• Hundreds of climate activists cut through a perimeter fence and occupied land at the Royal Bank of Scotland’s headquarters on Wednesday to protest its multi-billion pound loans to the oil and mining industries. They expect at least 500 activists to gather for a day of direct action against RBS on Monday.

• Some 600 demonstrators blocked the main highway linking the Afghani capital of Kabul and the eastern city of Jalalabad on Wednesday to protest the mounting civilian death toll in US-led raids in the war-torn country.

• Nearly two dozen people, some in wheelchairs, blocked a major intersection in front of the California Capitol in Sacramento for several hours on Wednesday afternoon to protest proposed budget cuts to in-home health care services. They were subsequently arrested.

• About a dozen demonstrators who gathered in front of the San Diego county clerk’s office yesterday to demand the issuance of marriage licenses for same-sex couples were arrested after refusing orders to disperse.

• More than 100 Bronxites rallied at the midtown offices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac yesterday to demand that the lending giants cut down on predatory landlords who neglect their properties and ignore renters’ rights.

• About 200 people blocked a major highway outside of Cairo on Wednesday to protest daily power outages that have hit many parts of the country.

Check out this great remake of Depeche Mode’s “People are People” by a flash mob in a Target store over the weekend. According to the video, over 250,000 people have pledged to boycott Target over their $150,000 donation to a group paying for ads for Tom Emmer, a conservative candidate for governor in Minnesota who opposes gay marriage.

If that many people follow through on their commitment to boycott, the store will easily lose far more than $150,000 in business for the donation, which will hopefully make other corporations think twice about the potential ramifications of spending money on political candidates.

Activists are not only upset about this particular donation, as their song suggests, but the fact that Target took advantage of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision earlier this year -  which ruled that corporations can spend an unlimited amount of money on political advertisements -  to back Emmer.

This would suggest that Target is just the first target by citizens upset with the now unchecked ability corporations have to influence elections in the US, and that as other donations by other corporations become public, these protests will spread. As one of the protesters mentions at the end of the video, Best Buy is already in the crosshairs for donating $100,000 to the same group supporting Emmer in Minnesota.

If you want to join the growing boycott of Target, click here or here, and sign this petition asking the company to change its ways.

• 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.

• 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.

• About 30 people, including a priest, protesting working conditions in front of the Hyatt Regency in downtown Chicago were arrested by police Thursday in a staged act of civil disobedience.

• French air travel has suffered significantly since Tuesday morning when some air traffic controllers went on strike to protest the reorganization of European skyways.

• In Las Vegas, eight activists protesting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s inaction on gay rights legislation were arrested for blocking traffic at one of the Strip’s busiest intersections today.

• On Tuesday, about 20 undocumented youths held sit-ins and risked arrest at various congressional offices in Washington D.C., including California Senator Dianne Feinstein, to urge the passage of the DREAM Act.

• Yesterday morning, a group of Barriere Lake Algonquins set up a peaceful blockade on the access road leading to their reserve, about 300 km north of Ottawa. The defensive action was aimed at stopping a government-appointed electoral officer from holding a nomination meeting on the reserve for the government’s highly-controversial imposed Band Council Election.

• The Teamsters Union, the Center for Health, Environment & Justice, Clean New York, WEACT for Environmental Justice, concerned parents, students and consumer activists protested toxic PVC plastic used in toys at the Toys R Us flagship store in Times Square yesterday.

• Rainforest Action Network activists disrupted Massey CEO Don Blankenship’s talk at the National Press Club yesterday sending by holding up two large banners that said:“Massey coal – not Clean, Safe or Forever.” They were eventually escorted out by security.

As evidenced by the rather extensive list of issues covered on this site, we follow a variety of movements and campaigns. One that we often overlook, however, is the growing trend of people counter-protesting the Westboro Baptist Church—a hate group known for picketing at public events and funerals, usually in relation to gay people, Jews and soldiers killed in battle (the latter of which they consider “God’s punishment” for the moral decay of America).

While this group deserves opposition and resistance, the typical response has been somewhat counter-productive. A distinct attitude of snarkiness and irony pervade the counter-protests, which usually consist of signs mocking the language of the Westboro Baptist Church. For instance, parodies of the sick “God hates fags” signs present at most WBC gatherings range from the sarcastic “God hates signs” to the absurd “God hates fuzzy tiny kittens.”

That’s not to say there isn’t power in humor. One admittedly funny photo from a counter-protest shows a WBC woman holding a sign that reads “Homosexuality is a sin”, while a young man stands next her holding a sign mocking her attire: “Corduroy skirts are a sin.” By playing on the stereotypical keen fashion sense of gay people, this comment is in its own way incisive. Yet, by also being insulting, it can only serve as a further divide between two people that ultiamtely must come together for hatred to be extinguished.

I have yet to see much effort to reach out to the WBC, perhaps because people think they are insane, irrational and unchangeable. Unfortunately, this attitude toward their fellow man/woman is something they share with the WBC. If both sides are belittling the humanity of the other as irredeemable than no progress will ever be made. Since the basic ideology of WBC is based on hate, the burden is therefore on the counter-protesters to bring the WBC folks back from the edge.

But if counter-protesters aren’t ready to make this gesture, they can at least improve the effectiveness of their campaign in other ways. Perhaps the best tactic being employed (or about to employed) is by an LGBT support group in Dallas. According to The Advocate:

Read the rest of this article »

• Anti-BP protesters from Greenpeace disrupted a speech by the company’s chief of staff at a major oil conference in London yesterday, urging the company to change its ways following the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

• Members of an indefinite vigil held in front of the Massachusetts State House have reached their 17th day of protest against the anti-immigrant amendments added to the budget bill.

• More than 100 gay rights protesters marched in Toronto on Saturday to demand greater rights for all minority populations marginalized because of their gender, sexuality or socioeconomic status.

• Students and staff at 100 colleges and universities in Great Britain are protesting funding cuts that could keep 200,000 people out of universities next year.

• Students at the University of Puerto Rico voted to end their two-month strike against massive budget cuts on Monday after agreeing to a package with the administration that includes an extension of tuition waivers, the cancellation of a fee that would have drastically raised education costs, a commitment not to arbitrarily punish strike participants, and rejection of school privatization plans.

• Israeli soldiers injured several protesters on Sunday in an attack on a nonviolent demonstration against illegal settlements and the construction of the Israeli separation wall in the Palestinian village of Beit Jala, near Bethlehem.

• 12,000 Minnesota nurses voted to hold an open-ended strike on Monday following retaliation from employers after a one-day strike on June 10.

• On Monday, dozens of Palestinians and international activists held a nonviolent protest in the town of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip against the Israeli-imposed buffer zone in Gaza following an Israeli incursion onto Palestinian-owned farm land earlier in the day.

• A strike over pay by the security stewards at World Cup stadiums spread to half the tournament’s 10 venues yesterday, forcing police to step in and assume their duties.

• Several hundred activists gathered in New York City’s Union Square on Monday at a rally to protect  homeless LGBT youth sponsored by the Ali Forney Center.

• Some 800 Burmese migrants have begun a hunger strike in a Malaysian immigration camp after the UN’s refugee agency stopped interviewing detainees about potential refugee status.

• On Tuesday, a dozen protesters gathered in front of NYPD headquarters to speak out against what they called the misuse of disorderly conduct charges against the homeless.

• In Sweden, around 30 Greenpeace activists broke into the Forsmark nuclear plant on Monday to demand that parliament vote against allowing new nuclear facilities to be built  in the country.

• On Monday, 250 rallied at a University of Illinois Board of Trustees meeting to protest tuition hikes and a concurrent salary raise of approximately $170,000 for University President Michael Hogan.

• More than 3,500 Romanians took to the streets outside the Parliament in Bucharest on Tuesday to protest proposed austerity measures Prime Minister Emil Bloc said must be made to meet the demands of a loan from the International Monetary Fund.

• Four people were arrested Tuesday at a Wake County, North Carolina school board meeting. The group of civil rights activists staged a nonviolent protest against measures they say will lead to re-segregation in county schools.

• Protests against Israel’s attack on the Free Gaza flotilla that resulted in the deaths of at least nine activists took place around the world yesterday. Hundreds of Iraqis took to the streets in Baghdad. Thousands gathered in Beirut, Tripoli and Sidon. Israeli embassies throughout Europe were greeted with rallies of 3,500 in Athens, 2,000 in Paris (pictured above), and 5,000 in Stockholm. Hundreds also protested in New York and Washington DC , with even larger protests planned for later today.

• Tens of thousands of people protested Arizona’s new immigration policies on Saturday in cities across the US—including Phoenix; Oakland; Boston; Passaic County, NJ; and Salem, OR.

• More than 130 activists were arrested in Moscow yesterday for protesting a government crackdown on protests despite the Freedom to Assemble guaranteed by the Russian Constitution.

• Gay and lesbian activists eluded Russian security services in a five-hour game of cat and mouse on Saturday to hold the first gay protest in Moscow not to be broken up by riot police.

• More than 30,000 people reportedly quit Facebook yesterday as part of a protest against the social networking giant’s privacy policies.

• About 25 protesters waved signs outside a Clearwater BP station on Memorial Day morning to protest the company’s disastrous oil spill.

• Tens of thousands of Romanian public workers went on strike yesterday to protest hefty wage cuts meant to reduce the country’s budget deficit.

• Tens of thousands marched in central Lisbon on Saturday to protest the government’s austerity measures, showing the first serious sign of popular discontent toward the government’s announced tax hikes, spending cuts, and freeze on civil servants’ wages.

• At their commencement ceremony last week, University of Maryland graduates held signs above their caps to protest the BP oil spill and demanded clean energy now.

• Thousands of French workers marched yesterday in Paris and other cities to protest planned pension reforms.

• Dozens of teachers rallied in Karachi, Pakistan yesterday to protest delays in certain allowances.  After police charged at them with batons, they held a sit-in.

• Last week, art activists entered the London Tate Museum and filled an exhibit with oil and dead fish to protest BP sponsorship as they labeled the Gulf oil spill “the largest oil painting in the world.”  The exhibit had to be closed for cleanup.

• A hundred people protested outside the courthouse in El Paso, Texas against Obama’s plan to deploy the National Guard to the US/Mexico border there.

• Several dozen people gathered in front of the Chevron building in Houston on Wednesday to protest the connections between oil and war.  A few were arrested for trespassing on private property.

• 400 employees of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago walked out on Wednesday to protest poor working conditions.

• A hundred people protested at a Toronto Gay Pride conference on Tuesday against the decision to ban the term “Israeli apartheid” from upcoming pride events.

• Activists mass-purchased an acre of land in Scotland near Donald Trump’s planned golf resort to prevent and protest the development of the land.

• Thousands of people formed a human chain in Okinawa, Japan yesterday to protest the movement of a US military base there.

• 500 Afghan villagers demonstrated outside their governor’s office on Friday to protest a recent US-backed raid that killed civilians.

• Thousands of villagers in India facing displacement by steel giant POSCO are staging sit-in protests during what they have dubbed “resistance week,” which lasts through May 21.

• Communications worker union members marched through Johannesburg, South Africa demanding wage increases.

• Women vendors in Nagamapal, India staged a sit-in yesterday to protest continued price hikes. The sit-in condemned a government official’s visit to the region and shops and businesses were also closed in protest

• 160 Russian tractor factory workers have begun a hunger strike after not being paid for five months. They are also fundraising for a plane ticket for President Medvedev to come and mediate.

• A gay pride parade meant to protest rights violations against sexual minorities was violently disrupted by police in Belarus on Saturday.

• People gathered in the Maldives last week, clad in red shirts, to protest rising electricity tariffs.

• Saturday was International Day of Protest for Lolita’s Retirement, in support of an orca whale at Miami’s Seaquarium, who lives in the smallest whale tank in North America and possibly the world.

• Gun control activists protested outside an NRA conference in Charlotte, NC, saying discussion of gun violence was missing from the conference.

• 15,000 people gathered in Madrid this past weekend to protest genetically engineered (GE) crops. The protest was part of a Greenpeace tour through Europe; another tactic was to display billboards in Brussels of officials as chefs cooking “GE recipes for disaster.”

• Disabled citizens held a sit-in in New Delhi yesterday, demanding better education and healthcare as well as a reserved 20 percent quota of jobs.

• Several dozen pro-reform protesters rallied outside the Egyptian Parliament yesterday after an opposition leader said violence should be used against activists. There have been frequent protests in Cairo in the last few weeks calling for open elections and an end to tight emergency laws.

• A hundred people gathered outside the Arizona State Capitol yesterday to protest an immigration bill that requires Arizona to enforce border laws. The bill, which protesters say is racist, will be passed in five days if not vetoed by the governor. Nine who chained themselves to the Capitol doors were arrested.

• A dozen environmentalists blocked the road out of Bacton, England to protest oil company Shell and its plans to build a new terminal.  The protesters, who were part of a worldwide day of action, only left when removed by police.

• Six people occupied Iowa Senator Grassley’s Des Moines office last Wednesday, demanding an end to funding of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine and a greater focus on human needs.

• A Japanese man who is part of an anti-U.S. base movement is hunger striking near parliament in Tokyo to protest the relocation of an American base within the area.

• Former employees of the Tahiti Hilton began a week-long hunger strike yesterday to protest redundancy payments and the hotel owner’s refusal to meet with them.

• Legislators in Chennai, India walked out of a government assembly yesterday to protest inaction from officials against rising yam prices.

Members of the trans community and allies protested in front of the Tribeca Cinemas in New York City last week.  The rally was in response to the Tribeca Film Festival’s premiering of “Ticked-off Trannies with Knives,” a transphobic film that highlights rape and violence.

The New York Times quoted an organizer’s explanation for the protest:

“The transsexual and transgender communities are all too often the victims of violence, marginalization and discrimination as a result of inaccurate media depictions like this film, which is offensive, dehumanizing and misogynistic and causes further misunderstanding and harm to an already dangerously oppressed minority group,” said Ashley Love, a Magnet organizer.

Protesters said both the derogatory language in the title as well as stark images of violence in the film lead to increased misunderstandings and violence against transpeople.

“People are telling us to lighten up,” Ms. Love added, “but I heard reports of two more trans women murdered this morning. It’s not a laughing matter. We’re not laughing at all.”

Not only do trans folks experience violence at shockingly high rates, they have problems accessing employment, medical care, and basic services such as public restrooms.

The Tribeca Film Festival declined to remove the film or change the title.  The movie description itself acknowledges the statistics–it was “inspired by the devastating increase in brutal hate crimes against the transgender community”–but its incarnation is seen as exploitative and encouraging of violence rather than explorative.

A candlelight vigil was also held, and as one activist put it:

This time we’re going to make ourselves heard. Because we’re tired of our dead being marginalized, overlooked, and even used as advertising material for a cheap gimmick of a film.

• 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.

• Downtown Athens was paralyzed once again on Friday when thousands of Greeks took to the streets to protest against the country’s newly announced package of austerity measures.

• In the UK, an estimated 270,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union will walk out today to begin a two-day strike over redundancy payments.

• Portugal’s public services–including schools, hospitals and customs–were disrupted Thursday by strike action called by unions to protest the government’s plan to freeze wages.

• In Pakistan, the workers of the National Programme for Improvement of Watercourses (NPIW) continued their protest and sit-in in front of Karachi Press Club on Friday, protesting against the Sindh government over delay in regularizing the services of employees.

• In Egypt, protesting workers from the Tanta Flax and Oils Company ended a 15-day sit-in last week after reaching a compromise with Manpower Ministry representative Wael Allam. They were offered a sum equivalent to two months’ salary and an early retirement package of LE40,000, which they accepted.

• Dutch gay rights groups have called for a halt to protests against a Catholic church southwest of Amsterdam after it said it would no longer seek to bar homosexuals from taking communion.

• Workers at a frozen pizza factory in Ireland have ended their hunger strike after making a deal with bosses over the sacking of three men.

• In the Philippines, Gabriela – the country’s foremost alliance of progressive women’s organizations -  has declared March 8, International Women’s Day, as a “day off” for Filipinas, to be spent out in the streets, marching, protesting and asserting their rights.