Experiments with truth: 5/20/11

The Editors May 20, 2011

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.

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