Today, in honor of Black History Month, we remember the first of the Nashville sit-ins, which occurred at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee on this date, February 13, 1960. The protests were organized by black college students and lasted through May and were intended to end segregation at lunch counters. They were coordinated by the Nashville Student Movement and the Nashville Christian Leadership Council, and were part of the broader sit-in movement that spread across the southern United States in the wake of the Greensboro sit-ins in North Carolina.

The students were represented by a group of 13 lawyers, headed by Z. Alexander Looby. Racists bombed Looby's home on April 19. He, and his family, escaped uninjured. Later that day, over 3,000 people marched to City Hall to confront the mayor about the escalating violence. After subsequent negotiations, an agreement was reached in May, and six downtown stores began serving black customers at their lunch counters for the first time.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #racism #jimcrow #nashville #sitins #civilrights #blackhistorymonth #BlackMastodon

The Strange Disappearance of an #AntiAI #Activist

#SamKirchner wants to save the world from artificial superintelligence. He’s been missing for two weeks.

By Kaitlyn Tiffany, December 4, 2025

Excerpt: "The reaction from the broader #AISafety movement was fast and consistent. Many disavowed violence. One group, #PauseAI, a much larger AI-safety activist group than #StopAI, specifically disavowed Kirchner. PauseAI is notably staid—it includes property damage in its definition of violence, for instance, and doesn’t allow volunteers to do anything illegal or disruptive, such as chain themselves to doors, barricade gates, and otherwise trespass or interfere with the operations of AI companies. 'The kind of protests we do are people standing at the same place and maybe speaking a message,' the group’s CEO, Maxime Fournes, told me, 'but not preventing people from going to work or blocking the streets.'

"This is one of the reasons that Stop AI was founded in the first place. Kirchner and others, who’d met in the PauseAI #Discord server, thought that that genteel approach was insufficient. Instead, Stop AI situated itself in a tradition of more confrontational protest, consulting #GeneSharp’s 1973 classic, The #MethodsOfNonviolentAction, which includes such tactics as #SitIns, '#NonviolentObstruction,' and 'seeking imprisonment.'

"In its early stages, the movement against unaccountable AI development has had to face the same questions as any other burgeoning social movement: How do you win broad support? How can you be palatable and appealing while also being sufficiently pointed, extreme enough to get attention but not so much that you sabotage yourself? If the stakes are as high as you say they are, how do you act like it?

"#MichaëlTrazzi, an activist who went on a hunger strike outside #Google #DeepMind’s London headquarters in September, also believes that AI could lead to human extinction. He told me that he believes that people can do things that are extreme enough to 'show we are in an emergency' while still being nonviolent and nondisruptive. (PauseAI also discourages its members from doing hunger strikes.)"

Read more:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/12/sam-kirchner-missing-stop-ai/685144/

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/l6ACC

#AISucks #NoNukesforAI #AIResistance #Terminator #Alphabet #WarBots #SkyNet #Activists

Power company employees, including engineers, officers, contract workers, defy Indian government, #strike illegally, engage in #SitIns

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nagpur/power-workers-defy-mesma-strike-sparks-statewide-jolt/amp_articleshow/124437104.cms

#India #strikes #union #unions #MSEDCL #privatisation #corruption #neoliberalism #Adani #Torrent #Reliance #TBCB #MESMA #INTUC #capitalism #exploitation #ClassWar

Komende #donderdag zijn er weer #sitins en #noise #demo's, verspreid over het hele #land.
In onze #regio niet alleen in #Arnhem en #Nijmegen, maar ook in #Tiel, #Zutphen, #Apeldoorn, #Doetinchem en op #station #Ede-#Wageningen.

#Update over de demo in Arnhem:
Het begint om 18:00 op het station, met een #lawaaiprotest met #potten en #pannen.
Aansluitend trekken we om 18:30 met een #mars de #stad in, waar het op dat moment #koopavond is.

[verkeerde account getoot] Treuriger gesteld met de media-aandacht dan vorige week. Ondanks nóg meer sit-ins en nóg meer mensen.

RTV Utrecht: *Weer lawaaiprotest in stationshal Utrecht, ook demonstratie op Amersfoort Centraal*

"De hal van station Utrecht Centraal staat vanavond opnieuw vol. Honderden demonstranten protesteren er tegen de oorlog en de uithongering in Gaza. Ook op Amersfoort Centraal hebben ongeveer honderd mensen zich verzameld.
Rond 18.00 uur stroomden deelnemers de hal aan de centrumkant van het station in Utrecht binnen. Mensen zwaaien met Palestijnse vlaggen en maken veel geluid met potten, pannen en pollepels. Ook hielden ze een minuut stilte en las iemand een gedicht voor in het Arabisch, Nederland en Engels. …"

https://www.rtvutrecht.nl/nieuws/3925993/weer-lawaaiprotest-in-stationshal-utrecht-ook-demonstratie-op-amersfoort-centraal

#sitIns #SitIn #Utrecht #Amersfoort #Gaza #Palestina #StopTheGenocide #StopTheStarvation