• More than 300,000 people took part in demonstrations across Israel on Saturday night calling for “social justice,” a blanket term covering demands for reforms in housing, taxes, healthcare, childcare, and education.

• Forty-five thousand Verizon Communications Inc. workers from Massachusetts to Washington, D.C., went on strike Sunday after negotiations fizzled over a new labor contract for more than a fifth of the company’s work force.

• Tens of thousands of opponents of embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh held rallies across the country following prayers on Friday.

• Thousands of protestors largely drawn from Pakistan Justice Party staged a sit-in protest in front of country’s Parliament in Islamabad on Saturday evening to protest corruption, unemployment and US drone strikes.

• Israeli forces targeted three separate rallies across the West Bank on Friday, firing tear gas at participants and lightly injuring dozens.

• In Jordan, dozens of activists staged a sit-in following Ramadan evening prayers on Friday night in front of Salt city’s cultural center, protesting what they concidered government stalling in impementing nesessery political and economic reforms.

• Thousands of demonstrators angry about the government’s austerity program briefly reoccupied a central Madrid plaza on Saturday after police withdrew following widespread outrage at officers’ handling of a protest two days earlier.

• The pro-LGBT activists from GetEqual Texas braved the Houston sun on Saturday to protest outside Reliant Stadium, where Governor Rick Perry and thousands of  Evangelicals were holding an unabashedly political “day of prayer,” “The Response.”

• Nepalese riot police arrested teachers affiliated with temporary teacher struggle committee during a sit-in protest in front of the education ministry in Kathmandu on Thursday.

Tina Rosenberg, whose recent book Join the Club is a must read for activists, had a piece on the New York Times’ Opinionator blog yesterday criticizing the importance of social media in social movements. In keeping with the thesis of her book—that peer pressure is the driving force behind social change—Rosenberg argues, much like Malcolm Gladwell, that “the idea of Facebook Revolution has been a great example of wishful thinking by the digerati.” She does cite, however, one recent event that gave her some second thoughts.

On Friday, I wrote about Friendfactor, an organizing tool used in the successful battle for gay marriage in New York State.  Friendfactor combines social media and real-world friendship to motivate people to get active.  Instead of getting an e-mail from a group asking you to support a political goal, you get one from a close friend or family member asking you to “help me get my full rights.”    Friendfactor is particularly interesting because it seems to offer a solution to one of the biggest obstacles in using social media for political change:  people need close personal connections in order to get them to take action — especially if that action is risky and difficult.

The Friendfactor story is an interesting one in its own right and worth a read. But despite the promise it offers for strong-tie building, Rosenberg still concludes that social media are nothing without “careful strategy, meticulous planning, strict nonviolence, unity.”

David Faris took exception to this belittling of digital activism in a blog post for the Meta-Activism Project:

What I would love is for Tina Rosenberg to find someone who studies digital media and thinks that street tactics were unimportant in the Egyptian revolution. My own interviews with activists and planners suggest that at least 10 days of careful on-the-ground planning – including timing how long it would take to march down certain streets as well as producing tactics to produce the illusion of greater numbers – went into the Tahrir protests. I don’t think any rational person would argue that the “digerati” put out the call on Facebook and then magically there were a million people in the streets.  Why must these two things be mutually exclusive? Egyptian organizers also learned a great deal about protest tactics from their Tunisian counterparts – and much of this learning took place with online exchanges, including back-and-forth exchanges on, yes, Facebook. This rigid demarcation between “on-the-ground” and “digital” simply does not square with the reality of today’s organizers.

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• Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets across Yemen on Sunday, demanding that a transitional presidential council be created to replace embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh and that his sons and relatives leave the country.

• Thousands of Greek demonstrators have begun gathering in front of the parliament in Athens at the start of a 48-hour general strike to protest against deep budget cuts demanded by international lenders as the price for more financial aid.

• Spain’s “indignant” activists began their last and longest protest march on Saturday, leaving from the northeastern city of Barcelona to cover 650 kilometres on their way to a major Madrid rally on July 24.

• Tens of thousands of people demonstrated around Morocco both for and against a proposed new constitution on Sunday, just a week before it is to be voted on in a referendum.

• About 3,000 people marched through downtown Montreal on Saturday to call for an end in Quebec to shale gas exploitation and a technique known as “fracking” that has triggered strong opposition from environmental groups.

• Thousands of people joined hands on Saturday across beaches from Florida to California to form a human chain to protest offshore oil drilling and promote clean energy.

• Police arrested 12 D.C. voting rights activists in front of the White House Saturday afternoon.

• Hamas prisoners being held in Israeli jails on Monday began a hunger strike after seven of their number were put in solitary confinement.

• Seoul National University student council members ended their 28-day sit-in against the university’s privatization plan on Sunday after 40 of 61 students voted to accept a tentative agreement between the council and the university.

• Russian police have arrested and charged up to 14 LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans) activists who were attempting to hold a demonstration in St Petersburg.

• Last Wednesday, Zimbabwe’s public workers began an indefinite strike to press the cash-strapped coalition government of President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to more than double wages.

• Over 80,000 people took to the streets of Athens late Sunday on the 12th consecutive day of protests against the government’s draconian austerity measures. Some 3,000 people also gathered in Greece’s second largest city, Thessaloniki, according to the police.

• Syrians poured into the streets on Friday in some of the largest antigovernment protests yet despite the shutdown of much of Syria’s Internet network. At least 96 people have died over the past three days in the continued crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad.

• In Israel, thousands of people rallied in Tel Aviv to denounce Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition to a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. It was one of the largest pro-peace rallies Israel has seen in years.

• Up to 23 people were killed and over 350 wounded on Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinian demonstrators stormed the border area from Syria.

• The March on Blair Mountain, with more than six hundred people setting out from Marmet, West Virginia on a fifty-mile, five-day journey began today to protest mountaintop removal, strengthen workers’ rights, and support investment in sustainable jobs for Appalachia.

• A two-day sit-in staged to protest against drone attacks concluded on Sunday with a warning to the relevant authorities that supplies to Nato forces in Afghanistan would be blocked if drone attacks continued.

• At least 30 people were injured when Indian police used teargas and batons to break up a mass anti-corruption protest led by India’s most famous yoga guru on Sunday.

• Approximately 250 supporters —including many veterans—converged on Saturday at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to rally for the release of alleged whistleblower U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning.

• Sri Lanka’s powerful Buddhist clergy demonstrated Friday urging the president to restore rights of workers and students days after a violent police crackdown on a labour protest killed one factory worker.

• Three gay rights activists, including a former Democratic Senate candidate, were arrested last Thursday for their protest on the floor of the North Carolina House of Representatives.

• Fourteen students were arrested at the University of Washington on Wednesday evening on charges of criminal trespass after they refused to leave a building that was closed, as part of the ongoing protests over the UW’s contract with food-services provider Sodexo.

• About 20,000 people assembled in the Greek capital’s central Syntagma Square on Sunday, responding to calls on social networking sites for gatherings across Europe to demand “real democracy”.

• Tens of thousands of mostly liberal protesters again filled Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday to call on the military council to end the practice of sending civilians to military trials, to expedite legal action against former President Hosni Mubarak and his associates, and to start governing with some civilian presidential council.

• Five protesters were arrested by U.S. Park Police at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC on Saturday after taking part in a flash mob to protest a recent court decision that upheld a ban on dancing within the memorial. A second protest is being planned for this weekend—and over 2,300 people say they’ll attend.

• Russian police detained more than 60 activists in Moscow and St. Petersburg on Tuesday at demonstrations against restrictions on freedom of assembly.

• Several people were arrested for participating in a banned gay-pride event in Moscow on Saturday.

• Up to 100 protesters blocked the driveway to the Brisbane, Australia hotel where mining bosses from the coal seam gas industry were holding an annual summit yesterday.

• Several dozen opponents of shale gas marched through Quebec, Canada on Monday to warn of its possible environmental impact. Training sessions on how to organize sit-ins and occupy exploration sites are also being planned.

• 15,000 people gathered in the Sbata district of Casablanca on Sunday to demand more democratic freedoms, jobs and better social conditions. But security forces intensified their hardline crackdown.

• Dozens of supporters of hunger-striking retail cleaning workers, joined by U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, rallied Sunday in south Minneapolis to demand higher wages for supermarket floor cleaners.

• Over 100,000 Mexicans took to the streets over the weekend to protest the war on drugs, impunity, corruption, and violence.

• Three people were killed when Yemeni security forces opened fire on demonstrators and launched rocket-propelled grenades at an office building Monday as they cracked down on a protest in the flashpoint city of Taiz in the country’s south.

• About 300 Iraqi oil workers staged a brief walkout in the southern oil hub of Basra on Monday, protesting a lack of financial benefits and threatening to halt production at some fields if their demands were not met.

• Mauritanian secondary schoolteachers on Sunday launched a three-day strike to demand health insurance coverage, new social housing and other benefits.

• Over 100 newly-minted lawyers walked out of their own graduation at the University of Michigan Law School on Saturday to protest the ceremony’s commencement speaker, anti-gay Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH).

• Thousands of people rallied in Japan Saturday to demand a shift away from nuclear power after an earthquake and tsunami sparked the world’s worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl a quarter-century ago.

• Palestinian prisoners in four Israeli jails went on a hunger strike on Sunday in protest against the Israeli solitary confinement policy applied against tens of prisoners who have been denied their basic human rights and mainly the right to get family visits.

• On Sunday thousands took the streets across Syria demanding that President Bashar al-Assad step down. At least 13 people were killed and many more arrested when Syrian forces attacked ongoing protests in two towns.

• In Yemen, at least 22 people were wounded Sunday when government forces loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh fired on pro-democracy protesters. The crackdown came just one day after thousands of women took to the streets to protest a claim by Saleh that demonstrators are violating Islamic law because they are allowing women and men to mix.

• A Bahraini hunger striker protesting the assault and detention of her father and husband was taken to hospital Sunday but was released after refusing an intravenous tube.

• In Serbia, some 50,000 protesters Saturday gathered in the capital, Belgrade, to protest against the government and call for early elections.

• Hundreds of people attended a ‘kiss-in’ protest at a London pub after a gay couple claimed they were thrown out for kissing.

• In Pakistan, enraged citizens held protest demonstrations in different parts of Karachi against unannounced load shedding by the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) despite increasing the cost of electricity.

• Around 150 demonstrators set up chairs for a ‘sit- in’ protest in front of the Chinese embassy in Berlin on Sunday to demand the release of Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei.

• On Sunday, 6,000 Palestinian prisoner launched a one-day hunger strike to protest the internal Palestinian split and Israeli measures.

• Police fired tear gas and violently dispersed hundreds of protesters in Libya this morning who gathered in front of police headquarters of in Benghazi demanding an end to Gaddafi’s 41-year rule.

• Anti-government protests in Shia villages around Manama, the Bahraini capital, left several people injured and one person reported dead on Monday.

• In Iran, clashes have erupted today at the funeral of a protester killed on Monday, when tens of thousands of people took to the streets in the largest Iranian protests since the aftermath of the nation’s disputed 2009 election.

• In Yemen, protests against longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh are escalating as they continue for a sixth consecutive day. Earlier today government supporters attacked pro-democracy demonstrators as they set off on a march from a university in the capital of Sanaa.

• Labor unions across Egypt have taken the country’s revolution as a cue to stop work and demand better pay and conditions. More than 12,000 workers at state-owned Misr Spinning and Weaving went on strike on Wednesday. In the coastal city of Damietta, about 6,000 spinning and weaving workers were also striking. And thousands of workers and employees from the Upper Egyptian city of Assiut have organized sit-ins.

• On Tuesday, an estimated 10,000 people gathered at the capital building in Madison, Wisconsin to protest against a bill that would eliminate almost all collective bargaining rights for public workers and slash their pay and benefits.

• Eighteen people were put in handcuffs and detained by sheriff’s deputies in San Francisco Monday afternoon after a sit-in at the county clerk’s office. The act of civil disobedience was carried out by gay and lesbian couples to protest same-sex marriage bans in California and other states.

• On Tuesday, the train schedule was badly disrupted while 13 locomotives were stranded at the Pakistan Railways Mughalpura workshops as workers went on strike and laid on the railroad tracks in protest against non-payment of salaries.

• Public transport came to a halt in Athens on Tuesday once again due to a 24-hour strike over the controversial new law which envisages a partial privatization of the debt-ridden Greek Railways, the restructure of the sector and transfers of employees to other public companies to save costs.

• “We pay taxes, Why don’t you?” protesters chanted as they carried signs and Valentine’s Day balloons on the sidewalk in front of the Bank of America building in downtown Hartford Monday in a demonstration designed to embarrass Connecticut’s largest bank into greater cooperation with delinquent homeowners.

• A strike by Portuguese train engineers on Tuesday caused severe disruption for commuters in the latest protest against government spending cuts designed to ease a debt crisis.

• One of Equatorial Guinea’s most prominent authors, Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, entered his fifth day on a hunger strike yesterday to protest the policies of Equatorial Guinean dictator Teodoro Obiang.

• Around 10,000 of Thailand’s “Red Shirts” gathered in Bangkok Sunday to mark seven months since a deadly military crackdown on their anti-government protest.

• Up to 40,000 opposition activists rallied in central Minsk on Saturday to call for longtime authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko to step down. By late Sunday, police had cleared Independence Square of all demonstrators.

• Public transport workers in Athens again went on strike Monday, bringing the Greek capital to a standstill, in an ongoing series of one-day strikes aimed against a government austerity package.

• Several thousand workers organized by Spain’s main trade unions braved cold weather in several cities around the country on Saturday to protest the government’s austerity measures and its plans to extend retirement age.

• About five hundred people took to the streets of New York City on Sunday as part of the intensifying global response to the decision by administrators of the Smithsonian Institute to censor a video installation by queer icon David Wojnarowicz.

• About a dozen social justice activists gathered in front of Central Prison in Raleigh Friday to protest prison conditions.

• A group of students and citizens staged a sit-in at a Texas Commission on Environmental Quality branch office in Corpus Christi to protest a proposed petroleum-burning power plant.

• Thirty-three women descended 500 m into the El Chiflon del Diablo mine – an unused carbon mine which now operates as a tourist attraction – to protest the elimination of a labor program of which they belonged and have threatened starting a hunger-strike.

• One hundred pinwheels briefly blanketed the ground outside an administrative building on the campus of the University of North Carolina on Tuesday, as members of the Sierra Student Coalition protested the use of coal extracted through mountaintop removal.

• While George Bush and Dick Cheney broke ground on the new presidential library at Southern Methodist University on Tuesday, about 100 people from around the country gathered a few blocks away to protest.

• More than 100 angry Ryanair passengers staged a sit-in in an aircraft cabin for several hours on Wednesday after their flight was diverted to Belgium.

• Dozens of gas drilling demonstrators gathered outside New York’s Broome County Legislature to oppose plans to lease mineral rights on public property.

• Thousands have converged in Lisbon to protest the NATO summit. Several rallies are being held culminating in an antiwar march on Saturday.

• Six illegal immigrants, including a Cal State San Bernardino student and a graduate of UC Riverside, staged a sit-in Wednesday at John McCain’s Washington office to get the Arizona senator’s commitment to a path-to-citizenship proposal he has supported in the past.

• About 17,000 Greek students, teachers, workers and pensioners marched in the rain to the US embassy in Athens on Wednesday, beating drums and chanting slogans that opposed international efforts to solve Greece’s current debt crisis, such as “No IMF, no EU, let’s take our fate into our own hands”.

• Activists of the transsexual, gay and lesbian community gathered along a street in San Salvador on Monday to demand the right to choose a name according to their gender.