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Peruvians protest against pardon for jailed ex-president Fujimori

The Guardian | Protest -

Alberto Fujimori, 79, was serving 25-year sentence for corruption and authorising death squad killings

Thousands of Peruvians have marched through Lima to vent their outrage over a pardon for the jailed former president Alberto Fujimori, in the biggest protest since the decision was announced.

The public opprobrium was directed at Peru’s president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who granted the pardon on health grounds on Christmas Eve to lift the 25-year sentence, Fujimori, 79, had been serving for corruption and authorising death squad killings.

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End of la ZAD? France’s ‘utopian’ anti-airport community faces bitter last stand

The Guardian | Protest -

Since 2008, an eclectic group of campaigners have united to protest a new airport in western France. As they await the president’s ‘final decision’, Kim Willsher finds them determined to stay – and proud of the community they have created

On a cold but sunny December morning, the only sound around the hedgerows of Notre-Dame-des-Landes is the cawing of a horde of squabbling crows. Those asleep in the cabins, caravans and reclaimed farmhouses of Europe’s largest political squat (in terms of area) are awaiting a far ruder awakening.

“They could send the gendarmes to evict us at any time,” says Pierre (not his real name; like most of the “resistants”, he prefers to remain anonymous). “But we are ready to defend the area – this is now our home. Besides, they’ve tried in the past and not succeeded.”

I’m a small farmer first – but I’ve also had to become a protestor to defend this land

Related: The Inequality Project: the Guardian's in-depth look at our unequal world

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'We don’t have time to wait and see': air pollution protesters resort to direct action

The Guardian | Protest -

Campaigners vow to continue to block traffic at sites across London until their demands are heard and political action to reduce pollution levels is taken

As the green man appeared on the pedestrian crossing a couple of dozen people dressed in Santa hats and tinsel shuffled into the road at one of London’s busiest roundabouts.

Moments later, in the early morning gloom, a banner was unfurled and the small group of pensioners, students and workers – armed with home-made road signs and leaflets – had blocked both lanes of the dual carriageway.

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Everything is awesome (ish)! Ten reasons why 2017 was actually brilliant

The Guardian | Protest -

Good news for people who like good news – here are 10 events from the year that suggest it wasn’t quite the dystopian hellscape we feared

“I do not need to smash my A-levels because I do not need a degree. Any idiot can get a degree. Who else has got a Nobel prize? This is a pretty small club, me and Barack Obama, and all he did was get voted for.” That’s what a lesser person would have thought. Malala, with three As at A-level and a place to read PPE at Oxford, chooses greatness every day of her life.

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Fox hunting: activists claim trail-hunts are a cover for continued bloodsport

The Guardian | Protest -

Ahead of the year’s main Boxing Day hunt, saboteurs say hunters are not obeying the law and loopholes must be closed

As horses, hounds and hunters gather on the busiest day of the year for fox hunting, activists have raised concerns that trail-hunting is being used as a cover for bloodsport more than a decade after it was banned in the UK.

At least 300 hunts are expected to take place across the country on Boxing Day. Riders on horseback gallop behind a pack of hounds directed by a huntsman while terriermen, whose traditional role was to dig foxes out of holes so they could be hunted, follow on quad bikes. Hunt supporters bring up the rear on foot. They all say they’re legally trail-hunting – following an animal-based scent, often fox urine – with hounds for sport.

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Berlin: Rigaer 94. A call to resistance

House Occupation News -

The police state unleashes its full range of possibilities: early this Monday, presumably 100 faces of people, who took part in the events of Hamburg, got published. The state campaign yielded completely its disguise of prosecution and started a smear, that should break any kind of resistance. Let’s not be silent towards these incidents, this general attack on the last social and resistant elements remaining. To burn this society of snitches and murderers and fascism at the stake is a still unaccomplished duty.

It is clear to every reasonable human being, that the episode of Hamburg was absolutely necessary. The lies and fake debates of the repression authorities and the system conformant and right wing media did not achieve to rewrite the successful resistance against the G20. In one of the most self-confident democratic regimes of the whole world with a differentiated apparatus of power and the image of invincibility, ten thousands of people dared to upraise, taking great risks and partly serious consequences for their own lives. A composition of protests, resistant and offensive actions transformed the summit of the ruling powers into a disaster. A disaster for the brand of Hamburg, Germany and the most powerful themselves, whose most important meeting now has an unpredictable future.

A disaster is what the summit was also for the police. This institution that has, in the German empire as in fascist Germany and that of democracy never just been the executive but first and foremost the legitimating power of this nation of murderers and losers. We all know how deeply ingrained the ideology of the police-state is in our society.
A society that threw a dead Rosa Luxemburg into the Landwehrkanal, even behind a bookshelf chased Anne Frank and sent her, with millions of other “subhumans” to Death-camps; this society which in the end declares a German-national military(1) as the “resistance”, is fascist. The security-apparatus of the BRD, formed by the same butchers that hunted partisans and antifascists for the german nation all over europe without mercy , is fascist. The wider society and the executive powers reunited in the hunt on communists and brought the machinery against the guerilla groups that fortunately shot the bullet at the german embodied fascist Hans-Martin Schleyer to a till then never seen perfection, just a few years after the “liberation”.

The faces of the resistance were pasted up on wanted-posters on every corner, on every intersection one had to expect to be controlled by heavily armed police, the reintroduction of death-sentence was taken into consideration and put into practice through police work. The discourse in society, directed by the staff of media, politics and police set the course for countless fatal shootings , white torture and special laws against large parts of society. The police state, still in its infancy at the time of the murder of Benno Ohnesorg and under permanent threat of an uprising, has throughout the years developed into a state within the state. With the end of the urban guerilla and the new social movements we are faced with a society unable to bring forth a relevant opposition against this system. Not even when people are cruelly tortured and murdered in the bunkers of police stations like Oury Jalloh from Dessau, who was burnt alive by a fascist pig.

The only retarding factor in the perfection of the totalitarian police state seems to be the careful proceeding of the head-strategists, as to not raise too much concerns with conservative civil rights activists. Like us, they have less and less means and backing in a civil society that has decided, what the state does can not be wrong; what the press says is right, resistance is senseless.

The times of comfort zone protests have definitely passed. To this regard the German society got to the point again, where it has not been since 80 years. These are the key innovations and challenges for the resistance:

The mere participation on a demonstration can mean longtime prison.
The police can define areas, where their own law are in force.
The police can classify anyone as potential offender (“Gefährder”)(2), to be able to imprison people without a court decision and watch over them completely.

Already before the G20 summit, measures against the people of the resistance have been taken. Persons, who are classified by the police as potential offenders, received bans to not come to Hamburg. Obligations to register with the police have been issued and enforced under threat to be punished by a fine and imprisonment. Furthermore visible observations with the purpose of intimidation and for sure area-wide undercover surveillance have been made.
There is no need for further explanation that during the summit the complete city of Hamburg has been under control by the police, which lead to “adaptation” of civil rights and massive violence by the heavily-armed police troops.
The police activities before and during the summit did not show a new quality. Every major event of the past was accompanied by attacks by the security apparatus on societal conventions. But the mass of attacks and their implicitness with which they were exercised against formerly self-evident forms of protests in Hamburg were remarkable.

What’s been started after the summit is a qualitative leap. There are those claiming the riots were started by the state to smash resistance structures in a final campaign. This line of thought is bullshit as we know we all politically wanted the state disaster in Hamburg. To put an end to these conspiracy theories once and for all we take the political responsibility for everything that happened in Hamburg: from civil protests to the last stone that was thrown at cops. As a part of the rebellious structures we called for a demonstration in solidarity with all those facing repression shortly after the summit, in the future we will also not hide from the responsibility to further the revolt. Those that only see a state conspiracy behind everything are incapacitating the resistance in all its properties and have no legitimization to speak in its name.

It’s clear now, that the state is fighting for its power of definition concerning this event in the same way as it seeks to rule over everything. Over our lives and social structures, the nature and the techniques. In this battle for the capitalist and national idea the state will always use the means of fascism. It’s always the same methods being used again and again to denounce the resistance as criminal, non-political and unsocial(3). Doing so, the German state can rely on its police, its media and its people with their representatives. It’s hard to say, who is the most disgusting one of these creatures. Is it the chief of the special investigation group “Black Block”, who would hunt down anyone and everyone held in front of his fangs? Or is it Brechmittel-Scholz(4), who’s representing the dirty Bourgeoisie of Hamburg with their luxury limousines? Or the newspapermen being the executive power of the police’s propaganda. Or the collaborators with their smartphone footage handing over thousands of people to the hands of repression because they are cowards that fear to take control over their own lives and would love to march behind every Hitler.

Some of us were laughing about the last wave of raids, which was leaked before. Or about the fact that Fabio, the sympathetic boy, is becoming a problem for the strategy of repression. Nevertheless the police strategy should not be underestimated. An important part of the strategy involves a long term propaganda to gain back the power of definition about the events of Hamburg. Who could believe that several months later, the G20 would still be on the daily agenda thanks to frequent press conferences organized by the police? And who could believe that the professional propaganda with almost endless resources would fail without our contribution?

That’s why we – at this point of extensive manhunt – renew our confession to the struggle against the state, the fascist organizations like the police, the secret services and right-wing structures as well as collaborators and snitches within the population and the press. Fabio and all those, who even in court keep their straight stance, are our role-models to defy fear and send greetings of freedom and solidarity to all those who face the repression, and the world of the G20.

On the occasion of the manhunt and because of the calls for denunciation of 100 people we decided to publish pictures of 54 police officers, who were part of last years eviction of Rigaer94. We would be happy to receive hints of their private addresses. They can be held responsible for the eviction as well as for the violence of the three weeks of occupation.

It’s important now, to put an end to our waiting attitude and empower the mobilization and solidarity of active structures. The demonstration after the wave of raids was a starting point(5). But with the next raids we have to grow in numbers. If we don’t have any other means, we at least have to take to the streets to take responsibility for our friends who are hunted by the state.

Everyone to the streets! Resolute and angry we fight the ruling order and stay strong in the face of repression!

(1) Stauffenberg was a high ranking general who tried to kill Hitler. He was member of the aristocracy, who basically criticized Hitler for a bad strategy
(2) “Gefährder” is a term created by the german police and widely used in public debate to stigmatize and criminalize muslim people. The use against leftists and anarchists is quite likely to be more widely adopted.
(3) originally “asozial”, something between antisocial and unsocial
(4) Brechmittel-Scholz: Major of Hamburg, who is renowned for ordering the use of poison (Brechmittel) by the police that would make people vomit in order to find out if they swallowed drugs
(5) On December 5th police cracked down on several homes of people that were identified as participants of a block that was attacked by the police in the Rondenbarg street during the attempt to block the summit. As a reaction there were demonstrations in major cities all over germany.

Contra Info https://en-contrainfo.espiv.net/2017/12/22/berlin-rigaer-94-a-call-to-resistance/
Rigaer 94 https://rigaer94.squat.net/2017/12/17/rigaer94-aufruf-zum-widerstand-und-veroeffentlichung-von-fahndungsbildern-von-polizist_innen/

Youth mobilization challenges election fraud in Honduras

Waging Nonviolence -

by Jeff Abbott

Salvador Nasralla, the presidential candidate for the opposition in Honduras, marches with protesters on December 10. (WNV/Jeff Abbott)

The anger and frustration in the streets of Honduras following the controversial November 26 presidential election is palpable. Everyone seems to have an opinion about the electoral process, which was marked by accusations of fraud carried out by the incumbent president of Juan Orlando Hernández of the National Party.

In Honduras’ second largest city, San Pedro Sula, small groups of semi-truck drivers have “Fuera JOH,” or “get rid of Juan Orlando Hernández,” written on their mud flaps or posted in the windows of their vehicles. When I was staying in the city center, the silence of the night was broken with loud chants of “Fuera JOH” from the streets.

The accusations of fraud sparked the widespread movement against Orlando Hernández. Hondurans have carried out weekly marches through the major cities that have drawn hundreds of thousands across the country. According to Jesus Garza, a Honduran political and human rights analyst, these marches have been among the largest in the country’s history.

Many of these marches are organized by the opposition political party La Alianza Contra de la Dictadura, or the Alliance Against the Dictator, led by former president Manuel Zelaya, but Garza points out the vast majority of actions — including the establishment of roadblocks on major roads across the country — are spontaneous.

In almost weekly actions protesters have blocked over 80 points along the highways with burning tires across the country. These actions have been met with intense repression from the military, in coordination with the national police.

These actions have remained largely peaceful, but several incidents have turned into street battles, with small groups of protesters throwing rocks at police and military. Organizers claim that these are more than likely infiltrators from gangs. They fear that this could justify the escalation of the situation and more repression.

Faced with the growing unrest, the Honduran government declared a state of siege on December 1 that suspended the constitution and established a curfew between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. for 10 days. Yet the angry population refused to accept the curfew, and the government was forced to shorten it, before retracting the state of siege altogether on December 7.

At least four people were killed on the first night of the siege. According to the human rights organization Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras, over 30 people have been killed by Honduran state security forces since the crisis began.

But in spite of the threat of state repression, the youth of Honduras have maintained their opposition to the burgeoning dictatorship in Honduras.

On December 8, thousands of frustrated Hondurans carrying torches marched through the streets of Tegucigalpa to the U.S. embassy to call on the United States to help defend their democracy.

Youths chant “Fuera JOH” outside the U.S. embassy on December 8. (WNV/Jeff Abbott)

The march was organized in part by Los Indignados, or The Indignants, a group of youths that began to organize following the 2013 election of Juan Orlando Hernández to challenge corruption and violence in Honduras.

Protesters were encouraged by organizers to tweet using the hashtag #IDontWantToLeaveMyCountry to Donald Trump’s personal account ahead of the march. Many youth are forced to leave Honduras due to the rampant violence and lack of opportunity. Their situation grew especially worse following the 2013 election of Orlando Hernández.

Protesters ripped down National Party campaign signs as they marched down Morazán Boulevard. Once the march arrived at the embassy demonstrators burned the signs in a symbolic rejection of the administration.

Two days later tens of thousands marched again to the U.S. embassy. This march was organized by the Alliance Against the Dictator. The protesters were accompanied by Salvador Nasralla, the presidential candidate for the party, and former president Manuel Zelaya. The pair addressed the crowd during a standoff with military police, where they denounced the fraud in the November 26 presidential election and the silence of the international community.

Messing with the wrong generation

Both of these marches included massive participation by the country’s youth. This generation is at the heart of the movement.

Most young people in Honduras have grown of age in the eight years since a coup d’état ousted democratically-elected president Zelaya. This generation has seen a drastic decline in their opportunities, as well as an increase in violence. According to Warren Ochoa, a congressional candidate and youth coordinator for the LIBRE party, at least 800,000 new young voters registered to participate in the election.

“This part of the population is the group that suffers most in the country,” Ochoa said. “There are 1.6 million people unemployed. Over 50 percent of all murders are of youths. This is the population that is most repressed and that sees the least benefits of the system.”

Orlando Hernández’s four years in office, which began in 2014, were marked by the rapid increase in foreign direct investment in key sectors, as well as the privatization of the infrastructure, including highways and the national energy company. The same period was marked by a rapid increase in violent crime.

“This process that the National Party has overseen since the [2009] coup has been a disaster,” Ochoa said. “Poverty has increased. So too has extreme poverty. There are people living on less than two dollars per day. This system that has produced new riches has not produced benefits for the majority of the population.”

The movement is spreading and mobilizing thanks to social media and messaging apps, such as WhatsApp. These tools have provided a means of countering the national media, which has largely ignored the causes of the growing unrest.

“The people are using the social networks,” said Meicke Bautizo, a 27-year-old activist and human rights defender from Tegucigalpa. “They are not just using them to pass the time, but rather to inform themselves.”

Nasralla and former president Manuel Zelaya shake hands in front after addressing the marchers on December 10. (WNV/Jeff Abbott)

The movement has built on the foundation laid by earlier social organizations and the popular movements of the 1980s, which failed due to the systematic repression brought against them using counterinsurgency tactics.

“There was a lot of repression in the 1980s, and they threw in the towel,” Bautizo said. “But when [the right-wing] carried out the coup d’état against Mel [Zelaya], it all changed. They began to question why this president who had lowered the cost of electricity, lowered the cost of transportation, and increased the minimum wage, was removed in a coup. So people began to re-politicize themselves.”

According to Bautizo, the youth began to become more politicized following the election of Orlando Hernández in 2013.

This occurred at the same time that student groups began to organize for the democratization of the student union at the National Autonomous University of Honduras. Bautizo and the others from Los Indignados worked closely with students to improve their political awareness and teach them tactics that moved away from just fighting the police.

“We managed to work with the students to teach them that [the movement] was more than just throwing stones [at the security forces],” Bautizo said. “All of these youths were injected in the student movement during this political crisis. The social problems were increasing, and so too was the lack of confidence with the system.”

The origins of the crisis

The current crisis in Honduras began following the presidential election on November 26. Many argued that Orlando Hernández’s quest for reelection is illegal, as the Honduran constitution bars any president from even mentioning a second term. Yet Orlando Hernández sought a change in the constitution, and won a victory in the supreme court that permitted him to discuss a second term.

The opposition faced an uphill battle against the incumbent president, who had won his first election amidst allegations of fraud.

Early results from the Supreme Electoral Council, which oversees the electoral process, showed that opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla was leading Orlando Hernández, but this lead quickly disappeared after an error with the computers.

The initial results that put Nasralla ahead of Orlando Hernández were supported by Luis Zelaya, the candidate from the Liberal Party.

Late in the evening on December 17, the electoral council officially declared that Orlando Hernández won the election, guaranteeing that the protests will only intensify. These results were supported by the the European Union, which had overseen the elections to guarantee transparency. The Organization of the American States, on the other hand, called into question the results.

“There are no conditions to affirm that the winner is one or the other, and this shows that this process has been affected by marked irregularities and deficiencies,” the OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro said in a press release. The statement ended by calling for a new round of elections. The opposition too has decried the results and called for further protests.

The police rebel

The movement against the alleged fraud has found an unlikely ally in their movement.

On December 4, the elite anti-riot police within the Honduran National Police known as the Cobras, announced that they were refusing to comply with orders to enforce the curfew, as well as their orders to repress the people. The heavily armed unit made this declaration to the press from their barracks in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula.

“The reason for our position is we cannot repress the people,” one masked Cobras officer told Heather Gies from Upside Down World. “This isn’t a political issue, but yes we are with the people because it is unjust what is happening.”

The police denied that their action was a labor strike, but said that it was taken because of their desire for peace in Honduras.

Yet shortly after the declaration, the elite unit entered into negotiations with the administration of Orlando Hernández in Tegucigalpa. The state sought to end what they perceived as a strike in order to get their elite unit back on the streets.

“A small example of this systemic crisis that we are facing is the rebellion of the police,” Ochoa said. In comparison, Ochoa points out that the healthcare sector has maintained an eight-month strike to improve work conditions, but they have not received a response from the administration of Orlando Hernández.

“Supposedly the state did not have the funds to pay them,” Ochoa said. “But when a force that represents the power of the state [stopped working], the government arrived at an agreement with them within 24 hours. This is the behavior of a military regime.”

Honduran military prepare to confront protesters at the roadblock in Villanueva on December 15. (WNV/Jeff Abbott)

Following the negotiations the unit returned to the streets, but they maintained that they were only there to guarantee that order was maintained during protests. Despite the agreement — that included a pay increase for the police — protesters still see the unit’s declaration as a sign of solidarity with the movement. During one march on December 10, protesters showed their support for the unit by shaking their hands and patting them on the back as the protesters marched through the streets of Tegucigalpa.

“This was a rebellion from the lower rungs of the ladder,” Ochoa said. “They had received their orders to repress the people, but they found their families on the other side of the barricades. They found themselves in the middle of this contradiction. The state found that they did not have all the control.”

It’s not over

Following the electoral council’s declaration of Orlando Hernández as president, the opposition called for maintaining its mobilization, and the population has once again responded by taking to the streets to decry the fraudulent election.

There have been daily protests, including marches through the major cities, as well the establishment of new barricades. On December 21, tens of thousands marched through Tegucigalpa once again to the U.S. embassy to demand that they denounce the election fraud.

“The government is betting that the people are going to tire of being in the street,” Garza, a Honduran political and human rights analyst, said. “But the people are angry, and they have not grown tired yet. The protests will continue through Christmas. The situation continues to be very intense, but so too is the response of the popular mobilization.”

Trump inauguration protests: six activists acquitted of rioting charges

The Guardian | Protest -

Setback for prosecution could affect government strategy regarding more than 150 others charged in January demonstrations

A jury has acquitted six people on charges of rioting and destruction of property connected to violent protests during Donald Trump’s 20 January inauguration. The case could have major implications for the government’s strategy for prosecuting more than 150 others charged for their actions that day.

The verdict by a Washington superior court jury after two days of deliberations is a setback for the prosecution’s approach to the case. From the start, government prosecutors did not attempt to prove that any of the defendants had personally committed acts of violence or vandalism.

Related: US government uses Project Veritas video in trial of anti-Trump protesters

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Eminem attacks Donald Trump: 'He's got people brainwashed'

The Guardian | Protest -

The rapper continues his stream of invective against the president in a new interview, saying ‘his election was such a disappointment to me about the state of the country’

Eminem has attacked President Trump in a new interview, saying: “I get almost flustered thinking about him – that’s how angry he makes me.”

Related: The woke Slim Shady – understanding Eminem in the age of Trump

Related: Eminem: Revival review – puns and witless beats in a total rejection of hip-hop

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Athens: Requesting Funds for an Arrestee

House Occupation News -

For almost 10 years the 6th of December has marked the day a 15 year old boy named Alexis Grigoropoulos was murdered by police in the Exarchia neighborhood of Athens, Greece. His murder was the spark that ignited a wild fire of insurrection across the country in December 2008 that
caught the world’s attention and inspired general revolt for years to come; both in Greece and beyond its’ borders. Every year the memory of Alexis lives on through the resistance of courageous individuals coming together to fight the state and its bastard police in the streets of Exarchia (where Alexis was killed, and where police are not welcome).
For more information on the 6th of December and its history please look here.

On this 9th anniversary of the death of Alexis, a comrade was arrested by mat police (riot squad). He is accused of throwing molotov cocktails at the police. He is now facing time in prison if he doesn’t pay a 3000 euro fine. Local efforts are being made to support this individual via
fundraiser events in the coming week, but funds are very scarce and it is a critical matter of time (December 24th, 2017) to raise this money or have him go to prison. In court our comrade’s defense to these allegations was as follows: “I am anarchist, and was in Exarchia to
defend the neighborhood against the presence of the police who are only serving the interests of the rich capitalists and constantly attacking the poor”. We are seeking international support to try and come up with
this money before the 24th of December. A paypal link is included below.
For more inquiries we have included an email address as well below.

We are writing this statement as members of the Rosa de Foc international squat in Exarchia:

For More inquiries into this case please contact:
solidaritygreece6december2017 [at] riseup [dot] net

PLEASE DONATE TO THIS CAUSE HERE:
PayPal.Me/george1312

Solidarity is without borders, and our strength!
The spirit of Alexis Grigoropoulos lives on in our actions of today!
Fire to the Prisons!

From protests to bombings, a 50-year history of US embassies

The Guardian | Protest -

As the US embassy in London moves to new premises, we survey a history of sieges, battles and raids at US missions

When the US embassy moves out of Grosvenor Square, London, early next year it will be the end of a centuries-old connection with this corner of Mayfair. The first ambassador to Britain, future President John Adams, lived from 1785 to 1788 in a house that still stands on the square.

The embassy itself was housed in several central London buildings before settling into Grosvenor Square in 1938 and its current home in the 1950s. During the second world war, it was even known as “Little America”, after General Dwight D Eisenhower set up his headquarters across from the diplomats.

Related: US embassy proves a catalyst for £15bn Nine Elms regeneration project

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Raging Granny Ruth takes on the GOP tax bill

Waging Nonviolence -

by Sarah Freeman-Woolpert

Ruth Zalph at a tax bill protest on Capitol Hill on December 5. (Todd Whynott Collins)

In recent weeks, 86-year-old Ruth Zalph has been repeatedly arrested for protesting the GOP tax bill and advocating for health care coverage in Washington, D.C. Calling herself “Raging Granny Ruth,” Zalph is a founder and leader of the Raging Grannies in North Carolina, a group that uses song and street theater to advocate for justice and equality, particularly in the realm of voting rights and fair political representation.

Before the Raging Grannies, Zalph already had an extensive history of activism and community organizing, including countless arrests protesting nuclear weapons during the Cold War, as well as leading the 860-mile NAACP Journey for Justice march in 2015. She has also conducted many actions as part of the Del Ray Citizens for Social Responsibility and the Palm Beach Friends Quaker Meeting.

I recently met up with Zalph at a sit-in against the tax bill, where she joined disability rights activists and faith leaders in civil disobedience actions on Capitol Hill. She told me about her early anti-nuclear activism, using Jimmy Carter as an excuse to not pay a court-mandated fine, and how the Raging Grannies have evolved over the years.

You started out as an activist protesting nuclear energy and nuclear proliferation. Why was the anti-nuclear movement so important to you?


I traveled to Kazakhstan and Ukraine when they were part of the Soviet Union. In Ukraine, I interviewed a dying victim from the Chernobyl disaster. The government didn’t have to answer to them. Those facilities were thought to be fail safe. So, for example, when Duke Energy announced plans to store nuclear fuel waste at the Shearon Harris plant in 2000, I went with a group of people to their offices to demand a public hearing. We wanted to deliver a letter to the CEO on the 29th floor, and they would not permit us to take the elevator. So we sat downstairs [and refused to leave]. They arrested us for trespassing, and the case went all the way up to the North Carolina Supreme Court. I read a testimony in court, and I explained that the nuclear waste storage project posed a great safety hazard to the general public. So, our actions were done for the greater good. I told the court room that I was there to represent the innocent ones, and that I was willing to break the laws of man to follow a higher power.

What is one memorable moment you can recall from your earlier acts of civil disobedience?

When Jimmy Carter was the president, nuclear submarines were stationed in the port of St. Mary’s, Georgia. We had a civil disobedience action in 1988 at the port, demanding to speak about the dangers of nuclear ships in the port. They gave us warnings, then arrested us for trespassing. When the case came to court I was found guilty and ordered to pay a fine of $100. I said, “I will not pay a fine to any system that I feel is unjust, but I will pay it to Habitat for Humanity.” And the judge couldn’t say, “I’ve never heard of them,” because Jimmy Carter was on the board of Habitat for Humanity. So the judge allowed it. When my friend, who was also ordered to pay a fine, wanted to give it to the American Civil Liberties Union, the judge said, “I never heard of them.” So she said, “Fine, mine will go to Habitat for Humanity, too.”

When did you become a Raging Granny, and could you tell me more about the group?

We are a disorganization, the Raging Grannies. I was one of the people who started it 20 years ago in North Carolina. The group is made up of middle-aged women, and they started going out with signs telling the United States: “Take your nuclear submarines out of here!” But nobody paid any attention to them, so they decided they needed to do something more dramatic. It was useless, they were doing this every other week. So they decided, “Okay, we’ve got to sing some songs and do a little street theater, and maybe people will pay attention.” And they were right! So they dressed as they thought grandmothers would dress: They put on hats with big flowers and buttons, and they got out there and sang. Well, lo and behold, the press came, the photographers took pictures and people paid attention to them. And this started spreading.

There are now 99 gaggles of grannies around the country, and there are a few in other countries as well. Everyone has a right to help write songs, everyone is encouraged to be a leader at an action. We have meetings every month, and we try to encourage people to join in decision-making. Every two years, all the Raging Grannies from Canada and the United States get together for an “un-convention.” Our beliefs are nonviolence, justice for all people, fair voting and fair representation. We do not endorse candidates, we focus on issues. So we will favor women’s rights and equal pay, we will favor the right for a woman to decide what is good for herself and her family, but we’re not endorsing a person. When they have a tax bill that’s going to take away children’s healthcare, that is not fair.

How have you been involved with the current protests against the GOP tax bill in Washington?

I’ve been arrested three times in Washington, D.C. in the past few weeks for protesting this horribly insidious tax bill with its implications for health care. I participated in the Moral Mondays demonstrations in North Carolina, led by Rev. William J. Barber. And I realized at one point that I am a white woman with privilege, privileges that not every woman gets. Therefore, it was incumbent upon me to try to work to see every woman — white, black, gay, straight, transgender — have the same rights as me.

Ruth Zalph protesting in Washington, D.C. earlier this year.

Our country is just such a racist country. It started with taking away land from the native peoples and they are still suffering today. The U.S. government has broken so many treaties. So, as an individual, I say our system stinks. But I speak for myself on that.

I joined the NAACP, and I was part of America’s Journey for Justice in 2015, where people started walking from Selma, Alabama to Washington, D.C. Rev. Barber was there, and he said, “I’ve got this problem with my back, at one time they never thought I’d be able to walk or stand. And I can stand, and I can walk with a little help. But I can’t walk this march.” So, I said, “I’ll walk for you.” Well, that was that, I opened my mouth!

I partnered with the flag-bearer, an African American man in his late 50s [who called himself Middle Passage]. He had had two heart transplants, and he and I led the march. I walked a hundred miles. He collapsed two days before we got to Washington, and he passed away, which was a great loss.

So, we did the Moral Mondays demonstrations, where I was arrested several times for making too much noise or for breaking the rules of the building or not leaving when asked to leave. It was something that I felt was very important to risk doing. I’m retired, I’m not dependent on an employer, and I’m in good health. So I said, “Somebody needs to do it, and it’s got to be me.”

Now it’s growing. There are hundreds of organizations that participate. We do an awful lot of letting our legislators know what’s important to us. One thing is labor, fair salaries, the Fight for 15 is part of it, and the ability to have a union, fair voting.

Have the Raging Grannies taken on a bigger role since Donald Trump was elected?

We certainly have a lot more to sing about! We have just so many things that are important to us, to maintain our freedom, women’s rights. We sing for the planet about global warming, Duke Energy’s coal ash and fracking, the Atlantic Coast pipeline, the Environmental Protection Agency. Sometimes we go to public hearings, and you have to sign your name if you’d like to speak. I’ve signed my name and gotten up and sang. One time, we were at a hearing and they said, “You will not be allowed to sing,” which is outrageous.

Ruth Zalph getting arrested at a civil disobedience action on December 5. (Todd Whynott Collins)

It must be hard to sustain your energy in spite of the frustrations and tragedies you have witnessed. How do you keep from feeling cynical?

I think about the people who have engaged in civil disobedience in Washington, D.C. They are people who have disabilities from birth. They have open ports in their bodies, feeding ports and a port for their heart, but they are working, going to school. One is a 20-year-old college girl. She has a cart that carries around her medication and a computer telling her when to feed herself. If you can imagine, she went into the Senate chambers last month, stood in front of the Senators and said, “I need my healthcare!” These people stand out there and say, “You are trying to take away my healthcare, you’re trying to kill me! Kill the bill, don’t kill me!” You’ll be hearing that chant a lot from us now.

What advice can you give to those who are just getting started with civil disobedience?

Don’t be afraid. There are always good people there to help you. You will meet some of the sweetest, kindest, most beautiful people when you are involved in this struggle — people who will do anything for you. You talk to somebody and they’ll say, “Okay, you need a place to stay? You can stay with me when you come.”

And resist! Don’t let them scare you off. Corporations like Duke Energy are always trying to do whatever they can to put more money in their pockets. If you don’t keep at it, they’re going to get their way all the time. You’ve gotta fight back, fight back, fight back.

'I felt elated that I'd done something': first-time activists on a year of protest

The Guardian | Protest -

From the Women’s March to Brexit, in 2017 many people took to the streets for the first time. Four new protesters reveal their reasons

There is a saying known as the Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Its origins are hazy, and not rooted in ancient Chinese wisdom, but it gets repeated in times of turbulence. Robert Kennedy famously used it in a speech to students in Cape Town in 1966, when he called on them to find “common qualities of conscience and indignation” to “wipe away the unnecessary sufferings of our fellow human beings at home and around the world”.

And here we are again, in interesting times, rediscovering our consciences and indignation. From the sea of pussyhats that descended on Whitehall for the Women’s March in January to the public figures felled by #metoo, this has been a year of protest. Grassroots movements took on the establishment in a surprise general election, driving an even more surprising result. Across the country, more and more of us decided that this was the year we would take a stand.

The women I’ve met through this, they give me hope. I went to a meeting and they were bursting at the seams

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What a failed civil rights campaign can teach climate activists trying to stop Kinder Morgan

Waging Nonviolence -

by Cam Fenton

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In early December, Canada’s National Energy Board gave Texas pipeline company Kinder Morgan permission to ignore local laws and permits while starting construction on its Trans-Mountain pipeline. Scheduled to ship nearly 900,000 barrels of tar sands per day from Alberta to Burnaby, British Columbia by 2019, the project is a potential lightning rod for the climate movement.

As someone with more than a decade involved in campaigns to stop tar sands expansion, I’ve been struggling with a simple question: How do we stop Kinder Morgan now that it’s been approved?

On the one hand, there is a newly minted provincial government in British Columbia that took power with a promise to “use every tool” at its disposal to stop the project. On the other, the federal government, in support of Alberta and Kinder Morgan, has argued the province has no real recourse for action.

The movement, especially indigenous peoples, have pledged fierce resistance. In the last few months of 2017, we’ve started seeing sparks of disobedience — a mass flotilla shutting down Kinder Morgan’s terminal construction, a series of actions bird-dogging the same federal leaders who approved the pipeline and the launch of the Tiny House Warriors project, an indigenous-led strategy to construct tiny homes along the path of the pipeline.

As inspiring and important as these actions have been, we still don’t have a clear answer to the question at hand: What is the end-game for stopping Kinder Morgan once and for all? Drawing from all my experiences from campaigns, both successful and failed, I see only two ways that the Kinder Morgan pipeline doesn’t get built.

The first way is for the federal approval, and the permits that come with it, to be overturned or revoked. If one of the ongoing court challenges to Kinder Morgan is successful in overturning the project’s National Energy Board approval, the door re-opens to a federal government rejection — much like the Northern Gateway project, an approved tar sands pipeline to the coast of British Columbia, was rejected by a federal court in 2016.

Mounting delays could also keep Kinder Morgan from starting serious construction well into the next 2019 federal election. That would open the door for a shift in the federal government’s position on the pipeline, or a shift in who controls the government and where the balance of political power lies in Canada.

The second option is for Kinder Morgan to pull the plug. So far, we haven’t seen a pipeline company back away from an approved tar sands pipeline. The closest example came earlier this year, when — after years of work and millions invested — TransCanada walked away from its Energy East project. It was a major victory for people-powered organizing, which blocked it in Quebec and forced it to undergo a comprehensive climate change review.

Extrapolating the mix of political, regulatory and economic challenges that sunk Energy East, we can assume that for Kinder Morgan to walk away the TransMountain project, it would need to face a veritable wall of opposition. Provincial and local political hurdles, physical construction delays and collapsing investor confidence would need to add up to a broad public acceptance of this project having no chance of reaching completion.

To get there, it’s going to take a campaign of escalation, coordination, strategy and no small bit of luck. In order to do it right, activists and organizers are going to need to learn from the past — specifically two historic campaigns that occurred over 50 years ago.

Albany vs. Birmingham

In January 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. and a group of civil rights leaders gathered just outside of Savannah, Georgia for a meeting that would change the course of American history. The movement had just suffered one of its most stunning defeats: the Albany campaign.

The massive desegregation campaign in Albany, Georgia had started with energy and massive participation. Thousands of people were willing to go to jail, including King. But after two years, they had fallen short of winning any concrete demands for the local movement.

Why did Albany fail to achieve its goals? Most casual observers point to the shrewdness of Albany Police Chief Laurie Pritchett.

During previous campaigns, like the recently victorious Freedom Rides, civil rights organizers had largely been met with aggressive, obstinate and overtly racist police leaders. Some of these men actively ordered their departments to attack and violently arrest activists, while others collaborated with white supremacist groups to support extrajudicial assaults. Pritchett, however, took a different tact.

Much like the protesters opposing him, Pritchett had also read Gandhi and, therefore, understood what they were trying to do: use the drama of arrests, police violence and local officials upholding segregation laws in defiance of federal orders to land front page coverage in national newspapers. Armed with this knowledge, he only arrested protesters under “law and order” regulations and directed and trained his deputies to show restraint when policing marches and performing arrest.

The result: Albany stayed in the back pages of the newspapers, which ensured that the federal government had no direct cause to intervene in the city.

This lesson speaks to our current moment. In September, the British Columbia detachment of Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP, established something called the Division Liaison Team. Dressed in grey windbreakers and polo-shirts, this team exists to “work with all groups that are planning and executing events so that they are able to fulfill their objectives in the safest manner for everyone.”

Their goal is straight out of the Pritchett playbook: Squash the drama. What King learned in Albany is that they needed a plan for that escalation, not just a bunch of actions that would hopefully be enough to reach their goals.

In their 2015 book on mass movement organizing, “This Is an Uprising,” Mark and Paul Engler offer another lesson from Albany that is relevant to the struggle of defeating Kinder Morgan. They explain that the Albany campaign started without a clear and comprehensive idea of what victory looked like. The earliest actions in Albany were not deployed as part of a specific strategy in the city, but inspired by other actions taking place on the heels of the Freedom Rides. The Englers describe the genesis of the Albany campaign as a “diffuse, broad-based attack on the segregationist power structures without adequately analyzing their opponents’ weaknesses.”
That lack of planning meant that Albany leaders exhausted their supply of bail money after two days of mass action, leaving hundreds of people languishing in jail and putting a planned bus boycott — a crucial part of their escalation strategy – in jeopardy.

This is not to say that regular people can’t make a huge difference. Too often, however, we get more focused on tactics than on the full picture narrative of how movements win. To date, a number of high-conflict, powerful actions have been taken to stop approved pipelines — such as the Line 9 pipeline in eastern Canada and the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline in Texas — both with mixed results.

While these actions, and the people who organized them, were heroic, they didn’t stop the projects they aimed to block. The reasons for that are no doubt many, but for the climate movement rallying to stop Kinder Morgan — or any pipeline for that matter — one lesson is crucial: Single actions, no matter how many people participate, won’t stop these projects.

In Albany, according to the Englers, “all these factors contributed to a catastrophe. But together they pointed to a more fundamental problem: There was no clear plan to use the steady escalation of nonviolent conflict to make the pressure on racist structures unbearable.” Put another way, people had a plan to fight, but no plan to win — which is exactly the problem the climate movement has with Kinder Morgan.

Project Confrontation

Taking the lessons from Albany into account, King and his colleagues drafted something called Project C — with the “C” standing for confrontation.

Project C became the blueprint for the Birmingham campaign, one of history’s most iconic fights for social justice. In Birmingham, a potent mix of civil disobedience, mass action, boycotts and more triggered a national crisis that not only helped to desegregate the city, but also set the wheels in motion for the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

Meticulously planned, Project C decided to target the racist and overbearing Police Chief Bull Connor. They picked Birmingham, in part, because it was a hotbed of vicious white supremacy, and because Bull Connor had a reputation for responding to protests with violence and aggression.

They set goals for the amount of money the movement would need to cover bail for large numbers of people participating in civil disobedience. The goal, as King later wrote in his infamous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was to “create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation,” exposing and forcing the entire United States to come to terms with the true, vicious nature of Jim Crow segregation.

In Birmingham, the crisis was cultivated through mass, principled, nonviolent direct action that provoked Bull Connor to use every nasty tool at his disposal to crack down on resistance. The actions started as a slow simmer and built to a steady boil with the Children’s Crusade — a massive march in Birmingham, where thousands of school children were met with police batons, water cannons and attack dogs. When photos from the Children’s Crusade hit the front page of national newspapers, the campaign burst onto the national agenda.

It took risks. It took guts. It took discipline. It took creating a steady, constant escalation of planned actions — exactly what I think we need to stop Kinder Morgan.

A Project C for Kinder Morgan

If you accept, as I do, that Kinder Morgan can only be stopped by either a shift in the position of the Trudeau government or the company abandoning the pipeline project, then you must also accept that either of those conditions requires an unprecedented, dramatic political moment.

In 2016, a moment like this captured global attention in Standing Rock. A Native American encampment to protect sacred land and water began at a slow simmer, eventually drawing the attention of the world, when — after a constant series of spiritual actions and acts of civil disobedience — police attacked protesters with water cannons in sub-zero temperatures. The public outrage and the response to this stoked a fire that put enough pressure on President Barack Obama to reject a crucial permit required for the pipeline.

The challenge facing Kinder Morgan opponents is that a crisis born of police action is not a given. In rural North Dakota, Native Americans have been the subject of police violence for as long as colonial police forces have existed. While it’s true that the indigenous peoples in British Columbia have faced the same story with the RCMP, things like the Division Liaison Team tell us that there is a concerted effort on the part of police, likely at the behest of the federal government, to avoid these kinds of conflicts around Kinder Morgan. It’s possible that sustained confrontation around Kinder Morgan could result in the kind of police overreach that provokes a national crisis, but right now it seems likely that we’ll see more of a Laurie Pritchett approach to policing Kinder Morgan protests than a Bull Connor approach.

At the same time, that doesn’t mean crisis is impossible to provoke. Shortly after approving the Kinder Morgan pipeline in 2016, Federal Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr threatened to use the military to get the Kinder Morgan pipeline built. It’s a comment he quickly walked back, and while it hints at the potential of the federal government authorizing excessive force in policing Kinder Morgan protests, it likely speaks more to the Trudeau government’s tendency towards bluster and political overreach. With the ascendance of British Columbia’s New Democrats, on a pledge to fight Kinder Morgan with “every tool” available, federal political overreach is almost inevitable. In fact, it’s already underway.

A few weeks ago, the Canadian government gave its support to Kinder Morgan in a bid to overrule local and regional permitting, which the Texas oil company says is holding up its pipeline’s progress. Responding to this claim, British Columbia Environment Minister George Heyman told the federal government to “get its nose out of British Columbia’s business.”

With comments like this, it’s clear that we have smoke, but we still need fire. To date, the provincial government’s main “tool” in the fight against Kinder Morgan has been rhetoric. It is saying the right things, but many in the province are looking for action, like the legal “tools” for stopping the pipeline that environmental lawyers laid out earlier this year. These tools, and others, could provide the most significant delays to the Kinder Morgan pipeline, as well as provoke the kind of federal government overreach that would put Kinder Morgan front-and-center in Canadian politics.

We don’t have to wait for the provincial government to take action. Instead, we can act, with recognition that strategic civil disobedience can pressure leaders into living up to the moral leadership undertaken by everyday people.

In June 1963, just months after the Children’s Crusade pushed the Birmingham campaign to a crescendo, President John F. Kennedy delivered his now infamous Civil Rights Address. The speech marked not only the president’s embrace of the civil rights movement, but his recognition of Project C’s strategic brilliance. During his speech, he remarked that it was “the fires of frustration and discord” where “redress is sought in the streets in demonstrations, parades and protests” that moved him to action.

Project C’s success in moving Kennedy to act hints at another lesson for the Kinder Morgan movement: taking the fight national.

In the run up to the Birmingham campaign, King and his compatriots surmised that moving politicians like Kennedy would require action from Northern whites. At the time, Jim Crow laws kept most African Americans in the South out of the electoral process, and so neither Democrats nor Republicans seriously considered their opinions in any political calculus. For Project C organizers, that meant they needed to draw the eyes, stir the hearts and move the feet of the people politicians most coveted: white liberals and progressives across the United States. In the end, Project C inspired more than 150 actions across the United States, shocking the established order.

To stop Kinder Morgan, this has to be about more than just a pipeline. On the ground, the goal of the Birmingham campaign was to desegregate that single Alabama city. But the Southern Christian Leadership Conference organizers knew that trying to desegregate the South one city at a time was impossible. They looked at Birmingham as not just an instrumental campaign, but as a chance to wage a broader, symbolic struggle. To do this to Kinder Morgan, we have to treat this not just as a battle to stop one pipeline, but as a flashpoint in the fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground, respect indigenous rights, and shift Canada and the world to 100 percent renewable energy.

From strategy to action

For the past few months I’ve felt caught between two truths. On the one hand, Kinder Morgan has started construction, and that demands response. On the other, a response without a pathway to victory has felt, at times, as dangerous as not responding at all.

Albany and Birmingham offer helpful lessons to our current moment, and — like the designers of the Birmingham campaign — we should apply the lessons of the past to the struggle ahead.

We know that, in challenging Kinder Morgan, we’re likely to face a restrained and measured police response much more akin to Laurie Pritchett than Bull Connor. That means we need to create drama by other means — such as by using a steady escalation of action to demonstrate moral leadership and by calling our local and provincial political allies into action. If they take bold stands against Kinder Morgan, they will draw the company and federal government into dramatic, public conflicts.

We also know that the fight against Kinder Morgan needs to be more than just a series of actions against a single pipeline. Kinder Morgan was approved without adequate climate considerations and against the opposition of indigenous peoples and communities. We have to demonstrate that, in the era of climate change, this cannot happen without facing mass civil disobedience. In other words, we need fires of frustration and discord, and we need them from Vancouver to Toronto and everywhere in between.

We also have to remember that in Albany organizers stumbled into the fight of their lives and paid dearly for it. In Birmingham they marched, heads held high, into an even greater fight with a plan to win, changing American politics forever. In taking on Kinder Morgan, we have to be prepared to win, not just be spoiling for a fight.

As the Sun-Tzu quote goes, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” It’s an overused quote, but right now — as we gear up for what could well be one of the decisive battles over the fate of our climate — it’s worth considering.

'Feminism' beats 'complicit' to be Merriam-Webster's word of the year

The Guardian | Protest -

Defined as ‘the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes’, feminism spiked in online searches after the global Women’s March and revelations about Harvey Weinstein

Feminism has been named word of the year by the American dictionary Merriam-Webster.

The US dictionary said that it had seen a 70% increase in online searches for the word in 2017, compared to 2016. The largest spike in searches came in the last weeks of January, following the Women’s March in Washington DC and around the world.

Related: ‘Something’s happening ...’ How the Women’s March inspired a new era of resistance

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In Venezuela, Maduro’s opponents must not lose faith in elections | Reynaldo Trombetta

The Guardian | Protest -

After decades of corruption, the president’s threat to ban rivals from elections was met with apathy. But only an honest vote can restore Venezuela’s democracy

Venezuelans have all the reasons in the world to be furious and to lose faith in democracy. Those that voted for Hugo Chávez 19 years ago were betrayed by a president that promised to end poverty and corruption. His government proved to be authoritarian and, at best, inefficient, while his successor, Nicolás Maduro, turned out to be a dictator who might one day stand trial for human rights violations.

Those that quickly saw the “revolution” for the corrupt farce it was were oppressed and marginalised. After two decades of abuse it is understandable that they don’t believe in the government’s call to dialogue, don’t feel represented by the leaders of the opposition and don’t support elections.

Related: The problem for Venezuelans: Maduro’s opposition would provide no relief | Oscar Guardiola-Rivera

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Inside the secret world of the corporate spies who infiltrate protests

The Guardian | Protest -

Major firms hiring people from corporate security firms to monitor and infiltrate political groups that object to their commercial activities

It was perhaps not the most glamorous assignment for a spy. Toby Kendall’s mission was to dress up as a pirate, complete with eye-patch, bandana and cutlass, and infiltrate a group of protesters.

The campaigners had organised a walking tour of London to protest outside the premises of multinational firms, objecting to what they believed was the corporate plunder of Iraq.

Related: Surveillance firms spied on campaign groups for big companies, leak shows

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The traditional Chinese dance troupe China doesn’t want you to see

The Guardian | Protest -

Shen Yun seems like a kitsch dance troupe. But Beijing sees it as the propaganda wing of the Falun Gong movement, and a threat to their rule – and hounds the dancers from city to city, trying to sabotage their shows. By Nicholas Hune-Brown

If you live in a major city in the western hemisphere, you have probably seen the image: a Chinese woman floating through the air, dress billowing out behind her, with the caption “Shen Yun – Art That Connects Heaven and Earth”. The adverts are for a company based in upstate New York that presents spectacles of Chinese traditional dance, in which a large cast performs intricate, synchronised routines to the pop-eastern sounds of a live orchestra. Each year, Shen Yun’s ads spring up across the world in advance of the company’s touring season – from banners hanging from streetlamps in Brussels to billboards looming over Los Angeles freeways.

The company has five separate touring troupes that carry out a dizzying schedule, a kind of Cirque du Soleil of the east backed by a seemingly bottomless publicity budget. They have played the Lincoln Centre in New York and the London Coliseum. In a single week last spring, they hit Philadelphia, Honolulu, Charlotte, Kansas City and Huntsville, Alabama. Then Barcelona, Salzburg, Bremen, Baden-Baden and Paris.

Related: New York dance troupe says China banned shows over Falun Gong links

Related: Is it too late to save Hong Kong from Beijing’s authoritarian grasp?

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In Turkey, academics asking for peace are accused of terrorism | Judith Butler and Başak Ertür

The Guardian | Protest -

A petition asking Turkey to end violence against Kurds has been distorted by the president’s regime – and its signatories vilified. We must rally behind them

Last week the trials began in Istanbul of those who signed the Academics for Peace petition in January 2016. A total of 148 trials are scheduled through to May 2018, with new trials expected to be announced in the near future. Each focuses on a single individual, but the indictment is the same for all of them. If they are found guilty, each signatory faces a prison sentence of up to seven-and-a-half years.

In the petition, entitled “We will not be a party to this crime”, more than 2,000 signatories sought a negotiated solution to the military conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK). At a time of heavy clashes in Turkey’s Kurdish-populated towns, the petitioners objected to the continuation of violence against the Kurdish people, called for an end to the round-the-clock curfews that deprived the population of necessary provisions, and asked that the Turkish government resume talks with the PKK that the government itself had previously inaugurated. The petition referenced violations of international law and basic democratic principles, and accused the government of “deliberate and planned massacre and deportation”.

International solidarity is once again crucial at this time when our colleagues in Turkey are facing criminal trials

Related: Democracy in Turkey is going on trial | Letters

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Hambach Forest (Germany): 400 people in December 10th Demonstration

House Occupation News -

Today’s walk in the Forest has attracted over 400 people reflecting a wave of popular support sweeping not just the region but all of Germany and from around the world. This is happening at the time when the rulling parties are no longer able or willing to hold an argument on exiting from coal and its effects on the climate but instead have become an extension of RWE special interests and are trying to redirect attention and justify large police actions to destroy the last of Hambi by talk of extremism and violence.

All as an attempt to criminalize the whole climate justice movement employing such pesky tactics as road blockades and locking on to planet and climate destroying equiment. Many supporters realized that this is one of the last chances to see the world unique bionome of Hambacher Forest in its present shape if at all. They have expressed their gratitude by sharing home-baked cakes, lots of other food, warm clothing and other supplies with the unarmed “extremists” most of whom do not have firearms training both of which can not be said for the hundreds of armed cops that will arrive in Hambach to help RWE destroy it bringing a reality of climate unstability that in a logic so typical of disaster-capitalism is in turned used to justify progressive militarization of police forces.

The walk went through two occupations of Gallien where people stopped by to chat with forest defenders and then through OakTown to the edge of the forest and standing on the wall separating the forest from the zone of destruction and the mine. There a human Red Line of banners and people holding hands, singing was formed while speaches others spoke on the topic of Hambacher Forest, Coal and Climate Justice.


Special Thank You also to the oldest 93 years old participant of the walk who has knitted warm mittens and hat as a special gift for the defeders of ancient Hambacher Forest: VIELEN DANKE!

[Published on December 10th, 2017 by Enough is Enough!]

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