When protests really matter

Americans, and in particular US Americans, often ask me if protests make any difference.  Surely the politicians are corporate executives and are set in their ways.  Surely protesters have no real power and protest in the street won’t influence their thinking.  I have some personal experience that disproves this thinking.  When i sat on the Cornell University board of trustees, at one point the board was inconvenienced by a couple hundred students protesting against apartheid in South Africa, because the students had surrounded the building the board was in and the board could not leave.

One of the thousands of US protests against apartheid

So the efficient Cornell board re-opened its completed meeting and spent an hour talking about the oppressive and racist government in South Africa.  While campus security forcibly removed the protesters, the board decided to set up a committee which would review the university investment policies.   A year after this forced meeting started they would start selectively divesting from South Africa.

When the committee started to do it’s work, almost no one linked it’s creation and actions to the protest, they were too far separated in time.  These protests and thousands like them would ultimately help free Nelson Mandela and liberate South Africa from exclusive white rule.

When leakers were heroes

In 1970, 300,000 protesters surrounded the Pentagon. Inside that building sat a defense contractor named Daniel Ellsberg who was writing the secret history of the Vietnam war for the highest brass of the Pentagon to review.  He had access to all of the military’s top secret documents.  He looked out his window, saw this tremendous protest, which included all three of his daughters, and he decided that he was on the wrong side.  Ellsberg would leak his secrets to the NY Times and Washington Post in what would ultimately be known as the Pentagon Papers.  These papers would show that the US had staged the Tonkin Gulf attacks that had been used to justify the war in the first place, as well as many other lies about the war.  These papers and the huge national protests that ensued would force Nixon to promise to withdraw from Vietnam as part of his re-election campaign.

The largest protest ever?

Over the last couple of days the largest protests in Egypt’s history and perhaps the largest protest ever in the world have raged in Tahrir Square.  [See pictures].  The Daily Kos is reporting unofficially 33 million people, which would make it about 1/3 the countries total population.  The military has given the fairly recently elected Muslim Brotherhood president Morsi 48 hours to satisfy the demands of the protesters before it acts (as it has in the past) to solve the problem.   Five of Morsi’s top ministers have already resigned.

Similar mass protests forced out Honsi Mubarek just two years ago.   After years of dictatorship, Egypt is still finding its democratic legs.  And as is more often true than many people realize, these protests really do matter.

March Against Monsanto – Death City

“Raise your hand if you like food” the six year old said into the microphone

one of the best speakers at MAM

“You know why i did not raise my hand?” he says to the crowd with their arms up in the air.  “Because 80% of food now has GMOs in it.  Now raise your hand if you like organic food.”

The crowd ate it up and enthusiastically raised their hands again.

“Now raise your hands if you don’t like Monsanto” He exits

The march was unpermitted and the police behaved well

There were perhaps a thousand protesters.  There was no big name group taking responsibility for the action.  The microphones were largely open mike and a great group of folks picked up the communication to the protesters, including a surprising number of kids.

I spoke once at the teach in before the rally and twice into the open mic to the assembled marchers.  I gave away a few hundred dark green zucchini seed packs to new organic gardeners.

loved the american flag heart glasses

Despite the depressing nature of the topic, including reports of 90% bee colony collapse last year attributed to Monsanto products, states rights being trampled by a bought off Senate, our own bad news about Monsanto suing contaminated farmers, and WikiLeaks proof that the US government plans trade wars with countries banning Monsanto’s GMO products, the protesters were nearly universally upbeat and engaged.

Monsanto is a threat to these and other bees

We heard incorrectly that Monsanto purchased the infamous security firm formerly known as Blackwater.  And what is true is that Monsanto is stepping up its intelligence gathering on anti-Monsanto activists.  If Monsanto is willing to shamelessly lie to block GMO labeling, one wonders what they might do with information about activist who are opposed to their products.

Of course Anonymous was there

There were a surprising number (to me anyway) of people who had their faces covered.  Anonymous/Guy Fawkes masks were popular, Palestinian scarf sets and costume masks minimally reduced the efforts of the plain clothes video teams working the crowd.  Though none of the many people who addressed the crowd through the many open mic PA addresses concealed their identity this way.

Our hopes got tangled in the puppet strings

All photo credits me.

As goes California, so goes the world

My first anti-nuclear demonstration was at Diablo Canyon in 1981.  i did not identify as an anti-nuclear activist at the time, and it would take almost a decade for me to realize that this was my calling.  But Diablo still holds a special place in my heart.

Diablo Canyon Reactor complex in central California

When the president of the utility that built this reactor was being interviewed after he had left the job, he was asked if the protests at Diablo Canyon had mattered to his company and his response was unusually candid.

“At the time Diablo Canyon was completed, we were planning 10 more reactors in California, we did not build any of them”.

So as is so often the case, the people who were protesting did not see the effect of their work. Diablo went online not long after the protest despite thousands of arrests and proof that systems had been installed improperly.

So we lost the battle at Diablo, but we won the war agaisnt reactor construction nation wide. And as is so often the case with both technology and politics, as goes California, so goes the world.  New reactor construction in the US had already dropped off to nearly nothing after the Three Mile Island accident, which resulted in over 100 in-construction reactors to be stopped.

Now California is possibly leading the way again.  Voters will likely get a chance in November to keep all of the reactors in California off line, should they choose.  The two San Onofre reactors have been closed for over a year now, awaiting very expensvie repairs.  Similarly, Diablo Canyon has no place to put its radioactive waste and this initiative requires that a long term waste repository be established before these reactors can be trusted to dispose of their waste responsibly.  With the canceling of the Yucca Mountain project, this will be years if not decades away.

We can only hope, as goes California so goes the world.

California has lead the country in real renewables

Will anti-nuclear protests help bring democracy to China?

New nuclear power construction is based on lies.  Usually in the west it is based on lies about how much it will cost and how long it will take to build.  In Finland the newest 3rd generation reactor is already over double the planned cost and time for construction.  At the newest French reactor in Flamanville similar delays and overruns are mounting up.

In China, one of the lies is about population size.  China requires that the population within a 10 km radius be under 100,000 people, in this range near the under-construction Wangjiang reactor the population is over 150K. And China is notorious for displacing villagers who are inconveniently in the way of large projects. Over 1.2 million were displaced for the 3 gorges hydro project in 2008.

In some senses, this protest is a classical anti-nuclear one.  Most of the benefits of the reactor are going to Pengze county, while much of the risk is being born by the lower income Anhui province, which is one of he countries poorest and just across the river from the plant.  The power companies responsible for the project are refusing to talk with the media about the protest.  The construction site has seen seismic activity, as recently as 2005 a 5.7 earthquake shook Jiujiang 80 km away.   Even Wikileaks has released information showing the technology being used is dated and 100 times less safe than Gen 3 reactors, according to Westinghouse, which is also famous for its lies.

But what is unusual is that the Chinese residents and local government are willing to protest at all.  These do not take the form of protests in the street, rather (so far) they have been of the form of local petitions which were then carried by the local government to  the national energy authority,  Last month the provincial government debated opposition to the reactor.  Even the official Chinese media has claimed that worries about this reactor have drawn national attention.

Elsewhere in China, the experimental breeder reactor outside of Beijing had an accident in October 2011, only 3 months after it producing power.  Japan reported the accident, China  denies it.  Also elsewhere (unrelated to this nuclear protest) Chinese residents have been assembling to protest corruption.  These efforts have included ransacking the police office and fighting with riot cops.