Category: Protests

  • To the U.S. government and its embassy in Honduras, we say: If you do not want to continue facing the massive exodus of displaced people from your failed imperial and neoliberal policies, leave the Honduran people alone. Let us take charge of our present and future, let us elect the leaders we want, and stop imposing on us sellout puppets to do your errands and dirty work for you.

    The post 12 Years After Coup, Honduran Resistance Fights For Fair Election appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Last week, Columbia students marched into the classroom of the university’s president, Lee Bollinger. The class he was teaching at the time? “Freedom of Speech and Press,” according to the Columbia Spectator, which also noted that Bollinger left through the side door. It was another skirmish in a conflict that has pitted the school against a group made up primarily of unionized undergraduate and graduate teaching and research assistants.

    The post The Second-Largest Strike In The U.S. Is Happening In New York City appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Protesters dressed as Pikachu have gathered opposite the COP26 conference as climate protests continue in Glasgow. The giant Pokemon were demanding an end to Japan’s support for coal power.

    It comes after several demonstrations took place in Glasgow on Wednesday, including an Extinction Rebellion march through the city attended by hundreds.

    No Coal Japan

    On Thursday morning, a group called No Coal Japan held up a banner saying “Japan, time to end coal” on the opposite bank of the Clyde. They say Japan is continuing to finance coal plants in Bangladesh and Indonesia.

    ENVIRONMENT Cop26 Emissions
    (PA Graphics)

    Other planned protests

    Another Extinction Rebellion protest is expected outside the Home Office building in Cessnock on Thursday, while there will be other large marches through the city on Friday and Saturday.

    Extinction Rebellion’s protest on Wednesday was against “greenwashing” and included demonstrations outside the SSE and JP Morgan offices. The group said police action raised “serious questions about civil liberties, right to protest, and human dignity”.

    On Wednesday evening, Police Scotland said five arrests had been made at the demonstration, including two after officers were sprayed with paint.

    Cop26 – Glasgow
    A group were kept within a police cordon as they marched towards Cop26 (Jane Barlow/PA)

     

    On Friday, thousands are expected to march through Glasgow with the Fridays for Future movement founded by Greta Thunberg. Saturday will see another large march from the COP26 Coalition, with organisers saying tens of thousands are expected.

    By The Canary

  • Striking John Deere employees rejected a second contract offer on Tuesday. After decades of austerity contracts with cuts to pensions, healthcare, and wages, workers at the farm equipment manufacturer — members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) — are standing up and demanding more, just as the t-shirts they’ve been wearing on the picket lines put it: “Deemed essential in 2020. Prove it in 2021.”

    The post John Deere Workers Hold The Line And Vote Down Second Contract Offer appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Members of the Bolivarian Circle in Miami and Trokia Kollective chant “free Alex Saab” outside Miami’s Clyde Atkins Courthouse on Monday, Nov 1st – the day originally scheduled for Venezuelan Diplomat Alex Saab’s arraignment. Despite the disappointing delay of his arraignment to November 15th, his supporters are energized as they stand witness outside Ambassador Saab’s prison, the Miami Federal Detention Center (FDC). They are resolute in their commitment to Diplomat Saab for breaking through the crippling illegal U.S. unilateral economic sanctions imposed on the people of Venezuela.

    The post Protest In Miami In Support Of Alex Saab appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Maher writes, police “don’t prevent violence, and they don’t make any measurable contribution to public safety… The police have wormed their way into the very foundations of American society and work every day to make themselves—and their bloated budgets—seem indispensable.” In this special conversation for the TRNN podcast, Police Accountability Report Host Stephen Janis speaks with Maher about his groundbreaking assessment of American policing and the practical necessity of collectively devising better models for communal safety.

    The post A World Without Police Is More Possible (And Necessary) Than You Think appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Chanting “shame on you,” activists rallied amid a heavy police presence Monday evening outside a swanky reception for world leaders and others attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland to protest their inadequate response to the planetary emergency. Members of Britain’s royal family and corporate executives joined heads of state and other leaders at the exclusive dinner event, which was hosted by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

    The post Climate Activists Confront World Leaders At Lavish COP26 Dinner appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • In a Day of the Dead protest, protesters gathered in a slight drizzle at San Francisco’s Alta Plaza Park and marched to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s house, a few blocks away. The signs they carried declared health care to be a human right and demanded Medicare for All. One, carried by “Red Berets” was an American flag with the year other countries had instituted national health care written on the stripes. “WHAT ABOUT US???” was on the bottom line.

    The post Day of the Dead Protest in Front of Nancy Pelosi’s House appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • A month-long strike by Nabisco workers beat back the snackmaker’s bid to introduce a two-tier health care plan and switch them onto 12-hour shifts. Employer contributions to workers’ 401(k) plans will be doubled. One of the biggest issues in the strike was the company’s effort to do away with premium pay for weekend shifts and work after eight hours. The company wanted to put all workers on an Alternative Work Schedule consisting of 12-hour days, paid at straight time.

    The post Nabisco Workers Hope Strike Inspires Others appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Abuja, Nigeria, November 1, 2021 — Authorities in Nigeria must prioritize the safety of journalists covering protests and hold officers responsible for abuses accountable, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

    On October 20, in three separate incidents, police officers arrested, harassed, or beat up three journalists–Sikiru Obarayese, Abisola Alawode, and Adefemi Akinsanya—as they covered memorials marking the one-year anniversary of killings at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, the journalists told CPJ by phone.

    On October 20, 2020, Nigerian security forces shot and killed protesters at the Lekki Toll Gate during protests calling for an end to police brutality across Nigeria, according to a report by privately owned Premium Times online newspaper.

    “Police attacks on journalists covering protests are unfortunately not novel in Nigeria and are among the dangers the press in the country face on a daily basis,” said Muthoki Mumo, CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, from Nairobi. “Nigerian authorities should hold accountable the officers responsible for harassing and attacking the media to send a signal that such behavior will not be tolerated.” 

    Sikiru Obarayese, a reporter with the privately owned Daily Post newspaper. (Credit: Obarayese)

    Around 1 p.m. on October 20, police instructed Obarayese, a reporter with the privately owned Daily Post newspaper, to leave the memorial demonstration moving through Oshogbo, the capital of Nigeria’s southwestern Osun state, the journalist told CPJ. Initially, Obarayese refused, but when he finished his filming and began to leave, an officer pushed him from behind and asked what he was doing. Obarayese said he asked to stop being harassed, and a Divisional Police Officer ordered the journalist be taken to a nearby police van, where at least six other officers beat him with their hands and guns as they forced him into the vehicle. The officers took his eyeglasses and Bluetooth headphones but allowed him to keep his phone as they drove him to the local Dugbe police station, Obarayese told CPJ.

    At the station, Obarayese was punched repeatedly in the face by an officer, and other officers threatened to kill him if he did not cooperate, but the journalist told CPJ it was unclear what the officers wanted him to do, according to Obarayese and a Daily Post report.

    From the station, Obarayese was taken to a nearby magistrate court and charged with “breach of peace for videoing the Divisional Police Officer,” according to the journalist and a copy of the handwritten charge sheets reviewed by CPJ. However, Obarayese said the police withdrew the charges and he was released without his glasses which, as of October 26, have not been returned.

    The Osun state police spokesperson, Yemisi Opalola, told CPJ that police officers did not assault Obarayese, but that she intervened when she heard about the journalist’s arrest and subsequent charge. 

    Abisola Alawode, a video editor and digital producer with the privately owned Legit news site. (Credit: Alawode)

    In an incident in Lagos, Alawode, a video editor and digital producer with the privately owned Legit news website, told CPJ that he arrived at the Lekki Toll Gate at 7:30 a.m. and about 30 minutes later, he began filming police arresting a lone protestor. As he filmed, other officers asked that he and other reporters in the area show their press identification cards. 

    According to Alawode and a report by Legit, attempts by the journalist to identify himself with his official business card and driver’s license were not accepted by the police and officers dragged Alawode by his trousers to a nearby police van.

    Inside the van, at least two officers repeatedly hit Alawode in the face and across his body and only stopped after the journalist repeatedly told them that he was a reporter and showed them his business card, Alawode said. Officers then drove Alawode to a police station, where he was detained for over five hours. The journalist said he was released after officers made him speak on phone to the Lagos state police commissioner, Hakeen Odumosu, who apologized for the police officers’ conduct.  

    Officers returned Alawode’s phone without any indication that they accessed it, he told CPJ. CPJ has previously documented Nigerian security forces’ efforts to use digital forensic technology to access journalists’ devices. 

    Adefemi Akinsanya, a broadcast correspondent for Arise TV in Nigeria. (Credt: Akinsanya)

    In a separate incident at the Lekki Toll Gate, a group of officers tried to seize a drone that was being used to film the protest by Arise TV, a privately owned station, by pulling and dragging Akinsanya, a broadcast correspondent, from various sides, according to Akinsanya and her Arise broadcast report. Ultimately, the officers were unsuccessful, Akinsanya told CPJ.

    Odumosu also apologized for the officers’ conduct with the Arise crew and promised to ensure the officers were held accountable, according to the same broadcast report.

    As of October 29, Akinsanya told CPJ that she has not heard from the police on what was being done to hold the officers responsible.  

    Adekunle Ajisebutu, the police spokesperson for Lagos state, told CPJ via messaging app on October 26 to contact Odumosu since he had personally spoken about the matter. CPJ called and texted Odumosu but did not receive a response. 


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • In an open letter published Tuesday, Howard University President Wayne A. I. Frederick wrote that students’ two-week occupation of a campus building in protest of poor housing conditions and other issues “must end.” Students have occupied Howard’s Armour J. Blackburn Center for two weeks, vowing to stay put until the university remediates mold in students’ dorms; creates a housing plan for incoming freshmen; and reinstates student, faculty, and alumni members to the university’s Board of Trustees, among other demands.

    The post Howard University President Condemns Sit-In By Students Protesting Housing Conditions appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Rainbow Warrior is planning to sail to the COP26 summit in Glasgow in defiance of port authorities, environmental group Greenpeace has said. The campaign group’s famous ship is carrying youth strikers from communities most hit by climate change to demand world leaders “stop failing us”. Greenpeace said port authorities had warned the group not to sail up the River Clyde to the global climate conference but added the vessel would still attempt the journey.

    The post Rainbow Warrior Aims To Defy Glasgow Port By Sailing Youth Activists To COP26 appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • As the rich and comfortable stayed indoors and rode out the worst months of the pandemic on their Peloton bikes, workers around the country shifted into a different gear. Ten thousand farming equipment workers in Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Colorado, and Georgia walked out of their jobs, joining 1,400 cereal workers at Kellogg’s plants in Nebraska, Michigan, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania, as well as 1,100 coal miners at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama and nurses in New York and Massachusetts. And thousands more are waiting in the wings—from workers in academia, to health care workers at Kaiser Permanente in Oregon, California, and Hawaii, to film and television workers in the entertainment industry who averted a strike after threatening to walk off the job and reached a tentative agreement, which will now be voted on.

    The post Beneath Striketober Fanfare, The Lower Frequencies Of Class Struggle appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • American liberals know that something is missing from the body politic, and that something is a labor movement with sufficient strength to not only boost pay, but also wield the kind of political power that once pushed Midwestern Republicans to raise the minimum wage, vote for civil rights laws, and even increase social spending.

    The post Is This A Strike Wave? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • “We’ve reached the end of the line and our patience with the Scranton School District. The district has refused to address our concerns about the slash-and-burn budget cuts that are significantly affecting the quality of education,” said Scranton Federation of Teachers President Rosemary Boland. “Strikes are always the last resort. We held off for many months, hoping, in vain, we could agree on conditions that are good for kids and provide decency, fairness, respect and trust for our educators.”

    The post Scranton: Teachers Will Go on Strike appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • New York, October 28, 2021 — Guatemalan authorities must stop harassing journalists covering protests and ensure the independent press can safely cover events of national interest without interference, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

    Since October 22, police officers have confronted protesters in El Estor, in the eastern coastal department of Izabal, who have demonstrated against mining operations at a local nickel processing plant, according to news reports.

    Police have raided at least one news outlet and the homes of at least two journalists in connection to those protests, and have harassed members of the press covering the demonstrations, according to news reports and journalists who spoke with CPJ.

    “Guatemalan police must show that they are able and willing to distinguish between protesters and the press, and cease harassing journalists for covering demonstrations in El Estor,” said CPJ Latin America and the Caribbean Program Coordinator Natalie Southwick. “Authorities must recognize that journalists have a right to cover demonstrations and ensure they are able to do so safely, instead of treating them like criminals simply for doing their jobs.”

    In an October 22 video published on Twitter by the independent digital outlet Prensa Comunitaria, police can be seen ordering journalists not to film them and asking them to leave the scene. In another video from that day, Prensa Comunitaria reporter Carlos Choc said police officers had shoved him and confiscated his phone and microphone while he attempted to cover the demonstrations.

    A Prensa Comunitaria reporter who spoke with CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of retribution and ongoing security concerns for the team in El Estor, said that police had returned Choc’s phone as of today but not his microphone.

    On October 24, police officers searched the radio station Xyaab’ Tzuultaq’a, which has also covered the demonstrations, according to news reports and the Guatemalan Federation of Radio Schools, a national group of community radio outlets. Xyaab’ Tzuultaq’a Director Robin Macloni told CPJ via messaging app that police spent about 30 minutes inside the office, questioned one of their staff members, and then left without confiscating anything.

    On October 26, at about 8 a.m., police officers and officials from the Public Ministry searched the home of Prensa Comunitaria reporter Juan Bautista Xol in El Estor, and accused him of participating in the protests, according to an interview the journalist gave following the raid, as well as the Prensa Comunitaria reporter who spoke to CPJ. The raid lasted more than two hours, during which Bautista was not allowed to leave the premises, according to those sources.

    Bautista said in that interview that he had no role in the protests and only covered them as a journalist. He is not facing criminal charges but officials from the Public Ministry confiscated his cell phone, according to that interview and a statement from the Guatemalan Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office.

    Also on October 26, police officers searched Choc’s home in his absence, according to news reports and Prensa Comunitaria. Authorities did not seize anything from the home or detain anyone, according to those sources.

    Jorge Aguilar, a spokesperson for the Guatemalan National Police in El Estor, said in a statement that the raids were conducted “to locate people connected with attacks against police officers during the demonstrations” but that there were no arrests.

    CPJ has previously documented harassment and attempts to intimidate Choc, including a robbery at his home in April 2020 and a criminal case against him and another journalist for documenting the death of a fisherman during a demonstration.

    CPJ emailed the Public Ministry and Guatemalan National Police for comment; the Government Ministry, which oversees the police, replied with an automated response saying that an official would reply within 10 days, and the Public Ministry did not respond.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The first clashes between police officers and citizens who came out to demonstrate on Tuesday were recorded in at least three country points, as part of the National Strike called to protest against the Government of Guillermo Lasso. In Imbabura, in the canton of Peguche, repression was reported by what is believed to be members of the security forces, who threw tear gas to disperse the citizens who gathered in this sector.

    The post Ecuador: National Strike Marches Face State Repression appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • On October 15, protestors shut down Puerto Rico’s Highway 18 in San Juan chanting “Fuera Luma!”, our Out Luma, demanding an end to the government contract with the private energy company, Luma Energy. Their cries were echoed at protests on the same day in New York City, Miami and Philadelphia. Three days later, protestors also rallied at the Capitol in San Juan to call for the stoppage of cuts to the public university, social services and public pensions.

    The post Puerto Ricans resist austerity measures and corporate corruption appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • In the third week on strike, 1,400 Kellogg’s cereal workers in the US are continuing their fight against the hated two-tier wage system and the inhuman 16-hour mandated work schedule. Kellogg workers have worked through the pandemic. Classified as “essential workers,” they have risked their health for private profit.

    The post Striking Kellogg workers describe the issues in their fight appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Black Lives Matter activist addresses participants in the mass sit-in on the Ohio State University (OSU) campus during the demonstration. Students staged a sit-in demonstration in reaction to the police shooting and killing of Ma'Khia Bryant, 16, the day before. Activists demanded that OSU sever ties with the Columbus Police Department to keep BIPOC students safe.

    The police-perpetrated murder of George Floyd and the subsequent uprising in June 2020 galvanized campus organizing. Almost immediately, students at Hostos Community College named the racism inherent in policing and demanded their campus cut ties with the New York City Police Department. Students at Columbia University and Howard University launched tuition strike campaigns — a refusal to pay any tuition — demanding the divestment from Israel, the defunding of campus police departments, and the severing ties with local and federal policing agencies. A student-led coalition at the University of Minnesota successfully severed relationships with the local police. (However, simultaneously, the university almost immediately began to hire additional private security forces.)

    While mainstream media appear quick to proclaim the end of the #defundpolicing movement, last year’s vibrant campaigns have created fresh starting places for campus-based anti-prison-industrial complex organizing.

    With the fall 2021 semester seeing students filter tentatively back to in-person classes at colleges and universities across Turtle Island, assessment and study is overdue: What have we learned from a year of organizing? How are networks responding to emerging cul-de-sacs, or dead ends and false openings? What solidarities have been made possible? As two organizers and educators, in this spirit of study and movement-building, we share our reflections on the past year’s work — successes, challenges and experiments.

    Political Education Materials Are Powerful Tools

    Many campaigns and projects produced potent materials that aimed to educate people about the long racist histories of policing, particularly on campuses, with concrete tactics for abolitionist struggle. The University of Oregon’s critical history of policing timeline Instagram account offers crucial examples of the racialized violence perpetrated by police on that campus, while Critical Resistance Abolitionist Educators’ How to Grow Abolition on Your Campus: 8 Actions provides entry points for abolitionist organizing, including starting abolitionist study groups and challenging discriminatory policies for college access. Timelines and tools like these not only continue to circulate and to support ongoing political education, but also often function effectively to archive crucial abolitionist campaigns and modes of resistance.

    Push Organized Labor

    Over the last two years, campus-based unions have included demands to defund police in bargaining and also worked horizontally to push for police unions to be removed from wider coalitions and the network of organized labor. In 2018 in Davis, California, the campus-based labor union, UAW 2865, representing the Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions passed a proposal across the table calling for disarming and demilitarizing campus police. By 2020, other labor unions were taking up variations of these same demands: The striking Graduate Employees’ Organization at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor demanded a 50 percent cut to the Division of Public Safety and Security budget and that the university “cut all ties with police, including Ann Arbor Police Department (AAPD) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).” Similar organizing took place within the Professional Staff Congress at CUNY and the Graduate Student Organizing Committee at New York University. More widely, organized labor is struggling to engage abolition, and campuses are one site to push this analysis and these demands.

    Demand More Than Defunding Campus Police

    Those with a badge and a uniform are not the only entities regulating and punishing on campus. Most academic disciplines actively naturalize and expand policing: For example, at Lehman College in the Bronx, students seeking access to the campus food pantry had to be accompanied by campus police, demonstrating the intimacy of student affairs offices and campus police departments. Abolitionist organizing on campus extends beyond defunding the police and involves building forms of community and developing authentic responses to harm that meet people’s needs. Initiatives — often pushed by campus feminists — offer responses to sexual assault that are non-carceral: Brown University’s Transformative Justice Program — created before the summer 2020 uprising — offers survivor-centered abolitionist engagements to gendered and sexual violence. By providing free, fresh vegetables, the Kingsborough Community College Urban Farm works to meet the needs of students and community members, and positions the college as centered around care — or advancing a mission of what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls “life-affirming institutions.” Dissenters, a newer national anti-militarization network, is supporting (and paying student staff members) to develop campus-based organizing infrastructure to challenge militarization. All of these initiatives, and more, are doing the affirmative work of building abolition.

    Multiply Opportunities for Ongoing Dialogues About Safety

    People want to feel safe. While many readers may be involved in abolitionist organizing, for some audiences, these demands are new. Organizing must include opportunities for people to talk, build and strengthen practices of safety. Our understanding of safety acknowledges that many people are unsafe on today’s heavily policed campuses, particularly those that are non-white. Over the last year, multiple webinars, teach-ins and days of action unfolded that created dialogues not only about the violence of policing, but other ways to ensure that communities were strong and safe. Abolition feminists have proliferated discussions of safety, such as at the University of Massachusetts where students, outraged by the prevalence of sexual violence on campus and the university’s persistent failure to respond, pushed out and visibly occupied space on campus. At Columbia University, Black and/or feminist organizers have resisted the university’s definition of safety through policing, demanding instead 24/7 access to counseling and rape crisis services. Reimagining and redefining safety can be complex work that requires ongoing engagement — in community.

    Make Visible the Tentacles of Policing

    The landscape of campus policing is diffuse, with multiple public and private law enforcement actors sharing jurisdictions and creating borders well beyond the campus boundaries. The University of Chicago has one of the largest private police forces in the world, a trend among elite, historically white, private universities in predominantly Black neighborhoods and cities. Universities also create memoranda of understanding with policing agencies from nearby municipalities that both allow for non-university agencies to police campus and university police forces to roam off campus. Agreements like these led to the detention of Black Lives Matter protesters in the University of California Los Angeles’s Jackie Robinson Stadium by the Los Angeles Police Department in 2020 and also were behind the 2020 shooting of Stephanie Washington by Yale Police Officer Terrance Pollock in a New Haven neighborhood. For some campus police departments, such as the University of California Police Department, the entire state is within their jurisdiction. One key outcome of last year’s campus uprisings was highlighting the massive and multi-faceted infrastructures of policing that unfold on campuses and in adjacent communities.

    Work Across Borders to Craft Coalitions

    By necessity, defund campaigns clearly moved across the artificial on-campus/off-campus boundaries, and demanded the abolition of all policing everywhere. Collaborations across borders of all kinds are generative. For example, Abolition May, a Turtle Island-wide campaign orchestrated by the Cops Off Campus Coalition, and the intergenerational organizing by CUNY for Abolition and Safety and the Release Aging People in Prison campaign, create linkages between sites, institutions and people that may initially seem disparate. Solidarity, not borders, will move us toward the horizon of abolition and liberation.

    Learn From Organizing at Other Educational Sites and History

    Pre-K-12 organizing has more recent militant histories demanding (and winning) police-free schools. The Black Organizing Project in Oakland, California, struggled for almost a decade before successfully removing police from pre-K-12 schools in June 2020. Post-secondary educational sites can learn from these K-12 struggles and from our own histories of resistance and repression. For example, tuition strikes have historically made visible struggles against austerity and policing. In the wake of the student movements of the 1960s, both campus police budgets and college tuition increased exponentially, in order to manage dissent and privatize education. As Ronald Reagan noted without any irony, Those on UC campuses to agitate and not to study might think twice before they pay tuition, they might think twice how much they want to pay to carry a picket sign. It is always a good time to study.

    Center Systems-Impacted Communities’ Analysis and Demands

    Centering the analysis and demands of systems-impacted people (those who experience the violence of prisons, policing and related systems of violent control — a population overwhelmingly Black, poor, Indigenous and/or queer) surfaces other key ways that post-secondary education must shift. These networks have deepened the movement to “ban the box” — a demand that applications for admission or employment not ask about histories of arrest or conviction. In California, formerly incarcerated students founded and lead the Underground Scholars Initiative, an organization that creates a prison-to-university pipeline by providing support and community, and access to resources and members engage in organizing and advocacy to create a world without prisons. Centering the experiences and needs of these learners also renders visible other imperatives: From the need for paid child care, free tuition and gender-affirming and accessible bathrooms, to the importance of divesting from pension plans that profit from incarceration and resource extraction, the organizing of systems-impacted people presents an expansive challenge to the university as it is and a vision for the university as it could be.

    Anticipate Administrative Obstructionism

    Higher education administrations respond to these militant and organized campus-based abolitionist campaigns with too familiar tactics: cooptation and absorption and also swift repression. For instance, calls for abolition are met with institutional responses: the creation of hollow task forces and working groups charged with “studying the issue” or a hasty invitation to a high-profile (and usually highly paid) racial justice or equity consultant or guest speaker. Yet more task forces to research the problems and suggest the alternatives are not needed. Campus policing needn’t be researched further when the demand is clear: Defund and abolish campus policing.

    Where Do We Go From Here?

    While the fall 2021 pace of organizing feels like simmer rather than a boil on many campuses, we know not only is the work continuing, but the organizing from the previous year has reshaped the landscape. Campus communities — from undergraduate students and dining hall workers, to adjunct faculty and neighborhood residents — are joining forces to counter policing in and by universities. As we build coalitions, reflect on strategy and study together, we continue to build a movement, one that extends from the graduate union picket line to the mutual aid distribution site. Find your comrades, and join this beautiful movement to get cops off campus and build the spaces and places for abolitionist teaching and learning in our communities. Abolition now!

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    Protesting students have held demonstrations in several cities around Indonesia to mark seven years of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration, reports CNN Indonesia.

    The protests came as President Widodo left Jakarta to officiate at the opening of a palm oil processing factory owned by the PT Jhonlin Group in South Kalimantan.

    The largest demonstration was held in Jakarta on Thursday where protesters led by the National Association of University Student Executive Bodies (BEM SI) marched from the National Library to the State Palace in Central Jakarta.

    The protesters were stopped at the Horse Statue because of a police blockade. However, there was no physical confrontation and the student took turns in giving speeches in front of the police blockade.

    “Today, we are not here for existence, but to bring a clear substance,” said Boy, a representative from the Tanjung Karang Polytechnic during the action near the Horse Statue.

    The demonstrators read out 12 demands after being prevented from approaching the State Palace.

    One of the demands was that a regulation in lieu of law (Perppu) be issued to annul the revisions to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) Law.

    A similar action was also held in the South Sulawesi provincial capital of Makassar.

    The difference was that the students in Makassar blockaded Jalan Sultan Alauddin street, detained two trucks and set fire to used tyres.

    The field coordinator of the student action in Makassar, Razak Usman, criticised the government’s alleged bias in development and demanded that President Widodo make pro-people policies.

    “We demand the upholding of legal supremacy, reject amendments to the constitution, reject the Omnibus Law, want Law Number 19/2019 revoked, reject simultaneous regional elections, reject the removal of fuel subsidies and urge Jokowi to resolve the handling of Covid-19,” said Usman.

    Students in the Central Java provincial capital of Semarang held a long-march from the Old City area to the office of the Central Java Governor, Ganjar Pranowo.

    Upon arriving at the governor’s office they took turns in giving speeches. A number of different issues were taken up, including resolving past human rights violations, the Omnibus Law on Job Creation and the weakening of the KPK.

    “What has resulted from Jokowi so far? Where are his promises?,” asked action coordinator Fajar Sodiq.

    “Resolving past human rights violations are not heard, the Omnibus Law oppresses the ordinary people, and now we are witnessing efforts to weaken the KPK. Where [are the results of] Jokowi’s work?”

    As the students were protesting, President Widodo was visiting South Kalimantan where he officiated at the opening of a biodiesel factory, a bridge and monitored covid-19 vaccinations.

    The biodiesel factory, which is located in Tanah Bumbu, is managed by the PT Jhonlin Group owned by Samsudin Andi Arsyad alias Haji Isam.

    President Widodo said he appreciated the processing of palm oil into biodiesel and said he hoped that other countries would follow Jhonlin’s example in processing palm oil into biofuel.

    “Downstreaming, industrialisation, must be done and we must force ourselves to do it. Because of this, I greatly respect what is being done by the PT Jhonlin Group in building a biodiesel factory”, said Widodo.

    Meanwhile, Greenpeace Indonesia has published a damning new report about Indonesia’s palm oil industry and the devastation of rainforests.

    Translated by James Balowski for Indoleft News. The original title of the article was “Demo di Sejumlah Kota, Jokowi Resmikan Pabrik di Kalsel”.

  • On Wednesday, October 20, Palestinians staged a protest at the al-Manara square in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank in solidarity with six prisoners who are on hunger strike against their illegal administrative detention in Israeli jails, reported Al Jazeera. Several Palestinian civil society groups and prisoner rights groups participated in the protest, along with the families of those who are on hunger strike. They called for immediate and unconditional release of the six prisoners and expressed fear about their health.

    The post Palestinians Protest In Support Of Prisoners On Hunger Strike, Demand Their Immediate Release appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Washington, D.C., October 21, 2021 — The Taliban must thoroughly investigate attacks on journalists covering a protest today in Kabul and ensure that members of the press can cover issues of public interest without fear of assault and harassment, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

    Today, Taliban fighters assaulted at least three journalists covering a women’s protest opposing the group and demanding “work, bread, and education” in Kabul, the capital, according to multiple news reports and Bülent Kılıç, a photographer with the French news agency Agence France-Presse, who was among those attacked and spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.

    Taliban fighters hit the other two journalists as they scattered, according to those reports. CPJ was unable to immediately identify those journalists or the extent of their injuries.

    “The Taliban must accept that journalists have a right to cover events of public interest, including protests opposing them,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “The Taliban leadership must thoroughly investigate the attacks on journalists who covered today’s women’s protest and ensure that its members do not attack and harass members of the press.”

    Kılıç told CPJ that, shortly after the protest began at 9 a.m., he photographed a Taliban fighter punching a local Afghan journalist, whom he could not identify.

    The same attacker then struck Kılıç with the butt of a rifle, kicked him in the back, and swore at him as another Taliban fighter punched him, according to the journalist, a report by his employer, and a video of the incident shared by EuroNews.

    The two Taliban fighters chased Kılıç as he ran away, attempting to kick him from behind and beat him with a rifle as he repeatedly identified himself as a journalist, according to those sources. Another Taliban fighter intervened to stop the incident, but insulted Kılıç and ordered him to leave, he said, adding that he continued to follow the protest from a distance.

    Kılıç told CPJ that he sustained pain in his arm and back, but did not receive any serious injuries.

    According to the AFP report, two unidentified journalists in addition to Kılıç were attacked while “pursued by Taliban fighters swinging fists and launching kicks.”

    Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban spokesperson in Qatar, and Bilal Karimi, the Taliban deputy spokesperson in Afghanistan, did not respond to CPJ’s requests for comment sent via messaging app.

    Previously, on September 8, the Taliban detained and later released at least 14 journalists covering protests opposing the group in Kabul, as CPJ documented at the time, and beat and flogged several of those journalists.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • On October 20, at least half a million workers in South Korea — from across the construction, transportation, service, and other sectors — are walking off their jobs in a one-day general strike. The strike will be followed by mass demonstrations in urban centers and rural farmlands, culminating in a national all-people’s mobilization in January 2022. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), the country’s largest labor union umbrella with 1.1 million members, is organizing these mobilizations in a broad-based front with South Korea’s urban poor and farmers.

    The post Half A Million South Korean Workers Walk Off Jobs In General Strike appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Going into the vote on a controversial fifth tentative agreement, the mood among Washington carpenters who had organized for a “no” vote was uncertain. If one thing is clear about the first Northwest Carpenters strike since 2007, it’s that nothing was clear from the moment it started. That includes the number of people on strike, since many job sites were excluded under Project Labor Agreements and other similar agreements. Estimates by the union ranged from thousands to hundreds back to thousands again.

    The post After Strike, Washington Carpenters Approve New Contract By Slim Margin appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Coalition for Affordable Hospitals launched Friday morning and held a rally in Manhattan’s City Hall Park ahead of a City Council hearing on hospital costs. The effort includes nine unions that represent New Yorkers as well as the New York State Council of Churches and PatientRightsAdvocate.org, a nonprofit that promotes transparency in health care prices. The group is pushing legislation in Albany that would give health plans — including those managed by labor unions — more leverage to haggle over the price of health care.

    The post Labor Unions Band Together To Tackle NY’s High Hospital Prices appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • (Photo:  Tom Pennington)

    In country after country around the world, people are rising up to challenge entrenched, failing neoliberal political and economic systems, with mixed but sometimes promising results.

    Progressive leaders in the U.S. Congress are refusing to back down on the Democrats’ promises to American voters to reduce poverty, expand rights to healthcare, education and clean energy, and repair a shredded social safety net. After decades of tax cuts for the rich, they are also committed to raising taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations to pay for this popular agenda.

    Germany has elected a ruling coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats that excludes the conservative Christian Democrats for the first time since 2000. The new government promises a $14 minimum wage, solar panels on all suitable roof space, 2% of land for wind farms and the closure of Germany’s last coal-fired power plants by 2030.

    Iraqis voted in an election that was called in response to a popular protest movement launched in October 2019 to challenge the endemic corruption of the post-2003 political class and its subservience to U.S. and Iranian interests. The protest movement was split between taking part in the election and boycotting it, but its candidates still won about 35 seats and will have a voice in parliament. The party of long-time Iraqi nationalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr won 73 seats, the largest of any single party, while Iranian-backed parties whose armed militias killed hundreds of protesters in 2019 lost popular support and many of their seats.

    Chile’s billionaire president, Sebastian Piñera, is being impeached after the Pandora Papers revealed details of bribery and tax evasion in his sale of a mining company, and he could face up to 5 years in prison. Mass street protests in 2019 forced Piñera to agree to a new constitution to replace the one written under the Pinochet military dictatorship, and a convention that includes representatives of indigenous and other marginalized communities has been elected to draft the constitution. Progressive parties and candidates are expected to do well in the general election in November.

    Maybe the greatest success of people power has come in Bolivia. In 2020, only a year after a U.S.-backed right-wing military coup, a mass mobilization of mostly indigenous working people forced a new election, and the socialist MAS Party of Evo Morales was returned to power. Since then it has already introduced a new wealth tax and welfare payments to four million people to help eliminate hunger in Bolivia.

    The Ideological Context

    Since the 1970s, Western political and corporate leaders have peddled a quasi-religious belief in the power of “free” markets and unbridled capitalism to solve all the world’s problems. This new “neoliberal” orthodoxy is a thinly disguised reversion to the systematic injustice of 19th century laissez-faire capitalism, which led to gross inequality and poverty even in wealthy countries, famines that killed tens of millions of people in India and China, and horrific exploitation of the poor and vulnerable worldwide.

    For most of the 20th century, Western countries gradually responded to the excesses and injustices of capitalism by using the power of government to redistribute wealth through progressive taxation and a growing public sector, and ensure broad access to public goods like education and healthcare. This led to a gradual expansion of broadly shared prosperity in the United States and Western Europe through a strong public sector that balanced the power of private corporations and their owners.

    The steadily growing shared prosperity of the post-WWII years in the West was derailed by a  combination of factors, including the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, Nixon’s freeze on prices and wages, runaway inflation caused by dropping the gold standard, and then a second oil crisis after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

    Right-wing politicians led by Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. blamed the power of organized labor and the public sector for the economic crisis. They launched a “neoliberal” counter-revolution to bust unions, shrink and privatize the public sector, cut taxes, deregulate industries and supposedly unleash “the magic of the market.” Then they took credit for a return to economic growth that really owed more to the end of the oil crises.

    The United States and United Kingdom used their economic, military and media power to spread their neoliberal gospel across the world. Chile’s experiment in neoliberalism under Pinochet’s military dictatorship became a model for U.S. efforts to roll back the “pink tide” in Latin America. When the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe opened to the West at the end of the Cold War, it was the extreme, neoliberal brand of capitalism that Western economists imposed as “shock therapy” to privatize state-owned enterprises and open countries to Western corporations.

    In the United States, the mass media shy away from the word “neoliberalism” to describe the changes in society since the 1980s. They describe its effects in less systemic terms, as globalization, privatization, deregulation, consumerism and so on, without calling attention to their common ideological roots. This allows them to treat its impacts as separate, unconnected problems: poverty and inequality, mass incarceration, environmental degradation, ballooning debt, money in politics, disinvestment in public services, declines in public health, permanent war, and record military spending.

    After a generation of systematic neoliberal control, it is now obvious to people all over the world that neoliberalism has utterly failed to solve the world’s problems. As many predicted all along, it has just enabled the rich to get much, much richer, while structural and even existential problems remain unsolved.

    Even once people have grasped the self-serving, predatory nature of this system that has overtaken their political and economic life, many still fall victim to the demoralization and powerlessness that are among its most insidious products, as they are brainwashed to see themselves only as individuals and consumers, instead of as active and collectively powerful citizens.

    In effect, confronting neoliberalism—whether as individuals, groups, communities or countries—requires a two-step process. First, we must understand the nature of the beast that has us and the world in its grip, whatever we choose to call it. Second, we must overcome our own demoralization and powerlessness, and rekindle our collective power as political and economic actors to build the better world we know is possible.

    We will see that collective power in the streets and the suites at COP26 in Glasgow, when the world’s leaders will gather to confront the reality that neoliberalism has allowed corporate profits to trump a rational response to the devastating impact of fossil fuels on the Earth’s climate. Extinction Rebellion and other groups will be in the streets in Glasgow, demanding the long-delayed action that is required to solve the problem, including an end to net carbon emissions by 2025.

    While scientists warned us for decades what the result would be, political and business leaders have peddled their neoliberal snake oil to keep filling their coffers at the expense of the future of life on Earth. If we fail to stop them now, living conditions will keep deteriorating for people everywhere, as the natural world our lives depend on is washed out from under our feet, goes up in smoke and, species by species, dies and disappears forever.

    The Covid pandemic is another real world case study on the impact of neoliberalism. As the official death toll reaches 5 million and many more deaths go unreported, rich countries are still hoarding vaccines, drug companies are reaping a bonanza of profits from vaccines and new drugs, and the lethal, devastating injustice of the entire neoliberal “market” system is laid bare for the whole world to see. Calls for a “people’s vaccine” and “vaccine justice” have been challenging what has now been termed “vaccine apartheid.”

    Conclusion

    In the 1980s, U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher often told the world, “There is no alternative” to the neoliberal order she and President Reagan were unleashing. After only one or two generations, the self-serving insanity they prescribed and the crises it has caused have made it a question of survival for humanity to find alternatives.

    Around the world, ordinary people are rising up to demand real change. The people of Iraq, Chile and Bolivia have overcome the incredible traumas inflicted on them to take to the streets in the thousands and demand better government. Americans should likewise demand that our government stop wasting trillions of dollars to militarize the world and destroy countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, and start solving our real problems, here and abroad.

    People around the world understand the nature of the problems we face better than we did a generation or even a decade ago. Now we must overcome demoralization and powerlessness in order to act. It helps to understand that the demoralization and powerlessness we may feel are themselves products of this neoliberal system, and that simply overcoming them is a victory in itself.

    As we reject the inevitability of neoliberalism and Thatcher’s lie that there is no alternative, we must also reject the lie that we are just passive, powerless consumers. As human beings, we have the same collective power that human beings have always had to build a better world for ourselves and our children – and now is the time to harness that power.

    The post Our Future vs. Neoliberalism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Details of how the hunger strike will work are still being finalized, but Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the driver group New York Taxi Workers Alliance, said that dozens are signed up to join so far. “We cannot wait for the next administration,” Desai said. “Leaving drivers at $300,000 (or) $500,000 in debt is not a resolution. It’s a set-up for failure.”

    The post Taxi Drivers Plan Hunger Strike For Debt Relief appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Under a banner declaring “We did not vote for fossil fuels,” Indigenous and youth climate activists led a march to the Capitol today for a mass civil disobedience action, demanding Congress and the Biden Administration take urgent action to stop all new fossil fuel projects and launch a just renewable energy revolution. 90 people were arrested on the fifth and final day of the “People vs. Fossil Fuels” mobilization, bringing the total arrested during the week of action to 655.

    The post People Vs. Fossil Fuels Mobilization Concludes With Youth-Led Civil Disobedience At The Capitol appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Coosa High School students in Rome, Georgia, were warned by administrators not to organize a protest against racist actions recently taken by their peers — and when they went forward with their plan anyway, only Black students were punished.

    The students planned a protest condemning the school’s failure to discipline a group of white students who had used racial slurs against Black students; days earlier, students had also waved a Confederate battle flag in their direction.

    When news of the protest spread during its planning stages, administrators made an announcement over the intercom warning that there would be a police presence at the protest and students who participated would be “disciplined for encouraging unrest,” even if they were just in possession of a flyer for the protest.

    Shortly after, the organizers of the protest — a group that included Black, white and Latino students — were called to the office, where they engaged in arguments with administrators. Disciplinary action was handed out in the form of school suspensions, but only the Black students were punished.

    “They didn’t suspend me and I was yelling and loud,” said student Lilyan Huckaby. “It’s because I’m white.”

    The school sought out the involvement of law enforcement when handing out the disciplinary orders. Some parents of Black students who were suspended said they did not receive word of the disciplinary action until their children were brought home by the sheriff department; one mother said she was told by an officer who pulled her over while she was driving.

    Black parents told CBS46 that their children suffered emotional distress from being harassed and called racial slurs by white students. Lekysha Morgan, the mother of three children who were suspended for organizing the protest, said that she had complained to school administrators about racist remarks being made toward her children several times, but the school had never taken any action.

    The students still held the protest, even after being suspended.

    “I felt really disrespected how the school didn’t do anything about it and when we are not allowed to wear [Black Lives Matter] stuff and they are allowed to carry a racist flag around,” said organizer Deziya Fain, one of the students who was suspended.

    “I feel the Confederate flag should not be flown at all,” said organizer Jaylynn Murray. “It is a racist symbol and it makes me feel disrespected.”

    Beyond the fact that public school students still have the first amendment right to protest, inequitable punishment toward Black students is not limited to Coosa High School. Data from the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement for the academic year of 2019-2020 showed that Black students in Georgia were far more likely to receive disciplinary action than their white peers.

    In Cobb County, Georgia, for instance, Black students only make up 33 percent of the student population — but the report found they accounted for 52 percent of all disciplinary actions taken by school administrators in the county.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.