In the late hours of January 6, after more than two months on strike, the Student Workers of Columbia (SWC-UAW) reached a tentative agreement for their union’s first contract with Columbia University.
Contract wins include significant raises for workers, bringing annual compensation for those on 9-month appointments to just over $40,000 and raising the minimum wage for hourly workers from $15 to $21. SWC members also won dental insurance, childcare stipends, and an emergency healthcare fund available to all union members. They also won full recognition of all student workers as part of the bargaining unit and provisions for neutral arbitration of harassment and bullying cases. Full details have yet to be released to the public.
Upwards of 100 water protectors rallied outside the Hawaii State Capitol in Honolulu on Dec. 10. Their greatest fears had just come true. The U.S. Navy had kept decaying fuel storage tanks just 100 feet above a water aquifer that functioned as the main source of drinking water on the island of O’ahu. Those tanks recently leaked jet fuel into the aquifer, poisoning thousands of people and creating irreparable damage to O’ahu’s water supply.
At least 30 major artists, performers and organizations have pulled out of the Sydney Festival in Australia over a $20,000 sponsorship deal with the Israeli embassy.
Comedian Tom Ballard stated that “I love the Festival and I love telling jokes, but standing up for human rights and standing against a system of apartheid is more important.”
The Better Path Coalition reported on January 6 two local residents Christine “PK” DiGiulio, Analytical Chemist from Downingtown, Upper Uwchlan Township, and Connor Young, Registered Nurse from Lionville, Uwchlan Township, locked their bodies and halted construction on the Energy Transfer Partners/Sunoco Mariner East Pipelines.
Two weeks after Wet’suwet’en water protectors evicted Coastal GasLink workers and occupied a key pipeline drill site, water protectors executed a strategic retreat to avoid arrest and violence at the hands of dozens of militarized RCMP. Before a large scale mobilization by police, water protectors vanished into the woods, evading police violence and criminalization. We expect an imminent assault on our people at the direction of Coastal GasLink as we continue to occupy and utilize our yintah.
Under the cover of pre-dawn darkness, Native Hawaiians surprised the gates of the US Navy Command with a civil disobedience action over the #RedHill fuel leak. Empire Files producer Mike Prysner was on the ground.
The Center for Protest Law & Litigation has obtained documents through our ongoing investigation showing that Jonathan Frieden, the lead prosecutor in Hubbard County, Minnesota, who is seeking to jail hundreds of peaceful Line 3 water protectors, sought Enbridge pipeline corporation’s money to fund his prosecutions.
Thousands of Iranians took to the streets on Monday, January 3 to observe the second anniversary of the assassination of major general Qassem Soleimani. The largest procession was taken out in his hometown in Kerman. Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi also addressed the nation on the occasion and demanded a fair trial of former US president Donald Trump and his associates for the assassination.
If the United States is to make a transition to clean energy, it will need to build many more transmission lines—the thick wires that deliver power from rural areas, where there’s enough open space for wind and solar, to cities where the most power is consumed. Clean energy advocates say that power companies need to do more to understand what fuels public opposition and how best to engage with power line opponents. And one way to start, they say, might be to examine one of the most intense battles over an interstate power line in U.S. history, which unfolded across rural Minnesota for much of the 1970s.
The past four years have seen terms like “antifa” hit common parlance around the U.S., but have also seen confusing distortions of what that term means. As right-wing pundits work desperately to paint any and all potentially left-leaning protest action as anti-fascist, and then reframe anti-fascism as a series of nefarious terrorist plots, this has shifted much of the climate toward suspicion of anti-fascist activists. Despite the violence related to 2020’s protests being largely from far right vigilantes and the police, the mythology of “antifa violence” has still been spurred on by rumors, conspiracy theories and dubious allegations. This has provided cover to the far right, which uses claims of “community safety” to head into cities and attack anti-fascist protesters, as has been seen in a sequence of confrontations between far right and anti-fascist demonstrators in places like Portland, Oregon. This perception, along with attempts to crack down on activists through state repression, have led to what many people have alleged are excessive sentences that were disproportionate to the charges being faced.
In cases around the country, such as David Campbell in New York City, activists were facing prison terms for what they have claimed are self-defense against violence by far right groups, such as the Proud Boys. For many activists who have made it their job to try and prevent far right groups from parading into marginalized communities, threatening further attacks, they are finding that prosecutors’ offices see them as the antagonist in the situation.
This is what happened to Alexander Dial, a Portland, Oregon, resident who faced a series of serious felonies after a confrontation at an August 19, 2019, anti-fascist demonstration. Dial came to national prominence after photos surfaced of him taking a hammer away from a member of the fascist group the American Guard, which the Anti-Defamation League refers to as “hardcore white supremacists,” amidst what people on the scene referred to as an attack. Dial was wearing a mask and a shirt that said “Beta Cuck 4 Lyfe,” a play on the insult that far right internet trolls try to use to demean leftist men.
Dial said that he has attended protests most of his adult life, and had attended the August 17 event to show his support for the anti-fascists being targeted. The event was organized by the anti-fascist group Pop Mob and a coalition of other leftist and progressive organizations in response to a planned Proud Boys rally. The Proud Boys planned their event after another protest, just a few weeks earlier, where Pop Mob had created a dance party in response to another pair of planned far right demonstrations, one by the Proud Boys and the other by affiliates of a local far right group, Patriot Prayer. The dance party was named the “milkshake” after the then-recent “milkshaking” of English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson, known for agitating Islamophobic hatred in Britain, where activists threw milkshakes on him to humiliate him on camera and ruin his clothes. Far right media figure Andy Ngo had milkshakes thrown on him and was assaulted at that event in a well-publicized incident, which launched him to right-wing celebrity status. The Proud Boys, in response, planned a rally “against domestic terrorism,” and hundreds were set to descend on Portland.
The event itself was relatively peaceful as Pop Mob orchestrated a carnivalesque atmosphere less than a mile away from the Proud Boys, but in the same waterfront park. Black bloc activists, who dress in head-to-toe black outfits as a protest tactic and often take on more militant approaches, separated the two groups, ensuring that the Proud Boys could not attack those attending the Pop Mob event. Eventually, the police let the Proud Boys take to the bridge that separates the East and West sides of town. The American Guard members, however, allegedly took a bus back over to the Westside, near the anti-fascist demonstration, where they were met by anti-fascists.
“[I thought] those guys are here to cause trouble. Something is going to happen wherever they are,” Dial told Truthout. He then joined with a group of other activists he did not know to try and stand in the way of the American Guard from reaching other demonstrators. “They started to brandish weapons from inside. Knives. A clawhammer. They had guns,” said Dial.
Dial says that when they came out, one of the American Guard members tripped, was approached by someone else, and the Guard member dropped the clawhammer. That is when Dial got ahold of it, swung it to get them away, and threw it at them. The American Guard bus eventually left, and Dial was later circled by multiple police and arrested. It wasn’t until days later that he found out that he was being charged with multiple felony counts, including assault in the second degree and a riot charge. They charged five additional people with riot charges, making a total of six, the number legally necessary in Oregon to charge that an illegal riot had, in fact, taken place. Dial was taken from his arraignment straight to Multnomah County Jail, where he sat for 11 days until his bail was posted.
“The left is seeking progress, and that means changing institutions in ways that better more people. And if you are running the institutions that are capitalizing off of marginalized populations, you are going to fight back with all the powers of the system,” says Dial. “So overcharging anti-fascists is the easiest, cheapest thing to do.”
Dial says that the expanded charges came, in part, from the release of video that was taken on that day by Elijah Schaffer, a media person with the right-wing outlet The Blaze, and was amplified by Andy Ngo (including hosting the video on his YouTube channel). Two of the charges that had come down were what are called Measure 11 crimes, those that carry with them “mandatory minimum” sentences of more than five years. Measure 11 passed in Oregon in the mid-1990s as a way of getting “tough” on violent crime, and one of the cases that was used as an example of the time was when an antiracist skinhead shot and killed a neo-Nazi when defending himself during a New Year’s Eve attack.
Because of the current bail system, and the charges that had been tacked onto his case, Dial’s bail of over half a million dollars meant that he had to put up $54,000 to get out. Fifteen percent of that money, nearly $8,000, is kept by the county permanently, and he had to solicit donations from friends and family to get this money, clearing out his savings and “financially ruining” him. Once he got out, he had to pay to have an ankle monitor on, which he wore for months, as well as observing a curfew. Because his court case was extended for over two years, he had to get by on severely limited pretrial release conditions. His ability to work was hindered and he relied on many of these anti-fascist organizations to provide a great deal of support.
“[We] knew that what he needed most was a good criminal defense lawyer,” says “Walter,” an administrator of the International Anti-Fascist Defense Fund, which raises money for anti-fascist activists facing legal or medical costs. (Walter is using a pseudonym for fear of retaliation for their activism.) “All mutual aid in anti-fascism is important, but we believe the Defense Fund fills a gap by ensuring that anti-fascists who run into trouble don’t ever feel like they only have themselves to rely on.”
Support came internationally, with donations from across the world and thousands of people signing a petition demanding the charges against Dial be dropped.
Dial eventually took a plea agreement, and then in November of 2021, he had all but two charges dismissed by the judge, and he was given “time served,” three years of probation and 80 hours of community service, which Dial says he will try to complete by working with a nonprofit that helps upgrade the homes of people with disabilities to make them more accessible.
“No matter what you’re choosing to organize or whatever actions you want to take, [you need to] develop and maintain strong community ties with people you trust,” says Dial, who points out that this means real-world relationships and not just virtual ones mediated through social media. “You need connections with people who have your back and who know how to reach out to other people who might be able to help you in ways they can’t. What got me through all of this … was my community.”
These are the types of bonds that many anti-fascist groups are creating, and what can sustain many activists when targeted by state agencies. Community organizing is built on these bonds, and as was seen during the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations, mutual aid and fundraising support was a key part of sustaining the organizing itself. Without those levels of support for individual activists and long-term solidarity organizing, state repression could have a chilling effect on other organizers by making it appear too costly and dangerous.
The International Anti-Fascist Defense Fund addresses those needs by raising money and disseminating it where needed. Since 2017, the fund has disseminated over $19,000 to a total of 15 recipients who have faced financial hardship from their activism or have been targeted by the far right, according to Walter.
“[We] all recognize that standing up to bigotry [and] fascism is dangerous but necessary work, which is why it is important for everyone to stand behind anti-fascists when they run into trouble,” says Walter. “We believe that this is real solidarity and is true to the saying, ‘We keep us safe!’”
Dial’s story shows that it is these community connections that get activists through these situations, which may become more necessary as leftist protesters deal with the fallout from intense policing practices during the 2020 protests. By connecting different movements through bonds of resource solidarity, social movements become sustainable and individuals can come through these challenges with enough stability to continue.
Dial says that he is going to work to repeal Measure 11 in Oregon, which has reinforced a carceral culture that has been used disproportionately against marginalized communities. By sharing his story, he wants to give insight to those facing similar challenges about what it takes to survive overcharging by the state.
“You need connections to people who have your back and who know how to reach out to people to help you in ways they can’t,” says Dial. “That’s the whole point of why we’re all doing this in the first place. It’s about community.”
On Sunday, Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok announced his resignation from his post in the wake of the political crisis in the country.
“I announce to you my resignation from the post of prime minister to make way for another person from the daughters or sons of this generous country,” said Hamdok in a speech to the Sudanese people broadcast by the official Sudan TV.
As part of what the council called a “rehabilitation” effort, workers began clearing residents’ property in the spring of 2020. The work was stalled pending an ongoing court case that resulted in a temporary restraining order against the contractors, but when the order expired, crews returned in an attempt to remove the remaining homes. Dick was the first of at least 11 residents facing eviction, according to a construction plan circulated among colony residents last year. But others were paying attention. Shortly after contractors returned in November, supporters arrived at the Winnemucca Indian Colony to prevent workers from removing more homes. After they successfully stopped work in an initial confrontation with contractors and hired security guards, supporters told Unicorn Riot they knew their work had just begun.
Antifascists in Chicago have issued a call for a community mobilization against the neo-Nazi group, Patriot Front, who has stated that they plan to rally alongside the March for Life anti-choice demonstration on January 8th.
Patriot Front is the same group that is behind a wave of racist and anti-Semitic attacks and vandalism across the US, but is perhaps best known for its role in the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville in 2017, when the group was called Vanguard America.
Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, 2021 was a year of accelerated boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigning, successful grassroots actions and significant legal victories for Palestinian rights.
Thousands of people have rallied in the Iraqi capital to mark the second anniversary of the killing of a revered Iranian commander and his Iraqi lieutenant in a drone attack by the United States. Chanting “Death to America”, the marchers filled a Baghdad square to honor Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani, who headed the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the elite Revolutionary Guard, until his death on January 3, 2020. “US terrorism has to end”, read one sign at the rally by backers of the pro-Iranian Hashed, also known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a former paramilitary alliance that has been integrated into Iraq’s state security apparatus.
The ministerial level meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) will take place from November 30 to December 3. Generally, during such meetings, imperialist countries pressure developing countries to abolish their agricultural subsidies according to the policies of “free trade.” The new agricultural laws [the BJP’s neoliberalizing reforms against which the farmers’ movement struggled] were a result of the dictates of such meetings. The Indian farmers’ movement has won an incredible victory to repeal the Modi government’s neoliberal farm laws. But these domestic attacks on farmers’ lives and India’s food sovereignty are tied to a larger global project, embodied in the imperialist WTO. It’s time to leave the WTO for good.
Just over two weeks after the cruel 110-year prison sentencing of 26-year-old truck driver Rogel Aguilera-Mederos for a 2019 crash that killed four people and injured others, Colorado Governor Jared Polis announced Thursday that he was removing 100 years from Aguilera-Mederos’s sentence and reducing his sentence to 10 years.
Calls are mounting for President Joe Biden to terminate an under-the-radar Trump-era pilot program that—if allowed to run its course—could result in the complete privatization of traditional Medicare by the end of the decade.
A petition recently launched by Physicians for a National Program (PNHP) has garnered more than 10,000 signatures as doctors and other advocates work to raise public awareness of the Medicare Direct Contracting program, which the Trump administration rolled out during its final months in power.
This year was marked by a number of a political setbacks, but it also produced inspiring victories. As it comes to an end, we thought we’d take a look back on 2021. In addition to looking at Washington’s support for Israel’s violence, we wanted to take stock of what Palestine activists accomplished through their tireless work and unwavering commitment to human rights.
CN Rail has won the right to privately pursue criminal charges against three people who participated in a 2020 rail blockade in northern B.C., despite the fact that provincial prosecutors declined to get involved. The ruling cements the B.C. Supreme Court’s ability to enforce court injunctions, with or without the participation of Crown prosecutors, who unsuccessfully fought the decision.
The project’s supporters, who include Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, have described the facility as a vital tool for improving police morale and fighting crime. Yet about 70 percent of the people calling in expressed their opposition to Cop City. Beyond the basic objections to such a major expansion of the city’s policing footprint, environmentalists are also up in arms, since the site’s proposed location lies within the South River Forest, which is the Atlanta area’s largest remaining green space and, scientists say, one of the city’s greatest defenses against worsening climate change.
“I don’t think my friends are stupid people. I do think that they, like many other Americans, have lost touch with what makes our country tick. Too many of them think that our job as engaged citizens means that we must vote. They’ve forgotten that voting is the barest minimum. For our country to function well, our politicians must be led to do the right thing. If we don’t do the leading, then our politicians will be led by the big monied donors who buy their allegiance.”
The antiwar movement had been comatose for five years, ever since Obama ascended into the White House. All subsequent U.S. bombings and drone assassinations became presumptively progressive and thus not worth denouncing. But the potential of a new war in Syria was a defibrillator shock for moribund activists.
The people of the southern Argentinian province of Chubut are celebrating more than just the holidays this December. After a fierce struggle against a recently enacted zoning law that would have opened the province up to large-scale silver, copper, and lead mining by multinational corporations like Canadian Pan American Silver, the governor was ultimately forced to backtrack. The law in question, which was approved on December 15, was repealed last Tuesday, just five days later.
For many workers, the pandemic revealed the cruelty of capitalism. Mainstream media and politicians campaigned for a return to business as usual during this second year of COVID. In particular, workers, called “essential” and “heroes” during the pandemic, were expected to continue sacrificing the most while receiving the least in pay and benefits. At the same time, the world’s biggest corporations made record-breaking profits and the richest individuals saw their wealth multiply.
From 26 December 1907 to 9 January 1908, 10,000 tenants, predominantly Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe living in New York City’s Lower East Side, took part in a historic rent strike. During an economic depression causing mass unemployment and grinding poverty, landlords tried to hike rents by thirty-three percent. With their cry to ‘fight the landlord as they had the Czar’, the tenants won a partial victory, with rents significantly reduced for 2,000 households. The movement established a tradition of militant working-class housing campaigns that eventually contributed to winning vital rent controls that still protect millions of the city’s tenants today. But as the Covid crisis continues, New York City renters are again organising against rapacious landlordism.
Today, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians and several community organizations filed an appeal with Pierce County Superior Court challenging a November decision by the Washington Pollution Control Hearings Board (PCHB). Despite misleading and inaccurate information used to evaluate the project, PCHB determined the Puget Sound Energy’s (PSE) air permits, issued by the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency (PSCAA) and given to the Tacoma Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) facility, were adequate.
In late December 1831, white Jamaican planters slept restlessly in their beds. Rumors had long been circulating of disquiet among the enslaved Africans residing in plantations across the island. Before they knew it, the island would be set ablaze as tens of thousands armed themselves to fight for their freedom.
As it became known, the Christmas Rebellion (or Baptist War, named so after the faith of many of its key conspirators) was the largest uprising of enslaved Africans in the history of the British West Indies, and directly influenced the abolition of slavery in 1833 and full emancipation in 1838.
Miami, December 23, 2021 — Argentine authorities should immediately investigate the recent attack on the headquarters of the El Chubut newspaper and hold those responsible to account, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
At around 8:40 p.m. on December 20, a group of unidentified people gathered at the newspaper’s headquarters in the city of Trelew, in the southern province of Chubut, and threw rocks and firebombs into the building, breaking windows and setting several fires, according to news reports and El Chubut politics section chief Rubén Darío Giménez, who spoke with CPJ via messaging app.
The attackers entered the building, which also houses the outlet’s radio station, and ransacked it for several hours, damaging and stealing equipment and archival materials, Giménez said. Journalists and staff were evacuated by police, and no one was injured, he told CPJ.
“The violent attack on the Argentine daily El Chubut needs to be condemned in the strongest terms,” said CPJ Latin America and the Caribbean Program Coordinator Natalie Southwick, in New York. “Argentine authorities must ensure that all of the individuals who participated in this attack are identified and held responsible.”
The attack took place amid protests against a new mining zoning ordinance, which provincial authorities passed on December 19, according to news reports. At least 16 buildings, including the offices of the Supreme Tribunal, were set on fire or damaged during the protests, those reports said.
“From within this legitimate and popular protest, there is a group that detaches itself and attacks the newspaper,” Giménez told CPJ. “This is an intentional and premeditated attack by a group that takes advantage of the protest to engage in violence.”
Hours before the demonstration, there had been calls on social media for people to gather in front of the newspaper’s offices, according to reporting by El Chubut. Neither Giménez nor reporting by El Chubut gave possible motives for the attack, or who might have been behind it.
The prosecutor general of Chubut announced an investigation into the attack on El Chubut, as well as the other buildings affected, according to press reports and that report by the newspaper. Police have not made any arrests, Giménez said.
CPJ called the Chubut prosecutor general’s office for comment, but no one answered.
Members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) who work at Kellogg’s ready to eat cereal plants in Battle Creek, Mich., Lancaster, Pa., Omaha, Neb. and Memphis, Tenn. have voted to accept the recommended collective bargaining agreement. Approval of the contract ends the BCTGM’s strike against Kellogg’s, which began on October 5, 2021.
