Protest of the day

Thousands of people are protesting in Rome today against austerity policies and high unemployment.

Protest of the day

Workers in Bangladesh have managed to shut down more than 300 garment factories in protest over pay and working conditions after a building collapse killed more than 1,100 people.

Map of the day

This is the action map for the 11 June Carnival Against Capitalism, which gives the names and addresses of 100 locations in the West End of London “connected to blatant murder, oppression and exploitation.”

There is also an online map, which features more details and even more addresses. It can be found by selecting “Mapping Capitalist London” in the sector menu at  mappingthecorporations.org/.

Protest of the day

Hundreds of fast-food employees in Detroit walked off the job today, temporarily closing down a handful of restaurants as part of a growing U.S. worker movement that—as we’ve seen in recent months, in New York City and Chicago—is demanding higher wages.

Protest of the day

Tens of thousands of workers from Germany’s engineering, metalworking, and electrical industries have downed their tools in a series of rolling strikes during the past week in order to press for a better pay package.

Protest of the year

Workers protest on May Day 2013, from Bangladesh and Indonesia to Spain and Greece. . .

Protest of the day

 

Thousands of Bangladeshi garment factory workers have protested in the capital, Dhaka, over the death of about 200 workers in a garment-manufacturing building collapse.

Update

The death toll in the Rana Plaza has risen to at least 238 and many others remain unaccounted for. More than 1,000 of the 2,500 workers were injured, with many of them still trapped.

Labor activists combed the wreckage on Wednesday afternoon and discovered labels and production records suggesting that the factories were producing garments for major European and American brands. Labels were discovered for the Spanish brand Mango, and for the low-cost British chain Primark.

Activists said the factories also had produced clothing for Walmart, the Dutch retailer C & A, Benetton and Cato Fashions, according to customs records, factory Web sites and documents discovered in the collapsed building.

Protest of the day

Fast food and retail workers are taking to the streets of downtown Chicago today to demand higher wages.

“These are poverty wages and homelessness wages,” Lorraine Chavez of the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago.

They are calling it the “Fight for 15″ to get $15 an hour. The organization says that a single adult Chicago with a child needs a wage of $21 an hour to pay for necessities such as clothing and rent.

Many workers are forced to work two or three jobs to support a family, according to Chavez.

Protest of the day

 

Flamenco flash mobs—seemingly spontaneous dance and song performances—have been taking place in banks not just in Seville, but all over Andalusia. They are being staged by Flo6x8 to express anger and frustration at the economic crisis.

“At first there is surprise,” says Pepe El Moody’s (a pseudonym), one of the organisers, describing how people in the banks tend to react to these events. “Older people stand terrified in a corner, and mostly the bank employees are sympathetic, because they are suffering in this [economic] situation.”

Interestingly, the flash mobs are reconnecting flamenco with its origins as an art form of protest and social awareness.

Protest of the day

Tens of thousands of students flooded the streets of Chile on Thursday in one of the largest demonstrations demanding free education for all.

Student organizers estimated the crowd in the Chilean capital on Thursday at about 150,000 people. City officials said the number was closer to 80,000. Local media called it one of the largest marches in Santiago in more than two decades.

The size of the protest showed the strength of the student movement in an election year, said student leader Camila Vallejo.

“This symbolizes that the student and social movement didn’t go home and that that the movement is here to stay,” student leader Vallejo told local ADN radio.