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Police in India shoot tear gas at farmers protesting for better crop prices

<p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/one-planet"></a></p><div type="image" title="Konda Mason with farm manager Myles Gaines" height="720" width="960" msid="104245034" hostid="261" sizebytes="119104"></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>Jubilee Justice is a cooperative that helps Black farming communities practice regenerative agriculture.</li><li>The organization harkens back to the legacy of practices used in the 19th and 20th centuries.</li><li>Between 1910 and 1997, Black farmers lost around 90% of their property in the US.</li></ul><p>Konda Mason has always understood the importance of land.</p><p>Her grandfather left Alabama in the middle of the night when her dad was a baby, afraid he was going to be lynched because he owned property and a provision store. He left his land, abandoned the store, and took his family to California, where Mason eventually grew up.</p><p>"I've had that story," Mason told Insider. "I know that we had land once, and I grew up landless, completely landless."</p><p>Her grandparents still owned a small plot of land in California, less than a quarter of an acre, to grow food like collard greens and tomatoes and raise livestock to remain food secure. When Mason's mother died, her ashes were sprinkled among the collard patch.</p><p>The tradition of growing food is one that Mason has continued, maintaining a garden in every home she's lived in. Today, she's the president and cofounder of <a href="https://www.jubileejustice.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jubilee Justice</a>, a cooperative of Black farmers and an organization that helps Black farming communities practice regenerative and sustainable agriculture.</p><p>"I always said when I grow up, I want to be a farmer. People thought I was kidding — I really wasn't," Mason said.</p><div type="image" title="Konda Mason with rice businessman Robert Bimba and Jubilee Justice SRI advisor Erica Styger" height="768" width="1024" msid="104245035" hostid="261" sizebytes="96844"></div><h2>Returning to the land</h2><p>Even though land was such a large part of Mason's family story, she said she didn't fully grasp how central it was to every conversation about race and money until later in life.</p><p>In 2018, Mason began a project called <a href="https://www.jubileejustice.org/jubilee-journeys-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jubilee Journeys</a> — a series of conversations that bring together white participants who are financially well-off with spiritual and thought leaders from communities of color to promote racial healing and speak about the ways capital should be used and redistributed. She started these meetups hoping to talk through <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-better-capitalism-1-2018">alternatives to extractive capitalism</a>.</p><p>"And then I realized it was about land," Mason said. It sparked the four pillars that now guide her work: land, race, money, and spirit.</p><p>One of the attendees to the first Journey in California was a woman named Elisabeth Keller.</p><p>"The first thing out of her mouth was, 'I'm a white woman whose family owns a former plantation in Louisiana,'" Mason said. Keller's family had owned the roughly 3,000-acre Inglewood Farm property in Alexandria since her grandfather bought it in the 1920s.</p><p>"She wanted to kill what happened on this land, both to the land, which was very toxic, filled with chemicals," Mason said. "And then what happened with the people here. It was a cotton plantation." </p><p>After the Civil War, formerly enslaved people and their descendants continued to work as sharecroppers on the plantation.</p><p>Mason suggested hosting the next Journeys conversation at Inglewood as a way to promote healing. The meeting was a success, leading to another the following year. At one of these discussions, an agricultural attorney talked openly about the plight of Black farmers.</p><p>"I was so moved and it touched such a deep place, I just kept that in my heart," Mason said.</p><div type="image" title="Donna Isaacs, a permaculture farmer and a member of Jubilee Justice" height="4032" width="3024" msid="104245037" hostid="261" sizebytes="1875334"></div><p>Up until this point, Mason had no background in farming. But three months later, at a conference in New York, Mason ran into Caryl Levine, the cofounder of the organic rice company Lotus Foods. She became fascinated with Levine's sustainable approach to rice farming. Levine had adopted an agriculture-management method known as the <a href="http://sri.ciifad.cornell.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">System of Rice Intensification</a>, which uses up to 50% less water, requires up to 90% less seed, and can result in 20% to 100% more yield.</p><p>Crucially, this method also reduces methane emissions. Rice production is responsible for 10% of <a href="https://earth.org/system-of-rice-intensification/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">global methane emissions</a>. </p><p>At the time, most of Lotus Foods' work was happening in Asia and Africa. Levine opened up about her desire to create a domestic supply chain of farmers in the US. Ideas began to converge.</p><p>"I said to her, 'What about Black farmers?'" Mason said. Two weeks later, she was on a Zoom call making plans. The newly formed Jubilee Justice Rice Project would be centered on Inglewood Farm, what Mason describes as "the belly of the beast."</p><p>"This is where the worst of the worst has happened," Mason said, referring to the history of slavery on the plantation. "The universe just really has this interesting way of bringing me here to this land."</p><h2>Land loss</h2><p>Rice isn't the only crop producing methane. In 2021, agriculture <a href="https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions" target="_blank" rel="noopener">accounted for 10%</a> of all greenhouse-gas emissions in the US. Modern-day farming practices release methane and carbon dioxide from the soil, contributing to increased warming. Livestock, especially cows, produce methane as they digest grass and grains.</p><p>Nature is meant to be symbiotic. The insects and microbes that live in the soil capture carbon and convert it into organic material. But with the mass use of herbicides and pesticides, these beneficial organisms are killed off.</p><p>The use of agrochemicals such as fertilizers began in the 1960s and resulted in dramatically higher crop yields, changing farming practices. Average <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/43854/46734_eib124.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">corn yield rose</a> from 20 bushels per acre in 1940 to 150 bushels per acre by the early 2000s, partially due to pesticides and fertilizers. In that same period of time, cotton yields increased fourfold and soybean yields by threefold.</p><p>But as pests began to adapt to these chemicals, more agrochemicals continued to be introduced, leading to more environmental damage.</p><p>The 20th century also changed the demographics of farmers in the US.</p><p>In 1920, there were nearly <a href="https://agcensus.library.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/1920-Farm_Statistics_By_Color_and_Tenure.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">1 million</a> Black farmers in the United States, accounting for 14% of all farmers. Today, there are <a href="https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Highlights/2019/2017Census_Farm_Producers.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fewer than 50,000</a> — just 2% of all farmers in the country are Black.</p><p>During the Jim Crow era, white landowners began intimidating Black farmers into abandoning their land. Violent, racist attacks led many Black farmers to flee the South as a part of the Great Migration. </p><p>The federal government also practiced discrimination and intimidation tactics. A 1999 class-action lawsuit against the US Department of Agriculture claimed that the agency racially discriminated against Black farmers in distributing farm loans, forcing many of them into foreclosure. Per the settlement agreement, the USDA has paid or credited around <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-farmers-pigford/black-farmers-win-1-25-billion-in-discrimination-suit-idUSTRE61H5XD20100218" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$1 billion to Black farmers</a>, making it one of the largest civil-rights settlements in US history.</p><p>The payout, however, was a drop in the ocean compared to the impact that land loss had on the racial wealth divide over the next century.</p><p>In 1910, Black farmers owned between <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/46984/19353_ra174h_1_.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">16 to 19 million acres</a> of land, according to the Census of Agriculture. But between 1910 and 1997, Black farmers lost around 90% of their property, while white farmers only lost 2% during the same time period.</p><p>One <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pandp.20221015" target="_blank" rel="noopener">study</a> estimated that land loss cost Black farmers around $326 billion.</p><h2>A regenerative future</h2><p>Through Jubilee Justice, Mason wants to reclaim some of that history. She hopes to create a platform that addresses economic and racial equity for Black farmers, while also encouraging sustainable agriculture. </p><p>The farmers who are a part of the Jubilee Justice network all emphasize regenerative, sustainable, organic forms of agriculture. Regenerative agriculture aims to work with nature rather than against it by rejuvenating soil health, boosting biodiversity, and developing practices that are climate resilient. Many of these farming practices were developed by Indigenous communities prior to the Industrial Revolution.</p><p>The farmers in Jubilee Justice come from different backgrounds — some were raised on family farms while others built upon their interest in climate activism. </p><div type="image" title="Grand opening of the Jubilee Justice rice mill" height="1443" width="1920" msid="104245038" hostid="261" sizebytes="198200"></div><p>Recently, they built a rice mill that they own as a cooperative. For Mason, being able to own the means of production is critical.</p><p>"That's one of the ways that they kill Black farmers and take their land — they will have a contract and then next thing you know they reneg on that contract," Mason said of relying too heavily on external vendors and manufacturers. "Most people are one season away from bankruptcy."</p><p>Jubilee Justice builds upon a legacy of Black farmer <a href="https://www.rd.usda.gov/files/RR194.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cooperatives</a>. In the 19th century, after the Southern Farmers' Alliance refused to admit Black farmers except in certain chapters, Black farmers started the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Co-operative Union. </p><p>By 1891, they had over a million members. Following the civil-rights movement in the 1960s, there was a renewed interest in farming cooperatives.</p><p>By emphasizing cooperative economics, Mason hopes to move away from the mindset of hyper-individualism that capitalism values and to show Black farmers that if they rely on each other, the whole community can succeed together.</p><p>To Mason, land is sacred. Mason reflected back to her years giving eco tours in the Ecuadorian Amazon.</p><p>"Every time I left, I would be in tears," she said. "I didn't want to go. I didn't want to leave it. I knew that it was in danger. It's such an impact to spend time in the rainforest and to understand this planet and how precious and beautiful it is."</p><p>"I am just bent on leaving as much of a legacy as I possibly can and everything that I touch to come from a place of a regenerative mindset," she said.</p>

On a former cotton plantation in Louisiana, a Black farmers' cooperative is reclaiming the land and money their ancestors lost

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p><a class="cite">HONG KONG</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> (Reuters) - </span><a class="cite">Riot police</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> advanced on </span><a class="cite">Hong Kong</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> democracy protesters in the early hours of Monday, firing volleys of tear gas that sent some fleeing as others erected barricades to block the security forces in the heart of the former British colony.</span></p>
<p>Earlier, police baton-charged a crowd blocking a key road in the government district in defiance of official warnings that the demonstrations were illegal.</p>
<p>Several scuffles broke out between police in helmets, gas masks and riot gear, and demonstrators angered by the tear gas, last used in <a class="cite">Hong Kong</a> in 2005.</p>
<p>The unrest is the worst since <a class="cite">China</a> took back control of <a class="cite">Hong Kong</a> from Britain in 1997. It poses a serious challenge to <a class="cite">Communist Party</a> leaders in <a class="cite">Beijing</a>, concerned that calls for democracy could spread to cities on the mainland and threaten their grip on power.</p>
<p>Thousands of protesters were still milling around the main <a class="cite">Hong Kong government</a> building, ignoring messages from student and pro-democracy leaders to retreat for fear that the police might fire rubber bullets.</p>
<p>Police, in lines five deep in places, earlier used pepper spray against activists and shot tear gas into the air. The crowds fled several hundred yards (meters), scattering their umbrellas and hurling abuse at police they called "cowards".</p>
<p>"If today I don't stand out, I will hate myself in future," said taxi driver <a class="cite">Edward Yeung</a>, 55, as he swore at police on the frontline. "Even if I get a criminal record it will be a glorious one."</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>Britain returned <a class="cite">Hong Kong</a> to Chinese rule under a formula known as "one country, two systems" that guaranteed a high degree of autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed in mainland <a class="cite">China</a>. Universal suffrage was set as an eventual goal.</p>
<p>But <a class="cite">Beijing</a> last month rejected demands for people to freely choose the city's next leader, prompting threats from activists to shut down the Central business district. <a class="cite">China</a> wants to limit elections to a handful of candidates loyal to <a class="cite">Beijing</a>.</p>
<p>The protests later spread to the busy shopping district of <a class="cite">Causeway Bay</a> and across the harbor to Mong Kok, posing a greater challenge for authorities to contain, local media reported.</p>
<p>In a move certain to unnerve authorities in <a class="cite">Beijing</a>, media in <a class="cite">Taiwan</a> reported that student movement leaders had occupied the lobby of <a class="cite">Hong Kong</a>'s representative office on the island in a show of support for the democracy protesters.</p>
<p><a class="cite">Hong Kong</a> leader <a class="cite">Leung Chun-ying</a> had earlier pledged "resolute" action against the protest movement, known as Occupy Central with Love and Peace.</p>
<p>"The police are determined to handle the situation appropriately in accordance with the law," Leung said, less than two hours before the police charge began.<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div></span></p>
<h3>"NEVER GIVE UP"</h3>
<p>Police had not used tear gas in <a class="cite">Hong Kong</a> since breaking up protests by South Korean farmers against the <a class="cite">World Trade Organization</a> in 2005.</p>
<p>"We will fight until the end ... we will never give up," said <a class="cite">Peter Poon</a>, a protester in his 20s, adding that they may have to make a temporary retreat through the night.</p>
<p>Police denied rumors that they had used rubber bullets.</p>
<p>A spokesperson for <a class="cite">China's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office</a> said the central government fully supported <a class="cite">Hong Kong</a>'s handling of the situation "in accordance with the law".</p>
<p>Such dissent would never be tolerated on the mainland, where student protests in and around <a class="cite">Beijing</a>'s Tiananmen Square calling for democracy were crushed with heavy loss of life on June 4, 1989.</p>
<p>In mainland <a class="cite">China</a>, the phrase "Occupy Central" was blocked on Sunday afternoon on Weibo, the country's version of Twitter. It had been allowed earlier in the day.</p>
<p>Later, a <a class="cite">Hong Kong government</a> statement urged the Occupy organizers to bring an end to the "chaos", for the overall good of the city. The government said some public transport may be disrupted on Monday due to the protests, while some schools in affected areas would be closed.</p>
<p>A tearful Occupy organizer, <a class="cite">Benny Tai</a>, said he was proud of people's determination to fight for "genuine" universal suffrage, but that the situation was getting out of control, local broadcaster <a class="cite">RTHK</a> reported. He said he believed he would face heavy punishment for initiating the movement.</p>
<p>Inside the cordon, thousands had huddled in plastic capes, masks and goggles as they braced for a fresh police attempt to clear the area before <a class="cite">Hong Kong</a> re-opens for business in the morning. The city's financial markets are expected to open as usual on Monday.<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></p>
<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div></h3>
<h3>"WE WILL WIN WITH LOVE AND PEACE"</h3>
<p>Publishing tycoon <a class="cite">Jimmy Lai</a>, a key backer of the democracy movement, said he wanted as big a crowd of protesters as possible, after a week of student demonstrations, to thwart any crackdown.</p>
<p>"The more <a class="cite">Hong Kong</a> citizens come, the more unlikely the police can clear up the place," said Lai, also wearing a plastic cape and workmen's protective glasses. "Even if we get beaten up, we cannot fight back. We will win this war with love and peace."</p>
<p>Pro-democracy <a class="cite">Hong Kong</a> lawmaker <a class="cite">Lee Cheuk-yan</a> said three fellow legislators were among a small group of activists detained by police, including democratic leaders <a class="cite">Albert Ho</a> and <a class="cite">Emily Lau</a>.</p>
<p>Organizers said as many as 80,000 people thronged the streets in Admiralty district, galvanized by the arrests of student activists on Friday. No independent estimate of the crowd numbers was available.</p>
<p>A week of protests escalated into violence when student-led demonstrators broke through a cordon late on Friday and scaled a fence to invade the city's main government compound. Police used pepper spray to disperse the crowd. The <a class="cite">Hong Kong Federation of Students</a> extended class boycotts indefinitely.</p>
<p>Police have so far arrested 78 people, including <a class="cite">Joshua Wong</a>, the 17-year-old leader of student group <a class="cite">Scholarism</a>, who was dragged away after he called on the protesters to charge the government premises.</p>
<p>Wong was released from police detention without charge on Sunday evening. He told reporters that he planned to return to the protest site after resting.</p>
<p>(Additional reporting by Donny Kwok, Charlie Zhu, Venus Wu, Diana Chan, Kinling Lo, Stephen Aldred, Farah Master, Twinnie Siu and Bobby Yip; Writing by Greg Torode and Anne Marie Roantree:; Editing by Nick Macfie, Alex Richardson and Mark Trevelyan)</p>

Hong Kong Activists Defy Police Tear Gas As Protests Continue Overnight

<p><a class="cite"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>HONG</span> <span class="highlight">KONG</span> (Reuters) - </span></span></a><a class="cite"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Hong</span></span> <span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Kong</span></span> police</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> used tear gas for the first time on Sunday to disperse pro-democracy protests and baton-charged the crowd blocking a key road in the government district after</span><a class="cite"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Hong</span></span> <span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Kong</span></span></a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> and Chinese officials warned against illegal demonstrations.</span></p>
<p>The city's Admiralty district had descended into chaos as chanting pro-democracy protesters converged on police barricades surrounding their colleagues who had earlier launched a "new era" of civil disobedience to pressure <a class="cite">Beijing</a> into granting full democracy to <a class="cite"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Hong</span></span> <span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Kong</span></span></a>.</p>
<p>Police, in lines five deep in places wearing helmets and gas masks, staged repeated pepper spray and baton charges and threw tear gas. The crowds fled several hundred yards, scattering their umbrellas.</p>
<p>Police had not used tear gas in <a class="cite"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Hong</span></span> <span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Kong</span></span></a> since 2005, to break up <a class="cite">World Trade Organization</a> protests against South Korean farmers.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Here's a live video from the scene:</p>
<p></p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p><a class="cite"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Chanting "remove the blockade" and "shame on you", thousands of protesters blocked some of </span></a><a class="cite"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Hong</span></span><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Kong</span></span></a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">'s busiest streets, Gloucester Road and Harcourt Road, and milled among the stalled traffic after</span><a class="cite"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Hong</span></span> <span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Kong</span></span></a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> leader </span><a class="cite">Leung Chun-ying</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> pledged "resolute" action against a movement known as Occupy Central with Love and Peace.</span></p>
<p>"The police are determined to handle the situation appropriately in accordance with the law," Leung said just hours before the charge began.</p>
<p>A spokesperson for <a class="cite">China's <span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Hong</span></span> <span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Kong</span></span> and Macau Affairs Office</a> added that the central government fully supported <a class="cite"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Hong</span></span> <span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Kong</span></span></a>'s handling of the situation "in accordance with the law".</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>Inside the cordon, thousands had huddled in plastic capes, masks and goggles, a <keyword id="6354810" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Defense">defense</keyword> against pepper spray, as they waited for a fresh police charge to clear the area before <a class="cite"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Hong</span></span> <span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Kong</span></span></a> opens for business on Monday morning.</p>
<p><a class="cite"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Hong</span></span> <span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Kong</span></span></a> returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a formula known as "one country, two systems" that guaranteed a high degree of autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed in mainland <a class="cite">China</a>. Universal suffrage was set as an eventual goal.</p>
<p>But <a class="cite">Beijing</a> last month rejected demands for people to freely choose the city's next leader, prompting threats from activists to shut down Central. <a class="cite">China</a> wants to limit elections to a handful of candidates loyal to <a class="cite">Beijing</a>.</p>
<p>While promising a fresh round of public consultation, Leung also described <a class="cite">Beijing</a>'s decision as "legally binding".</p>
<p>Publishing tycoon <a class="cite">Jimmy Lai</a>, a key backer of the democratic movement, said he wanted as big a crowd of protesters as possible, after a week of student demonstrations, to thwart any crackdown.</p>
<p>"The more <a class="cite"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Hong</span></span> <span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Kong</span></span></a> citizens come, the more unlikely the police can clear up the place," said Lai, also wearing a plastic cape and workmen's protective glasses.</p>
<p>"Even if we get beaten up, we cannot fight back. We will win this war with love and peace."</p>
<p>Some protesters have trained for months in non-violent resistance, determined to make it as hard as possible for police to move them - their actions mirrored by police who have also stepped up anti-riot training and other tactics.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table cite"><div><div class="image on-image"><a></a></div><p></p></div></div>Communist Party leaders in <a class="cite">Beijing</a> are terrified of calls for democracy spreading to cities on the mainland, threatening their grip on power. Such dissent would never be allowed on the mainland, where student protests calling for democracy were crushed with heavy loss of life on and around<a class="cite">Beijing's Tiananmen Square</a> on June 4, 1989.</p>
<p>Pro-democracy <a class="cite"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Hong</span></span> <span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Kong</span></span></a> lawmaker <a class="cite">Lee Cheuk-yan</a> said three fellow legislators were among a small group of activists detained by police, including democratic leaders <a class="cite">Albert Ho</a> and <a class="cite">Emily Lau</a>.</p>
<p>Veteran democracy campaigner <a class="cite">Martin Lee</a> said <a class="cite"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Hong</span></span> <span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Kong</span></span></a> people believed democracy was good for the city and the rest of <a class="cite">China</a>. "They are prepared to sacrifice the comfort of freedom for the sake of themselves, their children and their children's children," he said.</p>
<p>TENACIOUS DISOBEDIENCE</p>
<p>Organizers said as many as 80,000 people thronged the streets in Admiralty, galvanized by the arrests of student activists on Friday.</p>
<p>No independent estimate of the crowd numbers was available but the action is being seen as the most tenacious civil disobedience action since 1997.</p>
<p>A week of protests escalated into violence when student-led demonstrators broke through a cordon late on Friday and scaled a fence to invade the city's main government compound after a week of peaceful action. Police used pepper spray to disperse the crowd.</p>
<p>The clashes were the most heated in a series of anti-<a class="cite">Beijing</a> protests that underscore the central government's challenge to stamp its will on <a class="cite"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Hong</span></span> <span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Kong</span></span></a>.</p>
<p>Police have so far arrested 78 people, including <a class="cite">Joshua Wong</a>, the 17-year-old leader of student group<a class="cite">Scholarism</a>, who was dragged away after he called on the protesters to charge the government premises. He was still in detention on Sunday.</p>
<p>His parents said in a statement the decision to detain him was an act of "political persecution".</p>
<p>As the crowd built in support of the students, the leaders of Occupy announced they had brought forward their own campaign, which had been due to start mid-week targeting the Central financial district.</p>
<p>Along with <a class="cite"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Hong</span></span> <span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Kong</span></span></a> and Chinese officials, some of <a class="cite"><span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Hong</span></span> <span class="highlight"><span class="highlight">Kong</span></span></a>'s most powerful tycoons have spoken out against the Occupy movement, warning it could threaten the city's business and economic stability.</p>

Hong Kong Police Fire Tear Gas At Democracy Protesters To Clear Streets

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><ul><li><strong>Protesters interrupted Stage 16 of the Tour de France when they blocked the road with bales of hay.</strong></li><li><strong>The protesters were identified by many as local farmers.</strong></li><li><strong>Police eventually moved the bales and combatted the protesters with pepper spray.</strong></li><li><strong>Many of the riders appeared to be affected by the pepper spray and one video showed a police officer using the spray just as riders were passing.</strong></li></ul><p><br>BAGNERES DE-LUCHON, France (AP) - Four-time champion Chris Froome was among riders whose eyes needed treatment for tear gas when a farmers' protest interrupted the 16th stage of the Tour de France on Tuesday.</br></p><p>Bales of hay blocked the road 30 kilometers into the 218-kilometer leg from Carcassonne to Bagneres De-Luchon. Tour organizers said police used tear gas to disperse the protesters as the peloton approached.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Froome, race leader Geraint Thomas, and world champion Peter Sagan appeared to be among those affected by the chemical and were treated with eye drops.</p><p>Reuters photographer&#xa0;Stephane Mahe captures these photos of (from left to right)&#xa0;Daniel Felipe Martinez of Colombia, Thomas, and&#xa0;Sonny Colbrelli of Italy.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>One video appeared to show a police officer using pepper spray on a protester within feet of the riders (look for the puff of spray between the red tractor and the white truck).</p><p>&#xa0;</p><p>The stage resumed after a 15-minute delay.</p><p>This Tour has been marred by incidents.</p><p>Race organizers have struggled to deal with angry fans protesting Froome's participation. After fans threw flares at riders in the climb to the ski resort of Alpe d'Huez, Tour organizers banned the use of smoke flares for the rest of the race.</p><p>Froome raced all season under the cloud of a potential ban for using twice the permitted level of salbutamol during his victory at the Spanish Vuelta in September. He was cleared only just before the Tour. He said he has been repeatedly spat at since the race started, and spectators have punched him and tried to make him fall off his bike.</p><p>Froome sits second in the general classification, 1 minute, 39 seconds behind Sky teammate Thomas.</p><p>___</p><p>AP Sports writer Andrew Dampf and Associated Press photographer Peter Dejong contributed to this story</p><p>___</p><p>More Tour de France coverage:&#xa0;https://apnews.com/tag/TourdeFrance</p><div></div></hr>

Tour de France halted by protesting farmers and cops who inadvertently hit riders with pepper spray

<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/undividing"></div><p></p></div></div><p>The camera pans to a close shot of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukick72Qafc">country star Brantley Gilbert</a>'s face as he stands alone in a field and&#xa0;a voiceover says,&#xa0;"I love the feeling out here. The freedom. The simplicity. The open road."</p><p>He bikes along country roads in Tennessee with his motorcycle buddies, with a medley of songs - from Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" - playing in the background.</p><p>"This is my home. No matter where I go, my heart stays here. My friends, my family, this country ... my country, my people," he says as they ride past a railroad crossing and an American flag waving atop a coffee shop.</p><p>The gritty black-and-white spot, which evokes an unapologetically Americana feel, made its debut during a NASCAR race on NBC last month. It's hardly an ad you'd expect from Apple, which tends to tout its products from sleek, sexy, and edgy angles. Even Apple Music has tended to focus on genres like pop, rap, and hip-hop, until now.</p><p>Maybe Apple's tone in this ad shouldn't come as a surprise. Country radio comes a close second to pop music among Americans ages 25 to 54, and it is especially big among young people living outside major urban areas, an important consideration given the larger effort by brands and ad agencies to understand, incorporate, and cater to "middle America" in recent months after Donald Trump's win.</p><p>"It started with the election, but it wasn't just the political landscape that was shell-shocked," said Jordan Cohen, chief marketing officer at Fluent, an ad-tech company that conducted a recent survey on consumers living in middle America. "The election made advertisers rethink whether they were actually in touch with this segment of the country."</p><p>Kate Rush Sheehy, group strategy director at ad agency R/GA Austin, agreed.</p><p>"People were shocked by the outcome. There was confusion, anguish, and maybe even a few tears," she said, referring to the morale at the agency the day after the results. "It didn't matter how anyone voted. What mattered is that it proved we didn't truly understand those who our communications are designed to reach."</p><p>The election, in other words, was a rude awakening for marketers. At best, they realized that they had been largely indifferent to the wide swath of Americans living in "flyover country," and, at worst, completely blind to them.</p><p>But in Trump's America, marketers have been rethinking how they cater to this audience. They've started taking guided tours of cities designed to help them better understand people in this consumer group. And they're doing research on core middle-America values for their marketing.</p><h2><strong>Cultural immersion </strong></h2><p>In January, fast-food chain Arby's along with its Minneapolis-based ad agency of record, Fallon, went on a cultural immersion trip to Nashville, a daylong tour of the city's local culture. For Arby's, the aim was to find more common values with people in the region, partly to make sure its "We Have the Meats" tagline continues to resonate.</p><p>"The idea is to make sure that Arby's remains relevant with our target audience, which we have identified as folks that are heavy meat eaters, family- and community-oriented, and those who work hard but do not take themselves too seriously," Jeff Baker, Arby's vice president of brand experience, told Business Insider. "We're proud of how we've been approaching our target."</p><p>Last year the restaurant chain introduced a venison sandwich at a handful of hunting-focused restaurants in the region. It sold out within minutes, not just because people in the area are avid meat eaters but because they have an affinity for hunting.</p><p>This year's tour - which spanned visits to a local restaurant, the city's Google-sponsored Entrepreneur Center, Nashville Fashion Alliance, and publishing giant Warner/Chappell Music - reaffirmed that the brand was on the right track, Baker said. He said it gave Arby's new ideas to keep its dialogue with middle America moving forward.</p><p>The tour was organized by the <a href="http://newheartlandgroup.com/">New Heartland Group,</a> an agency founded in 2001 by music-industry veteran Paul Jankowski who sees opportunity, more so today than ever before, in helping brands and coastal agencies better understand this massive consumer group. It's not hard to see why.</p><h2><strong>The alt-middle</strong></h2><p>Middle America has long been lumped by marketers into one stereotype-laden bucket. But recent studies have revealed more nuanced insights about the region. According to research by the New Heartland Group, for example, people living in the heartland are bound together by three core values: family, community, faith.</p><p>And it pays to appeal to these values. A recent national survey by ad-tech company Fluent of 26 "heartland" states, for example, found that Americans living in the heartland are more likely (53% versus 48%) to shop with brands that share, or exemplify, their core values than coastal Americans. Those in the heartland are also more likely to purchase from brands that produce goods in the US, share their core values, and make contributions to the community.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>&#xa0;</p><p>So it's unsurprising that marketers are doubling down on their efforts. According to Jankowski, the agency has been getting "significantly more calls" in the past six months from brands, and has been a part of several new business pitches for agencies who want to show that they get these audiences.</p><p>"Sixty percent of US consumers live in the area extending from North Dakota to Florida, in the South, and their core values play a major role in determining their buying behavior," Jankowski told Business Insider. "Brands have realized that they have no choice but to understand these values to build advocacy with their consumers."</p><h2><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></strong></h2><h2><strong>'Core American' values in creative</strong></h2><p>Another such brand is Farmers Insurance, known for its quirky ads highlighting bizarre situations that people file insurance claims based on. But its most recent spot has an undeniably rustic appeal, by no means an accident. It features a moose that decides to attack a park swing, ramming it so hard it mangles a family's mobile home.</p><p>According to David Measer, senior vice president and group strategic planning director at Farmers' ad agency RPA, the Los Angeles-based brand has changed its qualitative-research approach in the months after the election. Farmers has made an effort to allow middle America to play a greater role, both in informing its strategy and creative development. The ad is the product of this endeavor.</p><p>Measer is also helping other clients, including Honda, chart out their plans. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California who last year spent months researching America's "alt-middle" - the 100 million people in between the two coasts.</p><p>"Clients have started looking outside of the usual cities they would go to. They no longer assume that Chicago will be representative of everything between the coasts," he said. "The election left such a bad taste in so many people's mouths that a lot of marketers have started to look at the rest of the country. Rather than retreating, they want to engage."</p><h2><strong>Exercising restraint</strong></h2><p>It's now apparent to brands that middle America is no longer just an income level or a mailing address but a set of values that bind people together. And that means that if advertisers wish to integrate themselves into the lives of this group, old textbook-marketing ways of audience segmentation and targeting must go out the window.</p><p>According to Joe Maceda, managing director at <keyword id="6354777" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="media">media</keyword> agency Mindshare North America's Invention Studio, while clients have used demographic and psychographic parameters to target their audiences for years, they have been a lot more hesitant to target ads based on any overarching assumptions of late.</p><p>Research conducted on behalf of an alcohol brand that the agency works with suggested that its message and product were much more likely to resonate with left-leaning areas in the country. But the brand decided to adopt a much more neutral strategy, out of fear of alienating massive swaths of Middle America.</p><p>"In the end, given the current climate, they decided that they shouldn't be political, and certainly not left-leaning," he said, without naming the brand. "And they're not the only ones."</p><p>Advertisers are also being cautious about where their content shows up, more so in the highly politicized climate of today than before. A brand in the oil industry sector, based in the Midwest, recently asked its agency, Mediassociates, that its <keyword id="35666" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="advertising">advertising</keyword> run only on customized digital "white lists" of websites that excluded any publishers with perceived liberal biases, including The New York Times.</p><p>"The fear was that potential industry customers might have an adverse reaction to the brand, if they thought the brand was supporting a perceived 'wrong' political point of view," said Ben Kunz, executive vice president of marketing and content at the agency. "'Where' advertising appears against 'what' type of content is becoming a strategic part of every media plan."</p><h2><strong>More research</strong></h2><p>While some are exercising restraint, others are revamping their approaches. Digital agency R/GA Austin, for example, has a new strategy imperative. According to Rush Sheehy, since the election, the agency has been going out of its way to understand how "real" people feel. It's doing more focus groups, proprietary surveys, and primary research.</p><p>For its client RaceTrac, a chain of gas stations in the South, the agency spent a day doing research for the brand's summer campaign at one of its stores. It talked to people about why they go&#xa0;to RaceTrac, why it's an important part of their day, and what summer means to them.</p><p>Turns out the blue-collar folks who shop at RaceTrac do summer differently. While summer may be a time to plan a vacation for most consumers, the agency found that core RaceTrac customers don't have the means to get away from work for weeks at a time. Instead, they try to find 20 to 30 minutes a day to take a break and enjoy themselves. So for the brand's summer campaign, its strategy shifted from an aspirational strategy to honoring customers who choose to enjoy the summer every day.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>This insight informed the brand's media plan. Instead of running TV and digital ads, it invested significantly in theater ads playing before popular summer movies. RaceTrac's guests tend to celebrate their summer vacation with little things.</p><p>"One of the biggest catalysts to get smarter as marketers is to be more diligent and thoughtful," she said. "All major brands must serve people across areas and mindsets."</p><div></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/whats-inside-pimple-pus-bacteria-acne-2017-8">All the nasty things inside a pimple - and why you should stop popping them</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

You Searched For "tear gas on farmers" and got 7 results

Police in India shoot tear gas at farmers protesting for better crop prices

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Hong Kong Police Fire Tear Gas At Democracy Protesters To Clear Streets

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Tour de France halted by protesting farmers and cops who inadvertently hit riders with pepper spray

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After Trump's shocking win, advertisers faced 'confusion, anguish, and maybe even a few tears' - now they want to reach his voters

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