Last week, a press release was released revealing a new website apparently from Bank of America, YourBofA.com, followed by another, seemingly hastily-written press release imploring readers to ignore the “malicious website (YourBofA.com) that is fraudulently representing itself as a Bank of America re-branding effort.” The second release insisted that “Bank of America is not making plans to enter into federal receivership.”
The malicious website (and both press releases) is another creation of the activist pranksters The Yes Men — the group that has posed as World Trade Organization representatives, George Bush henchmen and many more, all in good, subversive fun. To learn how laughter can be the greatest weapon of all, I sat down with Andy Bichlbaum, one of the founders of The Yes Men last month at Scratcher Bar in the East Village. Now, in addition to The Yes Men, The Yes Lab and teaching at New York University, he has been involved in developing the Plus Brigades, a project of Occupy Wall Street meant to infuse the movement with renewed creativity in the streets.
Tens of thousands of Czechs staged one of the biggest protests since the fall of Communism on Saturday, marching in Prague against spending cuts, tax rises and corruption, and calling for the end of a center-right government already close to collapse.
On Sunday, 150 Palestinian prisoners joined with 1,200 others being held in Israeli jails who started an open-ended hunger strike on Tuesday to protest the conditions in which they are being held.
In Montreal, 89 people were arrested Saturday after trying to disrupt the second day of a conference on the development of northern Quebec.
Tens of thousands of Egyptians demanded on Friday that their military rulers stick to a pledge to hand over power by mid-year after a row over who can run in the presidential election raised doubts about the army’s commitment to democracy.
In Bahrain, tens of thousands people marched along a motorway from Budaiya, an area to the west of the capital, Manama, on Friday to demand an end to the crackdown on dissent, ahead of the Formula 1 Grand Prix on Sunday.
Thousands demonstrated in the Rome on Friday to protest government plans to introduce legislation that will make it easier for companies to sack employees.
Less than 24 hours after their release, University of Texas students arrested after staging a sit-in at President Powers’ office gathered with supporters Thursday on the steps of the UT Tower to continue in their campaign against sweatshop labor.
Tens of thousands of teachers, doctors, police officers and other public workers went on strike on Wednesday in Slovenia over proposed pay cuts under austerity measures to rein in the euro-zone member’s budget deficit.
Woman at a 15M movement protest at the French consulate in Valencia, Spain. By Marc Sardon, via Flickr.
The 15M movement in Spain has faced repression from the very beginning: 24 young people were arrested and beaten by police in the demonstrations organized by Democracia Real Ya on May 15 last year, which is a large part of why several dozen people decided to camp that night in Sol square, turning the demonstration into an encampment. That first night, the Legal Committee of Sol was created by lawyers and laypeople; similar groups emerged in other camps around the country in order to give legal support to the movement. This has never been an easy job, but it has only been getting harder.
Since May 15, the Legal Committee of Sol has given support to more than a hundred arrestees. There have been another hundred arrested in Barcelona and many more in the rest of the country. Activists have been charged with undermining authority (facing one to three years in jail), disobedience and resistance (six months to one year), and disorderly conduct (six months to three years). Most of all, though, 15M protesters are being punished though economic means. There are nearly 70 people with fines in Madrid, according to the Legal Committee of Sol, and in Barcelona, there have been more than 200 people fined, together amounting to more than €40,000.
On Tuesday, WNV editor Nathan Schneider was a guest on Al Jazeera’s Inside Story, where he discussed his recent article on the question of co-optation and Occupy.
I am big fan of the post office in general and of my local post office in particular. I go there as often as I can (honestly, I do). But, when I needed stamps on Monday, I was not prepared for the line snaking out the door. I had completely forgotten about tax day! I girded myself for a long wait, but the clerks were the very picture of efficiency and I was in and out and all stocked up on bonsai stamps in ten minutes.
While I stood in line, I thought about the peculiarity of our tax system. For most Americans, April is a month marked by terrible stress, paper pushing and a last minute mad dash to get the taxes finished before April 15 (or the 17th, this year). People plan and pine and worry and most pay a sizable percentage (16-20 percent even for people of lower income brackets) of their annual income in taxes.
Since the start of the Arab Spring, which has led to many new seasons of protest in turn, the media has often gravitated to individual activists who have become leading figures in mobilizing the public during these revolutions. Tawakul Karman in Yemen, Ahmed Maher in Egypt and Moncef Marzouki in Tunisia — these are just three names that have resonated in the media over the course of protests. Their specific stories of perseverance in the face of brute force have galvanized people around the world.
While many of these advocates have been recognized by the media and rightfully protected for braving arrests, detention and beatings, one man in Bahrain has been holding a protest of his own within prison walls, but without much attention. Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja is the most renowned human rights defender in Bahrain, known in virtually every household and revered for pressing on with civil disobedience for greater political rights.
The manager of a Hot and Crusty bakery on New York’s Upper East Side watched through the window as a handful of workers speaking broken English passed out fliers to customers inside. Across the street, a private detective in a shiny black SUV surveyed the scene as potential customers and well-dressed women scanned the quarter-sheets detailing the chain restaurant’s abuses: below-minimum-wage paychecks, threats of cutting hours, refusal to negotiate with the workers for safer conditions. (Other violations were left off, including multiple accounts of sexual harassment.) One of the workers exiting the restaurant flashed those flyering a discrete thumbs-up.
The workers were from another branch of the chain bakery 20 blocks south, where they launched a successful organizing campaign with the help of the Laundry Workers Center. Now, as they continued to push for negotiations, the team was expanding to other restaurants to put pressure on the owners.
The "Dog" nuclear test during Operation Buster-Jangle at the Nevada Test Site on November 1, 1951. It was the first U.S. nuclear field exercise conducted on land; troops shown are a mere 6 miles from the blast.
It remains the most bombed real estate on the planet. The Nevada Test Site — recently renamed the Nevada National Security Site — is 1,360 square miles of sprawling desert north of Las Vegas. A nuclear weapon was detonated there on average every eighteen days from 1951 through 1992. In the 1980s the spiritually-rooted Nevada Desert Experience (NDE) launched a campaign with the audacious goal of ending this practice. For the next decade its effort gained traction, with thousands of people from across the U.S. and around the world converging on the site’s southern gate to protest, pray and engage in nonviolent civil disobedience. Other organizations, including the American Peace Test (APT) and Greenpeace, joined NDE in this struggle. In 1988, three thousand people were arrested in a ten-day action organized by APT at the Nevada Test Site.
When the Egyptian Revolution began, Sharif Abdel Kouddous was at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, covering independent film for Democracy Now!, where he was a producer. Four days later, Kouddous was in Cairo, where much of his family lives, documenting the unpredictable twists and turns of the occupation of Tahrir Square. Day after day, Kouddous returned to the square, reporting from the heart of the action, often amidst outside skepticism about the movement and its strategies.
By early March, Kouddous had left Democracy Now! and was reporting on the revolution for various news outlets as a freelancer. Being a reporter for alternative media, free from the corporate media’s expectations of what he calls a “false sense of objectivity,” has been crucial to his success in telling the story of the uprising from close up. Additionally, Kouddous’ Egyptian roots — though he has lived most of his life in the States — not only helped him connect to people in Tahrir but also gave him insight into the way the revolution in Egypt was reshaping class boundaries, as people from diverse backgrounds came together to bring down a dictator.
“The Tombs” is the less-than-endearing nickname for New York City’s Central Booking, the jail you get sent to if you are arrested in Manhattan and set to be arraigned before a judge. This spiraling dungeon below the courthouse at 100 Centre Street is about as ominous as it sounds. Above, the court itself is pristine and immaculate, adorned in mahogany and full of quiet, proper, well-dressed people. But all you have to do is open a door to the back of the courtroom to reveal an underground complex made up of filthy jail cells, violent correctional officers and hundreds of (mainly) poor people (mainly) of color, awaiting their arraignment for anywhere between 10 and 72 hours.
When the Egyptian Revolution began, Sharif Abdel Kouddous was at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, covering independent film for Democracy Now!, where he was a producer. Four days later, Kouddous was in Cairo, where much of his family lives, documenting the unpredictable twists and turns of the occupation of Tahrir Square. Day after day, Kouddous returned to the square, reporting from the heart of the action, often amidst outside skepticism about the movement and its strategies.
