before you encourage people to get arrested as a form of protest, think
And even if you think you’re just in for a dull afternoon because you’re ‘privileged’, you could be very wrong. What you could be in for is trumped up charges, months of court proceedings, your identity leaked to the media, intelligence agencies monitoring your phone, your name in an anti-terrorism file, and much more.
Protesting and taking action involves necessary risks, including at times the risk of arrest. When we decide to take action against the state, we accept that that might have unpleasant consequences, or life-changing consequences. But we limit those consequences when we can.
Which is why activists prepare, meet without phones, encrypt their online communication, wear masks and gloves, organize a legal team, organize jail support, make sure every activist knows not to talk to police, etc etc.
Because our lives matter, and because the more of us are safe and free, the better we can fight on.
Think before you choose a form of ‘civil disobedience’ that involves the certainty of arrest. That is not your only option and organizations that tell you that this is how activism must be are lying to you. There are more effective ways to resist and people that can help you do it. You can disrupt the system with a good chance of getting away with it.
On this day, 14 June 1991, up to half a million women in Switzerland took part in a nationwide women’s strike demanding legal enforcement of gender equality which was incorporated into the federal constitution on 14 June 1981. Of primary concern was the continuing pay differential between men and women. Women walked out again on the same date in 2011, and today women in Switzerland are again on strike demanding better recognition and remuneration for care work, and end to sexual harassment and action against wage inequality. Women earn around 20% less than men on average, and 40% of this pay differential cannot be explained by factors like men and women working different jobs.
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A leading human rights campaigner and head of a prestigious London art gallery is the co-owner of an Israeli cyberweapons company whose software has allegedly been used by authoritarian regimes to spy on dissidents, the Guardian can reveal.
Yana Peel, the chief executive of the Serpentine Galleries and a self-proclaimed champion of free speech, co-owns NSO Group, a $1bn (£790m) Israeli tech firm, according to corporate records in the US and Luxembourg.
NSO is the subject of multiple ongoing lawsuits and has been criticised by human rights groups, including Amnesty International, which has asked Israel’s ministry of defence to revoke the company’s export licences.
However, Peel, who has declared the Serpentine a “safe space for unsafe ideas” and served as a judge for international freedom-of-expression awards, defended her stake in NSO, which she has held since February. She described criticism of the company as “misinformed”.
