Walmart UNI conference in Los Angeles, October 3, 2012. (OUR Walmart Facebook page)

“Workers of the world unite!” says the traditional slogan of the Industrial Workers of the World. The Wobblies, since their founding in 1905, have envisioned a global union capable of waging a worldwide general strike. By its height in the 1920s, the union was capable of mobilizing hundreds of thousands of workers. But while the Wobblies never fully realized international unity among workers, there is new promise for its vision today — thanks not to a union, but to a union-busting corporation: Walmart.

What started as a warehouse workers’ strike in California late last year has grown into a global struggle against the world’s largest private employer. The 2.1 million Walmart workers constitute the third-largest workforce in the world, following the U.S. Department of Defense and the People’s Liberation Army of China. And they are revolting.

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Anti-coal protesters conducted a sit-in last summer at the Montana Capitol building. (Coal Export Action / Rae Breaux)

This spring, Montanans will have a chance to follow up on the largest climate-related act of civil disobedience in Montana history, which saw 23 arrests over five days, as hundreds gathered at the State Capitol in opposition to Big Coal. A subgroup of the protesters — myself included — are now taking our case to court, arguing that the threat of climate change necessitates peaceful civil disobedience. If we are successful, it could set an encouraging precedent for nonviolent protest in Montana and elsewhere.

This campaign started on Aug. 13, 2012, when seven of us sat down in the State Capitol rotunda and refused to leave at closing time, an act of protest against elected officials’ leasing of state lands to the coal industry. We were particularly concerned about coal mine-for-export projects — like the massive Otter Creek proposal in Southeast Montana — which would add to climate change while exposing communities throughout the Pacific Northwest to coal dust and diesel pollution. The mine itself would damage or destroy precious aquifers and agricultural land in eastern Montana.

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On January 11, Witness Against Torture activists pose in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, which is covered in a false facade for repairs. (Flickr/Justin Norman)

One might think this would be over by now. Four years ago, President Obama signed an executive order to close the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, yet it remains open. More than half of the men imprisoned have been cleared for release by the Obama administration’s Guantánamo Review Task Force but continue to languish for years after the fact. In the past two and a half years, 13 prisoners have been released and two have died in custody — including the recent and tragic case of Adnan Latif.

Yesterday, over 100 human rights activists — myself included — tied 166 orange ribbons to the White House fence, one for each of the prisoners who remain. The activists also hung a banner that read “Inaugurate Justice: Close Guantánamo.” The unpermitted action followed a coalition-organized protest in which over 300 people marched from the Supreme Court to the White House to mark the 11th anniversary of the prison’s opening. More than 100 Witness Against Torture activists undertook a seven-day, liquids-only fast for the fifth year in a row while orchestrating daily vigils, penning letters to prisoners, leafleting and hosting film screenings and discussions.

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Orange jumpsuit-clad demonstrators projected “Torture is Wrong” onto the Newseum in Washington D.C. at the premiere of Zero Dark Thirty on Tuesday. (WNV/Palina Prasasouk)

Alabama’s football team watched Zero Dark Thirty to get themselves psyched up for the big game against Notre Dame on Sunday night. Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal’s depiction of the hunt for Osama bin Laden must have been inspiring stuff, because the Crimson Tide went on to overwhelm the Fighting Irish 42 to 14 in one of the most watched games in history.

But not all people find the film to be the stuff of glory and excitement. Zero Dark Thirty includes graphic depictions of CIA torture and abuse, while making the case that water-boarding and other abusive tactics produced actionable information leading to Osama bin Laden’s capture. It all but says that torture, torture and only torture is the reason that the United States was able to catch the al-Qaeda leader.

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More than 1,500 people rallied in Albany, NY on Wednesday to oppose fracking. (New Yorkers Against Fracking / David Braun)

Hundreds of clenched fists were raised Wednesday afternoon at Albany’s Empire Convention Center. Behind a security checkpoint defended by state troopers in rigid-brimmed campaign hats, New York governor Andrew Cuomo delivered the annual State of the State address to a room packed with clapping hands. In the longest such speech in the state’s history, Cuomo covered everything from an initiative to increase gambling revenue to promoting tourism. He even found room on the podium to lay out plans for an Adirondack Whitewater Challenge that would include a “Politician Division” in which government officials and their staff from would race each other on rafts. The segment of Cuomo’s address that has received the most media attention was his impassioned plea for tighter gun control. But one smoking gun escaped his mention: high-volume hydraulic fracturing.

A moratorium on the controversial shale gas drilling method is set to expire at the end of February, so activists on both sides of the debate came to Albany to make their voices heard. While there was a small cluster in favor of drilling, the vast majority of the more than 1,500 people in attendance were there to tell lawmakers not to let fracking poison their air, water and soil. Many had traveled from across the state, including legendary folk singer Pete Seeger, who led the crowd in a rendition of “This Land is Your Land.” Later, with fists in the air, they took a pledge — mic-checked by biologist Sandra Steingraber — to conduct nonviolent civil disobedience before the gas industry is able to make good on the thousands of New York land leases it currently sits on.

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Participants in an Idle No More solidarity action in Los Angeles in December. (WNV/©Paulo Freire Lopez)

What began with four women organizing local teach-ins and rallies in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, last fall has grown into a global grassroots movement of indigenous and non-indigenous allies fighting for the sovereignty of indigenous people, the honoring of treaty rights, and the protection of land and water. Because these communities are determined to fight the exploitation of natural resources that is resulting in climate change and other environmental crises, their cause has the potential to impact the whole world.

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A protest outside of the arraignment of the Beale 5 on January 8, 2013. (WNV/Guarionex Delgado)

On Monday President Obama nominated his counterterrorism chief, John O. Brennan, to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Though some civil liberties groups and other critics have raised questions about Brennan’s involvement in the CIA’s practice of torture during the Bush administration, relatively less has been said about his primarily responsibility during President Obama’s first term: accelerating and institutionalizing the U.S. drones program and its “disposition matrix” — as the government’s sanitizing parlance puts it — which has included setting weekly drone kill lists.

Politicians and the mainstream press have generally reacted warmly to Brennan’s nomination, especially in contrast to President Obama’s choice for Secretary of Defense, former Senator Chuck Hagel, who is considered suspect by some in the foreign policy establishment because he opposed the Iraq War and is said to harbor anti-war sentiments rooted in his service during the Vietnam War.

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Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking against the Vietnam War at the University of Minnesota. (Minnesota Historical Society)

The December 14 rampage that claimed the lives of 28 people, including 20 children, in Newtown, Conn., has prompted a vigorous new debate on gun violence in the United States and the emergence of a spate of legislative proposals that the president and Congress may broach sometime this year. While policies designed to outlaw or control guns are needed now more than ever, for many of us these efforts must be rooted in a larger imperative: coming to grips with the culture of violence that makes this kind of tragedy possible and seeing our way clear to an alternative.

It is this deeper prompting that compelled Carol Bragg to begin a 30-day fast on January 1 calling on the nation’s political leadership “to embrace the revolution in values and commitment to nonviolence that are part of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

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A monument in Guatemala commemorating the victims of the Agua Fria massacre on September 14, 1982. (MiMundo.org)

In 1995, I was on a bus in Guatemala. It was crowded. Not rush-hour-A-train-in-NYC crowded. No, this was inhaling-the-air-the-person-next-to-you-just-exhaled crowded. Whole-families-to-a-seat crowded. Crushed together so close, you could count the ribs of the person in front of you. School-bus-meant-for-50-children-carrying-200-people crowded.

The family in the next seat up had a little girl. She was five or six months old, very serious and very beautiful. She wore a red-polka-dotted kerchief and a cotton dress. Pinned to her smock was a large live beetle. I asked why and was told the beetle attracted any bad spirits in the area, consuming them to protect the little girl.

The country was full of wandering spirits. At that time, Guatemala was just beginning to emerge from more than three decades of armed conflict. Human rights organizations estimated that 200,000 people had been killed and another 50,000 disappeared. These were conservative figures. The vast majority of the killings were carried out by the military and paramilitary groups — which enjoyed political, economic and military support and training from the United States. The war had ended and the United Nations had begun a peace and reintegration process, bringing combatants from both sides back into civil society.

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A banner made by the Indignados for last New Year’s Eve celebration. (Flickr / Popicinio)

If 2011 — with the emergence of the Arab Spring, Europe’s Indignados and Occupy Wall Street — was the year of the protester (as Time magazine acknowledged), what was 2012? Given the near total dominance of election coverage, it would be easy to assume that this was the year of a return to politics as usual. After all, Time reverted to naming President Obama its “Person of the Year” — an honor it also bestowed on him in 2008.

But as much as the massive street protests that toppled regimes and forced governments to hear the cry of the 99 percent may seem to have faded, those of us who follow people-powered movements day in and day out know that there was much, much more to 2012 than elections. From protesters’ return to Tahrir Square in Cairo amidst President Morsi’s dictatorial decrees to the wave of Russian opposition protests, including the brave and controversial actions of Pussy Riot, democracy movements remained vigilant. Meanwhile, in the United States, Occupy re-emerged in the wake of Hurricane Sandy as a leader among the relief efforts, and the climate movement escalated its use of direct action against a myriad of fossil fuel targets.

At Waging Nonviolence we have tried to keep you informed about all these movements, as well as the many others that flew even more under the radar. With 2012 coming to a close, we decided to cull through our archives from the past year and pick out some highlights of what impressed and excited us the most. After reading through our picks, we hope you’ll consider sharing yours in the comments.

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