• At least 10,000 protesters marched through the streets of Paris Saturday to rally against the government’s crackdown on immigrants and the recent expulsion of hundreds of Roma.

• Hundreds of people took to the streets in northern Afghanistan to protest a US-led airstrike in Takhar province that killed civilians last Thursday. The demonstrators shouted slogans against American and foreign troops and called for them to be brought to justice.

• About 3,000 Muslims marched Saturday through Indonesia’s capital to the U.S. Embassy to protest plans by a Florida church to burn the Quran on Sept. 11.

• A small sit-in at the University of Connecticut’s administration building entered its third day on Thursday, and students vowed to remain in the building until the university promises to increase janitors’ pay.

• Gaza families of prisoners detained in Israeli jails held a protest Monday against the deduction of 170 shekels from prisoners’ salaries for electricity payments. The protesters gathered at Red Cross headquarters, and chanted slogans blaming the ruling Hamas party for the deduction, which they said increased prisoners’ suffering.

• London Underground workers started a fresh wave of 24-hour strikes, threatening travel chaos for days and costing the economy almost £50 million, in protest at plans to axe 800 jobs. The action, to be followed by further stoppages in October and November, will disrupt Tube services, used by millions of passengers every day.

• Shopkeepers observed a general strike and schools were shut for the day on Saturday in Quetta, Pakistan to mourn an overnight attack on minority Shiite Muslims that killed 68 people.

• Greenpeace members protested against Japan in front of its Ankara embassy Monday following the arrest of two group activists in that country after they exposed a whale meat scandal involving a government-sponsored whaling program in the Southern Ocean.

• 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.

1) Engage leadership.

The UUA president made a personal commitment on the issue. He offered to go to Arizona. He issued an invitation to others. He agreed to get arrested. Denominational leaders are often overwhelmed with their responsibilities and commitments. And yet, their personal involvement in economic and social justice issues, on the ground, particularly in the midst of tough situations, can support and embolden local leadership and draw others into the work. Leading through action is always stronger than through words.

Equally important was the leadership of the local pastors in Phoenix, especially the terrific work of Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray and of the UUA’s moderator, Gini Courter, who came to Phoenix with members of the UUA Board.

2) Link to principles and history.

The UUs consistently linked the struggle in Arizona to their longstanding commitment to civil rights and their core principles. The UUs also linked the campaign to the denomination’s anti-racism initiative.

3) Assign staff and resources for planning.

The UU committed money and staff to the planning and preparation in Arizona. Presumably, the UUs are as cash-strapped as other denominations, and yet they committed resources to action and witness. As a result of the denomination’s commitment, contributions flowed to help with bail, legal defense, and additional outreach work.

4) Coordinate with local coalitions.

Often, the planning for large social action events, particularly ones involving planned civil disobedience, is a bit complicated, requiring lots of time, patience, and flexibility. The UUs developed their plans in collaboration and coordination with others on the ground. The UUs were particularly grateful for the work of Puente and the interfaith folks in Somos. This respectful approach is not always easy but leads to deep relationships long-term.

5) Be visual.

The UUs were very visual. Their yellow T-shirts could be seen blocks away. Their giant banner was a good media visual. And they chose a smart downtown street location that attracted attention.

6) Use social media.

The UU media team took advantage of the latest in social media. Participants posted on Facebook and YouTube. They tweeted. They took photos and videos. The mass text alerts told people where to go and kept folks abreast of breaking news.

7) Ask for personal engagement and sacrifice.

The UUA made a courageous and bold ask of supporters. People were asked to get to Phoenix in July and consider getting arrested. Approximately one-third of those arrested in Phoenix were UUs. Participants were blessed by the experience. Rev. David Miller from Solana Beach, California wrote in a blog post:

This week I have wept with sadness but also with great hope and joy. I feel this is a turning point for Unitarian Universalism. There we were, in our orange-ish yellow shirts, in mass, with the giant word “love” on our chests. Excuse the old marketing guy in me, but there it was, our brand, we were being called “the love people.” It was phenomenal to be a part of a coordinated effort of civil disobedience with Unitarian Universalists from every corner of this country. Lay people, ministers, administrators, association staff, all coming together. People from all over the association, linked arm in arm with brothers and sisters in the struggle and with our president leading the way, I was so proud. I was proud of our joint effort, our cooperation with local organizations and the visible power we had being there together. We were supporting each other as members of a faith, a faith steeped in the power of love to change hearts.

• About a hundred net neutrality activists left their laptops at home Friday afternoon to gather at Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters to protest the search giant’s perceived betrayal of the movement for federal internet openness rules. The protest group’s ranks included eager young activists, long-time technologists, first-time protesters and the ever-present Raging Grannies, who led anti-Google sing-alongs set to classic Americana songs.

• Around 1,000 Senegalese opposition supporters took to the streets on Saturday to protest President Abdoulaye Wade’s regime, saying they were fed up with power cuts, floods, and rising food costs.

• In Haiti, dozens of protesters held a sit-in at the National Palace Thursday to oppose the forced evictions of thousands of displaced residents from makeshift camps. The Haitian government has been urged to issue a moratorium on all forced evictions until alternative shelter options can be provided.

• Two Korean priests are publicly fasting outside a government building in the latest protest against the highly controversial Four Rivers project, which they believe will be detrimental to the environment.

• Iranian opposition members in Germany are staging a two-day hunger strike to demand a stop executions and an international investigation of prisons in their home country. A group of 20 on Friday chanted slogans such as “Stop stonings” and “Free political prisoners” on Berlin’s most prominent public spot at the Brandenburg Gate, two days after the purported TV confession of an Iranian woman facing death by stoning on adultery charges.

• On Saturday, all the taxi drivers in the provincial city of Dégolan‌ in Iranian Kurdistan went on strike parking their taxi cabs by the Bolbanabad terminal to protest a 20 day interruption in the compressed natural gas supplies.

• Sunday’s game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Washington Nationals was briefly interrupted by protesters urging commissioner Bud Selig to move the 2011 All-Star Game from Phoenix because of Arizona’s new immigration legislation.

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? … It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. … Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

These teachings were alive and well during the demonstrations in Arizona against SB 1070, the state’s anti-immigrant law that was partially struck down by a federal judge two days before it took effect. In recognition of the larger issues raised by the bill, as well as the realization that open persecution of “illegals” would remain official state policy going forward, hundreds of people took to the streets on July 29th under the banner of the movement’s mantra, “We Will Not Comply.” Almost 100 people were arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience during these protests, and a clear message of the refusal to cooperate with injustice was communicated to both local officials and an international audience alike.

While many of the events of that day have been well-reported, the opening salvo that set the tone of noncompliance and civil resistance seemed to slip by almost without notice. It was, however, a poignant and powerful action that reflected the best qualities of the nonviolence paradigm. Here is my recollection of what transpired that night as SB 1070 was to take effect:

The clock nudged toward midnight on a cool Arizona summer evening. With monsoon moisture in the air and faint stars flickering above, two columns of people solemnly proceeded on opposite sides of the street to the main entry point into their city. Families, children, and elders together filed into the street, with an air of celebratory defiance building as each individual added their body to the blockade. None would pass into this community for the foreseeable future, and people living in terror had openly lost their fear. The tone was now set, and the events of the coming day would reflect it, consciously or not.

This was the beginning of Arizona’s July 29th demonstrations against SB 1070 and related anti-immigrant policies. At 12:01AM that day, the parts of the bill that had not been struck down earlier in the week by a federal judge – including a mandate that all state officials and agencies enforce federal immigration laws to their fullest extent, and also a provision that criminalizes harboring or transporting undocumented persons – took effect. And in the tiny town of Guadalupe (pop. 6000) on the outskirts of Phoenix, community members fired the first nonviolent “shot” in the day’s struggle against legalized oppression.

As the tension mounted, city buses began to stack up and sheriff’s deputies slowly encroached toward the human blockade from both sides of the street. The line of resistance stood firm, however, and soon doubled when another line was formed mostly of local activists and allies in the struggle for justice and human rights. Law enforcement officers now bluntly stated their intention to make mass arrests unless the intersection was cleared. Still no one moved. The flummoxed deputy again made his pronouncement, and again the blockade remained. When the warning was repeated a third time, it became clear that neither the political will nor manpower was present to effectively deal with the dozens of civil disobedients who had physically created a wall of noncompliance at the edge of their town.

Following a phone call from the mayor, and with due regard to the facts that the symbolic action had accomplished its purpose and the people had stood up in solidarity, the blockade self-dispersed after more than an hour of holding the street. The point had been made: people were tired of living in fear, and they would not comply with laws like SB 1070 that seek to institutionalize that fear. Make no mistake, the provisions of the law were designed not so much to change the realities of living as an undocumented person in Arizona, but more so to inculcate a climate of permanent fear and to institutionally legitimize the worst of the state’s unjust police practices. But on this day, when the world would be watching, people stood up.

Episodes like this need to be placed in a context to fully understand their import. For the residents of tiny Guadalupe, a town made up of equal parts Mexican and Yacqui, there has been a constant reign of terror in their midst with the main perpetrators being Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies. Guadalupe has no police force of its own, and so had made a contract with the county sheriff’s department to take on the role of policing the township. Over the years there have been numerous incidents and allegations of police misconduct, leading to a very public feud between Guadalupe’s former mayor and Arpaio that resulted in the contract being suspended and the sheriff’s department becoming unwelcome there.

What specifically prompted this dust-up were a set of 2008 immigration “raids” conducted by the sheriff’s office, which resulted in about 150 arrests with nearly half having immigration implications. The raids themselves essentially devolve upon massive sting operations where deputies scrutinize moving vehicles for the most minute traffic violations – for example, a cracked taillight or windshield, changing lanes without adequately signaling, or the improper use of a horn. These stops then result in ID checks, searches, and other escalations that can lead straight to deportations. The raids are conducted primarily in communities of color, leading many to suggest that the true nature of the “crime” being targeted is simply being brown-skinned.

Guadalupe’s political leadership at the time publicly averred that Arpaio and his forces had not been invited to the town to conduct these raids, with the former Vice Mayor bluntly stating that “Arpaio is doing it because he wants to show the Latin people that he has power.” A former councilwoman concurred, noting that “this is racial profiling and it needs to stop.” For her stance against Arpaio, former mayor Rebecca Jimenez was herself pulled over and ticketed by sheriff’s deputies for a broken headlight. “How do you like working for a sheriff who racially profiles against people of color?” Jimenez asked the deputy who pulled her over, according to a report released by the sheriff. “I didn’t think that Sheriff Joe was going to retaliate against me, but I guess that I was wrong,” she said, according to the report.

This is the backdrop against which Guadalupe’s residents took the streets in the opening hours of July 29th. The Phoenix New Times later reported that the crowd had “faced down” Arpaio’s deputies, with one resident saying that “regardless of what the law says, we’re all human beings. We shouldn’t be treated as something else.” Following the action, protest organizer Andrew Sanchez said that “it was peaceful, it was successful, and we managed to get the cops’ attention.” Indeed, this action of open noncompliance with unjust laws and practices was done in the best tradition of nonviolent civil disobedience, and it merits our attention as an important part of what will be an ongoing campaign of “noncooperation with evil” in the days ahead.

• A group of desperate job-hunters—who’ve been out of work so long their unemployment benefits ran out—staged a protest rally on the steps of Federal Hall on Wall Street yesterday to demand that the Senate pass the Tier 5 unemployment extension.

• A crowd of approximately 35 gathered at JP Morgan Chase’s offices in San Francisco on Tuesday to demand that banks and private equity firms pay California counties millions in overdue real estate taxes related to corporate acquisitions stemming from the economic crisis.

• Four Greenpeace activists climbed onto the roof of Poland’s environment ministry in Warsaw this week to protest the government’s lackluster defence of the Bialowieza Primeval Forest, one of Europe’s most precious environments.

• Employees at the Mott’s apple processing plant in Williamson, N.Y., have been on strike for at least two months with no end in sight, as the company insists on wage cuts despite posting record profits.

• A crowd of about 300 villagers in Kabul blocked a main road in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday to protest the killing of three innocent villagers by US Forces. In the first six months of this year, 386 civilians were killed by NATO or Afghan government forces.

• Police arrested five of about 100 protesters gathered outside a Minneapolis hotel yesterday, trying to deliver petitions to commissioner Bud Selig to move the 2011 All-Star game out of Arizona because of that state’s new immigration law.

• Expatriate Kashmiris and Pakistanis from different parts of the United Kingdom staged a big demonstration in front of 10-Downing Street on Thursday to protest against British Prime Minister David Cameron’s remarks on issues of Pakistan and Kashmir.

• Through a series of well-choreographed steps, a tiger-themed flash mob called “Freeze Tiger Trade” spearheaded by WWF-Malaysia turned heads and attracted attention on the status of our Malayan tigers here in Kuala Lumpur.

• In Turkey, nongovernmental organizations in the eastern province of Batman held a silent march and sit-in demonstration yesterday in protest of a mine explosion that claimed the lives of four people on Monday.

• On Wednesday, unionized workers of the West Indies Paper Products Limited in Jamaica walked off the job to protest against what they claimed was the failure of the management to improve wage and fringe benefits.

• More than 100 people at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in England went on hunger strike on Wednesday.

• In Azerbaijan, ten opposition activists jailed for participating in an unsanctioned rally calling for free elections in central Baku on July 31 have declared a hunger strike.

• Around 120 Chinese seasonal berry pickers in northern Sweden went on a 15-kilometre (9.3-mile) march overnight to Friday to protest their salaries

• In Malaysia, police forcefully broke up peaceful candlelight vigils held on August 1, against the Internal Security Act (ISA), and arrested 36 people in Petaling Jaya and Penang.

• Several Greenpeace activists were arrested after rappelling off the Calgary Tower yesterday morning to hang a banner attacking the relationship between the oilsands industry and government.

• Hundreds of Afghans have taken to the streets in the southwestern Helmand province to voice their anger at the killing of a 65-year-old man by US troops. Another demonstration was held in the southern Oruzgan province over the alleged desecration of Islam’s holy book, the Quran, by US forces.

• Two men carrying Mexican flags in protest of Arizona’s immigration law ran onto the outfield during the seventh inning of the New York Mets’ game against the Arizona Diamondbacks Friday night at Citi Field. Prior to the game, about 40 people across the street from the ballpark chanted “Oppose racism!” and “Boycott Arizona!”

• Several hundred Red Shirt protesters defied a state of emergency in the Thai capital on Monday to stage a symbolic protest, with hundreds of people sprawling on the ground and chanting, “People died here!”

• An estimated 30,000 people, consisting of tourists and residents, linked hands on the Thai island of Koh Samui on Saturday afternoon to protest oil exploration due to start in the Gulf of Thailand.

• Advocates for New York City’s community gardens delivered fresh produce to the steps of city hall Monday to protest the expiration of the Garden Settlement of 2002, which protected community gardens from real estate developers.

• About half the detainees at the 216-bed Campsfield House immigration centre in Oxfordshire Britain are refusing meals to protest their prolonged detention and treatment, which has caused many to suffer from mental health problems.

• About 600 employees of a Volvo bus plant in India have been on strike for a week to demand better pay and the return to work of four colleagues suspended following a dispute at the plant.

Hard line Arizona officials were no less deterred by the ruling as well. Gov. Jan Brewer and State Senator Russell Pearce both called it a “bump” in the road, while Sheriff Joe Arpaio went ahead with one of his controversial crime raids targeting illegal immigrants. But in a moment that should only bolster the resolve of those determined to fight this law nonviolently, Arpaio also told the Associated Press that he is “not going to put up with any civil disobedience.”

As if comparisons to the Civil Rights Movement weren’t already strong enough, such a statement practically summons the ghost of Alabama’s infamous law enforcer Bull Connor, whose aggressive tactics against peaceful demonstrators backfired when broadcast on national television.

But rather than wonder if Arpaio is so blinded by power that he would make this same mistake, protesters should be asking themselves if they are up to the challenge of remaining nonviolent if he does?

So far they have shown remarkable determination.

• Members of the youth climate group Consequence hosted a Big Oil Carnival for Senate staffers on the steps of Union Station in Washington DC on Tuesday. The event was complete with oil-themed games, Tony Hayward clowns, a stilt walking Uncle Sam and a message to the Senate: “Stop playing games with our clean energy future.”

• Greenpeace U.K. shut down at least 30 BP stations in London on Tuesday, fanning out to as many as 50 BP stations and posting banners that said, “Closed: Moving beyond petroleum.” They also pulled safety switches that cut off fuel supplies at the stations — and removed the switches so they couldn’t be turned back on again.

• Four supporters of the federal DREAM Act stood before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in full cap and gowns at a Netroots Nation luncheon in Las Vegas last week to protest his lack of conviction on a bill that would allow a pathway to citizenship for undocumented youth.

• An animal rights activist was arrested in Jordan’s capital on Sunday after covering herself in lettuce in a square along one of Amman’s trendiest streets. She held a placard reading “Let vegetarianism grow on you.”

• Rights activists, including celebrities such as Bianca Jagger and actors from James Cameron’s film Avatar, gathered outside the venue of the annual general meeting of the mining company Vedanta in London on Wednesday to protest its controversial plans to mine tribal land in the Orissa region of India.

• Eight people were arrested during a sit-in staged by the direct action group GetEqual in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday as part of an effort to push for a vote on the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, which would outlaw workplace discrimination based sexual orientation and gender identity.

• 15 people from a small town in North Queensland, Australia blocked a coal export terminal by camping on it for two nights to protest pollution and noise from the coal trains that pass through the town 15 times a day.