On January 26, a group of activists with Organizing for Occupation (O4O), Housing is a Human Right and Occupy Wall Street interrupted another foreclosure action in Brooklyn with their singing. (Frida Berrigan reported on the first of these actions back in October.) As you can see from the above video, after selling only one house out of four, the auction was aborted and 39 people were arrested.

In an email interview with Karen Gargamelli, an attorney with Common Law who is involved with O4O, she explains why they have chosen this melodic tactic:

We sing because it is non-violent and because it is beautiful. We hope to confound the systems that evict New Yorkers (the courts) and the elected officials that refuse to regulate the big banks with loveliness.

With this easy-to-learn song, O4O hopes these blockades will spread across the country, and effect what Gargamelli called “a people’s moratorium” that would create “real negotiating power between homeowners and lenders.” The next singing auction blockade is planned for February 17th in Queens.

• 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

• 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.

• 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.

The PAH started in February of 2009 from a small group of citizens in Barcelona in order to demand that the Mortgage Law include dación en pago, a measure that would make possible to hand back the keys and the property to the bank, discharging all mortgage debt if the holder fails to pay the mortgage. But as more and more families were evicted from their homes, PAH took to the streets in November, 2010 with the Stop Evictions campaign, which gained even more momentum during this year’s May 15 movement mobilizations. PAH became a meeting point for people in danger of losing their homes, organized locally by citizens and activists to provide legal advice and promote civil resistance actions.

Today, PAH has chapters in more than 40 cities, and it has stopped at least 110 evictions through nonviolent resistance. Since October, hundreds of 15-M activists had been occupying empty buildings to provide living space for evicted families in cities like Madrid, Barcelona, Terrassa and Granada; dozens of families have decided to occupy empty houses themselves.

Activists associated with PAH in Elche, a city near Alicante, has advised as many as 50 families and, in many cases, they’ve discovered irregularities bordering on illegality. “There are families that have been paying a default insurance,” explains Gloria Marin, from PAH Elche, for instance. “They didn’t know that and the bank didn’t tell them a thing about it while trying to evict them.” In Elche, as in many other cities, the courts and the police have not moved to intervene against anti-eviction actions.

Barcelona, one of the cities where PAH’s work began, the response of the regional government has been even more positive. In October, thanks in part to PAH, the City Council moved to declare Barcelona “active on the prevention of evictions,” creating a commission to study each case, to ensure the right to housing and to support the inclusion of dación en pago in the Mortgage Law. A hundred other cities have taken similar action as well.

In other places, however, the situation has become a bit more difficult. In Madrid, where PAH has succeeded in stopping 17 of the 20 evictions it fought, police response has been escalating. PAH started its work in Madrid last June, but, after a month of several eviction preventions, the courts decided to increase the police presence. In July, more than 50 riot police prevented over 100 citizens from stopping an eviction.

The police presence since then has increased even more. “In recent weeks, the courts have sent in the police forcefully,” says Chema Ruiz of PAH Madrid. “In the beginning there were just a few police officers, and the evictions were easily stopped, but the situation has changed.” Last week, some people were arrested in an anti-foreclosure action, among them a photographer from the alternative newspaper Diagonal. Facing the increased police presence, PAH Madrid activists have changed their tactics, focusing more on the visit of the judicial commission to an endangered house and attempting to prevent it from approving the foreclosure.

Despite the repression of these actions in the Spanish capital, the message of PAH has been heard and echoed in mainstream Spanish politics. After the two-year campaign for the dación en pago was ignored by the two major parties, some months ago most of the country’s political parties included it in their platforms going into the November 20 election. Even PSOE, which rejected the dación en pago last June in Congress, reversed course and incorporated the proposal in its platform. But the victory of the right-wing Partido Popular in the Congress makes it impossible to know whether the PSOE’s promise would have become a reality.

Political promises aside, PAH’s work has forced the government to relieve some of the sting of eviction felt by those who suffer it. “We have forced the government to make a move,” says a statement on the PAH website. “It’s a ridiculous and insufficient change, but it marks the path.”

Now, the regional government of Catalonia is going further and has announced to enact the dación en pago and to purchase option agreements to let families keep their homes. PAH is also working on a “popular initiative” to petition Congress to reexamine the inclusion of dación en pago in the Mortgage Law. Soon they will begin collecting the 500,000 signatures needed to do so.

Even the banks are starting to react to people’s calls on behalf of the right to housing. In Murcia, PAH has negotiated the dación en pago for 100 families, as it has for thousands throughout Spain. In many cases, after accepting the dación en pago, canceling the debt in exchange of the house, the banks consented to allow a family to stay in their home by paying subsidized rent. “It’s not because they are better now, but because we have forced them to take care of their image,” says a statement from PAH.

Some banks have launched such programs as “Supportive Leasing” in La Caixa, which offers 3,000 houses with a monthly rent between €75 and €150, or the inclusion of dación en pago in their mortgage products—though generally with very high interest rates.

Today in Spain, banks are becoming major real estate holders. Bankia alone—a bank that was recently privatized—began the year with more than €11 billion in property, making it the country’s largest landowner. Other banks, such as CAM (also recently privatized), Santander or BBVA, offer more than 20,000 foreclosed houses with significant discounts. Most of these banks has received thousands of millions euros from the government last year in bailouts. PAH calls on the government to purchase these houses from the banks in order to increase the number of public housing units, but, for now at least, the government has yet to listen.

I blame my parents, who never once took me to the mall to visit Santa Claus when I was young. I also never wrote the old man a “wish list.” So here I am, at 37, sitting down to write my very first letter to Santa Claus.

Dear Mr. Claus,

I hope this letter finds you and the missus well. I know you are known by many names—Kris Kringle, old Saint Nicholas, but I will call you by your American commercial name for the purpose of this letter.

I have been very nice this year: kind to neighbors, generous with my time and energy, a compassionate ear in times of difficulty. I have tried not to complain or gripe or whine too much, even though there is much in the world to be grumpy about. I did not participate in as many “Occupy” events as I should have, but New Year’s Resolution time is almost upon us, and trust me when I tell you that will be on that list.

So, with that preamble, allow me to give you the list of things I want for Christmas this year.

Of course, there is very little that I need—other than very warm winter outfit that will not be too bulky or down-fashion (I am going to spend the first two weeks of January outside demanding that President Obama shut down Guantanamo, close Bagram, end torture and ensure accountability for the architects of this travesty).

So, put that at the top of my list, please. Warm, not bulky, winter coat. This Patagonia one is really nice, but it is made in China. Never mind about that. I’ll just layer up.

Other than that… hmm. I thought long and hard about how to make this a real Christmas wish list and not just a list of all the ills in the world that I want changed.

Food for hungry children. I know that you have an enviable distribution network, so in addition to toys and tchotchkes, could you also hit up all the hungry kids with nourishing food. There are about 16 million “food insecure” kids in this country, so it will take some effort.

Good places for all the Occupy folks to be for the winter. A lot of people dropped everything and “came home” to Occupy Wall Street, Hartford, San Diego and countless other upspringings around the country. They found community, meaning, a platform for their outrage and alienation—and the daily necessities in those anarchic and somewhat miraculous spaces. Now, with spots like Zuccotti Park closed to Occupiers around the country, many of those friends are looking for a place to go. In Providence, Occupiers put it to the city. We’ll leave the park if you open a day shelter for the homeless.

Peace. It’s not too hard, right? I mean, you can fly through the air behind eight tiny reindeer. That stretches the bounds of credibility just as much as the belief that humankind can all breathe air and share space without killing each other, right? Well, maybe it is all a stretch. But especially right now, as the killing returns to Iraq with a vengeance, we need a little help in the peace department. Wasn’t President Obama just crowing about the end of war in Iraq? And now, the papers are full of news of a new wave of bombings and a crippling political crisis: 63 dead in Baghdad and more than one hundred wounded on Thursday.

Good work and more time. I am happily unemployed and feel really privileged to spend my time doing things other than making money. But, I know so many people who are out of work or who are really unhappy in their jobs. And beyond being unfulfilled or bored, there are countless people working in dangerous and unhealthy environments—mining, machine shops, fishing vessels, farms—and who are being exploited. And then there is the modern scourge of slavery and human trafficking. I wish for good work that is meaningful and justly remunerated for all people. And while we are on the subject, just how much are you paying those elves of yours?

I could go on and on, there is a lot to wish for better in the world. But, I will conclude my letter by noting that if you are able to deliver all these things to me on Christmas morning, I would be most grateful (and I would not be the only one). My family is making chocolate peanut butter balls and beer to give to friends and family for Christmas, so we’ll leave some out for you.

By the way, I don’t have a chimney, but you should be able to figure it out.

All the best,

Frida Berrigan

Occupy Wall Street found a new home today—not a new park, or a plaza, or a square, but a house. Just weeks after the eviction from its encampment in the financial district, hundreds of occupiers joined local community members in a foreclosure tour of the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn through the rain, which concluded with a celebratory block party as a family reclaimed a foreclosed home owned by Bank of America. It was one of many anti-foreclosure actions taking place in communities across the United States today.

As the march passed, I heard a local woman saying, “This was a long time coming.”

For those of us who have been organizing and reporting on Occupy Wall Street for months, the afternoon was a reunion of familiar faces, of people who used to see each other daily in Liberty Plaza. But more visible than usual at Occupy Wall Street actions were collared clergy and members of the State Assembly and City Council. Together with locals and organizers with the NYC General Assembly’s Direct Action Committee, they were leading the marches and queuing the chants—all through the people’s mic, of course, megaphone-free. Along the way, staffers of groups that were once waiting-and-seeing from afar what Occupy Wall Street would do were now busily coordinating the action; among these are Van Jones’ Rebuild the Dream, New York Communities for Change, and Organizing for Occupation. And this, it seems, is our clearest glimpse yet of what Occupy Phase II will look like.

The General Assembly and its related working groups are only able to do so much on their own. Without the focal point of an encampment anymore, the movement’s actions will rely more and more on coordination with institutions more firmly entrenched in neighborhoods where it works—as well as, despite the movement’s own leaderless structure, those institutions’ leaders.

While occupiers have almost always welcomed the support of outside organizations cheerfully, today I heard grumbling among some of the older ones who have had negative experiences with this or that public figure in the past, and who are suspicious of traditional institutions as a whole. A City Council member might stand with the movement one day, but what will he or she expect from it on election day? And how far will a given non-profit organization go with civil disobedience before it starts to scare away its funders? These are new questions that the Occupy movement will be facing more and more.

The answer, though, seemed clear to me when I passed an activist running from the soon-to-be-reclaimed house with a drill in his hand—which presumably had been used to bypass the lock. With the march came a team from Occupy Wall Street’s Sanitation Committee to clean up inside the house. Outside, the occupation’s library and kitchen set up shop, along with teach-ins and a piñata. The answer I had in mind, that is, is direct action. As long as this movement keeps nonviolent direct action at its center, refusing to wait for the powers that be to approve of the undertakings it deems necessary, its momentum will continue to grow. Politicians and non-profits will join the cause not so much because they see an opportunity for themselves but because they can’t afford not to.

That’s exactly what appears to be happening in Phase II, even more than Phase I. As more and more occupations are hardened by the experience of forced eviction, they’re less receptive to the kind of coddling by politicians that took place in some cities early on. The spirit of direct action is spreading. David DeGraw of OWSNews.org tells me that he has been getting text messages from all over the country today like the following:

I just removed a newly changed lock off of a house to let original owner back in. my leatherman rules!

Without the need to focus on encampment sites, furthermore, the attention of Phase II is much more carefully oriented around root causes, around the very means by which the movement’s corporate opponents perpetuate themselves: foreclosed homes, ports, rampant consumerism, and more to come. Foreclosures, as ground zero of the 2008 financial crisis, are a fitting place to start. They’re also where the often-abstract machinations of Wall Street actually hit home for many Americans. By preventing them, or reversing them, the movement will find new allies who were less moved by the earlier talk of ending corporate personhood or imposing a Tobin tax.

This was a foregone conclusion for the May 15 movement in Spain, which was such an inspiration to many Occupy Wall Street organizers in the first place. (See our report on the Spanish squatters from back in September.) At the action today, I talked about this with Monica Lopez, who was part of the Spanish movement and has been at Occupy Wall Street since the beginning:

• Occupy protesters across the country celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday, bringing all the trimmings of a traditional meal to the unlikely location of a demonstration. In New York’s Zuccotti Park, organizers said they distributed some 3,000 individually wrapped plates for what they described as an “open feast.”

• Some 10,000 people from the majority Shi’ite community in Bahrain took to the streets of the town of Aali, chanting slogans that were taken from the inquiry led by international rights lawyer Cherif Bassiouni.

• Yemeni protesters—who have been in the millions for nearly 10 months—were out again Thursday, rejecting a provision that gives Saleh immunity from prosecution.

• Portuguese workers’ general strike halted public transport and some factories in many parts of the country on Thursday and thousands marched to protest austerity measures imposed as the price of an EU/IMF bailout.

• A Romanian mayor has begun a hunger strike to protest cuts in heating subsidies imposed under a government austerity drive, reawakening memories of the harsh final years of communism.

• Hundreds of people in Thailand’s Pathum Thani province north of the capital blocked cars from using the outbound lane of an elevated highway on Wednesday to pressure the government to accelerate the drainage of water.

• Iran’s main government-run newspaper was published Tuesday without a front-page headline, replaced by photographs of its headquarters during an assault a day earlier by forces working for the judiciary who briefly arrested the newspaper’s top official and more than 30 others.

• Several thousand Colombian students participated in multiple marches on Thursday to demand more funding for public education. In Argentina, about 1,000 student marched through Buenos Aires holding flags reading “the student struggle is walking through Latin America.”

• Thousands of Peruvians have protested a $4.8 billion open-pit gold mining project they fear will damage their water supply.

• Thousands of workers in southern China went on strike in the last week to demand higher pay and better treatment, disrupting work at companies including one that supplies equipment to International Business Machines Corp.

• A dozen men in suits, including the Yes Men’s Andy Bichlbaum (middle-left) and Mike Bonanno (middle-right), marched with hidden placards last week after announcing at Occupy Wall Street’s General Assembly that they were about to take part in a highly arrestable action. As the police, who overheard the announcement, prepared to make arrests, the suits lifted their hidden placards, revealing the message: “Brokers and Police for the Occupation.”

• While Occupy Wall Street protesters braved snow, sleet and rain in New York this weekend, scores of protesters in Portland, Oregon and Austin, Texas were arrested after refusing police orders to disperse.

• Hundreds of students staged an anti-government rally in eastern Sudan on Sunday, protesting against poverty and rising food prices, witnesses said.

• Workers at the world’s third-largest copper deposit, Chile’s Collahuasi mine, ended a partial strike begun early on Saturday after reaching an agreement with management over bonus payments.

• Air France cancelled one in five flights on Sunday after cabin crew stopped work for a second consecutive day to protest against employment conditions.

• More than 30 farmers who staged a sit-in Thursday in front of the Myanmar government housing department in Yangon to protest the unfair confiscation of their land. Seven people were arrested, despite the government’s stated commitment to democratic reforms.

• Activists say Syrian security forces have killed at least 44 people, as large protests calling for a no-fly zone to protect civilians and soldiers deserting the army were held across the country on Friday.

• More than 30,000 Israelis marched in Tel Aviv Saturday night to express anger over the high cost of living. Thousands more protested in Jerusalem.

I am a lousy singer. Lots of enthusiasm, but little talent. That’s why I like singing in groups. I can participate with enthusiasm and the people listening don’t need to don ear muffs.

Recently, I have had a little video on auto replay on my computer. The production values are not prime time ready. In fact the images are literally shot from the hip on a tiny hidden camera (I know I should not sound so awed, but at a time when most people have little cameras on their cellphones or smart devices—I am so behind the times that my spellchecker still wants to turn the word cellphone into cellophane). The action opens at the beginning of a foreclosure auction in a typical courtroom—this one at the State Supreme Court in downtown Brooklyn. People are sitting in the benches and up front a woman sits behind a low bench and begins the process of selling someone’s home—a building on Fulton Street being foreclosed by a company with a money-dream name of Instant Capital.

And then a rupture in business as usual—voices; not of auctioneers or buyers or gavel-whackers, but of people. They implore, they entreat, they demand, they sing:

Mrs. Auctioneer,
All the people here,
We are asking you to hold off the sales right now,
We are going to survive but we don’t know how.

The words are simple. The tune is catchy. The sentiment is strong. People who are getting kicked out of their homes are not alone, we are all in this together, the systems and institutions and cogs that grind away at people need to be infused with humanity, with voices, with song. The auction is disrupted, the court room cleared, the singers threatened with arrest. They stay, they continue to sing, and they are taken out in flexi-cuffs. 100 or so people outside hold signs and banners and commit to disrupting future auctions that make people homeless and put money in the pockets of corporate interests.

I have watched it over and over again. And I cry each time… Because it is so brave and it is so beautiful and so different. It is hard to describe, so I will just ask that you watch it.

The group who planned the October 14th action is called Organizing for Occupation. It is small and informal and committed to helping people stay in their homes, challenging the banks and the Instant Capitals and the shysters that offer a quick buck and—with fast talking and a sleight of hand—rob people of their futures. They say:

We firmly believe that safe and affordable housing is a human right, and that the government and the private sector have failed to meaningfully address this crisis. Therefore it is up to those who are most afflicted by the lack of affordable housing, homelessness, and foreclosures to actualize that right themselves through non-violent direct action.

They have been doing amazing work and are gearing up for more.

Song is powerful. It has a way of getting attention, of cutting through the endless mobius strips of argument, bureaucratic rationalization and political entrenchment. Witness Against Torture, another small and informal group, has been working to close Guantanamo and end torture since 2005. We are trying everything. Last year, one of the things we tried was “Guantanamo prisoner walks” through the halls of Congressional office buildings. We wanted to haunt the corridors of power with the silent and miserable specter of justice delayed and denied—many of the men at Guantanamo have been deemed no threat to the United States and cleared for release by both the Bush and Obama administrations and then left to languish there because of political cowardice and partisan brinksmanship.

We ended our haunting solitary vigils by coming together beneath Alexander Calder’s huge “Mountains and Clouds” sculpture in the Hart Building lobby and singing “Courage, Muslim brothers, you do not walk alone, we will walk with you and sing your spirit home.” It is a twist on the song South African prisoners during the Apartheid regime sung to those being taken off to torture and death. Our singing is not as good as the O4O folks, but we definitely got the attention of everyone in the building as we—ever so slowly—exited the building (The link includes a reflection on the action and a video, I can’t remember who wrote it, but it was not me—even though it says Frida Berrigan’s blog at the bottom).

Singing is primeval, elemental. It is woven into what makes us human. And we respond to it at a deep and instinctual level. It touches us all. Hearing singing makes us want to sing, which is why it is such an effective and affecting tool in the activist toolbox.

Here are a few other great singing actions (some political and some not so much, but all staggeringly beautiful interruptions of business as usual).

In May 2010, activists took over the lobby of the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco with a brass band and sang a version of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance (“Boycott the Bad Hotel”) to support union organizers working for affordable healthcare and a fair contract.

In April 2011, the Alliance for Greater New York showed up outside a private Bryant Park breakfast hosted by the Wall Street Journal where the head of Wal-Mart was speaking and sang “Mr. Wal-Mart” to the tune of Jean Knight’s “Who Do You Think You Are?”

Courage to Resist members interrupted a private breakfast with President Obama, serenading him about Bradley Manning in April of this year. It was all very polite and decorous—as befitting a $5,000 breakfast, I suppose—and only one or two singers were escorted out of the hall. Obama thanked the singers and remarked that they had “much better voices than mine.”

On July 4, 2006, more than 300 activists in Copenhagen marched on the U.S. Embassy there wearing orange jumpsuits and black hoods. In front of the Embassy, they sang “Amazing Grace,” calling it a “birthday card” to America.

I might be a bit of a sap, but I find all of this very moving. Even that sort of hokey Hallelujah choir at the food court in the Welland Seaway Mall in Ontario at Christmas last year stirs me deeply.

Singing is also a metaphor for good organizing. It reminds us of the power of cooperation. One voice singing invites harmonies, gets stronger the more people join in and makes room for others’ solos. Singing needs to be practiced and experimented with. And everyone can learn it: even those of us with scratchy voices have a part to sing. We can all be schooled into better singers—there is an innate talent in all of us that can be encouraged and honed and given center stage. People who sing well together work well together, and the labor is made lighter by the beauty of the voices weaving together.

• Galvanized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, protests began in New Zealand, touched parts of Asia, spread to Europe, and resumed at their starting point in New York with 5,000 marchers decrying corporate greed and economic inequality in Times Square. Meanwhile, 24 people were arrested at a Manhattan Citibank branch while trying to close their accounts.

• Police arrested around 175 demonstrators at the Occupy Chicago camp in a downtown park early on Sunday, hauling them away in vans and buses even as protesters vowed to carry on their campaign against economic inequality.

• Yemeni security forces used live rounds as well as tear gas and water cannons to disperse thousands of people attempting to march on the city center in Sanaa from their stronghold in Change Square. At least 16 people were killed.

• The dissident group Ladies in White sent a message of defiance to the Cuban government on Sunday, having men join them for their weekly protest march for the first time since forming in 2003. It is also believed to be the first time in decades men had taken part in a public protest in Cuba.

• Author, commentator, civil rights activist and Princeton University professor Cornel West was arrested while protesting on the steps of the Supreme Court on Sunday about corporate influence in politics.

• Activists with the October 2011 Stop the Machine protest in Washington’s Freedom Plaza gathered outside the Supreme Court yesterday to draw attention to corporate influence in politics. Nineteen people were arrested, including author, commentator, civil rights activist and Princeton University professor Cornel West.

• Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan was among 19 demonstrators arrested during an anti-Wall Street protest in Sacramento, California yesterday.

• More than 2,000 Tunisians have marched in favor of a secular state that allows press freedom and other rights. The demonstration is a response to protests and violence by Islamist extremists.

• Organizing for Occupation, a coalition of housing advocacy groups, disrupted a Brooklyn foreclosure auction on 60 homes last Thursday with a singing protest.

• Hundreds rallied in the disputed Iraqi town of Khanaqin on Sunday to demand the reversal of a central government ruling barring the flag of the autonomous Kurdish region in official buildings.

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence”

To be radical—stemming from the Latin radix meaning root—suggests that it is about getting at the heart of a matter. Dr. King cut right through to the source of injustice and over forty-five years later, are we witnessing the rebirth of a radical revolution of values that Dr. King prophesied? Is #OccupyWallStreet and its comrades nationwide “on the right side of the world revolution?” In that bold speech Dr. King gave a year before his death, publicly breaking from the civil rights movement’s acquiescence to the status quo support of American involvement in Vietnam, King warned that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Has the United States, by spending upwards of $3 trillion on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya and maintaining over 1,000 overseas military bases in more than 50 countries, reached a moral, economic, political and spiritual tipping point?

#OccupyWallStreet is well into its third week of camping out at Liberty Plaza. On October 1, The New York General Assembly—the “official” spokesgroup of #OccupyWallStreet—released a document, “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City,” naming its reasons for the occupation. A brief glance at part of the manifesto gives a snapshot of the state of the union.

• They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
• They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
• They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
• They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
• They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
• They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
• They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
• They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Thousands peaceably assembled in more than 500 cities nationwide is a phenomenon that demands to be noticed.  The loosely-connected but well-coordinated and steadfast occupation of public spaces are something this nation has not seen since the 1960s.  Ordinary people are continuing to awake to the power of collective nonviolent action.  But do we really know what we’re in for if we are serious about getting the kind of deep, structural changes we want?

The celebratory fervor surging in America’s Left—even in the face of police overreaction and brutality—may risk mistaking the trees for the forest.  Large gatherings—protests, rallies, occupations like these—are a show of power and a shot of energy to waning movements.  #OccupyWallStreet is breathing life into a debilitated Left and worn-out Americans.  But as it stands, #OccupyWallStreet is a symbol of resistance and represents the potential of revolutionary action that can transform Wall Street and company.  It has not yet moved into the kind of active resistance—boycotts, work stoppages, noncooperation, tax refusal, disobedience, blockades, etc.—that has strategic pressure points and staying power that forces change. Even the 700+ arrests of demonstrators in New York—an amalgamation of state repression, activist courage, and social media savvy—is not yet the kind of resistance needed to take down corporate power.  But none of this is to undermine the incredible success, energy, building momentum an ongoing creativity and commitment of #OccupyWallStreet.  The movement is exactly where it needs to be as it attracts thousands, if not millions, of supporters before its propelled into its next stage of nonviolent social change.

A sobering analysis of the protracted struggle ahead—the risk and sacrifice and courage it will continue to demand—can prepare us for the long haul. A warning to us all: the oligarchs (and, perhaps more importantly, its cadre of ideological supporters) of the corporate state will not go gently into that dark night. It will go kicking and screaming, unashamed and uncaring of how many lives it brings down with it.

At its core, #OccupyWallStreet and other progressive movements—the peace movement’s plan for a Washington, D.C. occupation which began yesterday, the environmental movement’s Stop the Pipeline, a whole host of social, economic, and environmental justice groups organizing protests in Chicago for the NATO-G8 summit in May 2012—are protesting and revolting against empire and its deadly consequences, the brunt of which is born most by the poor, marginalized, dispossessed and the earth.

Invoking “empire” is sure to elicit a knee-jerk reaction of being “too revolutionary,” not only from detractors of #OccupyWallStreet, but maybe even from some its ardent supporters in the mainstream Left. Consider some of the more vocal “demands” that have surfaced around these nationwide occupations (it must be noted that no “official” demand(s)—for better or for worse—have been issued by #OccupyWallStreet; see Mark Engler’s summary of the demands issue):

• End Corporate Personhood
• Forgive Student Debt
• Stop Home Foreclosures
• Tax the Rich

Demands such as these seem radical—revolutionary even—but from the perspective of global capitalism, they are not. The demands are oriented toward reforming the less noble parts of American democracy and stabilizing an economy that works for the 99%. John Nichol’s reporting for The Nation quotes a number of mainstream liberals—congressional leaders and union presidents—indicating growing support for #OccupyWallStreet among certain segments of business leaders and politicians. But lest we be deceived, be wary of such support. Consider how support for the occupation is framed:

“It’s clear what this movement is all about. It’s about taking America back from the CEOs and billionaires on Wall Street who have destroyed our nation’s economy. It’s about creating good jobs. It’s about corporate America treating its workers and customers with honesty and fairness and paying its fair share to stimulate the economy,” —Teamsters President James Hoffa

“We have been inspired by the growing grassroots movements on Wall Street and across the country. We share the anger and frustration of so many Americans who have seen the enormous toll that an unchecked Wall Street has taken on the overwhelming majority of Americans while benefiting the super wealthy. We join the calls for corporate accountability and expanded middle-class opportunity.” —Joint Statement by Co-Chairs of the Progressive Caucus

Nicholas Kristoff’s op-ed in The New York Times that simultaneously celebrates #OccupyWallStreet and affirms capitalism is revealing of how political liberals are characterizing the protests: “if a ragtag band of youthful protesters can help bring a dose of accountability and equity to our financial system, more power to them.” But there is a problem—global capitalism cannot be reformed to work for the 99% and that is the nature of empire: it does not share power, especially the multinational corporations. In this current historical milieu, empire means global capitalism and its stalwart supporters in the power elite—governments, corporations, religious and education institutions, and the militaries of the world.

The scholarship of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri has been invaluable in contextualizing empire outside of the traditional nation-state framework by situating power in the intersections of globalization’s multinational corporations, constitutional entities (domestic and international polities), and democratic spaces (the United Nations, NGOs, etc.). That is, empire today is more than just America. It is deeper, more pervasive—touching every part of our lives. The reach of global capitalism and the institutions that support it, justify it, and defend it are powerful indeed—and, important to note, not totally evil.

At the height of the Roman Empire, the seat of power and authority was centrally located—”all roads lead to Rome.” The empire of global capitalism—which is much more amorphous and porous in a predominantly post-modern society than its antiquated predecessors—resists centralization. Wall Street is a symbol of global capitalism. No doubt, there are very real manifestations of empire’s largess in Manhattan’s business and cosmopolitan districts: luxury condominiums, extravagant restaurants and shopping, an onslaught of media-driven consumption, advertisers technologically painting the streets and the skies with commercials. But behind the image of Wall Street are people and institutions that are engaged in power relations to protect the vital interests of global capital. An ideology has been created out of these power relations that is so powerful, so dominant, that even as the #OccupyWallStreet protests unfold, it is near-impossible to name it. Maybe that is why the movement has been so reluctant to making demands. How do you demand the end of empire? Really. How does one realistically make that demand without sounding absurd and without being a hypocrite? That’s the point: you can’t. But it must be done.

The question, then, is one of vision—of dreaming—that #OccupyWallStreet must consider: How far are we willing to go? And is the support from the power elite of union bosses and politicians complementary to that vision—will they join us in that paradigm shift away from empire and global capitalism into something new, something unknown, something that is being formed as we speak? These protests are not about handouts or specific policies, even though debt relief and ceasing cuts to social spending would undoubtedly make life easier for all. Rather, #OccupyWallStreet is about a paradigm shift of how power is conceived and consolidated in politics, economics, social relations, and society in general. It is about King’s revolution of values: a comprehensive shift away from racism, militarism, greed and poverty to a vision of community, economic and environmental justice, equal rights and responsibilities across racial, gender, class, sexuality, and religious differences. Indeed this is a revolution—but the real struggle is just beginning.

*Part Two will be a more in-depth look at global capitalism’s imperial ideology and what #OccupyWallStreet may face as an anti-imperial movement against it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

15-M has not only blocked evictions but has also successfully lobbied Congress to adopt protective measures for mortgage holders, such as raising the proportion of wages that cannot be garnished to pay off debts.

The movement has also pressed for legal reforms to approve “dacion en pago” – which basically means handing back the keys and the property in exchange for the bank discharging all mortgage debt. This solution, however, was rejected by all of the major parties.

But the protesters have managed to get some banks, like Bankinter, to adopt “dación en pago” on all mortgage loans, while Banco Santander has offered a three-year mortgage payment suspension for clients who have lost their jobs, or families that have seen a 25 percent drop in monthly income.

[...]

In Málaga, one of the largest cities in the southern province of Andalusía, 15-M successfully pressured the regional parliament to begin to study a “popular legislative initiative” (ILP) presented on May 31 that would boost citizen participation in political decision-making, Cosín said.

[...]

Another victory by 15-M was to prompt a debate on the need to reform the country’s election laws, which favour the large political parties, in order to increase social participation in decision-making.

The ”indignados” have also been diligently protesting against cuts to public spending, demanding free health care and public education. What this movement will ultimately accomplish is still yet to be seen, but these victories should give the activists the momentum to continue the good fight.

Since the economic crisis came to Spain, there have been hundreds of thousands of foreclosures around the country. Here’s one, which appeared on the website of the a community group called Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH, which translates as Platform of those Affected by Mortgage):

Elisa and her family suffered a foreclosure. They lost ownership of their home but are still forced to keep on paying a €300,000 debt to the bank. The bank has rejected any form of negotiation to find an alternative solution to the problem and it is now willing to leave them with a life sentence.

It’s a common story, increasingly, around the world. But what’s less common is what PAH says in the very next sentence: “We believe that we can stop this.” The group had already prevented three evictions to save this family, but this time the judge ordered the police to intervene.

The PAH received a major boost thanks to this year’s May 15 movement, in which it was heavily involved, but its work started back in February 2009. “Most of us were people from an older housing rights movement called V de Vivienda (roughly translated to ‘H’ for Housing) and other organizations,” explains Ada Colau, a spokeswoman for PAH. She also points out the influence of US organizations like the Center On Housing Rights and Evictions, as well as Michael Moore’s film Capitalism: A Love Story.

“We denounced the property bubble when the government denied that it existed,” Colau says. “We knew that it was a problem because the people were over-indebted when paying off their homes and with the economic crisis many families couldn’t pay their mortgages. We expected a high number of evictions, but what we didn’t know about was a law that can put Spanish people in debt for life.” PAH’s first actions aimed to encourage mutual support between citizens and to legislate a Deed of Assignment of Payment, which would cancel the debt with the bank by handing over the house to those living in it. Because of the government’s failure to act, the Platform started working to help the families facing foreclosures directly.

On November 2, 2010, PAH started the “Stop Evictions” campaign, giving legal advice and calling for citizen mobilizations to prevent families from being thrown out of their homes. The case of Lluis, who is from a small city in Catalonia called La Bisbal del Penedès, was the first one. A 59-year-old unemployed mechanic with a 9-year-old son, Lluis was facing the loss of his home, a €100,000 debt, and the loss of custody of his son because he was unable to provide him with a home. The support of nearly 20 neighbours made the judge postpone the eviction for a month, and by December there were 50 people sitting in front of the court asking for a solution for Lluis. Because of such organized pressure, the judge asked the bank to postpone the eviction until Lluis found another place to live or got another job. The Lluis case opened the door for many families in a similar situation. By June, the Platform had already used civil disobedience tactics to stop 42 evictions.

As PAH explains on their website, their actions are focused on stopping evictions of single-home families who can’t pay the mortgage because of unforeseen circumstances. The Platform calls on people to gather about a half an hour before an eviction is scheduled. Participants share different tasks during the mobilization; some of them speak with the legal commission and the police, politely explaining the reasons for the action, some stay with the family inside the house, and some coordinate those outside the house. After the eviction is prevented, the citizens go to the city council, and then to the bank, to demand a solution for the family.

In July, they stopped 20 more evictions in this way. But, after all of the PAH’s victories, Madrid’s police force redoubled its efforts and managed to prevent the Platform’s interference for the first time. It was the second attempt to evict a woman named María José and her two sons, one of whom has a disability. The judge ordered the use of all necessary police force to carry out the eviction. There were 50 police agents against 100 citizens and, before 8:00 a.m., María José lost her home and was left with a debt of €200,000.

That case was a turning point for PAH, which is now organizing under the slogan “An evicted house, a squatted house.” José Coy, one of the founding members of the Platform, announced on July 23rd in Madrid’s Sol Square, in front of 40,000 people with the May 15 movement, that there would be a new kind of action to defend housing rights: squatting in empty houses. After that, the PAH developed a list of empty, foreclosed houses in every part of Spain, and in recent days they conducted their first action by arranging the return of a family to their home in Moncada, Valencia. Meanwhile, last month in Seville, one hundred people gathered to develop a similar action to support of a man named Juan Carreño and his family, who lost their home in July. Mobilized by the SAT (Andalusian Workers Union), people entered through the windows and remained in the house until the bank agreed to negotiate with the evicted family.

“We have no choice,” explains Ada Colau. “The judges have begun to put out more dates and increase the police presence, and each time it’s more difficult to stop evictions.”

Today there are 2 to 4 million empty houses in Spain. “With a resigned and weak government that leaves the housing in the hands of the private market, thousands of empty houses are in the bank’s hands,” she adds. “We have no more options.”

Special thanks to Erin Rosa for helping with the English translation.