PN
Well, everyone has to get through having movement messiahs. It’s a process of inspiration followed by disillusionment.
People always say about Evo Morales [president of Bolivia since 2005], he came from the movements, and the movements kept him in check, and he understood that role.
Obviously, Julian Assange had the best comment on this when he arrived at St Paul’s [Cathedral, London] on the first day of Occupy. We were in the middle of the first general assembly, and I was…
What a lovely project! My head today is not responding. I’m about to talk to an estate agent about putting in an offer for our co-op to buy some land. My head space is definitely elsewhere! That quote [from the front of PN] is amazing. I’m a bit shy about things like this. If it was writing in an email....
- Woman
I’m not a vigorous activist, though I’ve been on a few marches. Except in the world of education, where I hope it has been transformative for a few…
Robb Johnson, singer, song writer
The big news is that our entertainment at this year’s Peace News Summer Camp features not one but two amazing performers. Robb Johnson, the brilliant radical folk singer-songwriter whose gig was a highlight, if not the highlight, of last year’s camp; and the sensational John Hegley, one of Britain’s most innovative and popular comic poets and songwriters.
Peace News Summer Camp gives grassroots activists a chance to come together…
New folk make up half the organising team for this year’s Peace News Summer Camp, bringing new energy and new ideas. We put on the camp, which has been going since 2009, to give grassroots activists a chance to come together and recharge batteries while sharing experiences, ideas and strategies – in a family-friendly, off-grid, low-impact way.
Summer Camp is designed to encourage the things that make for a better society: friendliness, connection and community;…
I will probably start ranting about This Changes Everything [conference] where in the workshop lots and lots of men had spoken and the facilitator said we have only time for one question and a man and a woman both put their hands up and the facilitator chose the man and I objected very strongly and said I wanted to hear what the woman had to say.
It made me think that we are talking about issues of inequality when we aren’t addressing it in our movements. But maybe that is self-…
What comes into my mind if you say ‘activism and Valentines’? Russell Brand! I dunno.
Man, 20s, London area
Whoa! That’s a tricky one. I’ve never associated the two. People do activism out of the goodness of their hearts for the love of people, maybe?
I think that’s what it’s generally done for, activism, for the love of the planet and love of the people. Oh, hang on, my friend has got a good one. (See below.)
Man, 20s, Glasgow area
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Emily Johns (Peace News co-editor) and Gabriel Carlyle (PN promotions worker) are ready to tour the UK, speaking about PN’s mammoth project ‘The World is My Country: A Visual Celebration of the People and Movements that Opposed the First World War’.
A year in the making, the 10 posters feature stories from a history of police raids and buried documents, feminist peace initiatives and clandestine printing presses, Maori princesses and striking German munitions workers.
…
On 29 December, 10 peace activists were arrested at the Pentagon in Washington DC, USA, during a nonviolent witness by over 50 people from the Atlantic and Southern Life Communities.
Commemorating the feast of the Massacre of the Holy Innocents, the group held a procession to the Pentagon. One banner read:
‘Love Your Neighbor Means Don’t Bomb, Occupy and Kill Them!’
After political and religious speeches, the 10 were arrested for refusing a police request to enter…
On 1 December, US whistleblower Edward Snowden addressed the Swedish parliament by video from Russia as he was given the Right Livelihood award for his exposure of NSA spying on an industrial scale.
No one collected the award on his behalf, as his family and supporters said they hoped that one day Snowden might be able to receive it in person – he is wanted for ‘espionage’ by the US government.
The awards jury said Snowden was honoured ‘for his courage and skill in…
‘Arming All Sides’ is an excellent new online First World War resource initiated by Campaign Against Arms Trade.
The website questions what role the arms trade played before, during and after the war, what opposition was mounted to the trade, and how the war affected what people thought about making and selling armaments. armingallsides.on-the-record.org.uk
As PN went to press, the Green Party was reporting that its UK-wide membership had doubled in the past year, and was approaching 48,000 – more than UKIP (42,000) or the Liberal Democrats (45,000).
This figure includes membership of the Scottish Green Party, which has gone up five-fold, from 1,700 in September to around 9,000 at the time of writing.
Other parties committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament are also doing well.
Scottish National Party…
On 17 December, five Trident Ploughshares activists painted ‘Scrap Trident, Ban Nukes’ onto the fence around the Faslane nuclear base north of Glasgow. Mary Millington, Gillian Lawrence, Janet Fenton, Barbara Maver and Brian Quail (left to right) were the campaigners taking on Britain’s only nuclear weapons base, home to the UK’s four Trident nuclear submarines. The Scrap Trident coalition is planning a demonstration in Glasgow on 4 April, and a ‘Big Blockade’ of Faslane on 13 April. Photo:…
Human rights activist Nabeel Rajab was sentenced to six months in prison on 20 January, for insulting the government of Bahrain on Twitter. He was arrested in October and detained for a month, after tweeting about reports that members of Bahrain’s security forces had joined Islamic State in Iraq. Rajab is free on bail as he appeals.
Rajab said that human rights defenders across the Gulf region ‘are not only the victims of the repression of our own governments but also the victims…
As PN went to press, hopes were rising that Al Jazeera journalist Mohamed Fahmy might be pardoned by the Egyptian president, general Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
The Egyptian-Canadian journalist has spent a year in prison along with his Al Jazeera colleagues Peter Greste and Baher Mohamed after being convicted of spreading false news and collaborating with the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
After Egypt’s supreme court ruled on 1 January that the three should face a…
On 19 January, Israeli police Monday arrested pregnant journalist Joman Abu Arafeh as she was leaving the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, according to the Palestine News & Information Agency (WAFA).
Earlier, on 14 January, the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) launched ‘The Media in Gaza: Caught in the Crossfire’, a report on Israeli media violations during the July-August 2014 attack on Gaza.
MADA’s director general, Mousa Rimawi said: ‘We…
