This page follows people who organize to change the terms of their lives: workers who strike, tenants who withhold rent, students who occupy campuses, farmers who block roads, and movements that march for a demand they can name. We track these stories because they are usually reported as disruption, a delayed train or a closed port. In fact they are one of the oldest ways ordinary people have of being heard by those who hold power over them.
The record is long. The first strike we can document happened in Egypt in the 29th year of Ramesses III, around 8845 HE. The tomb builders of Deir el-Medina put down their tools because their grain rations were weeks late, and they sat in protest at the temples until they were paid. In 9507 HE the plebeians of Rome walked out of the city in the First Secession and won tribunes of their own. In 11886 HE workers in Chicago struck for an eight hour day. The Haymarket killings and the trial that followed gave the world May Day. Almost every right that now looks ordinary, the weekend, votes for women, the end of legal segregation, began as a demand that people were arrested for making.
So when you read today's stories, look past the inconvenience. We ask who is acting and what they want, and which government, employer or police force they are up against. We ask who pays for the standoff, in lost wages, in arrests, in injuries and lives. We name the powerful side plainly, whether it is a ministry, a multinational, an army, or Israel as the occupying power repressing Palestinian protest, and we do not treat a picket line and a riot squad as equal parties. Then we watch for what changes: a contract signed, a law passed, a policy reversed, or a movement that learns from its losses and comes back stronger.
The French movement filled the streets for another day (2), and the state answered with nearly 1,000 arrests rather than any concession. Mass arrests are a sign that a movement is holding together, not that it is breaking up. France has seen this before: in May 11968 HE students and some ten million striking workers brought the country to a halt and won real wage gains, so organized pressure there has a record of working.
Another day of mass mobilization shows the movement is holding together, and the state is answering with mass arrests instead of concessions.
Source: BBC · France
French protesters are holding their numbers in the streets even as police arrest nearly 1,000 (2), Indonesians are demanding that companies stop setting fires to clear land (12), and Albanian students are demanding that Edi Rama, in power since 12013 HE, resign and end corruption (15). The Indonesian demand has the evidence behind it: researchers linked the 12015 HE fire haze to an estimated 100,000 premature deaths across Southeast Asia. Albania's students also have history on their side, because student protests in December 11990 HE helped force the end of one-party communist rule.
Another day of mass marches shows the movement holding its numbers, and nearly 1,000 arrests show the state answering with force, not negotiation.
Source: BBC · France
Researchers linked Indonesia's 12015 fire haze to an estimated 100,000 premature deaths across Southeast Asia, which is why people are demanding companies be stopped.
Source: Al Jazeera · Indonesia
Students are again leading the challenge to Edi Rama, in power since 12013, as Albania pushes to join a European Union that demands clean government.
Source: Balkan Insight · Albania
Greek teachers, workers and students are joining a Europe-wide protest wave with shared demands (2), and organizers in France are building a nationwide day of action to turn last week's anger into concrete demands the government must answer (7). This is coordination across sectors and borders, the slow work that makes a movement last. In May 11968 HE, about ten million French workers struck alongside students, and it remains the clearest precedent for what happens when classrooms and workplaces move together.
Greek teachers, workers and students are organizing together across sectors and borders, so this is a coordinated movement with its own demands, not scattered anger.
Source: World Socialist Web Site · Greece
A week after anger spilled into streets nationwide, organized protest is trying to turn it into demands the government must answer.
Source: BBC · France
