Canvasopedia

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo, is a reminder of the damage autocracies do to themselves when they clamp down on freedom of speech and thought.At a single day's trial last December, Mr Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison after having helped to draft Charter 08, a manifesto for political change in China.His Nobel prize comes at the precise moment when people right at the top of the Chinese system such as the Premier, Wen Jiabao, are joining the debate about the need for greater political liberalisation.

As the debate in Congress continues over health care reform, activists are continuing to put the pressure on. In a new article at The Nation, Peter Dreier writes that momentum for reform is growing, with groups like Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and MoveOn having organized hundreds of protests in front of insurance company offices around the country, at the homes of insurance company CEOs, and at the annual conference for America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) in Washington, D.C. over the last month, calling for a robust public option.Rather than simply providing an alternative to the private insurance, other organizations – like the California Nurses Association, Physicians for a National Health Program, and Mobilization for Health Care for All – have continued to fight for a universal single-payer health care system that would get rid of insurance companies altogether. Over the last month, more than 100 people have risked arrest at sit-ins at the offices of  insurance companies in New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and Minneapolis.

MADISON, W.Va. - A Climate Ground Zero activist has been sentenced to 20 days in jail for blocking a road to a Massey Energy office during a mountaintop removal mining protest. The group has been committing acts of civil disobedience all year, many targeting Virginia-based Massey. Twenty-two-year-old Joseph Hamsher is the first to get jail time instead of fines. Hamsher pleaded guilty to conspiracy and trespassing in Boone County Magistrate Court on Tuesday, and will serve 10 days on each charge. A court official said Wednesday he could have been fined more than $1,800.

Sister to Attawapiskat- where are the promises? Attawapiskat are still continuing to struggle after they declare 2 state of emergencies this year in 2009. The first call came when the demolition of the school, old water plant, 3 valve tanks and the old fire hall. The most affected was around the school, where the old school acted as a cap exposed toxic contamination onto the air making the community sick. They were force to shut down the school and declared their first State of Emergency. INAC refused to recognized it, everyone was left in disabelief as they were handed down their death sentences that we consider genocide. The smell of poisonous diesel contamination was felt with an overwhelming smell in the community.

The crisis in Honduras highlights the need to pay more attention to fragile and weak democracies before they present more serious challenges, says the European Partnership for Democracy. The international community’s strategy “entails clear risks both for democracy in Honduras and more generally for the regional political and institutional equilibrium,” writes the EPD’s Carlos Hernandez Ferreiro in a new report.A manifestation of deeper political trends in the region, the crisis illustrates how the failure to adequately consolidate or at least enhance the quality of Latin American democracy, particularly by addressing issues of social inequality, has facilitated the rise of the neo-populist Left, organized regionally in the shape of the Venezuela-led Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas.

About 200 citizens, including health care providers and patients, supported Medicare for All, a single payer plan, by marching to the Aetna office in New York City on Tuesday, September 29, 2009. This video shows some of the marchers on their way from the downtown office of Bristol-Meyers Squidb to the office of Aetna, one of the nation's largest health insurance companies.The marchers were in solidarity with 17 who were arrested at the Aetna office earlier in the day, staging a sit-in in the lobby of the building to call for an end to insurance abuse and support real health care reform, Medicare for All.

On September 27th, the Mobilization for Health Care for All launched a national campaign of "Patients Not Profit" sit-ins at insurance company offices to demand an end to a system that profits by denying people care. We want the real "public option": Medicare for All, a single payer plan that cuts out the profit and puts patients first.Together, through this campaign, we can turn the tide and win the fight for health care for all. To succeed, we need to organize sit-ins in as many cities as possible in the month of October. The campaign began with the local leadership of Private Health Insurance Must Go (PHIMG) in New York City on September 29th and continued in Chicago on October 8th and in 9 cities across the country on October 15th. The next wave starts on October 28th and we will continue to organize actions in as many cities as possible until we win health care reform that ensures that the insurance companies no longer stand between the American people and the health care that we need. It's time to cut out the profit and put patients first with Medicare for All.

Sam Pullen, 31, was arrested on Thursday, October 15, in Los Angeles at a sit-in at the Blue Cross health insurance office. He is refusing to give information to police, vowing to stay in jail until Blue Cross stops denying care to those who need it most. He is being supported by the group Mobilization for Health Care for All, which coordinated sit-ins and rallies in nine cities across the country yesterday in which 54 people were arrested to end insurance abuse and win health care for all.Pullen was inspired to action by his mother, who was denied coverage for a lifesaving bone marrow transplant by Blue Cross when he was a teenager. Weakened by her cancer treatments, Pullen’s mother staged a one-woman sit-in at the insurance company office, resulting in the approval of the transplant that extended her life for years. Thanks to the transplant, she lived long enough to see Pullen reach 18 years of age.Here is Sam’s story.

Thousands of people have marched through Washington to demand greater civil rights for gay men and lesbians. The protest took place a day after President Barack Obama said he would move to end a ban on gay people serving openly in the military. The marchers in Washington also called for the speedy removal of legal restrictions on same-sex partnerships. Mr Obama has been accused by some in the gay community of being slow to act on gay rights. On Sunday, the protesters in Washington carried signs urging President Obama to make good on his promise to end the controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military.

WASHINGTON -- The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center specializes in collecting data on human rights abuses that it says the government of Iran has been perpetrating against its own people, ranging from unlawful detentions to torture to assassinations. In the past five years, the group has received about $3 million from the State Department's U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. Rene Redman, the group's executive director, reportedly was ready to ask for $2 million more for the next two years, to be used to investigate Tehran's harsh response to protests against the June 12 election, which many say was rigged in favor of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. But this week the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center learned it will get no money for the foreseeable future.

Dharamsala, September 23 – The Dag Hammerskjold Plaza opposite the United Nations building in New York was filled with angry protesters yesterday as Chinese president Hu Jintao arrived to deliver his first address at the United Nations on climate change. Tibetans, Chinese, Taiwanese, Burmese, and Falun Dafa followers voiced their angst in unison against the Chinese president who they accused of oppressing thousands of innocent peoples. Meanwhile, the Tibetan Youth Congress, the largest pro-independence group of the Tibetan diaspora, condemned the United Nations for kowtowing to China by inviting Hu, who it accused of carrying out “gross violation of human rights in Tibet, East Turkestan and China”. Hu Jintao’s previous commitments of promoting and safeguarding world peace and seeking a harmonious society are no more than blatant lies, it said. While reiterating its demand for complete independence for Tibet the Tibetan Youth Congress appealed to the UN and the world leaders to raise the issue of Tibet through these UN Summits with the leaders of People’s Republic of China.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, in a rare interview Thursday, depicted himself as an African hero battling imperialism and foreign attempts to oust him rather than the widespread perception of a dictator clinging to power at the expense of the welfare of his people and country. The 85-year-old Mugabe, the only leader of Zimbabwe since it became independent from Britain in 1980, rejected repeated assertions by CNN's Christiane Amanpour that his policies have driven the nation once known as Africa's breadbasket to virtual economic collapse.Instead, Mugabe accused Britain and the United States of seeking to oust him by imposing economic sanctions, the effects of which he said were worsened by years of drought.

PITTSBURGH Police fired canisters of pepper spray and smoke at marchers protesting the Group of 20 summit Thursday after anarchists responded to calls to disperse by rolling trash bins and throwing rocks.The march turned chaotic at just about the time that President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama arrived for a meeting with leaders of the world's major economies.The clashes began after hundreds of protesters, many advocating against capitalism, tried to march from an outlying neighborhood toward the convention center where the summit is being held. The protesters banged on drums and chanted "Ain't no power like the power of the people, 'cause the power of the people don't stop."

WASHINGTON — Wednesday was the 50th day of their hunger strike, but Hamid Goudarzi, 26, and his fellow Iranian-immigrant protesters here swore they would never give up.Two Iranian immigrants, Reza Haghelahi, left, and Khalil Parsae, are part of a hunger strike outside the White House. “I’m getting weaker every day,” said Mr. Goudarzi, who gave up his job in San Antonio to join the protest. “But I’m here to the end.”He is among two dozen hunger strikers encamped a stone’s throw from the White House to protest the deaths in Iraq of at least six members of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, an exile group based in Iraq and committed to the overthrow of the Islamic revolutionary government in Tehran. Similar sympathy strikes are under way in Ottawa, London, Berlin, Stockholm and The Hague.

PITTSBURGH -- A relatively small and peaceful group of about 500 protesters, most demanding new jobs programs, marched through city streets in the first full day of demonstrations targeting the Group of 20 economic summit later this week.The turnout was less than the 1,500 expected, and some protest groups blamed the city delays in issuing permits and the promised threefold expansion in the city's police force for the small turnout. Protestors were also critical of comments made by President Barack Obama in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, downplaying the effectiveness of mass protest on abstract issues such as global capitalism.

Before dawn this morning, a small team of climate and Native Rights activists rappelled from the US observation deck at Niagara Falls. Dangling hundreds of feet above the ground, they sent a special welcome message to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper ahead of his first official visit to the White House to push dirty Tar Sands oil.Not that he’s feeling so welcome anyway. Obama limited the meeting to just one hour. While some have called it a slap in the face, Aides say Harper will turn the other cheek. “The economy, and the clean-energy dialogue,” one aide told the Globe and Mail, “will dominate the discussions.” Obama needed to dodge controversy over oil imports from Canada’s tar sands in the midst of the Climate Legislation debate. Harper needed a story to go with his photo-op.

On May 26 I wrote The Summer of Shove Begins, at a time when pundits and bloggers alike were gnashing teeth over whether US President Barack Obama was overreaching in his now successful agenda to have Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor confirmed by early August and to have a health care bill ready in September.I suggested, as I pretty much always do, that readers ignore the chattering up above and watch the ground game down below and that will decide how the story goes: “the real history will be made, this summer - as during the last two - by the unsung heroes and heroines: the organizers.”

MoveOn creates electronic advocacy groups to influence government on issues of peace and social justice.  It is a grassroots organization aimed at involving ordinary people in politics in order to narrow the gap between public opinion and legislative action.  With a network of over 600,000 “online activists,” MoveOn helps busy but concerned citizens find their political voice by organizing “electronic advocacy groups” around issues such as campaign finance, environmental and energy issues, impeachment, gun safety, and nuclear disarmament. 

A group of women in the poorest district of Pennsylvania came together in 1991 and organized the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) after welfare cuts threatened their families and community. KWRU sought to reframe the welfare debate as part of a larger fight for human rights, rather than one about personal responsibility for poverty or charity-based responses from governments. KWRU called the welfare cuts a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Section 23 and 25 (the right to a job and the right to an adequate standard of living) and organized other impoverished people by teaching them about these rights. Their position is that the government has an obligation to meet the basic human needs of those living in poverty. By framing the issue in this way, KWRU was able to mobilize a group of people that had not been mobilized and gain national and international attention about the continuing poverty in the Americas.

In 1999, ICT successfully pressured the World Bank to relinquish its funding to China’s Western Poverty Reduction Project through a two-pronged approach of mobilizing at the grassroots level to lobby the U.S. government and convincing Washington specialists to draft a claim to the World Bank investigation panel listing the internal policy violations.

The International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) is a Washington based, non-profit organization that has worked to promote human rights and self-determination for Tibetans since 1988.  In 1999, ICT launched a massive campaign to protest against the World Bank’s agreement to fund China’s Western Poverty Reduction Project, which proposed to move nearly 60,000 poor Chinese farmers into the Tibetan region.  ICT opposed such a project on the grounds that massive migration degrades the environment, and dilutes Tibetan culture.