A Maoist take on Cindy Sheehan. To quote the Revolutionary Worker quoting Ms. Sheehan: "I want him (Bush) to tell me 'just what was the noble cause Casey died for'?", she declared. "Was it freedom and democracy? Bullshit! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. "We're not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT ACT. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism! There, I used the 'I' word--imperialism, and now I'm going to use another 'I' word -- impeachment--because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail." (Meanwhile, on the spot, Bush's neighbor is becoming irate; more on that via Yahoo News.)
posted by davy on Aug 15, 2005 - 69 comments

Post election demonstrations and protests in Portland, San Francisco (pics). And a few more.
posted by loquacious on Nov 3, 2004 - 42 comments

The Greatest War Protestor of All Time --Wise, hilarious, and kind words from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. If you don't know who he is, fake it.
posted by chinese_fashion on Sep 15, 2004 - 7 comments

Riots in Iran have started, apparently over the recent elections. The revolution, it seems, will be blogged (with pictures). But not televised? Has anyone seen anything on CBSNBCBBCABCFOXESPN about this? If the riots are over the election, why are we hearing from the BBC (and others, presumably) that the election went smoothly? Does anyone have more information about what's happening with these pro-democracy riots? (Via Roger L. Simon).
posted by swerdloff on Mar 14, 2004 - 16 comments

Fox News "revises" its own news scroll during New York war protest. "The news ticker rimming Fox's headquarters on Sixth Avenue wasn't carrying war updates as the protest began. Instead, it poked fun at the demonstrators, chiding them. 'War protester auditions here today ... thanks for coming!' read one message. 'Who won your right to show up here today?' another questioned. 'Protesters or soldiers?' Said a third: 'How do you keep a war protester in suspense? Ignore them....' Still another read: 'Attention protesters: the Michael Moore Fan Club meets Thursday at a phone booth at Sixth Avenue and 50th Street.'" Fox claims the network "didn't mean to insult anyone."
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Mar 29, 2003 - 95 comments

Civil Disobedience Training (html version), The Handbook for Nonviolent Action and Civil Disobedience Training, Nonviolent Action Handbook, and Non-violence Discipline. And then there's that crackpot who wrote in the Dhammapada that "hate is not overcome by hate; by Love (Metta) alone is hate appeased. This is an eternal law." One imagines other texts on the timely topics of peace, nonviolence, and war resistance may exist -- Martin Luther King pointedly noted, "there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks, before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman empire."
posted by fold_and_mutilate on Mar 17, 2003 - 15 comments

Man arrested in a mall for wearing a peace T-shirt. For some reason I think loads of people will show up at this mall wearing peace T-shirts over the next few days.
posted by thedailygrowl on Mar 5, 2003 - 181 comments

So just how many protesters WERE there at the anti-war demonstration? Throughout history organizers give a higher turnout estimate and police give a lower one. The San Francisco Chronicle hired an independent third party to take aerial photos and estimate the number of demonstrators last Sunday, and the results show a crowd count much lower than what either the organizers OR the police had estimated. In Washington, DC, as USA Today notes, the Park Service "counted crowds for decades until 1995, when Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan threatened to sue after Park Police estimated attendance at the Million Man March at 400,000." Is having an accurate count a good thing? Will anyone care?
posted by twsf on Feb 21, 2003 - 51 comments

At D.C. protests, a few hundred thousand go missing - "Like most young Americans, I've been trained to think of protests and demonstrations as something shameful and vaguely embarrassing-something one outgrows, like Journey albums, or those hour-long showers you took when you were eleven and twelve." Stinging dead-on reportage about the media's coverage of the anti-war movement, from Matt Taibbi.
posted by GriffX on Jan 29, 2003 - 66 comments

Media covers massive D.C. (and world) Anti-War protests, discounts numbers - Backflash: NPR and the NYT later issued apologies for their drastic undercounting of the Oct. 26 D.C. Anti-War protest - later admitted to be between 100,000 and 200,000 in size "...It was not as large as the organizers of the protest had predicted. They had said there would be 100,000 people here. I'd say there are fewer than 10,000"(NPR's Nancy Marshall) Last saturday's D.C. AntiWar protest received far more media coverage but a similar discounting of the numbers. IndyMedia (above link) provided numbers more in line with D.C. Police statements. Many media outlets ran the same AP news feed. [NYT, NPR , CNN, ABC, AP] and claimed..."Thousands" or "tens of thousands" of protesters. But in the words of those who witnessed it (as I did - 2.5 times size of Oct. 26 protest, from what I saw): 'D.C. police chief Charles Ramsey said, "It's one of the biggest ones we've had, certainly in recent times." U.S. Capitol Police chief Terrance Gainer said, "I know everyone is skittish about saying a number, but this was big. An impressive number." A C-SPAN cameraman I spoke to spent the entire protest on the roof of a cargo truck just to the side of the stage. He told me that he had covered dozens of protests in his time, and that the crowd on Saturday was the biggest he had ever seen.' (story) and organizers claimed 500,000 marched in DC meanwhile, a new poll shows support for a war on Iraq is slipping in the US and also dropping at the UN
posted by troutfishing on Jan 20, 2003 - 105 comments

Today is the day when massive war protests are scheduled to appear throughout the U.S. Are you going? Are you completely against them? Was the one near you bigger/smaller than expected? And remember, MetaFilter is fun, but like the war or hate it, this is your last chance to register to make your opinion really count if you haven't already. The election is officially 30 days away. The war.... we'll get back to you on that.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Oct 6, 2002 - 65 comments

Oh, I got it now. One "rowdy" group in the streets lights bonfires, climbs lightpoles, blocks traffic, dances on cars and a police van as "bemused" riot cops looked on. Another group "allegedly committed vandalism" and were consquently arrested in droves. See, if you generally run wild in favor of the status quo, the cops are your friends. If you march in opposition to the status quo you get arrested.
posted by raaka on Feb 6, 2002 - 18 comments

An interesting twist in the trial of a bunch of Greenpeace protestors. The government drops felony charges in return for a guilty plea to misdemeanors and a promise from Greenpeace USA not to conduct any illegal demonstrations in the US for the next five years. Any bets on whether or not the deal will hold, and if we'll see this tactic used in the anti-globalization arena?
posted by jaek on Jan 9, 2002 - 5 comments

Silly Protest Signs in this "war" of many serious casualties where we are tip-toeing through religious ideas and many political issues, i am shocked at the lameness of some of the protest signs, please post others weak signs here.
posted by tsarfan on Oct 12, 2001 - 52 comments

We demand more diversity and the exclusion of men. "Hollins (University) drops charges against 2 nude protesters - The protesters demanded more diversity, more money for student services, more power for students and for men never to be admitted as undergraduates."
posted by NortonDC on May 6, 2001 - 11 comments

BBC report on the May Day protests On the whole I've been shocked by how uninformed the BBC has been, especially in comparison with The Guardian's comprehensive coverage. Having attended the Oxford Circus demonstration, I be sure of two facts: one, that the gathering was almost entirely peaceful... and two, that the heavy-handed police action is likely to incite frustration and violence. Remember, kids: the 3,000 'protesters' include ordinary members of the public caught in the police blockade.
posted by tobyslater on May 1, 2001 - 8 comments

FTAA Diary is a 48-page zine (available for download in pdf format) chronicling the experiences of folks who protested in Quebec. Illustrated with powerful black and white photos, the narratives personalize the events like no journalism could hope to.
posted by sudama on Apr 29, 2001 - 21 comments

Spent half of last night on the streets with around a million other people; my feet still smart from standing up so long, but we've finally kicked the f**cker out!
posted by lia on Jan 20, 2001 - 16 comments

Changing the Climate offers a new sport - Tagging SUV's Not as destructive as Phonebashing, but it's still vandalism.
posted by plinth on Dec 27, 2000 - 61 comments

Uh, oh. The price of protest is eternal vigilance, or something. Perhaps Ms. Hill was too busy flogging her book. No, seriously -- if one were to make a deal with Satan, would one really expect him to keep his side of the bargain?
posted by dcehr on Nov 28, 2000 - 18 comments

National Day of Protest against police brutality, repression, and the criminalization of a generation. Take a stand and wear black today.
posted by grank on Oct 22, 2000 - 6 comments

So I was paging through the special section of Indymedia devoted to the upcoming Melbourne protests, and came across a page about Melbourne University. Apparently their Student Union voted to skip the S11 protest because they thought too many flat-out anarchists and professional agitators were trying to take charge. So someone posts on Indymedia that this is a case where "democracy was ineffective." What? You lose the vote so there must be something wrong with voting?
posted by aaron on Sep 2, 2000 - 5 comments

Surveillance of political undesirables continues. Round up the usual suspects. The sad thing is that this is not the least bit surprising. I honestly believe that the Dem. convention protests are going to get unbelievably ugly. Here in LA, the cops are beginning to behave even more thuggishly than usual. And that's saying something, my friends. So here's my question....I'm a liberal who feels that the Dem Party has lost its way, and I'd like to register my dissatisfaction with a peaceful protest. However, such a protest carries with it the very real chance of a billy club beatdown and a far from pleasant stay in the luxurious LA County jail. Do I follow my conscience, or my common sense?
posted by Optamystic on Aug 9, 2000 - 14 comments

There have been some, uh, interesting remarks made by people regarding the rights of protestors and the rights of police in Philladelphia. Bijan Parsia has written an informative piece on Monkeyfist about what exactly is happening there, from a legal standpoint.
posted by queequeg on Aug 8, 2000 - 11 comments

Protest the IMF and World Bank April 16 and 17. Info on a non-violent rally/protest in DC, and other actions around the US. Also ... Michael Moore is going to be the emcee.
posted by E-Boogie on Apr 4, 2000 - 1 comment

The most disgusting things I've seen in California this year are the parents against a student group and Propsition 22. Last night, I saw that support for prop 22 was leading in the polls, which I find incomprehensible. The LA Times has a summary of what religious leaders think about it, and there's a protest against the proposition by 400 clergymen this weekend. If even these guys have problems with it, why would the average citizen support it? Hopefully reason will win out on this one, but unfortunately, if you haven't already registered to vote in CA, it's too late for this primary election.
posted by mathowie on Feb 11, 2000 - 5 comments