Thousands of young college students in the streets — some tearing down street signs and tipping a news van – were confronted by riot police and pepper spray before being dispersed late Wednesday evening. Another unruly mass of Occupy Wall Street protesters? No, it was Penn State students protesting the firing of a football coach.
After charges of sexual abuse by former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky were filed last Saturday, Penn State’s Board of Trustees met Wednesday evening and announced the immediate firing of head football coach Joe Paterno and President Graham Spanier for their complicit knowledge in the alleged sexual abuse. Following the announcement, thousands of students gathered in support of Paterno — endearingly known as JoePa — to protest the administration’s decision. At some point in the evening, the protest turned into a riot — which is sadly not the first at the so-called #1 party school.
Admittedly, the student protest-turned-riot does not speak for all of Penn State. As is often the case, the physical damage was inflicted by only a small number of people. Many students, alumni, faculty, and staff are, rather understandably, shocked and dealing with the news in a variety of ways — some extremely positive, like holding a “blue-out” at Saturday’s game to support victims of child abuse. Nevertheless, the events of Wednesday night show a culture rooted in violence, searching for meaning.
Through all the dynamic and dramatic progress of the Arab Spring, the pro-democracy campaign in the tiny island nation of Bahrain has tended to be sidelined. It has struggled to attract the world’s sympathy and attention due to a lack of foreign reporters on the ground and little good information circulating in news sources. Additionally, the Bahraini government has silenced local journalists, employed public-relations and lobbying firms to discredit the protesters, even while it regularly pays lip service to delivering reform.
Nada Alwadi, a Bahraini journalist (and Waging Nonviolence contributor), recently delivered a webinar talk from the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict in Washington, D.C., discussing the current challenges faced by the movement. She was formerly a reporter for Alwasat, a popular newspaper in Bahrain, and was detained in April by security forces for covering the protests in the capital of Manama. Nada left Bahrain earlier this year over concerns for her personal safety. She is currently working in the United States to spread awareness about the situation in her country.
On November 17, the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011 will come before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in a private hearing. It’s a bill that’s long overdue, as was its (rejected) precursor, the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010, also proposed by Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. If enacted, the bill would drastically reform the country’s current chemical safety legislation—the Toxic Substances Control Act—which, as it stands, is more loophole than not: a system so inefficient that in its 35 years, fewer than 10 chemicals out of 82,000 have ever been restricted or banned.
As researchers continue to investigate the breadth of the harm linked to chemicals exposure—from infertility and obesity to learning disabilities and autism—a range of organizations and activist groups are creating a movement for reform. The Safe Chemicals, Healthy Families campaign (SCHF), a national alliance representing over 11 million individuals, includes organizations ranging from Agent Orange Legacy (children of Vietnam War veterans), to Black Women for Wellness, to Consumers Union. But some of the biggest players, the front-line activists from Maine to California and everywhere in between, are moms.
I can’t remember the first time I heard the phrase “hunger strike.” I think it must have been when my dad went to Northern Ireland in the early 1980s to try and visit the men held in the Maze prison. My brother and I had a record of Irish political songs (are there any other kind?) and one told the story of Bobby Sands and the other men who refused to cooperate with the terms of their imprisonment. They refused to wear clothes, eat or use the bathroom. (They called it “being on the blanket” because they wore blankets instead of prison uniforms.)
In my child’s mind, I did not understand why anyone would do all of this—isn’t being in jail bad enough? Later I learned that they refused to eat or cooperate until they were recognized as political prisoners. The British government, which was occupying Northern Ireland, treated them like common criminals—no different from anyone else who had broken the law—but they saw themselves as a rival military force who, once apprehended, had to be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions strictures on holding prisoners of war. That is why Bobby Sands died, because the British would not treat him like a prisoner of war.
A downpour didn’t stop students from filling the streets of the main cities of Colombia yesterday. The biggest protest took place in Bogotá, where around 20,000 people walked for hours until reaching Bolivar Square. A day earlier, President Juan Manuel Santos tried to deter protesters by offering to withdraw the privatization bill they oppose once universities go back to normal academic activities. His offer was not convincing. The students once more decided to press on until the government and minister of education withdraw the proposed law.
The protests at least managed to frighten the ex-vice-president Francisco Santos, a relative of the current president. In a private interview, he expressed his surprise about the lack of authority that President Santos has shown in confronting the students. He feels that is time to use stronger force against them. At least 22 students were detained.
Media coverage of the protest was, as it usually is, very poor. The private national TV channels insisted on analyzing the traffic jams it produced and used the most violent footage they could when referring to it. They neglected to mention than the student strike has won support from high school students, parents, professors and some labor unions. Still, with cities around the country shut down for a day, this nonviolent movement showed how widely Colombians hold the conviction that the defense of education is a public good.
“We won. You won.” Those were Bill McKibben’s first words after the Obama administration’s announcement yesterday that it would delay a decision on the Canada-to-Texas KeystoneXL oil pipeline until after the 2012 election. His next words, however, were slightly less uplifting: “Not completely.”
This seems like an accurate read on the situation. On the positive side, as McKibben noted:
It’s important to understand how unlikely this victory is. Six months ago, almost no one outside the pipeline route even knew about Keystone. One month ago, a poll of “energy insiders” by National Journal found that “virtually all” expected easy approval of the pipeline by year’s end. As late as last week, CBC reported that TransCanada was moving huge quantities of pipe across the border and seizing land by eminent domain, certain that its permit would be granted. A done deal has come spectacularly undone.
“How long will those customers wait for Canadian crude oil to get to the marketplace before they sort of throw up their hands and say this is just never going to happen?” he asked.
My friend Anna Graves just sent me this link to photos she took during Occupy Oakland’s general strike on November 2. In our hyper-drive world, last week’s news is usually dead and buried, but even today it takes a while to drink in the real significance of something, especially when a certain take has already carried the day. Anna’s pictures offer us another chance to reflect on the import of this powerful public drama for economic equality.
So far, the meaning of the one-day strike has largely turned on the issue of violence and nonviolence, as Wayne Grytting summarized it on this site:
Occupy Oakland’s first attempt at a general strike began with press coverage that had supporters high-fiving across the country. Then came the hangover. Once again we watched as angry black bloc anarchists hijacked the media message. From the powerful pictures of protesters standing atop cargo vans, headlines of a shut down port and accounts of up to 10,000 peaceful marchers—including a children’s brigade of marching toddlers—we went to scenes of fire and chaos in the streets.
I did my best to smell and look expensive, like someone who would normally come out on a Monday night to hear “venture capitalist and turn-around CEO Steven Pease,” author of a 622-page book called The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement. The program began with a complimentary light dinner, then the talk: “Why Jews are Disproportionately High Achievers.” This was the first in a series of Wall Street-oriented events hosted at Birthright Israel’s alumni headquarters, a loft on West 13th Street with exposed brick walls and tasteful track lighting.
Inside my free copy of The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement—Birthright, flush with the cash of Wall Street bajillionaires like Michael Steinhardt, is very big on free—I found tables with statistics: 21% of Ivy League students are Jews, 11% of senators, 40% of NBA team owners, 31% of Forbes’ 400, 24% of Fortune‘s “25 Most Powerful People in Business,” 72% of“25 Real Estate Fortunes Among Forbes 400,” 23% of all Nobel prizes, and on and on. In every arena you could think of, Pease extolled “disproportionate Jewish achievement.”
The last time I’d been in that loft was early 2010, for a pre-trip Birthright orientation. (I wrote about my subsequent trip in The Nation.)But this time, I came with ten young Jews—a minyan—to Occupy Birthright. To liberate Birthright by repurposing its space.
A tree trunk in Athens' Syntagma Square graced by the Occupy movement's motto.
From a glance at a recent front page of The New York Times, you might guess that a political meeting in Athens this week would be full of talk about the resigning prime minister, bailout deals, and the Euro. The land that gave birth to European civilization now seems on the brink of sinking the whole continent’s economy. But, among those gathered on Monday in a basement in the neighborhood of Exarcheia—a kind of Haight-Ashbury for Greek anarchists—the agenda was completely different. They talked instead about parks, public kitchens, and barter bazaars. They even seemed pretty hopeful.
The lack of concern for political figureheads, in retrospect, was to be expected. Greek anarchists see no more reason to care about whether George Papandreou goes or stays than those at Occupy Wall Street are agonizing over Herman Cain’s sexual foibles. They have another kind of politics in mind.
This just in from our friends at the School of Authentic Journalism and Narco News TV—retired revolutionary Ivan Marovic guides us through three easy (or hard) steps to bring down a dictator, just like he did in Serbia in 2000. Follow his lead, and maybe someday you too will be sipping the sweet margarita of democracy.
I can’t remember the first time I heard the phrase “hunger strike.” I think it must have been when my dad went to Northern Ireland in the early 1980s to try and visit the men held in the Maze prison. My brother and I had a record of Irish political songs (are there any other kind?) and one told the story of 
“We won. You won.” Those were 
I did my best to smell and look expensive, like someone who would normally come out on a Monday night to hear “venture capitalist and turn-around CEO Steven Pease,” author of a 622-page book called The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement. The program began with a complimentary light dinner, then the talk: “Why Jews are Disproportionately High Achievers.” This was the first in a series of Wall Street-oriented events hosted at Birthright Israel’s alumni headquarters, a loft on West 13th Street with exposed brick walls and tasteful track lighting.