#global repression

[workersolidarity]

🇺🇸🇵🇸 🚨

COLOMBIA UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION THREATENS PROTESTERS WITH SUSPENSION

The administration of Colombia University has issued a statement in which they demand the student protesters dismantle their occupation encampments under threat of suspension.

According to the statement, students must dismantle their encampments and identify themselves to faculty or face suspension and presumed further arrests.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[the-secret-garden1]

Palestine Updates | Students Freedom of Speech is under attack at Curtin Uni.

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A post shared by Students for Palestine WA (@studentsforpalestinewa)

Students have received emails stating that the notorious phrase, "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." Is banned on campus, this phrase implies a call for justice and equality for the Palestinian people and their right to their land.

This is a blatant attempt of repression towards the student's freedom of speech, and call for justice. Students as well as citizens should have the right to speak out against genocide, and criticise those that are complicit in it.

So what can you do?

Email the university, demanding that they stop repressing pro-Palestine activism.

Here are the emails;

Vice Chancellor Harlene Hayne - vc@curtin.edu.au

Chief Operating Officer Fiona Notley - fiona.notley@curtin.edu.au

[boeing747]

like listen i dont think russia needs any defending but its amazing to me how "all russians are evil genocide supporting warmongers" mentality so often coexists with "every representative on every political level in my country is actively supporting a genocide in palestine and overwhelmingly anyone speaking out against it is punished and blacklisted and arrested" like ????????????????????????????? are we not on the same page? that our political systems as a whole inherently support the murder and disenfranchisement and ethnic cleansing of vast swathes of population for a nations own political gain?? how is my uncle being pilled by russian propoganda any different than your uncle being pilled by the every single Palestinian is a terrorist and deserves to die narrative being pushed out??? is it not a curse that we must collectively organize and fight against ???

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Scott Scheffer

The movement to save the planet must embrace the fight against U.S. imperialist wars, proxy wars, and sanctions, while building solidarity with its victims. If possible, the issue has to be brought to the floor of the U.N. conferences, but more importantly, it must link the issues at every climate change action in the streets and around the world. Without the Pentagon, there would not be a Global South. Millions now trapped in endless poverty would be living free from the devastating threat of U.S. war and able to use their own natural resources freely.

[rasticore]

terminally online "communists" stop dickriding literal dictators challenge IMPOSSIBLE

[firstoccupier]

When the Workers Walk: A U.S. History of General Strikes—and What the World Can Learn From It

Across the globe, labor movements have defined political eras, toppled governments, and transformed working conditions. But in the United States—a nation often allergic to the word “strike”—general walkouts have been rare, explosive, and brutally suppressed. What follows is a history of how U.S. workers pushed back, what it cost them, and why these lessons matter far beyond American…

[nando161mando]

Women form self-defense units in Sudan

Women from Al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, have gone to the front and joined local armed resistance groups. They fight against the RSF's terror campaign and ethnic cleansing in the city. The RSF repeatedly carries out massacres against non-Arab, indigenous populations and drives them out of their villages. Just last Saturday, the RSF attacked Al-Fashir Hospital, the only health facility still operating in the region. The hospital was unable to resume operations.

The war has had a devastating impact on the population, particularly on women and girls, who are among the most vulnerable groups in conflict situations. Women and children particularly suffer from sexual violence and a lack of access to food, water and medical care.

[workersolidarity]

🇺🇸 🚨

When we see protests being crushed by American police, we are reminded of this quote from the movie Boondock Saints:

"Now, we must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil which we must fear most. And that is the indifference of good men."

Nothing could be more dangerous to the personal freedoms, human rights, democratic rights, freedom from violence, freedom of speech and the freedom of the people to peaceably assemble than the indifference of good people to the injustices being committed by their government, in their name, with their tax dollars.

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[fandfnews]

USCIRF 2025 Annual Report Calls for Robust Global Action on Religious Freedom

Washington, D.C. — The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has released its 2025 Annual Report, urging the U.S. government to maintain a strong stance against threats to freedom of religion worldwide. The bipartisan federal body, established under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), made sweeping recommendations to designate 16 countries as…

[valentin10]

Nicaragua’s deepening repression : UN experts call for urgent global action

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/02/nicaraguas-deepening-repression-un-experts-call-urgent-global-action?utm_content=buffer2fa21&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[trendynewsnow]

35th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Perspectives from Belarus

Celebrating the 35th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall On Saturday, Germans gathered to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a structure that once divided the city into East and West for decades during the Cold War era. On November 9, 1989, communist East Germany opened its borders, granting citizens the freedom to travel to the West for the first time in many…

[reasonsforhope]

"With Donald Trump set to take office after a fear-mongering campaign that reignited concerns about his desire to become a dictator, a reasonable question comes up: Can nonviolent struggle defeat a tyrant?

There are many great resources that answer this question, but the one that’s been on my mind lately is the Global Nonviolent Action Database, or GNAD, built by the Peace Studies department at Swarthmore College. Freely accessible to the public, this database — which launched under my direction in 2011 — contains over 1,400 cases of nonviolent struggle from over a hundred countries, with more cases continually being added by student researchers.  

At quick glance, the database details at least 40 cases of dictators who were overthrown by the use of nonviolent struggle, dating back to 1920. These cases — which include some of the largest nations in the world, spanning Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America — contradict the widespread assumption that a dictator can only be overcome by violence. What’s more, in each of these cases, the dictator had the desire to stay, and possessed violent means for defense. Ultimately, though, they just couldn’t overcome the power of mass nonviolent struggle.  

In a number of countries, the dictator had been embedded for years at the time they were pushed out. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, for example, had ruled for over 29 years. In the 1990s, citizens usually whispered his name for fear of reprisal. Mubarak legalized a “state of emergency,” which meant censorship, expanded police powers and limits on the news media. Later, he “loosened” his rule, putting only 10 times as many police as the number of protesters at each demonstration.  

The GNAD case study describes how Egyptians grew their democracy movement despite repression, and finally won in 2011. However, gaining a measure of freedom doesn’t guarantee keeping it. As Egypt has shown in the years since, continued vigilance is needed, as is pro-active campaigning to deepen the degree of freedom won.  

Some countries repeated the feat of nonviolently deposing a ruler: In Chile, the people nonviolently threw out a dictator in 1931 and then deposed a new dictator in 1988. South Koreans also did it twice, once in 1960 and again in 1987. (They also just stopped their current president from seizing dictatorial powers, but that’s not yet in the database.)  

In each case people had to act without knowing what the reprisals would be...

It’s striking that in many of the cases I looked at, the movement avoided merely symbolic marches and rallies and instead focused on tactics that impose a cost on the regime. As Donald Trump wrestles to bring the armed forces under his control, for example, I can imagine picketing army recruiting offices with signs, “Don’t join a dictator’s army.”  

Another important takeaway: Occasional actions that simply protest a particular policy or egregious action aren’t enough. They may relieve an individual’s conscience for a moment, but, ultimately, episodic actions, even large ones, don’t assert enough power. Over and over, the Global Nonviolent Action Database shows that positive results come from a series of escalating, connected actions called a campaign...

-via Waging Nonviolence, January 8, 2025. Article continues below.

East Germany’s peaceful revolution

When East Germans began their revolt against the German Democratic Republic in 1988, they knew that their dictatorship of 43 years was backed by the Soviet Union, which might stage a deadly invasion. They nevertheless acted for freedom, which they gained and kept.

Researcher Hanna King tells us that East Germans began their successful campaign in January 1988 by taking a traditional annual memorial march and turning it into a full-scale demonstration for human rights and democracy. They followed up by taking advantage of a weekly prayer for peace at a church in Leipzig to organize rallies and protests. Lutheran pastors helped protect the organizers from retaliation and groups in other cities began to stage their own “Monday night demonstrations.”  

The few hundred initial protesters quickly became 70,000, then 120,000, then 320,000, all participating in the weekly demonstrations. Organizers published a pamphlet outlining their vision for a unified German democracy and turned it into a petition. Prisoners of conscience began hunger strikes in solidarity.

By November 1988, a million people gathered in East Berlin, chanting, singing and waving banners calling for the dictatorship’s end. The government, hoping to ease the pressure, announced the opening of the border to West Germany. Citizens took sledgehammers to the hated Berlin Wall and broke it down. Political officials resigned to protest the continued rigidity of the ruling party and the party itself disintegrated. By March 1990 — a bit over two years after the campaign was launched — the first multi-party, democratic elections were held.

Students lead the way in Pakistan

In Pakistan, it was university students (rather than religious clerics) who launched the 1968-69 uprising that forced Ayub Khan out of office after his decade as a dictator. Case researcher Aileen Eisenberg tells us that the campaign later required multiple sectors of society to join together to achieve critical mass, especially workers. 

It was the students, though, who took the initiative — and the initial risks. In 1968, they declared that the government’s declaration of a “decade of development” was a fraud, protesting nonviolently in major cities. They sang and marched to their own song called “The Decade of Sadness.” 

Police opened fire on one of the demonstrations, killing several students. In reaction the movement expanded, in numbers and demands. Boycotts grew, with masses of people refusing to pay the bus and railway fares on the government-run transportation system. Industrial workers joined the movement and practiced encirclement of factories and mills. An escalation of government repression followed, including more killings. 

As the campaign expanded from urban to rural parts of Pakistan, the movement’s songs and political theater thrived. Khan responded with more violence, which intensified the determination among a critical mass of Pakistanis that it was time for him to go.

After months of growing direct action met by repressive violence, the army decided its own reputation was being degraded by their orders from the president, and they demanded his resignation. He complied and an election was scheduled for 1970 — the first since Pakistan’s independence in 1947.

Why use nonviolent struggle?

The campaigns in East Germany and Pakistan are typical of all 40 cases in their lack of a pacifist ideology, although some individuals active in the movements had that foundation. What the cases do seem to have in common is that the organizers saw the strategic value of nonviolent action, since they were up against an opponent likely to use violent repression. Their commitment to nonviolence would then rally the masses to their side. 

That encourages me. There’s hardly time in the U.S. during Trump’s regime to convert enough people to an ideological commitment to nonviolence, but there is time to persuade people of the strategic value of a nonviolent discipline. 

It’s striking that in many of the cases I looked at, the movement avoided merely symbolic marches and rallies and instead focused on tactics that impose a cost on the regime. As Donald Trump wrestles to bring the armed forces under his control, for example, I can imagine picketing army recruiting offices with signs, “Don’t join a dictator’s army.”  

Another important takeaway: Occasional actions that simply protest a particular policy or egregious action aren’t enough. They may relieve an individual’s conscience for a moment, but, ultimately, episodic actions, even large ones, don’t assert enough power. Over and over, the Global Nonviolent Action Database shows that positive results come from a series of escalating, connected actions called a campaign — the importance of which is also outlined in my book “How We Win.”  

As research seminar students at Swarthmore continue to wade through history finding new cases, they are digging up details on struggles that go beyond democracy. The 1,400 already-published cases include campaigns for furthering environmental justice, racial and economic justice, and more. They are a resource for tactical ideas and strategy considerations, encouraging us to remember that even long-established dictators have been stopped by the power of nonviolent campaigns.

-via Waging Nonviolence, January 8, 2025.

[wolfspaw]

[opencommunion]

this call was released anonymously (understandably) but my local Palestinian organizers who I literally trust with my life have endorsed it, and it seems to be gaining momentum in multiple cities, so I encourage you all to get involved:

"A proposal to coordinate a multi-city economic blockade on April 15th in solidarity with Palestine recently received overwhelming commitments to participate around the US and internationally.

The proposal states that in each city, we will identify and blockade major choke points in the economy, focusing on points of production and circulation with the aim of causing the most economic impact, as did the port shutdowns in recent months in Oakland, California and Melbourne, Australia, as just a few examples.

There is a sense in the streets in this recent and unprecedented movement for Palestine that escalation has become necessary: there is a need to shift from symbolic actions to those that cause pain to the economy.

As Yemen is bombed to secure global trade, and billions of dollars are sent to the Zionist war machine, we must recognize that the global economy is complicit in genocide and together we will coordinate to disrupt and blockade economic logistical hubs and the flow of capital."

ETA: since I posted, organizers in St. Louis, Seoul, Brussels, and the Netherlands have signed onto the agreement, so if you saw this before and your city wasn't listed look again. anyone with the capacity to do some outreach, and a few connections to start with, could take the initiative to bring their city or region on board. read the solidarity agreement and check out the resources, and if you know trustworthy people in your area who might be interested in this sort of thing, talk to them about it.

remember that this isn't a series of protests (although some cities are organizing protests in conjunction), it's a commitment to take mass direct action and to maintain a united front in the face of any state repression. many organizers are (and have already been) using an affinity group model to actually coordinate those direct actions. autonomous groups can take action on April 15th whether or not others in their city/region have committed to this agreement. just do your homework (look up know-your-rights info specific to where you live + general direct action safety tips) and take good care of each other Blockades: a short guide to getting in the way Basic blockading Practical Protest Techniques: using your body Blockading: a guide ACT UP civil disobedience guide