Category: Protests

  • On September 3, 54 school bus drivers in the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System SCCSS) in Georgia began a rolling sickout and staged a protest at the school district offices over pay structure and lack of adequate protections from COVID-19. The sickouts forced the school board to scramble for drivers to transport students.

    The post Georgia School Bus Drivers Protest Inadequate COVID-19 Protection And Low Pay appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Washington, D.C., September 13, 2021 — The Taliban must immediately and unconditionally release freelance photographer Morteza Samadi and commit to allowing the media to operate freely and independently, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

    On September 7, Taliban fighters detained Samadi after he covered a protest in the western city of Herat, according to Ezzatullah Mehrdad, a reporter covering Afghanistan for The Washington Post, who is familiar with his case and spoke with CPJ via messaging app, and another person familiar with the case, who spoke with CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal by the Taliban.

    Mehrdad told CPJ that he called Samadi on September 7 after hearing that he was detained, and a Taliban official answered and said, “he is in custody.” The official accused Samadi of leading the protests against the Taliban in Herat and chanting against the Taliban, he said.

    As of today, Samadi remains in Taliban custody, according to Mehrdad and the person who spoke to CPJ.

    “The detention of Afghan journalist Morteza Samadi is further evidence of the Taliban’s failure to stick to their earlier promises of allowing media workers to operate freely and independently,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “The Taliban must immediately release Samadi and stop targeting journalists for their work.”

    Mehrdad said he had repeatedly called Samadi’s phone since September 7, but the line was busy.

    Mehrdad and the person familiar with the case told CPJ that Samadi had posted on Facebook in support of the protests the day before his arrest. CPJ was unable to review those posts, as the journalist’s account has been deactivated or set to private.

    Samadi has worked as a freelance news photographer for about two years, according to the person familiar with the case, who said Samadi previously worked as a reporter with Chekad TV and Radio Television Afghanistan, outlets operated by the former Afghan government.

    Separately on September 7, at about 12:30 p.m., Taliban fighters with the Red Unit special forces group assaulted two journalists working for a local broadcaster as they covered an anti-Taliban protest near the Iranian embassy in Kabul, according to those journalists, who spoke to CPJ on the condition that their names and their outlet not be identified, citing fear of reprisal by the Taliban.

    The fighters beat the first journalist on his head and back with their hands, feet, and an iron rod, and threatened to jail him for covering the protest, the journalist told CPJ. He said he had significant pain from the attack but did not require medical attention.

    The second journalist said that Red Unit fighters beat him “all over my body” with their hands, feet, and cables, adding that he fell to the ground during the beating and the fighters continued to hit and kick him.

    That journalist sustained open wounds on his hands and knees, as seen in photos he shared with CPJ. He received medical attention at a hospital following the incident, where his hands and knees were bandaged and he was prescribed painkillers, he said.

    The fighters also confiscated the first journalist’s phone and deleted footage of the protests before returning it, broke the journalists’ camera, and also confiscated their tripod, which they did not return, both told CPJ.

    On September 7 and 8, the Taliban detained and later released at least 14 journalists covering protests against the group in Kabul, as CPJ documented. CPJ is continuing to investigate additional alleged detentions and beatings of Afghan journalists since the Taliban seized power in August.

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


    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.

  • Protest. Petition. Call your senators. Nothing changes, right? No matter how large our demonstrations get, no matter how many millions of people write and petition politicians, no matter how many people get arrested in front of the White House or at our state capitols, it seems that our (supposedly) elected officials keep turning a blind eye and deaf ear to our cries for change. In fact, there’s even a study out that shows that in 20 years on 2,000 different bills, we, the People, got our bills through Congress a whopping 0.0 percent of the time.

    The post Think Outside The Protest Box appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Over 100 students walked out of their Friday morning classes at Colleyville Heritage High School to show their support of James Whitfield, the high school’s first Black principal who was placed on paid administrative leave last month. They want answers from school administrators as to why Whitfield is on leave. Students carried signs and wrote “We stand with Dr. Whitfield” in chalk on the sidewalks at the high school. They also marched around the school chanting, “Dr. Whitfield’s here to stay.”

    The post Colleyville Heritage Students Stage Walkout To Support School’s First Black Principal appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Just as many predicted over a year ago, the rollout of the vaccine for Covid-19 and its implementation has introduced intense polarization and social segregation through the implementation of mandatory vaccination for employees and vaccine passports. Medical authoritarianism and the burgeoning biosecurity state are here, expanding in real time. In New York City, San Francisco, France, and Italy, vaccine passports are mandatory for entrance to nearly any indoor public venue: restaurants, bars, museums, cinemas, and more. Also, hundreds of corporations, colleges, federal and state agencies are mandating rushed emergency experimental injections with no long-term knowledge of side effects.

    Yes, we’re all well aware that the Pfizer vaccine just got full FDA approval. Did anyone think that it wouldn’t? Did anyone in the media bother to ask if the forces of power, money, and technocratic medical tyrants would back down and not give full approval, considering how these forces have managed to shape reality and scare to death half of the population over a disease with a very low mortality rate? Regardless of your opinion of how severe the disease is, mandates and passports are incontrovertibly coercive, tyrannical measures. If the vaccines do not stop transmission, which the medical authorities have already admitted to varying degrees, then what is the point of these mandates and passports?

    Furthermore, the vaccine passport will effectively be discriminatory since minorities are less likely to get the vaccines. African Americans especially have lower vaccination rates, for good reasons, the US medical establishment experimented on black populations throughout the Cold War and even beyond. It’s not difficult to see the ramifications of bio-digital segregations. One does not need a PhD or medical degree; in fact, these “credentials” seem to blinker one’s view in support of this new form of discrimination.

    In the view of what we might term the technocracy, or perhaps the emerging biosecurity establishment, it is virtuous to separate the “clean” vaxxed from the supposedly disease-carrying, uneducated, lower-classes who won’t take these experimental shots.

    All of the power and money, all the “Science ™” snowballed into an unstoppable corporate/government momentum which shows no signs of letting up. All that propaganda, the deliberate lies about mask efficiency (they don’t work) and vaccine holiness (they don’t prevent transmission) they’ve been shoving down the public’s throats for over a year and a half? Yeah, the nanny-state politico-medical tyrants are not going to give up this narrative without a fight. They are doubling down on the fear and quest for total obedience and control. It suits late-stage capitalism just fine if small and medium sized businesses go under and the excess labor supply of the unemployed are evicted and go hungry. They are extraneous to the monopoly cartels which run the “economy”, which is run by giant tech corporations, the stock market, the military-industrial complex, and the FIRE sector, multinational conglomerates who operate with almost no competition in nearly every industry.

    There is no way to fight back against these abuses of power through the court system. In my opinion, the most rational approach would be to boycott, in any way possible, the corporations and public institutions that are going along with vaccine mandates and passports. Part of this involves the vote with your dollars approach. Hurting the corporate lemmings and technocrat sociopaths in their wallets and lack of tax revenues are the only things they will understand.

    If you were thinking of traveling to Europe, skip France and Italy. Guess what?  If globally millions of tourists suddenly gave the middle finger to these two countries and vacationed elsewhere, the dent in lost revenue and GDP might actually have some effect on the political establishment. In France and Italy citizens are rightly fed up with protests every day against the passports, and many vaccinated people have burned their vaccine papers in solidarity.

    Similarly, if people in the US abstained from traveling to and spending money in NYC and SF, every restaurant owner, museum board, theater, and small business would then put immediate pressure on city, state, and federal politicians to ban vaccine passports, hopefully for good. If millions of people refuse to shop and do business with companies that have mandatory vaccination requirements for their employees, it would also put immense pressure to relent.

    Investors should also divest from corporations that insist on mandating vaccines for employees. It may, in fact, be legal for companies to do so, but it is frankly coercive and is a sort of crossing of the Rubicon, blurring one’s private life and medical choices with public duties, to create a new type of “good citizen”, a biopolitical subject serving capitalism with zero critical thinking skills.

    For those in the workforce facing mandates, such as federal/state public employees and health care workers, if possible it is definitely worth considering if another career/job can be found. If enough teachers, nurses, etc., quit or go on strike against their employee mandates, pressure can be applied and the mandates could potentially be lifted.

    It’s worth pointing out that the goalposts continue to be changed from slowing the pace of transmission to eradicating the virus- from two weeks to flatten the curve (tacitly acknowledging that coronaviruses cannot really be stopped) to mandates for wide swaths of public and private work, as well as military and police presence on the streets of Australia, to name one of the most obvious police state measures. The goalposts are changing to determine our “good citizen” status. Before, one simply had to go along to get along, obey the laws, pay taxes, and keep one’s head down; now, not only are we expected to do and say the right things, but to inject the right experimental drugs into our bodies.

    My humble prediction is the goalposts are going to continue to move. The game is akin to the frogs boiling slowly in the pot; by consenting to our own freedom being curtailed and our own imprisonment, the establishment gets what it wants without having to crack down using excessive force and coercion. The innate desire to have access to public spaces, to go on vacation, will lead many people ignorant of the wider implications to accept these new dystopian measures.  The horizon of getting “back to normal” will recede faster as new variants naturally emerge, as viruses tend to do, and this will continue to be used as a new scare tactic, even as death rates effectively returned to normal four months ago (May of 2021) in the US, and many other countries show no more excess deaths, or none outside normal yearly variations, as well in 2021.

    The virus is now endemic, but the powers that be are going to insist upon using it as a weapon for total control over the population. We’re through the looking-glass, we now have a form of “scientism” which is irrefutable no matter how unsettled the truth really is. Statistics such as death counts from Covid are unreliable, with doctors confessing to listing Covid-19 as the primary cause of death when it’s not- dying “from Covid” is conflated as dying “with Covid”. Deaths from the lockdowns are not seriously considered, even though many scientists are on record stating that the lockdowns led to a large chunk of the excess deaths.

    Frankly, the near future looks pretty bleak for the US and the chances to have an open, honest dialogue about the seriousness of the pandemic, the capitalist world-system which stands to gain by using a 21st century tech-driven shock doctrine, and the police-state that will be built on the back of the panic caused by incessant propaganda. The fault lines are deepening and Democrats yammer to “trust the science” without any understanding themselves, and are willing to demonize anyone who doesn’t get an experimental jab or wear two masks while alone in their car; while Republicans continue to frame the “reopen the economy” debate in terms of those supposedly wonderful job-creating corporations, all the while being willing to sell the average worker out for an extra buck or two. Both parties are more than willing to screw over the poor, minorities, and working classes; if either cared about their citizens’ lives they wouldn’t throw people out into the streets via the mass evictions that are already underway.

    As imperial decline and rot deepen, and the domestic surveillance apparatus pulls its noose tighter against our necks, our best bet to resist these freedom-crushing decrees is to deploy citizen power, mass protests, and coordinated direct action against inhumane vaccine mandates and police-state vaccine passports.

    The post Boycott Vaccine Mandates and Covid Passports first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • “HOC is fully aware that the property was used for more than a century as a cemetery, and yet it has ignored the law and is planning to move forward with the sale in violation of the law.  Such misbehavior cannot stand unchallenged. Judge Smith’s careful and well-reasoned decision, issued from the bench after a two-hour hearing, properly evaluated the evidence and the statutes protecting the sanctity of burial grounds and blocked the sale.”

    The post Judge Blocks Sale of Historic African Cemetery appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • It is said that Palestinians are the most incarcerated people in the world. Rarely does one find a Palestinian who has not been a victim of the Israeli prison system and when one does find one such person, he or she will have a sibling, parent or another close relative who serves or has served time in an Israeli prison. Opportunities for Palestinians to celebrate as a nation are few and far between. When the news broke of the escape of six high-profile Palestinian prisoners from one of Israel’s most secure prisons, it was a reason to celebrate. This was a reason not only for Palestinians to celebrate but indeed for all people who believe in justice and freedom.

    The post Why Israel’s Gilboa Prison Break has Palestanians Celebrating appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Red paint and posters reading “No new jails” were plastered on the door of architectural firm Klein McCarthy at the beginning of the work day on September 9. Responding to a nationwide call-out for #ShutEmDown2021 actions on the anniversary of the Attica Prison Rebellion, autonomous prison abolitionist groups took part in the action which also featured graffiti and a banner drop over Highway 100. Unicorn Riot received a statement from anonymous participants in the action who said they targeted Klein McCarthy Architects because their contract “to design a new $28-million jail” in Winona.

    The post Prison Abolitionists Target Architectural Firm appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • On September 7, El Salvador became the first country in the world to recognize Bitcoin as legal tender, alongside the US dollar. The same day, hundreds of Salvadorans took to the streets of the capital San Salvador to protest the adoption of the highly speculative digital currency as national currency. They marched from the central square to the Legislative Assembly to express their dissatisfaction with the decision of the far-right government of President Nayib Bukele. The members and legislators of the opposition left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front party (FMLN) also joined the march.

    The post Salvadorans Reject the Adoption of Bitcoin as National Currency appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Ten thousand production and warehouse workers for the farm equipment manufacturer John Deere will take a strike authorization vote September 12 across nine Auto Workers (UAW) locals in Iowa, Illinois, and Kansas. Strike authorizations at bargaining time are not unusual for John Deere workers, and they haven’t struck in 35 years, but there are reasons to watch this round of negotiations closely. The last contract in 2015 passed very narrowly, by fewer than 200 votes out of 10,000 eligible voters, who traded rising health care costs for a small pay bump. The largest Deere local, Waterloo Local 838, rejected that contract 2 to 1; Ottumwa Local 74 also turned it down.

    The post Ten Thousand UAW Members Gear Up for a Strike Vote at John Deere appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Berlin, September 9, 2021 – Montenegro authorities should swiftly and thoroughly investigate the recent attack on a crew for the privately owned broadcaster N1 TV, and ensure that journalists can cover protests safely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

    On September 5, a group of protesters in Cetinje, west of Podgorica, the capital, harassed and assaulted N1 TV reporter Aleksandra Tolj Ružić and camera operator Amar Pozdelj,  according to a report and footage published by N1 TV and Ružić, who spoke with CPJ via email.

    Demonstrators shouted and spat at the journalists, threw stones at them, and attempted to stop them from broadcasting, according to those sources. Ružić told CPJ that she and Pozdelj were able to escape the scene without injuries.

    “Montengrin authorities must thoroughly investigate the recent attack on N1 TV reporter Aleksandra Tolj Ružić and camera operator Amar Pozdelj, and hold those responsible to account,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities must ensure that members of the press can safely cover events of public interest without fear that they will be harassed and assaulted.”

    The journalists were covering a protest against the inauguration of the head of the Serbian church in Montenegro by people angered over alleged Serbian influence in the country, according to reports.

    First, a group of demonstrators spat at Ružić and Pozdelj and shouted at them to stop recording, according to Ružić and those reports by N1 TV. When the journalists walked away from the scene, protesters threw rocks and other projectiles at them, and a group of eight to 10 demonstrators surrounded the crew while they were broadcasting, demanded to know why they were filming, and ordered Ružić to stop recording and delete their footage, according to those sources.  The journalists refused to comply and walked away from the scene, as seen in the N1 TV footage.

    One protester attempted to knock Ružić’s phone out of her hand, she told CPJ.

    Ružić said that the Montenegro prosecutor’s office had opened an initial investigation into the attack. CPJ emailed that office for comment, but did not immediately receive any reply.


    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 Nabisco strike that began when union bakers walked out of the Oreo and Ritz factory along Northeast Columbia Boulevard on Aug. 10 continues to fester—but Nabisco’s parent company, Mondelez International, has taken aggressive steps to combat the strikers’ tactics and keep its operations running.

    On Aug. 31, the company sent a cease-and-desist letter to the union warning strikers the company would pursue legal action if they didn’t stop interfering with plant operations.

    And then, on Sept. 2, Portland police kicked strikers off property beside the railroad tracks where strikers positioned themselves to block trains carrying supplies to the bakery by holding up picket signs, which union railroad workers honored.

    The post Nabisco Owner Sends Cease-and-Desist Letter To Baker’s Union appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • When negotiations failed to produce a new contract at a Volvo plant in Virginia this spring, its 2,900 workers went on strike. The company soon dangled what looked like a tempting offer — at least to the United Auto Workers local leaders who recommended it to their members: Pay raises. Signing bonuses. Lower-priced health care. Yet the workers overwhelmingly rejected the proposal. And then a second one, too. Finally, they approved a third offer that provided even higher raises, plus lump-sum bonuses. For the union, it was a breakthrough that wouldn’t likely have happened as recently as last year.

    The post Labor Shortage Leaves Union Workers Feeling More Emboldened appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • A large Israeli army campaign is taking social media by storm. The unstated aim of what is known as the “#Untie_Our_Hands” initiative is the desire to kill, with no accountability, more Palestinian protesters at the Gaza fence. The campaign was motivated by the killing of an Israeli sniper, Barel Hadaria Shmueli, who was reportedly shot from the Palestinian side of the fence on August 21.

    An immediate question comes to mind: what do Israeli soldiers want, considering that they have already killed over 300 unarmed Palestinian protesters and wounded and maimed thousands more at the Gaza fence during what Palestinians referred to as the ‘Great March of Return’ between 2018 and 2020?

    This ‘march’ is now being renewed, though it often takes place at night, where frustrated Palestinian youth gather in their thousands, chanting anti-Israeli occupation slogans and, at times, throwing rocks at Israeli snipers who are stationed nearly a mile away.

    Months after the Israeli onslaught on Gaza – a relatively brief but deadly war between May 10-21 – the stifling status quo in the besieged Strip has not changed: the hermetic Israeli siege, the snipers, the occasional nightly bombardment, the devastating unemployment, the closures, and the lack of everything, from clean water to cement to even cancer medication.

    Therefore, it should not be surprising that Palestinians in Gaza, especially the youth, are in desperate need of a platform to express their justifiable rage at this ongoing misery; thus, the renewed mass protests at the fence.

    Israeli politicians and media intentionally exaggerate the ‘threat’ posed by the Gaza protesters to Israel’s security. They speak of ‘incendiary balloons’ as if they are 500-pound bombs dropped by fighter jets. They are terrified by the prospect of Gaza kids ‘breaching the border’, with reference to fences that Israel has arbitrarily established around Gaza without respecting any ceasefire demarcations as recognized by the United Nations.

    This fear-mongering is now back with a vengeance, as the killing of the Israeli sniper is offering an opportunity for Israeli politicians to present themselves as the defenders of the army and the champions of Israeli ‘security’. A political witch hunt quickly followed, regarding those who are supposedly ‘cuffing the hands of our troops.’

    This same assertion was made by Naftali Bennett in 2019, before he became the country’s prime minister. “The High Court is cuffing the hands of IDF troops,” Bennett has said, vowing to “free the IDF from the High Court”.

    A year earlier, Bennett offered more details on how he intends to end Palestinian protests at the Gaza fence.  Responding to a question during an Israeli Army Radio interview on what he would do if he were the country’s defense minister, he replied: “I would not allow terrorists to cross the border from Gaza every day … and if they do, we should shoot to kill. Terrorists from Gaza should not enter Israel … Just as in Lebanon, Syria or anywhere else we should shoot to kill.”

    The emphasis on ‘killing’ in response to any form of Palestinian protests seemed to be the common denominator between Israeli officials, military brass and even ordinary soldiers. The latter, who are purportedly behind the social media campaign, seem to be enjoying their time at the Gaza fence. Israeli snipers – per their own testimonies – keep track of the number of Palestinians they shoot, try to break each other’s’ records and cheer on video when they document a ‘clean shot’ of a Palestinian protester, which should demonstrate the horrific violence meted out against those Palestinian youth.

    Israeli snipers at the Gaza fence work in pairs. A third person, known as the ‘locator’, helps the snipers locate their next target. Eden is an Israeli sniper, who, among others, gave testimonies to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in March 2020. Eden is particularly proud of a grizzly milestone that he and his team have achieved.

    “On that day, our pair had the largest number of hits, 42 in all,” he said. “My locator wasn’t supposed to shoot, but I gave him a break, because we were getting close to the end of our stint, and he didn’t have knees. In the end you want to leave with the feeling that you did something, that you weren’t a sniper during exercises only. So, after I had a few hits, I suggested to him that we switch. He got around 28 knees there, I’d say.”

    Such testimonies are further validated by occasional video footage of Israeli snipers cheering after shooting Palestinian kids at the fence. In April 2018, a particular video of cheering soldiers, along with the kind of dialogue that indicates that Israelis have no regard for Palestinian lives whatsoever, was leaked to international media. Even CNN reported on it.

    This violent phenomenon is not confined to Gaza. The debate on Israel’s ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy in the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories has been raging on for years. In 2017, Human Rights Watch linked the increased number of Palestinian casualties, who are killed at the hands of trigger-happy soldiers, to the violent discourse emanating from the Israeli government itself.

    HRW “has documented numerous statements since October 2015, by senior Israeli politicians, including the police minister and defense minister, calling on police and soldiers to shoot to kill suspected attackers, irrespective of whether lethal force is actually strictly necessary to protect life,” the report read.

    The above issue was highlighted in the execution of the incapacitated Palestinian, Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, in the occupied city of Al-Khalil, Hebron, in March 2016 and in the killing of Ahmad Erekat, at a military checkpoint in the West Bank in July 2020. Not only did Erekat pose no immediate threat to the lives of the occupation soldiers, but according to a statement by 83 Palestinian and international NGOs, Erekat “was then left to bleed to death for an hour and a half, while the Israeli occupying forces denied him access to medical care”.

    Considering the disproportionate number of Palestinian casualties which, at times, push Palestinian morgues in Gaza to full capacity, it is inconceivable what Israeli soldiers, army generals, and politicians want exactly when they speak of ‘untying their hands’. Far more bewildering is the international community’s apathy while Israelis debate about how many more Palestinians ought to be killed.

    The post Hashtag “Untie_Our_Hands”: How Many More Palestinians Must Die for Israel’s “Security”? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • This morning, Water Protectors erected multiple blockades at a major U.S.-Canadian tar sands terminal in Clearbrook, Minnesota in direct opposition to Enbridge’s Line 3. From grandmothers to young people, Water Protectors of all walks of life continue to stand up for the sacred. On one end of the mile-long blockade, grandmothers led beautiful solidarity with Anishinaabe treaty territory and Mother Earth, in front of a boat painted with MMIWG2S messages.

    The post Water Protectors Shut Down Major U.S.-Canadian Tar Sands Terminal appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Police have arrested more than than 500 people during Extinction Rebellion’s protests in London. The environmental group began their ‘Impossible Rebellion’ action on 23 August. The Metropolitan Police said since the action began, as of 6.30pm on Saturday 4 September they had arrested 508 people.

    The post More Than 500 Arrested As Extinction Rebellion Protests Continue In London appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Last week marked the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest labor uprising in U.S. history. In 1921, around 10,000 coal miners in Logan County, West Virginia, who had been trying to unionize with the United Mine Workers of America went to war against about 3,000 coal bosses, state police, private security forces and scabs. For five long, bloody days, those miners in their red bandannas — the Red Neck Army, as they called themselves — held the line, fighting like hell for their futures and their families.

    The post Labor Day Lessons From The American Union Movement’s Hidden History appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Citing unresolved complaints, disparities in wages with other businesses, staffing shortages and issues with building maintenance, the entire staff of the McDonald’s in Bradford who worked the weekend morning shift walked out in protest Sunday morning. According to a former employee who said he quit last week after working for the store for more than a decade, and who asked not to be named, “this is not the first incident of employees walking out of the Bradford store due to issues with executive management.”

    The post McDonald’s employees walk out appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Rights activists have condemned the use of non-lethal weapons against anti-lockdown protesters. Shane Pemmelaar reports.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Confronted with management’s burdensome demands for contract concessions, Nabisco workers in Portland, Oregon, instigated a strike last month that has rapidly taken on national proportions. Since then, the workforces of every Nabisco production and distribution facility in the country have followed suit, a coordinated action years in the making. The strikers have drawn on the radical energies of a recently resurgent labor movement in the United States — a momentous upswell in a key vector of working-class power.

    The post Nabisco Strikes Demonstrate Growing Strength Of The Labor Movement appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Around 90 Australian workers at the General Mills factory in New South Wales have been on strike for nearly three weeks. On Wednesday, June 23, the national leadership of the United Workers Union (UWU) called for a national boycott of General Mills products, especially their highly popular Old El Paso and Latina Fresh brands. The boycott is an attempt to expand what the UWU calls the “David vs Goliath battle against one of the world’s biggest food manufacturers.”

    The post Australian Union Calls For Boycott Of General Mills Products appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Since April 28 hundreds of thousands of Colombians have taken to the streets to demand the end to neoliberal reforms, chanting “el pueblo unido jamás será vencido”. Now, a month later their joint call has grown into a generalized rejection of the neoliberal and far-right government of Ivan Duque. His government is polled as the least popular in recent Colombian history, already a low bar for a State that has waged an ongoing war against its people.

    The post Popular Resistance In The Age Of Neoliberal War: The Case Of Colombia appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Activists at the Extinction Rebellion protest have now been freed from the plant pots, onto which they had glued themselves, only to be been placed immediately into handcuffs and taken to a police van. Others stripped naked in front of a branch of Barclays bank in protest, behind a banner which read: “We are all vulnerable, stop funding fossil fuels”.

    The post Extinction Rebellion Protests: Activists Strip, Some Glue, And Others Warn appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • By Hengky Yeimo in Jayapura

    Papuan activist Victor Yeimo has been receiving medical treatment in hospital following a police crackdown on a protest in the provincial capital Jayapura demanding that he be released from detention to be treated for illness.

    Hundreds of protesters had gathered at the Papua chief public prosecutor’s office on Monday to demand that West Papua National Committee (KNPB) spokesperson Yeimo be released from detention to be given hospital treatment.

    Yeimo’s detention was finally deferred on Monday afternoon and he was taken to Jayapura public hospital for treatment.

    The protesters arrived from the direction of Abepura, Jayapura city. They arrived at the chief public prosecutor’s office and began giving speeches on the street leading into the office.

    In speeches, the demonstrators demanded that chief public prosecutor Nikolaus Kondomo immediately defer Yeimo’s detention.

    Yeimo is currently being tried at the Jayapura District Court in a criminal case related to anti-racist demonstrations in Papua in 2019.

    On Friday, August 27, the panel of judges, presided over by Eddy Soeprayitno S Putra, with judges Mathius and Andi Asmuruf, ruled that Yeimo’s detention be deferred and that he receive medical treatment because he was ill.

    Demand for treatment
    The rally at the prosecutor’s office on Monday was because Yeimo had still not been released from detention. They demanded that the prosecutor release Yeimo immediately and allow him to be treated.

    The police had already closed the main gate to the office and prohibited the protests from entering the grounds. About 1 pm police forcibly broke up the rally which was coordinated by the KNPB.

    A number of protesters were injured, including Gad Holanue, Varra iyaba, Hengki Giban, Leti Soll, Egenius Tebay and Jufri Dogomo. Three protesters — Soleng Soll, Beni Orsa and Bayage — were arrested by police.

    Papua Regional House of Representatives (DPRP) member John NR Gobai said he deplored the police actions. Gobai, along with DPRP member Laurenzus Kadepa, had been accepted by the court as guarantors for Yeimo to be released and treated in hospital.

    “I was blocked by police, then I was pulled away by the demonstrators. I wasn’t able to get in and convey my wishes,” Gobai said.

    A Regional Representatives Council (DPD) member from Papua, Herlina Murib, was also barred from entering the office.

    “We hope that the police will not repeat this inhuman attitude which was shown by blocking us and removing people who wanted to convey their aspirations. This violates the law”, Murib said.

    Second demonstration
    The demonstration at the prosecutor’s office on Monday was the second one held by activists demanding that Yeimo be allowed to receive hospital treatment.

    Protesters had also gathered at the prosecutor’s office on Saturday, August 28, because the prosecutor was seen as ignoring the court’s ruling that Yeimo receive treatment.

    Because the prosecutor’s office was empty on Saturday, the protesters went to the prosecutor’s private residence where they again called on Kondomo to immediately postpone Yeimo’s detention.

    However, Kondomo refused the request, saying Yeimo could only be released on Tuesday, August 31.

    About 3.20pm on Monday, Yeimo was finally allowed to leave the Papua regional Mobile Brigade command headquarters detention centre and was taken to Jayapura public hospital. The ambulance transporting Yeimo was escorted by two police patrol cars and three black minivans.

    Around 20 police officers escorted Yeimo to the hospital. Public prosecutors Adrianus Tomana and Valerianus Dedi Sawaki were also present at the hospital.

    Advocate and lawyers
    Yeimo was accompanied to the hospital by advocate Emanuel Gobay and a number of other lawyers, Laurenzus Kadepa and John NR Gobai along with Yeimo’s wife and mother.

    Speaking to Tabloid JUBI at Jayapura hospital, Tomana said the medical examination was in accordance with the court’s ruling. Tomana stated that how long Yeimo’s detention will be deferred would depend on the examination and the doctor’s diagnosis.

    “How long the deferment will be depends on the results of the doctor’s examination. If the doctor declares that he is well, then we will revoke the deferment, and Yeimo will be returned to his detention cell,” he said.

    Translated by James Balowski for Indoleft News. The original title of the article was “Minta Victor Yeimo dikeluarkan dari tahanan, massa di Kejati Papua dibubarkan polisi”.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • WildEarth Guardians announced this week its intent to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over its failure to crack down on smog pollution in the Permian Basin of southeast New Mexico, where unchecked fracking is taking a dangerous toll on clean air.

    The post WildEarth Guardians To File Suit To Protect Clean Air From Fracking appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The report analyzes the impact that Indigenous resistance to fossil fuel projects in the United States and Canada has had on greenhouse gas emissions over the past 10 years. From the struggle against the Cherry Point coal export terminal in Lummi territory to fights against pipelines crossing critical waterways, Indigenous land defenders have exercised their rights and responsibilities to not only stop fossil fuel projects in their tracks, but establish precedents to build successful social justice movements.

    The post Indigenous Resistance Disrupts Billions Of Tons Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Annually appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The actions of the last week, from St. Paul to the White House, were a beautiful expression of solidarity. Across the country, communities came together to turn up the volume on the opposition to Line 3 to the point that Biden can no longer ignore us. It was also a declaration of hope that we can still stop this dangerous pipeline, despite Enbridge’s claim that they’ve nearly completed construction.

    The post Pressure Is Building On President Biden To Step In And Stop Line 3 appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • COMMENTARY: By Trevor Richards

    Apologies have been in the news recently.

    Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron told “French” Polynesia (Ma’ohi Nui) that French nuclear testing in the Pacific had not been clean. He pledged truth and transparency in the future.

    Earlier this month, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern issued an apology to the Pasifika community for the race-based Dawn Raids of the 1970s.

    I was reminded of the need for another apology as I watched New Zealanders competing at the Tokyo Olympics. These Games were a source of enthusiastic enjoyment and pride for many of us. What a contrast to the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

    Some New Zealand spectators at those Games were so ashamed of the country of their birth, that they pretended to be Australians.

    In 1976, the All Blacks were in South Africa. They had left for their tour within days of the South African police killing hundreds of black students protesting in the streets of Soweto against apartheid. Apparently no reason there not to tour.

    Around 30 countries from an enraged African continent boycotted the Olympics in protest against New Zealand’s presence. It was the first major Olympic boycott of the modern era, and our country had caused it — well, the New Zealand Rugby Football Union (NZRFU) actually, hugely assisted by Prime Minister Muldoon.

    Monotonous claim
    New Zealand rugby’s answer to most criticism over this period had been to monotonously
    claim that sport and politics didn’t mix. At Montreal, the extent to which they did was
    painfully clear.

    Author Trevor Richards
    Author Trevor Richards … as a HART campaigner against racist tours. Image: BWB

    New Zealanders had just discovered what a selfish sporting body, devoid of any moral compass, could do to the international reputation of a country.

    This was not the beginning of New Zealand rugby’s fall from grace. Nor was it to be the end. For more than 60 years, the NZRFU was involved in what many came to recognise as an ugly and intimate pas de deux with South African racism.

    From 1928-1960, rugby authorities acquiesced to South Africa’s insistence that it not include Māori players in any All Black team touring South Africa. Racist South Africa was the puppeteer pulling the strings. New Zealand rugby was a compliant puppet.

    From the beginning, many Māori saw it that way.

    In May 2010, New Zealand Rugby issued a short statement in which it said “sorry” to those Māori players “who were not considered for selection for teams to tour South Africa or to
    play South Africa”. “Sorry” had been very slow in coming. Eighty-two years for star Māori fullback George Nepia.

    But does this apology, if that is what it was, even begin to cover other major aspects of what it is rugby needs to address? South Africa was an international outcast. Over a period of more than 60 years, the NZRFU had offered Pretoria high levels of support, often at times when it was most needed.

    International outcry
    In 1960, an international outcry followed the killing of 69 unarmed black protesters at Sharpeville. Within weeks, the All Blacks were flying off for a three-month tour. In June 1976, amid even worse police violence, the All Blacks were off once again to South Africa.

    After the 1976 Olympic boycott and all the turmoil and violence which accompanied the 1981 Springbok tour, the NZRFU still felt able to press ahead with plans to tour South Africa again in 1985.

    To growing numbers of citizens, rugby’s insensitivity, arrogance and stupidity seemed limitless.

    Unsurprisingly, the hand of friendship offered by New Zealand rugby to South Africa became a lightning rod for increasingly large protests. By 1981, communities and families had become bitterly split. News crews from around the world flooding into New Zealand reported on ugly battles for the soul of a nation.

    It was the closest we had come to civil war in the 20th century.

    It is 100 years since South Africa first toured New Zealand. How timely it would be if we could start the second century of this relationship with an apology and wipe the slate clean.

    In 2006, the NZRFU adopted the brand name New Zealand Rugby. Within rugby, has there been more than just a name change? Is there now a recognition that responsibility for past behaviours needs to be accepted?

    These behaviours include years of insult to Māori, the unqualified support extended to a racist, pariah state, the resulting hurt and suffering that support caused black South Africans, the pain, shame, and opprobrium inflicted on New Zealand’s international reputation and the deep and bitter divisions created at home.

    If not now for such an apology, how long do we have to wait? The need for it is not going to go away.

    Trevor Richards was national chair of the Halt All Racist Tours movement (HART) from 1969-1980 and international secretary from 1980-1985. This article is published with the author’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • “We are asking you to stand with us. As representatives of communities who have carried the brunt of the harm from fossil fuels for generations, we ask you to join us in solidarity—and risk arrest—in Washington DC, October 11-15, 2021, as part of Build Back Fossil Free’s People vs Fossil Fuels Week of Action.”

    The post An Invitation From People Vs. Fossil Fuels appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The window cleaners – who are part of a master-contract that includes three companies (Columbia Building Services, Final Touch Commercial Cleaning and Apex North) – won major improvements in their new contract after holding strong on the picket lines and organizing several large rallies and actions in the Minneapolis area over the course of the strike.

    The post Minneapolis High Rise Window Cleaners End Strike After Winning Major Gains appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.