How the Milk Tea Alliance Inspired Singapore, and Why We Need to Let Youths Take the Lead

I am a Singaporean activist currently living in Taiwan. In 2014, I was sued by the Singapore prime minister Lee Hsien Loong over a blog post I wrote revealing how the Singapore government was investing the retirement funds of Singaporeans without being completely transparent to them. I was fired from my job on this pretext, and was later charged by the government for protesting over the same advocacy issue. In 2016, after supporting an opposition politician during a by-election, the police searched my home and took away my laptops and storage devices.

The Politics of Protest Processes: A Portrayal

This integrated overview of a dynamic field of study covers two main areas. The first half concerns the main internal dimensions of protest movements- their scope and variability, their ideational foundations, and their dynamics, including leadership and resource base. The second half places these movements in the context of their interactions with public authorities, and introduces certain key literatures, including “contentious” politics and the “exit, voice and loyalty” framework.

Cubans Mobilize Due to the Blockade and the Pandemic

The article analyzes the protests in Cuba in the context of the economic blockade and the health crisis as a consequence of the covid 19 pandemic. The current policy of the United States with President Joe Biden and the distances with the diplomacy of Barack Obama and the events after the more than two hundred measures adopted by Donald Trump, who adopted more than 240 additional measures to deepen the blockade. Additionally, the policy of the United States is detailed historically with Cuba and the milestones of the influence of the Cuban Revolution in Latin America are detailed.

Towards Unifying a Movement: A Reflection on the Current Situation of the Thai Democratic Movement

In the 2020 Thailand’s protests, the spirit of democracy humiliated over the past six years has been restored. Like a wave of the never-failing stream, Thai people, including myself young and old, demanded a change in Thai politics.

My Own Liberator: A South African Story

Dikgang Moseneke was born in Pretoria, South Africa in December 1947. He was imprisoned on Robben Island, where most political prisoners were kept, off the coast of Cape Town for 10 years as a young man for his political activity. While in prison, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Political Science and later completed a Bachelor of Laws degree. After his release from prison, he was admitted as an attorney in 1978 and in 1983 was called to the Pretoria Bar as a Senior Counsel. During the 1980s he worked underground for the Pan-African Congress and became its deputy president when it was unbanned in 1990. Moseneke also served on the technical committee that drafted the interim South African constitution of 1993. After a corporate career between 1995 and 2001, President Thabo Mbeki appointed him to the High Court in Pretoria and in 2002 as a judge in the Constitutional Court. In June 2005, he became the Court’s Deputy Chief Justice, a position from which he retired in May 2016. In this essay, he chronicles his years of protest, political activity, and imprisonment as a young man. The essay is an excerpt from his memoir, My Own Liberator, which is published by Picador Africa (2018), and is available online and at all good bookstores.

Taking Back Civic Space: Nonviolent Protests and Pushbacks against Autocratic Restrictions in Thailand

The year of 2020 witnessed the eruption of Thailand’s largest and longest-lasting mass demonstrations since the 2014 military putsch. Despite threats of crackdown, protesters leveraged a host of innovative nonviolent actions to reclaim political space that the regime had previously squeezed. This article sheds light on key mechanisms that underpin nonviolent actions’ ability to push back against a trend of shrinking space. We argue that the logic of nonviolent action, tactical and digital creativity, and counteracting repression operates in tandem. First, specific forms of nonviolent action carved out space for popular protest and increased public participation in it despite regime hindrances. Second, particularly tactical and digital creativity sustained this mass participation by reversing some effects of repression. Third, nonviolent responses to this repression encouraged further anti-regime mobilization. We conclude our analysis with some caveats. The Thai case shows that keeping regained space can be difficult.

Analysis of the Political Situation of the Protests: Cuba, between Disenchantment and Deprivation

This article seeks to provide a brief reflection on the causes of the recent social protests in Cuba that took place in July 2021, addressing in a special way the deprivation of services and rights as the main trigger for satiety and claims. As in 1994 protests were marked by the “special period”, in 2021 protests were set by the covid-19 pandemic and the unilateral coercive sanctions of the United States with an impact on three fundamental areas: tourism, remits and fuel supply.