• A parade of Indian people from many nations gathered in Seattle on Monday to commemorate the invasion of Fort Lawton 40 years ago, when more than 100 Indian people and their allies stormed the property and took a portion of the land “by right of discovery.” After a month of protests the government decided to donate a portion of the land for a cultural center.

• About 5,000 left-wing activists and Palestinians gathered Saturday to protest the eviction of four Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

• About 30 people gathered outside the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Denver, Colorado on Sunday to protest a decision by the archdiocese not to re-enroll a child in a Catholic school in Boulder next year because the child’s parents are lesbians.

• Thousands of health care reform advocates gathered outside the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington yesterday, where the lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans was holding its annual policy conference. They chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Insurance companies have got to go!” and staged a mass “citizens’ arrest” of the insurance executives.

• Days after staging protests on campus as part of the national March 4 Day of Action, a small group of students at Stony Brook University sat down in the hallway outside of President Stanley’s office for hours and begged passersby for spare change to cover the rising costs of tuition.

• People who care for injured inmates at California’s Alameda County’s jails are went on a one-day strike yesterday to protest what medical workers call “bad faith” contract negotiations.

• Hundreds of people rallied outside a Manhattan hotel Tuesday to protest a fundraiser held by the group Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.

Here is a bit of hopeful news from Palestine. Two and a half years after the Israeli Supreme Court deemed that the section of the separation wall that cuts through the village of Bil’in was illegal, the Israeli military has begun re-routing the wall to comply with the ruling. This move will return 30 percent of Bil’in’s land to the village.

In response to the news, Mohammed Khatib, the coordinator of the West Bank-wide Popular Struggle Coordination Committee and a member of the the Bil’in Popular Committee, said:

There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the only reason that this is finally happening now are the five years of persistent struggle and the sacrifices the people of my village have made. While we are happy for the lands that do return, we do not forget the lands and crops that remain isolated behind the Wall. Our struggle will continue until all of our lands are returned and the Occupation is over.

Since the wall was erected in 2005, Bil’in has been a focal point for nonviolent resistance in Palestine and garnered widespread support and positive media attention around the world. Residents from the village, along with other Israeli and international activists, participate in a weekly march to the wall every Friday. According to the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee:

In addition to grassroots demonstrations and nonviolent direct actions, Bil’in has held annual conferences on popular resistance since 2006; providing a forum for villagers, activists and academics to discuss strategies for the unarmed struggle against the Occupation.

In their latest weekly protest, activists from Bil’in demonstrated their creativity by dressing and painting themselves as the native Na’vi from the film Avatar.

Read the rest of this article »

• More than 250 Washington State University Vancouver students staged a “mass walkout” to protest budget cuts to academic programs, the elimination of crucial financial aid, and continued tuition hikes.

• Canadian anti-Olympic protesters are promising a series of protests starting this weekend, culminating in a march on the opening ceremonies Feb. 12.

• Anti-US demonstrations in several Iraqi cities coincided with Vice President Joe Biden’s visit this week.

• Chinese artists have been staging flash mobs to protest the bulldozing of their studios.

• Chinese activist Feng Zhenghu ended his 90-day sit-in at Japan’s Narita International Airport on Tuesday when Chinese officials finally agreed to let him return.

• Customs officials and tax inspectors in Greece are holding a two-day strike to protest government austerity measures, including wage cuts.

• Workers at Fiat plants across Italy held a four-hour strike on Wednesday to protest plans to shut a factory in Sicily.

• Life remained crippled for the fourth day on Thursday in the Kashmir valley due to a general strike protesting the death of a 13-year-old boy by police on Sunday evening in down town city.

• Supporters of the German Pirate Party assembled in nearly naked groups at airports in Berlin, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf on Sunday afternoon to protest the controversial “naked” scanners planned for security checks.

• British Airways cabin crew are routinely pouring vintage wine served to First Class passengers down the sink to protest staff cuts and a two-year pay freeze.

• About 200 people gathered for the kickoff of an 11-day series of events in Washington DC om Monday to raise awareness about the Guantanamo situation. About 100 people nationwide will participate in a liquids-only fast, while others planned to join in prayer and reflection through Jan. 22, the one-year anniversary of Obama’s executive order.

• Nearly 100 auto workers and labor activists demonstrated in snowy, blustery conditions near the North American International Auto Show on Monday, calling for a federal jobs recovery bill, a national single-payer health system and a green industrial policy.

• Around 150-200 inmates at Stillwateter Correctional Facility in Minnesota refused to return to their cells after a meal on Sunday afternoon to protest the operational rules of the unit, such as the amount of time they are allowed out of their cells. After almost two hours they complied with orders to return to their cells peacefully.

• Dockworkers at France’s top container ports in Le Havre and Marseilles staged the second 24-hour strike in as many weeks to protest government reforms.

• Around 1500 children in the villages of India’s Gujarat’s Sanand block have stopped going to school to protest the Gujarat government’s plans to acquire their parents’ farmland for industrial purposes.

Land seizure has become a major problem in China over the last few years. For instance, over a million people were displaced from their homes and businesses to make way for last year’s Olympic venues. Now, due to a government stimulus package passed earlier this year to aid new construction, even more evictions are taking place and not just for the so called “public interest” but for the private development of shopping malls and luxury apartments.

The new landlords tend to be quite ruthless when dealing with the removal of the previous owners. They hire thugs to drag people off the property and if they still persist in not leaving, demotion crews have on occasion been known to crush the building with protesting occupants still inside.

Despite these rather trying conditions, protests continue. Recently, the Associated Press called attention to one particular family’s fight–a rather unique and inspiring one, in fact:

Wanted: One live-in protester, $146 a month, no days off.

When the managers of a Beijing restaurant marked for demolition were too busy to fight it, they posted an Internet ad and hired a stranger to stay there around the clock. The job seems to be a first for China, where frenzied urban construction has led to violent evictions, protests and even suicide.

Huddled on a makeshift bed in the trash-strewn, freezing restaurant, Lu Daren said he once worked for a demolition crew and understands their tactics.

“I’m tired,” the 46-year-old said Thursday, after a long night of fending off the latest visit from what he suspects were hired thugs by the landlord. “Tired, tired, tired.” He stays — wrapped in blankets, reading the newspaper or writing idle poetry, occasionally taking short walks— because he thinks the restaurateurs have been treated unfairly.

As interesting as the want ad for a protester may be, it’s completely overshadowed by Lu Daren’s conversion from working for the ruthless landlords to working against them nonviolently. It even seems to be having an effect:

In a sign that the government may really be ready to pursue reform, mainland media have been allowed to write about Lu and his unusual new job. Lu has pasted newspaper reports to the windows, next to a small protest banner with a poem that ends, “the landlord has no shame.”

At another of the threatened restaurants down the street, Zhang Weimi wonders about Lu — and his past experience on the other side of the wrecking ball — but admires his dedication. When Zhang, who is trying to save his own restaurant, wakes up in the middle of the night, he sometimes sees Lu in his overcoat, pacing on the sidewalk.

“Maybe it’s his conscience,” the 30-year-old Zhang said. “Maybe now he felt he had to do something.”

• 19 Greenpeace activists were arrested on Monday in Ottawa after dodging security and scaling two of Canada’s Parliament buildings where they unfurled banners that read “Harper-Ignatieff: Climate Inaction Costs Lives” and “Stop the Tarsands” in French and English.

• 29 people were arrested Monday morning for blocking the entrance to Chevron’s headquarters in San Ramon, CA. They were protesting efforts by Chevron to undermine the fight against global warming.

• More than 30 youth activists from around the world  staged a “die-in” on Monday outside the main plenary at COP15 with the message – “The World Wants a Real Deal” and “Real Deal Saves Lives”.

• Over 300 coalfield residents and their allies rallied at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection yesterday to protest the blasting of Coal River Mountain and support a transition to a clean energy future.

• More than 200 people were arrested in Tehran on Monday during protests by tens of thousands at universities nationwide, marking the biggest anti-government demonstrations in months. Thousands continued protesting for a second day yesterday, as Iran threatened a tougher crackdown on the opposition.

• Hundreds of Afghans took to the streets yesterday to protest the killings of 15 civilians by U.S. forces during an overnight raid on Armal village.

• Crow Creek Sioux tribal members and supporters in South Dakota are planning to set up tepees on land auctioned by the Internal Revenue Service. Tribal Chairman Brandon Sazue intends to fast and pray on the land “until I drop.”

• American Indian activists marked Thanksgiving by holding a “Day of Mourning” in Plymouth, calling Plymouth Rock a monument to racism and genocide. Members of the United American Indians of New England have been holding the annual protest since 1970.

• 12 Greenpeace activitsts were arrested on the Indonesian Island of Sumatra yesterday after shutting down four cranes at a port run by one of Asia’s biggest pulp and paper groups.

• A dozen Chinese women related to some of the 104 miners killed in a recent blast protested outside the mine’s entrance on Monday in an effort to demand answers.

• 16 protesters who staged a sit-in at Canadian Labour Minister Rona Ambrose’s office in Edmonton to demand action from the federal government against climate change.

• More than 250,000 public sector workers went on strike to protest government plans to cut their pay, resulting in the closure of schools and limited hospital access.

Salon has an interesting historical piece about Johnny Cash and his battle with the music industry over a song called “The Ballad of Ira Hayes.” It seems radio DJ’s didn’t want to play (nor did Columbia records want to promote) a song that detailed the historical abuse of Native Americans like Hayes, who was used and abused by his government as one of the Iwo-Jima flag raisers. Anyone who’s seen Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers knows what happened to Hayes: the unwanted fame helped fuel a depression that led to alcoholism and his eventual death.

Although the song was originally written by Peter La Farge, a folkie who frequented the same Greenwich Village scene as Bob Dylan and others, Cash was the first to popularize it with the release of his 1964 album Bitter Tears, an album entirely dedicated to the plight of Native Americans. While Salon writer Antonio D’Ambrosio brings further deserved attention to a man who devoted much of his life–oftentimes at the expense of his career–to defending the rights of the marginalized, the real fascinating part of this article is its brief history of Native American activism. Although concurrent with the Civil Rights Movement, it was something entirely different… Read the rest of this article »

Some 10,000 high school students here formed a human peace symbol during a mammoth rally held Wednesday in support of the call for world peace and non-violence. Meanwhile,more than 2,000 students, soldiers from the Philippine military, government officials and NGO workers joined the colorful World March for Peace and Nonviolence in Manila’s Malate district.

• About 400 teachers, students and supporters rallied outside Sweetwater Union High School District headquarters in San Diego County yesterday to push for a better contract and for stalled negotations to start up again.

• More than 5,000 Montreal blue collar workers staged a four-hour strike yesterday to press the city for a new contract.

• 1,700 employees of Iran’s Pars Wagon Company, maker of freight wagons and passenger coaches, went on hunger strike yesterday to protest delays in salary payment.

• A two-day sit-in by over 10,000 farmers from northeastern India ended yesterday with the government assuring to look into their demands.

• On Tuesday, seventeen people were arrested at the New York offices of the insurance giant Aetna. The activists linked arms and chanted slogans “People Not Profits, Medicare for All.” The action was the first in a campaign by the group Mobilization for Health Care for All to hold sit-ins at insurance company offices nationwide.

• The World March for Peace and Nonviolence kicks off today in New Zealand, marking the start of the world’s first six-continent peace march calling for the elimination of wars, nuclear weapons and violence of all kinds.

• Stores, schools and other establishments were shuttered on Thursday in predominantly Arab communities in Israel, including the Biblical city of Nazareth, as 90 percent of the Arab Israeli population took part in a general strike to protest what organisers called “racist” policies and to mark the ninth anniversary of demonstrations at which police killed 13 Arabs.

• In San Juan, members of the Puerto Rican Workers union, SEIU Local 1996SPT, were violently removed by SWAT team agents and arrested for protesting the Governor’s announcement on Friday to lay off 16,970 government employees .

• On Wednesday, the Ecuadorian Police staged a violent raid on a group of indigenous people  blockading the bridge to protest proposed new war and land rights laws. The attack has left at least one confirmed dead, a teacher and member of the Shuar nation, and some 49 civilians and police injured.

• In India, over 10,000 engineers and account officers of state-owned telecom firm BSNL will go on hunger strike today on Gandhi Jayanti Day demanding absorption of officers on deputation and pay revisions, nearly one and a half months after engineers struck work for four days.

• About 150 immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India who had been living and working  for years in Greece began a mass hunger strike on Sunday at the airport in Athens after being detained.

• In Vermont, four women were arrested earlier this week after blocking entry to a nuclear plant in the town of Vernon. The four members of Vermont Yankee Shut It Down Affinity Group entered the plant housing the Vermont Yankee reactor and sat down on folding chairs. The group includes the ninety-year-old peace activist Frances Crowe.

• A group of migrants from Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, Palestine, and Egypt, began a highly visible hunger strike on Wednesday in France that they plan to continue until Western countries co-operate to offer them asylum.

• The pilots of Air India ended their five-day-old strike after an assurance over payment of allowances from Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel.

A dozen people gathered in Kanawha City, West Virginia outside the Department of Environmental Protection on Tuesday to protest the agency's leniency in granting surface mining contracts. They set up a "coalfield cool-ade" stand offering up jugs of black liquid to represent the slurry water coming from the faucets of those who live near coal mining.

• About a thousand indigenous farm workers marched through the streets of downtown Cuenca in southern Ecuador on Monday to protest new water, mining and oil laws that many fear will lead to privatization and destruction of their land and resources.

• The Peasant Movement of the Philippines and the National Federation of Peasant Women in the Philippines held a demonstration in front of the United Nations Climate Change Negotiations in Bangkok on Monday, using street theater to protest false solutions to climate change—such as biofuels.

• 23 Greenpeace activists shut down a conveyer belt used for the extraction of tar sands near an open pit mine in Northern alberta owned by Suncor, Canada’s largest oil company. They held banners reading: ‘Tar sands climate crime.’

• More than 150 university students in Caracas have joined a hunger strike that began last week to demand the Organization of American States investigate allegations that dozens of Venezuelans have been jailed for their opposition to President Hugo Chavez. Some of the students were hospitalized after sewing the mouths shut.

• More than 50 American Indian activists and others demonstrated at the University of North Dakota yesterday to protest the school’s Fighting Sioux nickname and logo. The Board of Education is set to discuss the matter today.

• Around 200 Penn State University students took part in The Sierra Club’s Coal-Free Campus Campaign by holding a silent protest inside the student center on Tuesday.

• Around 20 pro-Tibet supporters stood outside the Empire State Building’s Fifth Avenue entrance yesterday morning to protest its decision to make the nighttime lights red and yellow this week in honor of China’s 60th anniversary.

• More than 100 D.C. teenagers from four public high schools walked out of class Monday because they’re angry about impending teacher layoffs recently announced by D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.

• Residents living in the Somali police ground at Hamar Jajab district in Mogadishu staged a mass demonstration on Sunday against a statement from the Somali Police department which told them to evacuate the grounds as soon as possible or their makeshifts houses will be destroyed with bulldozers.

• About 4,000 workers at South Africa’s DRDGOLD marched at Blyvoor mine on Tuesday to protest wages, and with a strike entering its third week, they called on the government to revoke the company’s  license.

• Zimbabwe police on Friday opened fire on hundreds of striking workers in the southwestern mining town of Zvishavane, injuring four workers including a councillor from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party.

• Workers at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza City, The Khoudhouri College in Tulkarem, Aroub College in Hebron and the Palestinian Technical Institute in Ramallah held a sit-in strike Tuesday, in protest of a failure of the government to respond to requests for improved working conditions.

• Police arrested 14 anti-gambling activists who yesterday morning blocked the gate at the SugarHouse Casino construction site on the Delaware River waterfront in Fishtown.

• Hundreds of students shouting anti-government slogans took to the streets of Tehran and other cities Monday in another sign that Iran’s opposition is still active, despite arrests and allegations of state torture and rape.

UC Davis graduate student Kurt Vaughn, right, joined other minimally clothed students as they protest a plan to raise fees. The rally's goal was to get other students to join in a walkout today, the first day of classes.

• The World Bank has announced it will not provide any more loans to oil palm companies until it can guarantee the loans are not causing social and environmental harm. The announcement comes after years of protests by indigenous people and NGOs against the social and environmental destruction caused by oil palm plantations.

• Moroccan police violently intervened against a peaceful demonstration in Western Sahara calling for the exercising of the Saharawi people’s inalienable right to self-determination, detaining three people and injuring others.

• At least 100 students in China last weekend protested the detention of Ding Xiaoping, a popular lecturer who was a student organizer during the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square.

• On Tuesday, around 200 teachers at three public schools in New Providence, in the Bahamas, staged sit-ins to protest inadequate staffing and poor working conditions.

• Protesting the leasing of land to the Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL), the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU) staged a sit-in demonstration on Tuesday in front of the Meghalaya Additional Secretariat.

• In New Delhi, Jawharlal Nehru Students’ Union has called for a strike today to protest against the lack of health facilities on the campus.

While Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited President Obama at the White House yesterday, members of the DC Action Factory staged their own photo-op outside. One person wearing an Obama mask received a giant milkshake labeled "dirty oil sands" from a person inside a Big Foot costume bearing Harper's face, symbolizing his large carbon footprint.

• An empty building in Bristol, England has been taken over by the anarchist group Co-Mutiny for a week of “autonomous actions and events” featuring discussions on workers’ solidarity, anti-militarism, and climate justice–plus workshops on radical knitting and radical song writing.

• Fifteen indigenous leaders were arrested in Borneo for protesting dams that would flood their lands and destroy crops and burial sites.

• College students from Missouri to Oregon mounted a Sierra Club-led campaign targeting coal-based power at colleges on Wednesday, while a group of college presidents rallied in Washington in support of clean energy legislation.

• Twelve Greenpeace activists chained themselves to a ship off the coast of New Zealand yesterday to protest its shipment of palm kernel, which is used as animal feed, but is harvested at the expense of rain forests.

• Hundreds gathered for a demonstration on Tuesday to protest a police raid on an Atlanta gay bar last Thursday in which patrons and staff were forced to the floor and roughly frisked while officers made derogatory comments.

• Nurses picketed outside Central Michigan Community Hospital on Wednesday to protest a lack of progress on a new contract with the hospital.

• Hundreds of Palestinian villagers have made a short but symbolic march to the separation wall that Israel has built on their land, a non-violent protest that they regularly undertake.

• More than 300 Iraqis protested yesterday to demand that Syria stop its alleged support for “terrorists and assassins” determined to carry out attacks in Iraq.

• Argentine farmers marked the end of an eight-day sales boycott on Friday with rallies and marches promising to “keep fighting” in support of aid for peers suffering from the worst drought in decades and to eliminate the current export tariffs system which distorts production and threatens several crops.

• 40 anti-coal activists gathered on the steps of Parliament in Victoria, Australia yesterday to launch a campaign to close one of the state’s coal power stations.

• Following a recent robbery, about 50 disabled persons in Patna, India assembled on the platform of the Patna Junction yesterday morning and held a sit-in demonstration on the tracks to protest the lack of security in areas reserved for them on trains.

• Dozens of Prisoners at a prison in Bryanston, South Africa have gone on an indefinite hunger strike to protest the prison’s administration’s refusal to go through parole processes.