• In Cambodia, more than 500 employees at a shoe factory in the capital’s Dangkor district went on strike on Wednesday morning after managers failed to respond to a list of workers’ demands.

• Hundreds of protesters blocked streets in eastern Venezuela on Wednesday to demand clean water after a recent oil spill polluted rivers and streams that supply local storage tanks.

• Thousands of supporters of Iran’s opposition Green Movement marched silently through the streets of Tehran on Tuesday to urge the Islamic regime to release political prisoners.

• Outside the White House, hundreds of people rallied on Tuesday to protest China’s treatment of Tibet, ethnic Uyghurs and members of the Falun Gong. Alim Seytoff of the Uyghur American Association urged President Obama to pressure Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping on alleged human rights abuses.

• Six Greenpeace protesters were arrested after unfurling a sign in front of the Duke Energy building Wednesday morning, protesting the company’s recently-approved rate hikes.

• In what was billed as a Valentine’s Day message to the state’s lawmakers,  hundreds of activists gathered on Tuesday at Alabama’s Statehouse to protest the state’s  controversial immigration law.

• Flight attendants and ground workers at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport marched in picket lines Tuesday to protest American Airlines’ plans to outsource jobs and cut pay and benefits under a bankruptcy reorganization.

• Thirteen people were arrested inside the lobby of the AT&T building in Atlanta on Monday during a sit-in to stop the company from laying off 740 union workers across the southeastern United States.

• Some 200 Indonesians converged on a Jakarta square on Tuesday to denounce an Islamic vigilante group known for its armed attacks on minorities and moderates.

Most Christians—and all who celebrate the shop-til-you-drop version of Christmas—are in the final week of hubbub and to-do lists before the big day where Santa drops through the chimney with a bag full of plastic toys made of toxic petro-chemicals that were imported from China. Is that a tad too cynical? As the holiday season is upon us and folks celebrate (which I, too, enjoy) by generously giving to their favorite charities, baking homemade treats for neighbors, sipping eggnog with family, making foolish decisions at the work holiday party, my thoughts—as a Catholic Worker—inevitably turn to peace.

“What do you want for Christmas?” asks my mother. “World Peace.” I’ve made the joke so many times that it is no longer funny—was it ever? Nonetheless, I slug through the commercialized, state/religious-authority approved versions of Jesus that bear no reference to the poor, to social justice, or to the radical teachings of sharing, inclusivity, and nonviolence that the “Prince of Peace” spoke. “Nothing political,” my mother warns me before any family dinner. Each year, my immediate family gathers with our friends of over 20 years from across the street for games, drinks and a Christmas skit. The Olzen family script is in the works but I’ll give a little teaser for this year’s theme: “Occupy North Pole.” Again my mother forewarns as her eyes settle squarely on me, “but we don’t want to get too political.”

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Nonviolent action should be a truth-telling act. Gandhi, famously titling his autobiography Experiments with Truth, understood his life of nonviolent action to be intimately connected with seeking “satyagraha,”—truth force—a rich, depth-filled praxis as a means of transforming conflict and winning hearts and minds. Truth-telling holds enormous power for social change. Storytelling, like SmartMeme’s ReImagining Change or Utah Phillip’s Wobblie-inspired folks songs, tugs at the heartstrings needed for individuals to engage in the struggle. Information sharing, like Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers or Wikileaks’ caches of classified communiqués, forcibly change the direction of public discourse by disclosing the secrets intended to hide the truth. Human rights reporting, like Amnesty International’s global advocacy for political prisoners, has contributed to increased people-powered and institutional pressure for policy change. Truth-telling, then, in a public, honest and transparent way can hold a central function in pulling the curtain back on injustice and be a means for organizing creative, effective responses.

In September 2011, the humanitarian aid group No More Deaths released a shocking human rights report entitled Culture of Cruelty: Abuse and Impunity in Short-Term U.S. Border Patrol Custody. This is the organization’s second report; in 2008, it published Crossing the Line which narrated the stories of over 400 individual accounts of abuse of migrants while in Border Patrol custody. Their new report contains even more detailed evidence, concluding that “the abuse, neglect, and dehumanization of migrants is part of the institutional culture of Border Patrol.” Data collected from almost 13,000 individuals in 4,130 interviews—over the course of a three year period while simultaneously providing direct aid to repatriated and deported migrants—unmask an often-untold (or at least, unheard) story of pervasive and systemic human rights violation committed by a federal agency in the United States.

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On Monday, a close friend of Waging Nonviolence, Francisco “Pancho” Ramos Stierle, was arrested while meditating at Oscar Grant Plaza during the early morning raid on Occupy Oakland. (Several moving photos of his arrest can be seen here.) As a petition on Change.org explains:

He is currently being held by the Oakland Police Department on $10,000 bail and they plan to turn him over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for immediate deportation. He could be sent to Arizona as soon as tommorrow morning. That means we need to act now!

On Facebook, Leenie Venet offers this update:

Pancho is now at Santa Rita in Dublin, CA.  His arraignment for the civil disobedience charges has been fast tracked to Wed. 11/16/11 at 9:00 AM in Room 107 at the  WILEY W. MANUEL COURTHOUSE.  There is a possibility that he will  be transferred after this hearing to the custody of the immigration officials. Please attend this hearing and show your support for Pancho Ramos Stierle!!

Before he goes to court later this morning, please read and sign the petition to free Pancho, which can be found here. An email from Janine Schwab at the American Friends Service Committee says that you can also:

call the following federal officials NOW and ask them to ask Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release (or lift) the immigration hold on him. Barbara Lee 510-763-0370. Nancy Pelosi 415-556-4862. Diane Feinstein 415-393-0707. We have 12 to 24 hours to act on this.

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Local community-based immigrant advocacy groups, including VOZ, Oregon New Sanctuary Movement (ONSM), and the Partnership for Safety and Justice, converged in a peaceful demonstration this past Saturday outside of the Wells Fargo building in Portland, Oregon as part of a nationally coordinated effort in support of the National Prison Industry Divestment Campaign. Demonstrations, workshops and other actions were held by partner organizations across the country in the cities of Wichita, New York and Seattle.

Protestors called for the immediate divestment of investments made by Wells Fargo and other major shareholders in private prison corporations such as the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Geo Group Inc., whose business models actively pursue harsher immigrant incarceration policies such as those seen in Arizona, Georgia and more recently Alabama.  The detention centers and prisons that these and other corporations bank on are often plagued with instances of sexual and physical abuse against immigrants who do not have access to legitimate legal recourse due to their status.

Peter Cervantes-Gautshi, (check out his highly censored story, Wall Street and Our Campaign to Decriminalize Immigrants), who was present at the Portland action, stated that “we wanted to show Wells Fargo that this movement is growing and that more and more people are becoming aware of their involvement in using tax dollars to put people in cages. They need to instead invest in creating good jobs for people.”

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• Classrooms have remained shut for more than 10 million Kenyan students at the start of the term when students sit national exams after about 200,000 members of the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) stayed away. Teachers marched through the streets of Nairobi Wednesday on the second day of a nationwide strike.

• Thousands of people marched on Thursday against the appointed government in Swaziland, Africa’s last absolute monarchy.

• In Australia, unions are claiming victory in their campaign against the state government after an angry crowd of about 30,000 marched on State Parliament yesterday to protest the O’Farrell government’s controversial legislation that limits public sector workers’ pay raises.

• Thousands of teachers and students took to the streets of several of  Colombia’s  major cities Wednesday “in defense of public education.”

• At least 10 young illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States almost all their lives could be deported after being arrested Tuesday during a boisterous sit-in rally during which about 300 people blocked a busy intersection near uptown Charlotte to protest immigration law.

• About 1,200 workers at Freeport McMoRan’s Sociedad Minera Cerro Verde SAA unit, Peru’s third-largest copper producer, began a 48-hour strike on Wednesday over pay increases and will hold a second strike from Sept. 14 if no accord is reached.

• About 3,000 hotel workers started a week-long strike against Hyatt yesterday as part of a campaign in four cities—Honolulu, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles—over the subcontracting of jobs and poor working conditions.

• In Jordan, scores of journalists staged a sit-in on Wednesday in solidarity with colleagues discharged from service by Nourmina TV earlier this month.

• Bahrain yesterday released doctors and medical personnel who have been behind bars since March after increased international condemnation and a series of hunger strikes by supporters inside and outside the country.

• Normal life across Kashmir was disrupted on Tuesday, the first day of a 2-day general strike to press for release of political prisoners and to protest the fresh wave of arrests across the valley.

• In what organizers are proclaiming to be the largest social protest in Israel’s history, hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Tel Aviv and other cities Saturday night to protest the high cost of living in the country and demand government action.

• Workers across Italy went on strike yesterday as the center-right government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi rushed to secure parliamentary backing for austerity measures vital to keep European Central Bank support.

• More than 2000 people marched through the streets of a Glasgow suburb on Sunday to protest plans to build a massive waste incinerator.

• Several hundred Haitians demonstrated Monday in support of an 18-year-old man who says he was sexually assaulted by peacekeepers from Uruguay on a U.N. base along the southern coast of Haiti.

• Several thousand protesters from major unions and leftist groups rallied in central Madrid last night to demand a referendum on the proposed cap on long-term budget deficits.

• More than 100 jailed Bahraini activists – including doctors who treated injured protesters during months of anti-government protests and crackdowns in the Gulf kingdom – are on hunger strike.

• Immigrant rights groups chanted “Jesus was an immigrant” under the New Mexico governor’s office Tuesday as lawmakers returned to Santa Fe for a special session that may include a proposed repeal of a law that lets undocumented workers get New Mexico driver’s licenses.

• Thousands of nurses and supporters descended on their local Congressional offices nationwide last Thursday, demanding that Wall Street pay for the crisis it created.

• In the largest civil disobedience protests in the environmental movement’s recent history, 50 more people were arrested Thursday outside the White House in a protest against the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. Since Saturday, 322 people have now been arrested.

• Seven hundred transport workers blocked a main road in western Sydney yesterday to demand new federal work safety laws.

• Some retrenched workers of the Ghana Cotton Company (GCC) in Bolgatanga are on hunger strike and they and their colleagues on Thursday reiterated their appeal to government to ensure that their severance awards are paid them.

• Police arrested undocumented students who were holding a demonstration Wednesday outside the immigration offices in Los Angeles against Secure Communities, a controversial  immigration enforcement program.

• Police turned away a half-dozen protesters on Wednesday who had occupied Rep. Paul Ryan’s Kenosha office since last week.

• Around 100 lawyers in Syria defied Bashar al-Assad’s regime as it continues a violent crackdown against country-wide protests, by holding coordinated sit-ins outside bar associations in at least four regions of the country on Tuesday.

• The Pakistani city of Karachi was brought to a standstill on Tuesday after a “day of mourning” strike was called by a political party to protest against weeks of violence.

• Greek tourism workers walked off the job Tuesday in a 24-hour strike over government pension cuts, as dozens demonstrated outside three luxury hotels in the Greek capital to protest the cutbacks.

• In San Francisco, authorities arrested 45 people Monday during another protest against BART, the operators of the Bay Area train system.

• In New York City, an 82-year-old resident of Brooklyn facing foreclosure was allowed to stay in her house last Friday after more than 200 people gathered in front of her home to block the eviction.

• Hundreds of foreign exchange students walked off their jobs at a Hershey’s chocolate plant in Pennsylvania to protest low pay and physically draining work.

• Latino activists held a protest outside President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign headquarters on Tuesday to ask him to end a criminal deportation program they say is snaring large number of illegal immigrants who have not committed crimes.

• Syrian security forces fired at thousands of protesters who poured into the streets throughout the country Friday killing at least two, activists said, a day after the United States and its European allies demanded that President Bashar Assad step down.

• Indian activist Anna Hazare began a public hunger strike in the country’s capital Friday, accompanied by thousands of cheering supporters, who want to see stronger anti-corruption measures in India.

• Hundreds of striking Verizon workers held a candlelight vigil outside their CEO’s Mendham, New Jersey mansion Thursday, hoping to draw a stark contrast between the contract demands of blue-collar workers and the quality of life enjoyed by the company’s executives.

• What began as the latest public hearing organized by a U.S. Department of Homeland Security task force to address deportation policy concerns ended in the arrest of 10 immigration reform activists Wednesday evening in Chicago.

• Protesters gatecrashed a mining and exploration conference organised by the New South Wales government in Australia yesterday, abseiling off the balcony of a Sydney hotel to unfurl a banner against coal seam gas.

• A program that is central to President Obama’s immigration enforcement strategy has drawn protests by Latino and immigrant organizations in six major cities on Tuesday, as those groups stepped up their confrontation with the administration over the fast pace of deportations.

• Anna Hazare, India’s leading anti-corruption activist, began a hunger strike in police custody following his arrest Tuesday morning. His unlawful arrest sparked massive outrage across the country and widespread protests were witnessed.

• Bolivian indigenous activists started a long protest march on Sunday from the Amazon plains to the country’s capital against a government plan to build a 306km highway through a national park in indigenous territory.

• On Monday, hundreds of people attending the Midwest Rising! Convergence took to the streets of St. Louis to protest Bank of America and Peabody Coal. Fifteen community and climate activists were arrested.

• Jubilant students at Glasgow University were celebrating a victory on Monday night after one of the longest sit-ins in British history. The students will move out at the end of the month after reaching agreement with the university which they say will ensure no further cuts and a new club.

• Roughly 25 percent of the Trinidad’s police officers joined in a one-day strike on Monday to protest the government’s offer of a 5 percent pay raise, which the union says that isn’t enough.