Indigenous rights
Ottawa Action kills notion of ethical oil

One of the organizers of the event, President of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, Dave Coles, is the first to climb the fence and be arrested. Maude Barlow (far left) was in the first wave over the fence and was led away by police.
Ever feel like you aren’t where you should be? It’s okay, we all do. Yet, sometimes, we feel, without a single doubt, we are in precisely the right place at precisely the right moment.
A meticulously-planned civil disobedience uprising demanding climate justice and the honoring of the rights of indigenous people, felt just like that. Even before the drums.
The right place is a hill which belonged to the Algonquin First Nation for centuries, yet is currently occupied by Canada’s capitol buildings and is known as Parliament Hill.
The right time is the blue sky morning of Monday, September 26th. Clayton Thomas-Muller, of the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation and organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, opens a solidarity rally by thanking the Algonquin First Nation for use of their land.
Experiments with truth: 9/28/11
- In Ottawa, over 200 protesters objecting to the federal government’s enthusiastic support for Alberta’s tar sands and the Keystone pipeline XL were arrested Monday morning as they attempted to stage a sit-in in the House of Commons.
- Postal workers held rallies across the country on Tuesday to back legislation that would repeal a benefit-funding mandate they say lies behind the U.S. Postal Service’s financial woes.
- Bahraini clerics staged a protest sit-in on Monday over the recent mass arrests of women and minors by the Khalifa regime.
- Tens of thousands of French teachers and their supporters took to the streets Tuesday for a national strike and protests over education job cuts under President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government.
- In California, at least 100 prisoners at Calipatria’s Adminstrative Segregation Unit (ASU) and 50-100 prisoners at Pelican Bay’s Security Housing Unit (SHU) resumed their hunger strike to protest conditions on Monday.
- Philippine Airlines suspended all its early flights Tuesday after some of its workers walked out of their jobs to protest the flag carrier’s plan to outsource airport services, catering and call-center operations.
- On Tuesday, Palestinian and Arab prisoners currently held in 23 prisons and detention camps in Israel and in the West Bank went on a hunger strike to protest the Israeli Prison Service’s (IPS) measures against them and their families.
- Bolivian President Evo Morales has halted construction on a road project through a national park and indigenous land following more than a month of protests.
Experiments with truth: 8/17/11
- 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.
Experiments with truth: 8/15/11
- Thousands of residents of the Northeastern Chinese port city Dalian took to the streets on Sunday to demand the relocation of a petrochemical plant that threatened to spill toxins into the city last week when a typhoon breached a nearby dike. Chinese authorities have complied and ordered the closure of the plant.
- Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis poured into the streets of major cities and towns across the country on Friday, keeping the pressure on the nation’s embattled president to step down.
- About 100 people participated in a two-mile march in Santa Cruz, California on Sunday to demand a halt to construction of 32 homes on what is believed to be a 6,000-year-old Native American burial site.
- More than 1,000 people led by the poet turned activist Javier Sicilia have joined a march in Mexico City to protest the government’s strategy in the fight against drug gangs.
- Tunisian security forces used tear gas and truncheons Monday to disperse several hundred protesters in the capital demanding that the government step down for failing to prosecute supporters of the ousted president.
- Thousands of people turned out at rallies across Australia on Sunday to call on federal MPs to support a ban on live animal exports.
- Thousands of people took to the streets of Dublin yesterday to demand civil marriage equality.
- Tens of thousands of people gathered across Israel on Saturday to call for lower living costs in an effort to show the government their protest movement has countrywide support.
Experiments with truth: 8/10/11
- Ten people were arrested Monday after blocking the road to the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort near Flagstaff in an attempt to prevent construction on a new snowmaking system out of sewage that they say will defile a mountain held sacred by all the region’s indigenous people.
- Anti-fracking activists wearing gas masks and lab coats gathered in Cape Town city center on Tuesday to protest Shell’s plans for shale gas exploration in South Africa’s Karoo region.
- Tribal groups in the Philippines marked International Day of Indigenous Peoples on Tuesday with protests calling for an end to human rights violations, land grabbing and environmental destruction.
- About 125 people gathered outside Speaker of the House John Boehner’s office in West Chester, Ohio on Tuesday to demand more jobs for people in his district.
- Some 1,000 people took part in a protest in Youghal, County Cork, Ireland last weekend over plans by the Health Service Executive to replace the town ambulance service with a first responder paramedic car.
- Dozens of Togolese journalists marched in the capital, Lomé, on Saturday to call attention to reported allegations that government security agents planned to retaliate against critical reporters.
- Miners at Anglo American’s Moranbah North coal mine in Australia are protesting what they describe as a “dangerous practice” of sharing camp rooms, which would require workers to drive home after 12-hour shifts.
Experiments with truth: 5/20/11
- Thousands of people gathered in makeshift protest camps in Spain’s principal cities on Thursday to protest the nation’s two main political parties as inept at dealing with the country’s economic woes, including high unemployment. The largest demonstration occurred in the heart of Madrid for a fourth straight day.
- Ugandans are taking to the streets to protest rising fuel and food prices and rapid inflation in the so-called Walk to Work protests, named after a handful of opposition leaders who were arrested back in April as they walked to work in solidarity with those who can no longer afford to take public transportation.
- More than 150 exiled Chagos islanders and their relatives gathered in London on Thursday to press for a return to the Indian Ocean archipelago from which they were exiled 40 years ago, and to discuss the area’s environmental future.
- More than 200 women traveled to London on Wednesday to explain to their local MPs how they will be affected by the state pension age rising to 65 by 2018, instead of 2020 as planned by the previous government.
- Students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute held a second graduation ceremony on Saturday to protest the school’s choice of commencement speaker, ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, whose company they criticize for its environmental record. The “counterpoint commencement’’ featured Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute, a sustainability think tank, as its speaker.
- Activists in the north of Sweden are occupying BASF’s potato warehouse and blocking the exit in order to hinder the German chemical company from planting the risky GMO potato “Amflora.”
- As part of the first significant protest in West Virginia over the rapidly growing exploration of the Marcellus shale field, about 100 people gathered in front of the Monongalia County Courthouse on Wednesday to argue that state regulators aren’t up to the job of properly overseeing the natural gas industry and preventing air and water contamination.
- Residents of North Fair Oaks, California gathered around a 65-foot-tall tree nicknamed “Granny” on Monday after learning days earlier that utility crews were planning to cut it down. They have so far managed to save a centuries-old California valley oak tree in the path of a San Francisco water pipeline.
Experiments with truth: 4/13/11
- Around 3,000 people marched through central Tokyo on Sunday to protest the Hamaoka nuclear-power plant, which is located about 200 kilometers southwest of Tokyo in Shizuoka Prefecture—the heart of a region that seismologists believe is well overdue for a massive undersea earthquake of a magnitude 8 or higher.
- After Bahrain’s interior ministry acknowledged that two political prisoners had died in custody last week, the daughter of a detained human rights activist began a hunger strike on Monday, calling on the authorities to release her father and other members of her family who have been arrested.
- Tens of thousands of Yemenis filled the streets of Sanaa, Taiz, Hudaydah, Ibb and the southeastern province of Hadramaut on Monday to protest the Gulf Cooperation Council’s plan for Saleh’s removal.
- Soldiers and police moved into Cairo’s main square on Tuesday to end a five-day sit-in by protesters demanding civilian rule and swifter prosecution of Egypt’s former president and his allies.
- Irish Greenpeace volunteers held a protest outside Facebook’s Dublin office yesterday, calling on it to phase out its use of coal power.
- Protesters chained themselves to a ladder inside the State Government’s offices in Melbourne, Australia on Monday and called on the Government to withdraw its support for a proposed coal and gas-fired power station in the Latrobe Valley.
- Workers at Buenaventura’s Uchucchacua silver mine in Peru have lifted an eight-day strike seeking higher bonuses and better working conditions, but a protest by villagers with their own set of unresolved problems stemming from the mining company kept the workers from returning.
- Internet users in Dushanbe have staged Tajikistan’s first-known flash mob in order to protest the state electricity provider’s inability to provide uninterrupted power supplies.
- Activists barricaded a road outside the London offices of Electricite de France SA on Monday to protest plans by Europe’s biggest power producer to build a new generation of U.K. nuclear power plants.
Experiments with truth: 12/8/10
- La Via Campesina—the world’s largest federation of peasant and smallholder farmers—held what they called the “1,000 Cancún Global Day of Action for Climate Justice” in which several thousand people took to the streets to march in protest of the UN climate summit.
- Indigenous and youth groups demonstrated both inside and outside the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun yesterday to call for their inclusion in the negotiations.
- In a country where walkouts are very rare, Czech public sector workers went on strike against the government’s austerity measures on Wednesday.
- Public transport in Athens and train services across Greece are shut down today as state workers protest cuts in wages and bonuses and the reorganization of state-controlled companies.
- Hair salons across France turned off their sound systems on Tuesday in a nationwide protest against a tax on background music.
- Iranian students have defied a security clampdown to stage anti-government protests throughout the country. Unconfirmed reports say about a dozen people have been arrested, including at Tehran University in the capital.
- More than 10,000 supporters of Macedonia’s leading opposition party protested in the country’s capital to call for early elections, accusing the conservative government of mismanaging the economy and criticizing its failure to bring the country closer to the EU and NATO.
Experiments with truth: 10/8/10
- The group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Against the War demonstrated in Washington, DC, Thursday to launch “Operation Recovery,” the first veteran-led campaign to stop the deployment of soldiers traumatized by multiple tours of duty. The veterans gathered outside the Walter Reed Army Medical Center before marching to Capitol Hill.
- Gaza City residents organized a sit-in on Thursday, demonstrating collective anger over a home video of an Israeli soldier belly dancing beside a bound and blindfolded Palestinian woman in the West Bank.
- About 60 Greenpeace activists cordoned off part of the European Parliament headquarters yesterday to protest the widespread use of nuclear technology.
- Thousands of prisoners across Venezuela have ended a hunger strike after authorities agreed to some of their demands, a watchdog group said Thursday.
- Food service workers at Tulane University walked off the job at 6:00 AM yesterday morning to showcase their outrage over the unfair labor practices of their employer, the French outsourcing giant Sodexo. Cafeteria workers at Morehouse College went on strike Tuesday to protest Sodexo as well.
- In Trinidad and Tobago, nineteen labour unions have joined forces to protest against Government’s plan to move the San Fernando Industrial Court.
- In Guam, members of the Chamorru Nation held a sit in protest at the legislature today on Wednesday over the issue of indigenous fishing rights.
- In Portland, Oregon, roughly 100 students walked out of class Tuesday at Marshall High School to protest the proposed closure of their school in the district’s latest re-design plan.
- A prominent Iranian human rights lawyer is engaged in a hunger strike since September 25, to protest her detention in solitary confinement on suspicion of spreading propaganda against the ruling system, her husband said Wednesday.
Experiments with truth: 9/22/10
- Two Greenpeace activists climbed up the giant anchor chain of a massive oil drilling ship yesterday, stopping it from leaving to drill a deep water well off the Shetland Islands. The action is part of an effort calling on North Sea governments to adopt a ban on all deepwater drilling.
- Trade unions, university students, peasants and other groups in Peru are holding a 48-hour strike in Cusco that has suspended train services to the Inca citadel Machu Picchu due to protests over an irrigation project that critics say could leave communities without water.
- Thousands of people staged a protest in Sweden’s capital, Stockholm, on Monday against the election to parliament of 20 members of a far-right party.
- Six activists chained themselves to a crane in western Turkey on Monday to protest a hydroelectric dam that will mean the destruction of an ancient city of Allianoi.
- Around 10,000 people took to the streets of London over the weekend for a Protest the Pope rally and march against what the organizers called “papal intolerance” and to condemn the state funding of the visit.
- An estimated 1500 Scouts gathered in the little town of Vlaardingen near Rotterdam on Saturday to create an aerial image of 10:10, a global campaign to cut carbon emissions by 10 percent a year starting this year.
- A group of 12 Chilean activists began an open-ended “massive solidarity fast” on Sept. 14 to support indigenous Mapuche prisoners who have been carrying out a liquids-only hunger strike since July 12. They were arrested under a Pinochet-era law that criminalizes legitimate forms of protest against the seizure of their lands.
- Thousands of protesters led by high school students marched on Buenos Aires’ Plaza de Mayo on Sept. 16 to commemorate the 34th anniversary of the “Night of the Pencils,” when student protesters demanding free public transportation and other benefits were kidnapped and killed by the military dictatorship.









