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Sit-In

Palestinian Rights Advocates Hold Sit-In After DNC Refuses Speaking Slot

Delegates from the “uncommitted” movement led a sit-in outside of the Democratic National Convention and refused to accept no for an answer late Wednesday after the party reportedly declined their request to provide a mere five minutes of onstage speaking time for a Palestinian American to speak to the horrors unfolding in the Gaza Strip, which Israel has been bombing relentlessly with U.S. support for more than 10 months. DNC organizers did not say publicly why they are refusing to allow a Palestinian American to speak at the event at Chicago’s United Center, which is located in the county with the largest Palestinian American population in the U.S.

Malaysian Activists Hold Six-Day ‘Siege For Palestine’ Near US Embassy

More than 100 Malaysians have joined a sit-in demonstration outside the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur, in solidarity with Palestine and in response to the continued US veto to attempts for a ceasefire in the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza. The Kepung Demi Palestin or the “Siege for Palestine” demonstration is organized by the Palestine Solidarity Secretariat (SSP), a coalition of 48 groups, including political parties from both the ruling and opposition coalitions, civil society groups, and youth and student movements. The six-day long sit-in began on the evening of Tuesday, December 26, with dozens participating in the demonstrations despite rain and obstruction by the police.

Hundreds Arrested At Grand Central Station Sit-in Demanding A Ceasefire

Hundreds of protesters have been arrested after a “sit-in” on the main concourse of New York’s Grand Central Station, one of the city’s major transport hubs, demanding a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The protesters, wearing black T-shirts reading ‘Ceasefire now’ and ‘Not in our name’, unfurled banners calling for freedom for Palestinians and an end to the bombardment of Gaza. “No more weapons. No more war. Ceasefire is what we’re fighting for,” they chanted, punching the air. Banners were hung from the concourse’s sweeping staircase, and across the departures board. “Mourn the dead, and fight like hell for the living,” read one.

PDX Maintenance Workers ‘Sit Down! Fight Back!’

Portland Airport (PDX) wheelchair attendants, baggage and service workers, cabin cleaners and janitors held a militant picket and sit-down protest June 28 on the United Airlines departures roadway. PDX maintenance workers are fighting for the right to sit down between tasks on the job. They are demanding respect, the right to a union at United, health insurance and more. A Passenger Service Agent told demonstrators: “Our jobs involve hard physical repetitive labor that puts us at risk of workplace injuries. We are also at risk of contagious diseases. Our public health care is insufficient, and workers comp is so complicated, we need a lawyer to use it.”

Hill Staffers Arrested After Sit-In For Climate Action At Schumer’s Office

Democratic leadership may have given up on passing major climate legislation, but their employees aren’t ready to throw in the towel. Six Congressional staffers were arrested Monday after a first-of-its-kind sit-in at Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer’s office demanding he give climate negotiations another try. “Right now, we Hill staffers are peacefully protesting Dem leaders INSIDE,” Saul Levin, a policy adviser to congresswoman Cori Bush who was one of those arrested, wrote, as The Guardian reported. “To my knowledge, this has never been done.” The protest comes at a crucial moment for climate action in the U.S. In late June, the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could not restrict greenhouse gas emissions from power plants under the Clean Air Act without a new legislative mandate.

Chicago High School Students Hold Sit-In In Defense Of Students Who Refused To Stand For National Anthem

Students at Chicago’s Nicholas Senn High School carried out a sit-in on Wednesday in response to a teacher telling a Hispanic student, Yésica Salazar, 17, to “go back to your country” after Salazar refused to stand for the American national anthem during an assembly on January 30. Another student who also refused to stand, Tionda Cobb, 18, was questioned about her status in the school’s free lunch program and was told she should stand because, “people had died for the country.”

Power To Disrupt: Limits And Possibilities Of Campus Sit-Ins

College campuses are systems of capitalist domination: of workers, students and surrounding communities. But campus revolts have been on the rise in recent years. In the US, for instance, as the university system comes to rely more and more on cheap, precarious labor, teacher and graduate student union struggles have been on the rise. As public funds for colleges are slashed, tuitions increase, and campuses become key sites for fascist recruitment among disillusioned youth, many students are pushing back in occupations, walk-outs, demonstrations and other actions.

‘Resist Rockwool’ Holds Sit-In Of Senator Joe Manchin Office

Washington, DC — West Virginia residents occupied U.S. Senator Joe Manchin’s office today to demand he take a position on a controversial factory under construction in the Eastern Panhandle. U.S. Capitol Police arrested eleven protesters when they blocked the doors and hallway outside the office. Forty-two residents of Jefferson County, W.Va., and surrounding areas, organizing under the name “Resist Rockwool,” traveled to Washington to demand a meeting with Senator Manchin. He had just cancelled a townhall meeting scheduled later this month at Shepherd University which was to focus on the Rockwool insulation fiber plant.

Police Break Up Sit-In Against Canadian Mine In North Mexico

Canada's Coeur Mexicana mining company had reached a deal with the people of Guazapares, but then proceeded to violate the terms of that agreement. A group of 130 security officers from Chihuahua in Mexico broke up a sit-in protesting a Canadian mine, shooting into the air and arresting two of their leaders late last month. Canada's Coeur Mexicana mining company had reached a deal with the people of Guazapares, a small town in the Tarahumara highlands in northern Mexico, to use their territory and extract silver. But since the company failed to comply with the agreement, the community has been campaigning against it for three years. The August 20 sit-in lasted for 10 days until security forces, under the command of right-wing Governor Javier Corral, showed up – without identification or arrest warrants.

7 Protesters Arrested After Sit-In At Rep. Steny Hoyer’s Office

The protesters were demanding to meet with the Southern Maryland lawmaker about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. A group of about 12 protesters gathered in Hoyer’s office Thursday afternoon and refused to leave. They carried photos of Yemeni children, and some had their hands painted red. They were motivated by “desperation and frustration that people continue to die in Yemen,” said David Bradbury, an Australian filmmaker who attended the protest. Years of war have devastated the country and about 75 percent of the its population is in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations. The Yemeni children’s poorest country has faced sustained bombings and famine. The protesters believed that Hoyer has not used his “pivotal, crucial role in Congress” to spur the necessary action, Bradbury said. Capitol Police spokeswoman Eva Malecki said the group was charged with unlawful entry.

A Sit-In Almost Turned Into A Shit-In

For Kyle Harris for Westword - A sit-in almost turned into a shit-in when disability rights activists with ADAPT started needing to use the restroom — which had been shut down — after they had spent the night in Republican Senator Cory Gardner's Denver office, trying to force him to vote against a Republican healthcare proposal that the Congressional Budget Office says would leave 22 million uninsured by 2026. "We brought in a makeshift shitter," says activist and musician Kalyn Heffernan, the MC with Wheelchair Sports Camp, which won Best Hip-Hop Group at the 2017 Westword Music Awards on Tuesday, June 27, the same night she was occupying the senator's office. When the DIY toilet arrived, "I think that’s when they they decided to let us [into the restroom]," she says. "Once that came in, shit got real. We had so much coffee, someone was bound to shit." It's not like the activists were holding back their bodily functions. After they had been denied the restroom on Tuesday, several activists urinated in the senator's office in cups, bottles, a trash can, diapers and through catheters.

50 Clergy, Students & Allies Sit-In At Detention Center

By Staff of Cosecha. The sit in a the South Bay detention center in Boston comes in response to the detention of three immigrant rights activists from Justicia Migrante in Burlington, VT: Jose Enrique “Kike” Balcazar, Zully Victoria Palacios, and Cesar Alexis Carrillo Sanchez. ICE has been specifically targeting immigrant rights activists in what appears to be blatant political retaliation for advocating publicly for the rights of immigrants and dairy workers. “While the realities of raids, repression, and deportations are nothing new for our people, they’ve reached an unbearable boiling point,” said Rodrigo Saavedra, a Cosecha organizer. “The time has come for immigrants to transform the political weather. Cosecha is planning what could be the largest immigrant strike since the 2006 megamarches on May 1. It will be a Day Without Immigrants: We won’t work; we won’t buy; we won't go to school. Instead, we will rise together, we will march together and, in the absence of our labor and consumption, we will be recognized.”

Indiana Teachers Sit-In Demanding Young Recuse Himself From DeVos Vote

By Paulina Firoz for The Hill - A group of teachers in Indiana held a sit-in at the office of a senator they say should recuse himself from the vote to confirm President Trump’s pick for secretary of Education. The teachers say Betsy DeVos gave Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) $48,000 in donations last year, according to a report by local news outlet WTHR, which they say make his vote a conflict of interest. “Why would she pay so much, with so much desire to have this job if she were unqualified for it?” said one teacher said to WTHR at Thursday’s sit-in. Young is a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which is scheduled to hold an executive session to vote on DeVos’s nomination on Jan. 31.

Lessons From Republic Windows Workers’ Sit-In, Eight Years On

By Curtis Black for The Chicago Reporter - On a frigid evening near the close of 2016, while going to a meeting at Goose Island, I was a bit startled to recall another frigid gathering there eight years earlier. In 2008, Barack Obama was president-elect, the economy was collapsing, and the workers at Republic Windows and Doors occupied their factory to protest its sudden shutdown. You stepped inside the building and saw the very serious faces of blue-collar workers, mainly black and Latino, who had taken a very serious step at great personal risk in order to take back some control over their future—and perhaps set an example for the rest of us.

Arrests End NAACP Sit-In At Jeff Sessions’ Office

By Jay Croft for CNN - (CNN) An NAACP sit-in to protest the nomination of US Sen. Jeff Sessions as US attorney general ended late Tuesday when six people were arrested at Sessions' Mobile, Alabama, office. The arrests of five men and one woman included NAACP President Cornell W. Brooks, said Malik Russell, director of communications for the civil rights group. They face charges of criminal trespass in the second-degree, according to Mobile police. The protesters arrived earlier Tuesday and said they would stay until Sessions is no longer the nominee or they were arrested.
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