Protest Reports

The sense of resistance was fierce:

“Grab ’em by the profits” . . . “Keep your hands out of my wherever” . . . “NOT DECLAWED” . . .

But it was also, oh Lord, joyous — in a scraped raw kind of way, you might say. For instance, the young woman with the bullhorn, who led the chant where I was walking, had almost no voice left as she shouted “Show me what democracy looks like!” But as soon as the marchers shouted back, “This is what democracy looks like!” she threw her vocal cords back into it, and somehow, oh, somehow, I could feel it: the birth of a movement.

People on the radical left have criticized the 3 million Americans who protested the Donald Trump inauguration for not being radical enough, not being black or brown enough, not being working-class enough. There is some validity to these critiques; a thriving movement against Donald Trump must be centered on the struggles of women of color, working class people, immigrants, and other marginalized groups. But there has been an attitude of shaming people — many of whom are becoming politically active for the first time — for not being “woke” enough.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor has rightly pointed out that this attitude is politically immature and counterproductive. “The movement to resist Trump will have to be a mass movement, and mass movements aren’t homogeneous — they are, pretty much by definition, politically heterogeneous,” she writes in The Guardian. “And there is not a single radical or revolutionary on Earth who did not begin their political journey holding liberal ideas.”

Nonviolent action is extremely powerful.

Unfortunately, however, activists do not always understand why nonviolence is so powerful and they design 'direct actions' that are virtually powerless.

I would like to start by posing two questions. Why is nonviolent action so powerful? And why is using it strategically so transformative?

When an activist group is working on an issue – such as a national liberation struggle, war, the climate catastrophe, violence against women and/or children, nuclear weapons, drone killings, rainforest destruction, encroachments on indigenous land – they will often plan an action that is intended to physically halt an activity, such as the activities of a military base, the loading of a coal ship, the work of a bulldozer, the building of an oil pipeline. Their plan might also include using one or more of a variety of techniques such as locking themselves to a piece of equipment ('locking-on') to prevent it from being used. Separately or in addition, they might use secrecy both in their planning and execution so that they are able to carry out the action before police or military personnel prevent them from doing so.

What are the grounds for impeachment?

January 20 was marked by protests across the U.S. against the inauguration of Donald Trump. One of several actions in Columbus was a march to the downtown police station and City Hall to call on Mayor Ginther to demilitarize the police force.

“Trump ran on a platform of ‘law and order,’ which we know is nothing but a dog whistle for violent racist policing  — something he made abundantly clear throughout his campaign,” said Pearl Morgan, an organizer with Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), a group that organizes white people to fight against racism. “He openly encouraged violence against protesters at his rallies, seeming to view it as entertainment,” she said.

“We fear that Trump will fulfill his campaign promises to financially support and empower local police departments in their crackdown on our communities,” Morgan added. “That is why we demand that Columbus reject Trump’s plans for our police department, just as the voters of Franklin County rejected Trump on election day.”

1. Get active around policy not personality. And try to nudge newly active or re-activated people in that direction. To take one example of thousands, we should be cheering more loudly for the commutation of Chelsea Manning's sentence. And we should have raised a lot more hell than we did over the idea of locking her up to begin with -- and Obama's pronouncing her guilty before his subordinates tried her -- and over all the other whistleblowers still in cages or facing persecution. More support for not bombing Syria in 2013, and more condemnation for arming proxies instead. More -- hell, any -- support for Trump deescalating hostility with Russia, and more opposition to his proposals to "kill their families" and "steal their oil."

We are a group of independent election forensic investigators, election monitors, data analysts, and election integrity advocates who have been examining and analyzing the 2016 election. We are writing to you to share our views regarding the importance of including certain systemic vulnerabilities in the scope of your investigation, and to offer our resources to assist with your investigative work.

From all around the globe, nearly 50,000 people have signed this statement:

I understand that wars and militarism make us less safe rather than protect us, that they kill, injure and traumatize adults, children and infants, severely damage the natural environment, erode civil liberties, and drain our economies, siphoning resources from life-affirming activities. I commit to engage in and support nonviolent efforts to end all war and preparations for war and to create a sustainable and just peace.

World Beyond War, with your help, is expanding our staff, our organizing, and our activism. As we start the new year, I'll be staying on as director and we'll be adding a fulltime organizer and a part-time education coordinator (both already hired), as well as many volunteers -- including our growing global coordinating committee, chaired by Leah Bolger.

We've also just launched a campaign to divest public pension funds from weapons dealers. This will be a major undertaking. We've begun a campaign in support of international justice including moving remaining nations to join the International Criminal Court, and moving that court to apply the law equally. We're also working with allies around the world on closing military bases and restoring land to its people.

The Student/Farmworker Alliance held yet another protest on the Ohio State University campus on November 15. The student organization is engaged in a protracted struggle with OSU that began in April 2014, when they asked the university to terminate its contract with the Wendy’s Corporation. The fast food chain operates a restaurant in OSU’s Wexner Medical Center.

At issue is the human rights of farm workers in Wendy’s supply chain. Wendy's has refused to join the Fair Food Program developed by the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). Joining the Fair Food Program would alleviate the poverty of farm workers who harvest the fresh tomatoes used in the Wendy's sandwiches and salads. The CIW's program also promotes a safer, more humane working environment, including zero tolerance for sexual harassment and slave labor — abuses still common in the agricultural industry.