez has been pioneering for quite some time. The Times explained the beginnings of his work in New York in the 1990′s:

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