Demonstrators claim victory following weekend of violent clashes with police, but Erdogan warns of retaliatory measures. Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was facing the biggest challenge to his 10-year rule this weekend as parts of Istanbul turned into a war zone. Violent clashes took place between riot police and tens of thousands of demonstrators outraged at the heavy-handed response of auth ...

Hundreds of thousands take to the streets to denounce austerity and defend democracy as corruption scandals shake Spanish royal house and government. Europe’s 2013 protest season finally kicked off this week. On Saturday, three days after the umpteenth general strike paralyzed Greece, a “citizens’ wave” of indignation washed over Spain with hundreds of thousands of protesters swarming onto the streets of Ma ...

Anti-austerity rage intensified in Madrid, as protesters surrounded the parliament Tuesday night in a sign of mounting frustration towards the right-wing government. Their demands included the resignation of top officials with new elections, the halt to austerity measures, and the rewriting of the Spanish Constitution. The protesters charged the government with theft and criminal activity for implementing h ...

Spanish police have fired rubber bullets and baton-charged protesters attending a rally against austerity. Spanish media reported that at least 20 people had been arrested and more than a dozen injured. The "Occupy Congress" protest comes as the government prepares to unveil further austerity measures on Thursday in a bid to shrink its budget deficit. ...

Paolo Gerbaudo reports on the Routes of Europe conference in Florence, arguing that the Italian left must embrace the participatory democracy of the Indignados to achieve political purchase. The city of Florence is one of those privileged observation spots from which one can read the health of the Italian left and its international standing. Back in 2002 it was in this city that the first European Social Fo ...

Some of the most inspiring social struggles of 2011 have placed democracy at the top of the agenda. Although they emerge from very different conditions, these movements – from the insurrections of the Arab Spring to the union battles in Wisconsin, from the student protests in Chile to those in the US and Europe, from the UK riots to the occupations of the Spanish indignados and the Greeks in Syntagma Square ...

www.occupiedlondon.org There may be no better proof of the rupture that is brought about by the “movement of the squares” other than its open, participatory, directly democratic way of organising and functioning. Within a single week it has given birth to a political culture of a different type, one that literally overcomes all known models of organising and struggle to date. Even if the issue of its proced ...

This text has been prepared by the Commission for Group Dynamics in Assemblies of the Puerta del Sol Protest Camp (Madrid). It is based on different texts and summaries which reached consensus in the internal Assemblies of this Commission (and which will be made available on the official webs of the 15th May Movement) and from the experiences gained in the General Assemblies held in this Protest Camp up unt ...

In this time of great confusion, political apathy and misinformation we are compelled to respond dynamically to issues that affect us all as citizens of the world, as human beings. We EXPRESS OUR SOLIDARITY to Syntagma Square and, together, we call for the RE-ENFORCEMENT of the network of the Real Democracy Now groups across Europe. 1) We CONDEMN the propaganda of the major mainstream media who do not tell ...

When Stephane Hessel wrote in Time for Outrage! that indignation with injustice should turn to ‘a peaceful insurrection’ perhaps he did not expect that the movement of ‘indignados’ in Spain and ‘aganaktismenoi’ (outraged) in Greece would take his advice to heart so soon and so spectacularly. In the following link you can hear the audio from the event organized by the Birckbeck Institute for the Humanities: ...