Editor’s Note From Rivera Sun
Has President Milei had a week in office without a major strike, march or protest happening in Argentina? This week, university teachers went on strike after the government failed to reach a wage agreement with their union. Milei’s broad cuts to social spending have ignited mass outcry from many sectors of the populace, including soup kitchens, students, workers, and families.
In other Nonviolence News, Nigerians plunged into darkness as workers shut down the national grid over minimum wage disputes. Samsung workers in South Korea took industrial action for the first time, choosing to all use their paid leave entitlements simultaneously. The ‘Summer of Heat’ on Wall Street is trying to stop fossil fuel financing. Veterans For Peace and 350.org teamed up to protest military air shows that spew pollution. On TikTok, a ‘microfeminist revolution’ is taking place as women counter sexism online.
There are also a number of interesting articles on recent actions for a ceasefire in Gaza. Bogota, Colombia, banned exports of coal to Israel after a campaign pressured the nation’s president to take action. Thousands of people surrounded the White House to draw a ‘people’s red line’ after President Biden ignored his promise that bombing Rafah would constitute a red line that should not be crossed. Palestinians in Israel are demonstrating despite repression. New reports show that the Israeli government funded a covert effort to influence US politicians. (Surprise, surprise.) And a Jewish US Army Major has resigned over the US’ continued inaction in the face of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The most interesting story this week? In Paris, a housing justice encampment led by over a hundred teenage migrants is withstanding police repression to say: “No Housing, No Olympics”. They refuse to be swept under the rug – or out of the city – so Paris can build fancy infrastructure instead of homes.
We also mourn the passing of Rev. James Lawson, who died at age 95 having devoted his life to civil rights, labor justice, anti-war actions, and much more. Considered the strategic architect of the nonviolence movement, he was a passionate organizer and educator his entire life. I am grateful to have trained with him (and later taught) at the James Lawson Institute.
In solidarity,
Rivera Sun
27,000 Virginia Teachers Win Historic Union Election with Presidential Election Implications: In Virginia, a group of 27,000 teachers held a historic election in which 97% of all teachers voted to unionize and 81% of all support staff voted to unionize. “Today marks the culmination of a 47-year-long fight to win collective bargaining at Fairfax County Public Schools. The reason our campaign was successful was because we all took agency over our own lives,” says David Walrod in a statement. Read more>>
US Jury Finds Banana Giant Chiquita Guilty of Financing Paramilitary Death Squads In Colombia: In a historic first, an American jury has held a major US corporation liable for complicity in serious human rights abuses abroad. Specifically, the case has held banana giant Chiquita Brands International accountable for financing a brutal paramilitary death squad in Colombia. Read more>>
Columbia Law Review Back Online After Students Threatened Work Stoppage Over Palestine Censorship: The board had proposed appending a statement that would have undermined a Palestinian scholar’s article. The students rejected it. Read more>>
Israel Coal Exports Ban In Bogota Fueled By Palestinian-Colombian Coalition: President Gustavo Petro announced shipments were ending, following a campaign by a coalition of Palestinian activists, trade unionists and indigenous groups. Read more>>
Waffle House Is Raising Servers’ Pay Across the Country: After nearly a year of organizing for raises, an end to mandatory meal deductions & safer working conditions, thousands of Waffle House workers at over 1,500 stores across the South have won an increase in base pay of more than $3/hour plus more. “This is a win. We did this,” said Smith, 50. “It’s good, but it’s still not enough.” Read more>>
Museum Workers Win Demand To Shut Down For RNC In Milwaukee: Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) employees represented by their union, AFSCME Local 526, are celebrating a decisive victory in their campaign for workplace safety during the Republican National Convention. Read more>>
Southern California Passes First US Rule to Electrify Water Heaters, Boilers: “When it comes to our industrial sector, we don’t have to boil the planet to boil water,” said one campaigner.” If Southern California can forge ahead and do this, so can the rest of the nation.” Read more>>
Paris Is Banishing Its Homeless Before the Olympics. A Group of Child Migrants Isn’t Having It. Amidst the shiny new infrastructure the city has built ahead of the Olympic Games, which start in July, a sort of semi-permanent protest has taken on new urgency. “The situation is critical,” one banner reads. “No housing, no Olympic Games. We are staying in Paris.” The protest group was founded last summer by about 20 unaccompanied child migrants living in an encampment in Belleville Park to help support each other in the face of aggressive police action; it has since grown to over 170 children. Read more>>
Argentine University Unions Continue National Strike: Argentine university teachers continue on Wednesday the second day of the national strike in the face of the refusal of the Government of Javier Milei to reach a wage agreement. Read more>>
Israeli Government Funded Covert Influence Campaign Targeting US Lawmakers: The head of an Israeli watchdog group called a covert operation to sway US lawmakers “anti-democratic” and “extremely irresponsible.” Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs allotted $2 million to the operation in October and hired Stoic, a Tel Aviv-based political marketing firm, to carry it out. Stoic established fake news websites and hundreds of fake accounts on X, Instagram, and Facebook that posted pro-Israeli messages, trying to push certain US lawmakers to fund Israel’s military and support its war efforts. Read more>>
Argentine Soup Kitchen Groups Protest: Social movements who run hundreds of soup kitchens across Argentina, protested Thursday to demand that the government deliver held-up food aid that (it) has in storage. Watch here>>
Nigeria Plunged Into Darkness as Union Workers Shut Down National Grid In Minimum Wage Protest: A nationwide strike in Nigeria brought air travel to a standstill and plunged the country into darkness on Monday as union workers stormed the national grid and shut down the nation’s power supply, according to the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN). Read more>>
Global People’s Health Movement Calls For a New International Economic, Political, and Social Order: At a recent global gathering, hundreds of health activists committed to uniting the health movement with other progressive social movements. Their aim is to form a broad coalition for radical change to counter the crises of capitalism and imperialism. Read more>>
US Agencies Urged to Tackle Medicare Advantage, Other ‘Outrageous’ Healthcare Greed: “There is much the Biden administration can and must do to address the national embarrassment that is for-profit healthcare in the U.S.,” said Public Citizen’s healthcare policy advocate. Read more>>
Samsung Workers In South Korea Take Industrial Action For First Time: National Samsung Electronics Union, which represents tens of thousands of people, is pushing for better wages. So, employees took action by taking their paid leave entitlements simultaneously last week. Read more>>
‘Summer of Heat’ to Take Aim at Wall Street for Funding Climate Chaos: Five climate action organizations have banded together to create the “Summer of Heat,” a monthslong activism program targeted at Citigroup and other Wall Street companies for their role in the climate crisis. “We know that they’re enabling the fossil fuel industry, and we know that to end the fossil fuel era, banks like Citibank must stop funding fossil fuels,” an organizer said. Read more>>
‘Financing the Arsonists’: Scientists Arrested During Citigroup Climate Protest: “I invite you to join us, at any level of risk tolerance,” said one participant in the New York demonstration. “It feels deeply meaningful—even joyful—to be a part of this movement and to stand on the right side of history.” Read more>>
‘Fighting For 40 Years’: The Tiny Texas Community Facing Down Big Industry: Corpus Christi, Texas residents are fighting the encroachment of desalination plants in the Texas Coastal Bend. “I’m not going to take this house or this bay to the coffin. It’s a legacy. It must be here in a healthy form so that future generations can enjoy what I enjoyed,” Serna says. Read more>>
Over 160 Groups Call On United Nations To Stop Promoting Carnivorous Fish Farming: Scientists, activists, and NGOs say fish farming endangers the environment and local communities. Over 160 experts and civil society groups are calling on the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to remove carnivorous fish farming from its definition of “sustainable aquaculture” ahead of World Ocean Day on 8 June. Read more>>
Indigenous Tribes Lead DC Rally to Shut Down Dakota Access Pipeline: “The injustices of the Dakota Access Pipeline are many, including an assault on Indigenous rights and the right to defend our lands, waters, and communities,” said one campaigner. Read more>>
Inmates Challenge Alabama In Forced Labor Federal Lawsuit: The lawsuit against Alabama state officials, agencies, local governments, and private companies for their involvement in the prison labor program continues. Prisoners now must fight a wave of motions to dismiss. Read more>>
How Black Parents Got Cops Out of Oakland Schools: Four years ago, as a result of more than a decade of organizing led by the Black Organizing Project (BOP), a group of students, parents, teachers, and allies united to achieve a historic win in Oakland, California, resulting in the removal of police officers from the Oakland Unified School District. Read more>>
Real-Time Data Show The Air in Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ Is Even Worse Than Expected: Even though the general risks of living in the region have been clear for decades, the exact dangers are still coming into focus — and the latest data show that the EPA’s modeling has dramatically underestimated the levels of ethylene oxide in southeastern Louisiana. A new study finds levels of the carcinogen ethylene oxide that are 9 times higher than those estimated by the EPA’s models. Read more>>
Windmill Farms Mushroom Workers Struggle To Unionize: ‘We want a labor law that protects all farm workers’. Windmill Farms mushroom workers and UFW President Teresa Romero come to Seattle to share their struggle to fight exploitation and unionize. Farm workers at Windmill Mushroom traveled to Seattle on Wednesday to shed light on their years-long struggle for dignity and respect – and to urge lawmakers to pass legislation to ensure farmworker labor rights. Read more>>
Hundreds of Doctors Demand Biden End Solitary Confinement in Immigration Prisons: Solitary confinement in ICE prisons would likely explode in scope under Trump’s mass deportation plan. The letter comes after reports of multiple suicide attempts by immigrants incarcerated at a privately run ICE facility made national headlines. Read more>>
Immigrant Coalition Sues Biden: A coalition of immigrant advocacy groups sued the Biden administration on Wednesday over President Joe Biden’s recent directive that effectively halts asylum claims at the southern border, saying it differs little from a similar move by the Trump administration that was blocked by the courts. Read more>>
Venezuelan Women, Feminism, and People Power Building: Women in Caracas are building alternatives for political participation, autonomy, and fighting violence. Read more>>
Landless Women Building Free Territories: 40 Years of Struggle for Agrarian Reform in Brazil: Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) celebrates 40 years of struggle tackling gender-based violence in rural areas. As it is impossible to look at this revolutionary resistance without looking at women’s relevant participation in different fronts of struggle, it is also impossible to think about the 40 years of the MST without considering this participation as something that is built across different spaces, from occupations to the organization of encampments and settlements, to political education, and the different levels of its structure. Read more>>
Hundreds of Arizona Doctors Urge Voters to Back Abortion Rights Amendment: “Every person should be able to make their own decisions” regarding abortion, the doctors wrote. A letter signed by around 550 Arizona doctors and healthcare providers urges residents of the state to support the passage of a November ballot initiative to enshrine expansive abortion rights in the state. Read more>>
The Best Way To Secure LGBTQ Rights? Unions. Labor’s ability to improve queer workers’ lives stems from its power to raise standards for all workers. Read more>>
The Anti-War Left Makes Inroads in Israel: Standing Together’s national field organizer Uri Weltmann discusses the growing peace movement inside Israel, confronting far-right extremists seeking to disrupt humanitarian aid going to the Gaza Strip, and the left’s recent electoral breakthroughs. Read more>>
Red Line Protest For Gaza At White House Shows Support For Palestine: Thousands surrounded the White House Saturday with a ‘people’s red line’ message to the Biden administration to stop funding and supporting Israel’s war on Gaza. At midday, hundreds unfurled and circled the White House with a 2 mile long red banner with names of thousands of Palestinians slain by Israeli military bombing in Gaza. Over 200 groups joined in demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, withdrawal of military forces, and a pathway towards Palestinian Statehood. Read more>>
Veterans For Peace and 350.org Demonstrate Against Military Air Shows’ Dirty Glorification of War: Veterans For Peace (VFP) has been running the No Military Airshows (No MAS!) campaign for years to protest military air shows by the Navy (Blue Angels) and Air Force (Thunderbirds) for glorifying militarism and spewing pollution. 350.org’s U.S. team recently joined the campaign and is encouraging 350.org supporters to work with local VFP chapters and members to protest military air shows across the country. Read more>>
NAACP Calls on Biden to Indefinitely End Arms Shipments to Israel: The NAACP is calling on President Joe Biden to “draw the red line” and immediately halt weapons shipments to Israel in a statement showing the widening gulf between Biden and groups influential to his voter base. Read more>>
Jewish US Army Major Explains Why He Resigned Over Gaza: “I knew that as long as I stayed, I’d be contributing to this campaign that had already demonstrated basically it was going to be indiscriminately killing civilians at an industrial scale,” said Harrison Mann. Read more>>
Growing Defiance Suggests Israeli Police Will Find It Harder And Harder To Suppress Palestinian Disgust At Israel’s Genocide In Gaza: On May 27, following yet more bloodshed in Rafah, some 300 people, Palestinians and their allies, gathered in the Prisoner Square in the historic German Colony neighborhood of downtown Haifa. Prisoner Square is the unofficial name given by protesters to a square in the middle of al-Carmel street (today Ben-Gurion street), a traditional place of gathering for Palestinian protests in the city. Read more>>
Heat Waves Are Making Restaurant Kitchens Unsafe. Workers Are Fighting Back. As climate change makes summers hotter, restaurant employees are walking out and unionizing. Read more>>
The Dream of a Car-Free City: The delusion that cars belong in places like Manhattan is stubbornly hard to break. But across the world, cities are coming to their senses. This journalism series uplifts the best policies that can help the dream of a car-free city become reality. Read more>>
Welcome To The ‘Microfeminist’ Revolution: Women Clap Back At Everyday Sexism On TikTok: Watched by 2.8 million, the TikTok video touched off a viral conversation about microfeminism, inspiring women – and men – to respond with their own small but mighty clapbacks at sexism that are spreading online and off. Read more>>
A Rochester Credit Union Wants Local Government To Create A Bank: A local credit union has joined Rochester, NY’s mayor, city council members and its state legislators in a last-minute push for state legislation to create a “public bank” called the Bank of Rochester. They envision a government-owned financial institution built specifically to hold only government deposits while partnering with local private lenders like Genesee Co-op Federal Credit Union to boost their ability to make loans and investments in communities that still aren’t getting enough of it. Read more>>
Why a 19 M.P.H. Speed Limit Changes Everything: In cities that chop speed limits, cycling rates surge, traffic injuries plummet and kids spend twice as much time playing outdoors. Read more>>
Remembering Rev. James Lawson: The leading strategist of the Black freedom struggle died Sunday at age 95, leaving a radical legacy and methodology that’s inspired countless movements. Martin Luther King Jr. called him “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.” To Rep. John Lewis, he was “the architect of the nonviolence movement.” Jesse Jackson simply called him “the teacher.” Read more>>
China’s Report On US Human Rights Violations: The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China released a report on human rights violations in the United States in 2023. The following is an abstract of the report. The full text is in the attached file, linked at the end of this abstract. Read more>>
Should Children Take Part In Nonviolent Struggle? Children have the most to gain from victories over racism, heterosexism and climate-wrecking capitalism. Shouldn’t they participate in the struggle for their future? Read more>>
Corporate Media Push Conspiracy Theories to Discredit Students: Across corporate media, journalists and pundits introduced conspiracy theories to discredit the pro-Palestine student protest movement, particularly that they are funded by foreign countries or “outside agitators.” Read more>>
The Fight Against Caste Oppression Can Unite Indian Workers: The Indian state of Punjab shows us that caste oppression owes far more to material interests than it does to inherited religious ideologies. A movement of Dalit rural workers offers a powerful example of how that oppression can be challenged today. Read more>>
Summer of Heat on Wall Street: “The clock is ticking. That’s why during the Summer of Heat, we’re taking joyful, relentless nonviolent direct action to end fossil fuel financing. Wall Street is bankrolling the coal, oil and gas companies that are polluting our communities and killing our planet. But we’re going to stop them. Week after week. Month after month. We’re taking the party to the streets and we won’t stop.” Learn more>>
Activism In Exile: This webinar on activism in exile presents testimonies and lived experiences of people who were forced or chose to leave their countries, and the challenges they face in adapting to new societies. Speakers will delve into the complex intersection of activism, identity, and the profound experiences of exile—a journey marked by an ongoing search for meaning and belonging. (June 21) Learn more>>