Subjects Archives: Protest

More than 50 years ago (on 14 April 1967), Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of his famous speeches, on “The Other America,” at Stanford University.* King patiently explained to the audience of students and faculty members that, while in his view “riots are socially destructive and self-defeating,” they are “in the final analysis. . .the language of the unheard.”

Once again, Black America has surged to the front lines of the global struggle. This year, the United States has stood out primarily as a leading centre of right-wing lunacy, political breakdown and murderous incompetence in the pandemic. Now, it is showing the world something else: the potential for sudden eruptions of mass resistance that can change everything.

While some in media have condemned the protests as violent “looters” imposing “tyranny” upon the country, much of the violence is being deliberately instigated and propagated by an out of control police force that appears to have gone berserk over the widespread public challenge to their authority and their impunity to act as they wish.

This documentary short film captures the meaning and importance of Mauna Kea to the native Hawaiian people and why they stand to protect this sacred land.

This validates everything the Tribe has been saying all along about the risk of oil spills to the people of Standing Rock. We will continue to see this through until DAPL has finally been shut down. – Jan Hasselman
Attorney, Earthjustice

With the U.S. government now absurdly saying that Venezuela is the source of narco-trafficking, even though all evidence pointing to narco-trafficking is rooted in Colombia, the pressure on Colombia to deal with its drug problem is now lifted.

Workers at Amazon, Instacart and Whole Foods protested on March 30 and 31 over concerns about unsafe working conditions, inadequate safety measures and lack of enough pay.

To me, the Lebanese crisis looks like, in the first instance, as a foreign exchange and international transactions crisis, a classic developing country crisis in the era of financialisation. As such it is closely connected to the country’s policy on the exchange rate. The fixed peg policy chosen by the Lebanese ruling class and operated by the central bank and the government for a long time, has proven destructive. The country’s economy is under great pressure because the strong pound has damaged Lebanese competitiveness on an international scale and facilitated the growth of domestic credit.

On July 15, 2013, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), led by Berta Cáceres Flores, went to protest the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River. This river, in western Honduras, is considered to be sacred by the indigenous Lenca community. No one from the company that wanted to build the dam had talked to the Lenca.

Despite protests of historic proportions fueled by anger over corruption and a brutal right-wing crackdown, the unrest in Colombia has garnered remarkably little international media attention compared to Venezuela.

Just below the steps leading to the engraved words of George Washington “The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government”, members of the People’s MTA, Rise and Resist’s Elevator Action Group, Disabled In Action, The Peoples Power Assemblies NYC were demonstrating for their right to justice.

Not long before the Twin Towers fell, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben resurrected a concept anathema to the liberal notion of progress—the idea that unrelenting crisis is not necessarily exceptional. Agamben employed the image of “the Camp” to describe the space and time “when the state of exception begins to become the rule.”

Reverend Dr. Delman Coates joins Money on the Left to discuss why the politics of public money creation are essential for social and spiritual liberation. Dr. Coates holds a Master’s in Divinity from Harvard and a Ph.D. in New Testament & Early Christianity from Columbia University. He currently serves as Senior Pastor at Mount Ennon […]

The protest movement in Iraq, which is now entering its fourth month, has come to be the principal instrument for Washington to surreptitiously advance the broader geopolitical confrontation with Iran that is being played out within the country.

Today the cow is dry. Businessmen stepped on her neck for years, extracting the last drop of milk. There is nothing left for them to fight for, except for the hopes of using us to beg either from the U.S., the E.U. or the Gulf States.

From bus drivers to ballet dancers, workers from across France have taken to the streets in opposition to President Emmanual Macron’s attempts to reshape the country into a U.S.-style neoliberal state.

With her head bandaged and her arm in a sling, university student Aishe Ghosh went before the cameras to say that the students of the university she attends in New Delhi would move “not an inch back.”

Millions of Indians hit the streets today in support of the general strike and as part of nationwide coalition-building efforts to resist the policies of the right-wing Modi government.

On January 5, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rep. Barbara Lee announced that they are introducing a War Powers Resolution in the House. The legislation would remove U.S. forces from any conflict with Iran that hasn’t been granted congressional approval and is a companion to a Senate resolution that was introduced by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) two days prior.

As we enter the new year, protests across the planet continue unabated; rising levels of discontent are manifest in both progressive and reactionary directions. The political character of the anger might whip across the spectrum of opinion and hope, but the underlying frustrations are similar.