Activism

March For Our Lives Awakens Spirit Of Student And Media Activism Of 1960s

March 30, 2018 By Errol Salamon, Theconversation.com Educate! Activism, Guns, Media, Youth Activism

Student journalists used media as a key tool for activism in the widespread social movements of the 1960s, journalism scholar Kaylene Dial Armstrong writes in her book “How Journalists Report Campus Unrest.” One notable student protest happened in Washington, D.C., 50 years ago. In the spring of 1968, student demonstrators occupied the administration building at Howard University, a historically black school in Washington to protest racial inequality. Starting on March 19, more than 1,000 students shut down administrative operations at the university until March 23. One of the lead organizers, Adrienne Manns, was the editor-in-chief of Howard’s student newspaper, The Hilltop. The Hilltop supported the protesters from the outset. “It is the responsibility of The Hilltop to present issues and suggest solutions,” read a front-page editorial on March 8, 1968, in the lead-up to the occupation.

Walk To Palestine: Activist Walking 5,000km

March 21, 2018 Staff, Aljazeera.com Resist! Activism, Israel, Occupation, Palestine

Twenty-five-year-old Swedish activist Benjamin Ladraa is on a treacherous walk from Sweden to Palestine to raise awareness about human rights violations in the occupied territories. As of Wednesday, he is in Bulgaria and should reach Istanbul on March 20, walking 30-50km a day. Ladraa began his 5,000km journey from Gothenburg, Sweden, on August 8 last year. "The plan is to continue through Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and again through Syria to Jordan, and if I cannot get into Palestine, I will try to inform the media about it," he said.

Columbus Activists Turn Out To Support ‘Black Pride 4’ Protesters During Sentencing

March 21, 2018 Prince Shakur, Injusticetoday.com Educate! Activism, LGBTQ, Ohio, Protests

On March 13, roughly two dozen community activists and supporters gathered outside a courtroom in Franklin County Municipal Court to support four young activists accused of disrupting last June’s pride parade in Columbus, Ohio. The Black Pride 4 — Wriply Bennet, Ashton Braxton, Deandre Miles-Hercules, and Kendall Denton — and six other activists blocked the path of the parade for seven minutes last June “to protest the acquittal of Jeronimo Yanez, the Minnesota police officer who killed Philando Castile in 2016, as well as to shed light on the lack of safe spaces for black and brown people in the LGBTQIA+ community,” according to their press release. Three out of four of those arrested were sentenced Wednesday to two years of probation and dozens of hours of community service; two of them were fined.

Black Anti-Racist Protester Found Not Guilty Of Assault Against White Spremacist

March 17, 2018 Emily Shugerman, Independent.co.uk Resist! Activism, Courts, Racism, White Nationalism

A black man who was beaten at a white supremacist rally this summer – and later charged with assault – has been acquitted on all charges. DeAndre Harris made national headlines when he was attacked in a parking garage following the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August. Supporters were shocked when one of his alleged assailants – white supremacist Harold Ray Crews – responded by filing his own assault charges against Mr Harris. More than 100 of Mr Harris's supporters turned out to hear Charlottesville General District Court Judge Robert Downer read out his verdict on Friday, according to NBC. The judge found the 20-year-old not guilty, sparing him up to 12 months in prison and a $2,500 fine.

Women Will Rid The World Of Nuclear Bombs

March 17, 2018 Heidi Hurtur, Damemagazine.com Strategize! Activism, Nuclear Weapons, Sexism, Women

Today, experts say, we are inching ever closer to nuclear catastrophe. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists defines how close we are to nuclear war with their metaphorical Doomsday Clock. Earlier this year, on January 25, the Bulletin moved the minute hand to two minutes to midnight. North Korea has a greater capacity than ever to harm other countries, including the U.S.—and apparently so does Russia. The hypermasculine violent language between the U.S. and North Korea has provoked international tensions. Russia and the U.S. are at odds. South-Asia, Pakistan and other nations are increasing their arsenals, tensions over the Iran nuclear deal are mounting, and weakened U.S. international diplomacy under President Trump has advanced nuclear dangers worldwide. Expert nuclear war planner, Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Pentagon Papers and The Doomsday Machine, says he is terrified. So am I.

Teaching Students How To Dissent Is Part Of Democracy

March 16, 2018 Sarah Stitzlein, Theconversation.com Create! Activism, Democracy, Protests, Students

In scenes unprecedented in previous school shootings, the past few weeks have been marked by students taking to the streets, to the media, to corporations and elected officials in protest over gun practices and policies. Responses to these teens have been mixed. Some have celebrated their passion. Some concluded that the students are immature and don’t yet fully grasp longstanding issues with the Second Amendment. Some questioned the voices and perspectives of the teens. Still others see the protests as an inappropriate use of time that might be better spent reaching out to loner students who may be prone to future acts of violence. Some schools have even threatened to take disciplinary action against students for engaging in protests during school hours. This has prompted universities like my own to promise students that disciplinary actions that stem from peaceful protest will not be held against them when they seek college admission.

7 Things We Learned From D.C. Area Black Lives Matter Week Of Action In Schools

February 24, 2018 Teaching for Change, Medium.com Resist! Activism, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Washington DC

The Black Lives Matter Movement helps students connect with history in a new way. Talking about the Black Lives Matter Movement allowed students to reflect on the long history of the Movement for Black Lives. For example, a sixth grade Arlington teacher began her lesson on the U.S. Constitution with a discussion of the Black Lives Matter Movement. The class then read Mumbet’s Declaration of Independence, the true story of an enslaved woman in Massachusetts who sued for her own freedom. After the read aloud, students read the preamble to the Constitution and discussed who wasn’t included in the “we the people” phrase. Bringing it to today, they brainstormed how they could use the Constitution to fight for justice on issues in their own lives such as sexual harassment, deportation, the Muslim ban, health care, police brutality, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Young America

February 21, 2018 By Randall Amster, Commondreams.org Resist! Activism, History, Mass Shootings, Violence, Youth Activism

Nearly a century ago, Mohandas Gandhi started a new publication to share his vision of nonviolent organizing, filling it with inspiring quotations and political insights. He titled the journal Young India, to indicate that its teachings were intended to help the people plan for eventual independence, fusing the methods of building a movement with those required to begin (re)building a nation. Gandhi saw the means and ends as interconnected, and reflected this in his personal practices and societal aspirations. Of particular interest is the March 23, 1922, issue of the journal, which recounted proceedings from “The Great Trial” in which Gandhi was charged with attempting to promote “disaffection” toward the British colonial government. The exhibits against him were three articles he posted in Young India, including one titled “Tampering with Loyalty.”

A Woman’s Rebellion

February 21, 2018 By Rod Such, Electronicintifada.net Resist! Activism, Film, Israel, Occupation, Women

Naila and the Uprising, the latest documentary by Brazilian filmmaker Julia Bacha, who previously directed the 2009 documentary Budrus, centers on the life of Naila Ayesh and how she came to resist the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Naila was imprisoned and tortured for her resistance, and upon her release organized women to lead the uprising known as the first intifada that began in 1987. The film opens with a present-day scene of Naila looking through a photo album with her son Majd, who observes that asking someone to recall their past also means asking them “to relive it.” The viewer senses that this process will invoke painful memories, and indeed it does. Naila recalls that she was 8 years old in 1967, when the Israeli military invaded and took control of the West Bank...

My Unlearning Journey: An Interview With Manish Jain

February 7, 2018 Claude Alvares, Shikshantar.org Create! Activism, Class Struggle

When I was a kid in high school, I was bounced back and forth between honors classes and remedial classes in schools due to my rebellious questioning nature and boring classes/unispired teachers. I started to notice that the ‘dumb’ kids were not really dumb. In fact, they had many gifts which the school system was not able to see or appreciate. I noticed that many of those being labelled as ‘dumb’ were either from minority or low income backgrounds. Once you put kids into a track, it was very difficult to get out of it. I felt this was very unfair from a social justice perspective as a new kind of academic caste hierarchy. Later, I realized that using IQ tests and labelling millions of innocent children as ‘failures’ is one of the greatest crimes against humanity.

“We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices” Inspiration For Young Activists

January 25, 2018 Staff, Blacknews.com Educate! Activism, Children, Education

New York, NY — Random House Children’s Books will publish WE RISE, WE RESIST, WE RAISE OUR VOICES, an empowering collection of poems, letters, personal essays, art, and other works from over 50 diverse, award-winning children’s book authors and artists in collaboration with Just Us Books, a Black-owned publisher committed to exclusively producing Black and multicultural children’s books. Phoebe Yeh, VP/Publisher of Crown Books for Young Readers, acquired world rights for publication from Just Us Books co-founders and anthology compilers Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson. The beautiful, full-color keepsake collection will be available on September 4, 2018.

Remember Direct Action As Part Of Dr. King’s Legacy

January 14, 2018 Anton Woronczuk, www.therealnews.com Educate! Activism, Martin Luther King Jr, MLK

By Anton Woronczuk for the Real News. Well, Dr. King was involved in a whole range of activities in the five years that separated the March on Washington and his assassination. And yet these years have been excised. It's kind of like an assassination, a stealing of his life, a putting a cap on it, ending, somehow, in 1963, very conveniently. Dr. King was part of the changes of the '60s, but he was also changed by them, not necessarily changed in terms of his internal makeup, his worldview, but in terms of the range of topics that he as a Baptist minister thought that he could address. So everybody's familiar with the "I Have a Dream" speech. It's almost anodyne. But back in 1959--I'm going to read something to you that Dr. King wrote in a presentation. This is a dream that he had four years before his "I Have a Dream" speech.

Ahed Tamimi Offers Israelis Lesson Worthy Of Gandhi

January 11, 2018 Jonathan Cook, Counterpunch.org Resist! Activism, Israel, Nationalism

Sixteen-year-old Ahed Tamimi may not be what Israelis had in mind when, over many years, they criticised Palestinians for not producing a Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela. Eventually, colonised peoples bring to the fore a figure best suited to challenge the rotten values at the core of the society oppressing them. Ahed is well qualified for the task. She was charged last week with assault and incitement after she slapped two heavily armed Israeli soldiers as they refused to leave the courtyard of her family home in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah. Her mother, Nariman, is in detention for filming the incident. The video quickly went viral. Ahed lashed out shortly after soldiers nearby shot her 15-year-old cousin in the face, seriously injuring him.

Maine Town Wins Round In Tar Sands Oil Battle With Industry

January 6, 2018 Sabrina Shankman, Insideclimatenews.org Resist! Activism, Pipelines, Tar Sands

SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine—A federal judge has handed a win to South Portland, Maine over a pipeline company that wants to send tar sands oil through the city, a proposal seen as opening a path for Canada's crude to reach the East Coast for export. But the fight is not over. A federal district court judge dismissed on Dec. 29 all but one of the company's claims against the city. The ruling still leaves open a key question: whether the city is violating the U.S. Constitution by blocking the project. At the heart of the lawsuit is the question of local control and what—if anything—a community can do to block an unwanted energy project. The outcome could influence similar lawsuits elsewhere. When the Portland Pipe Line Corporation (PPLC) sued this small coastal city in 2015, it had some powerful allies, including the American Petroleum Institute, whose members include most major oil and gas companies.

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