Experiments with the Truth 10/2/2010

• Hundreds of students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas walked out of class yesterday and gathered for a rally outside a building where lawmakers were holding a finance committee meeting. The lawmakers agreed to hear their concerns over the proposed budget cuts.

• At least 50 women at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in England entered the fourth day of a hunger strike yesterday to protest against their detention and conditions, with ­several reportedly fainting in corridors and almost 20 locked outdoors wearing few clothes.

• 200 people marched toward the US embassy in Port-au-Prince yesterday, crying out for food and aid, while about 50 more gathered outside the police headquarters where the Haitian government of President Rene Preval is temporarily installed. They chanted, “Down with Perval” as they protested conditions and Preval’s lack of leadership.

• Thanks to a sustained campaign by UK-based tribal rights group Survival International, the Church of England has dropped its 3.8 million pound stake in the controversial mining company, Vedanta Resources, citing concern over the company’s human rights record.

• Teachers, parents and school board members rallied outside Detroit Public Schools’ administrative offices to protest a new standardized test being administered this week, which they fear will be used as a political tool to lobby the state legislature for academic control over DPS.

• Around 400 workers from the Tanta Flax and Oils Company in Cairo staged an open-ended sit-in Monday to demand the payment of withheld salaries.

Source: Bryan Farrell, Waging Nonviolence