Over 300 students and community supporters gathered on the Oval on March 1 to protest student debt, tuition increases, and a range of other issues relevant to college students.
Over 300 students and community supporters gathered on the Oval on March 1 to protest student debt, tuition increases, and a range of other issues relevant to college students.
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Forty students from across Ohio demonstrated in front of the Ohio Union Sunday afternoon by burning papers with their amounts of student debt written on them. The protest, which started at about 4 pm, opened with a march from inside the Union where students met earlier for the Ohio Youth Congress. As the students emerged outside, a large banner reading “Take Back Student Power” was dropped from the top floor of the parking garage next door. A few students in the march spoke briefly to their peers, and emphasized topics as diverse as tuition hikes and universities’ complicit attitudes toward conflict minerals. Before students began burning their student debt signs, they were encouraged to look around at each others’ numbers – which ranged from $20,000 to much more – and chanted “Holla back, I got yo back” in unison....
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Today marks a major shift in the politics of Wikipedia, the site famous for being a free source of information (and occasional misinformation) for anyone in the world with an Internet connection. The key to Wikipedia’s success is that it contains articles on just about any product, company, band, TV show, or idea in existence – and describing these often requires use of names, images, storylines, trademarks, or other materials that can be problematic under copyright law, but generally are not when used in the context of simply providing information. But, in response to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) – bills that, if passed by Congress, could cause any foreign website accused of copyright infringement to be shuttered by the U.S. Government without substantial evidence – Wikipedia has pledged to keep its English-language...
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America likes to pretend that the March on Washington was the finale of a decade long Civil Rights Movement; that MLK never wrote another word or spoke another thought after finishing his “I Have a Dream” speech; and that the only goal of his legacy and struggle was to bring Civil Rights to the Black community.
Here is King circa 1967 sharing his powerful vision for a more egalitarian world – a place where people are not just free from racism and discrimination but also free to access the necessities of life.
Read more in Intersections, The Robin Hood Theory
At 3:05 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, I felt my house shake. My first thought was that something heavy must have fallen over and, god forbid, broken. It wasn’t until I logged on to Facebook and saw the multitude of “Did we just have an earthquake?” statuses that I even realized I had just experienced a 4.0 magnitude earthquake. I know earthquakes happen, and that they occur often in some parts of the U.S. So why was everyone making such a big deal over a non-lethal quake? Because earthquakes don’t happen in Boardman, Ohio. In fact, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, there was not a single earthquake recorded with an epicenter in Youngstown (or in the encompassing Mahoning County) until 2011. Just to make sure, I checked out the U.S. Geographical Survey’s map of all recorded...
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The refusal of House Republicans to go along with the Senate approval of a two-month extension on President Obama’s middle-class tax cut has spurred a media frenzy over speculated fragmentation within the Republican Party: between Senate and House, between the Tea Party-aligned and non-aligned. It has been referred to ironically as a ‘Christmas present’ from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party for the 2012 presidential race.
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WEST CHESTER, OH — Protestors upset by Republican House Speaker John Boehner’s midnight hour passing of Keystone XL Pipeline legislation performed a human oil spill at his Ohio office this morning. Nearly 40 people from around the state arrived at Speaker Boehner’s office at eleven in the morning. They were met by a congressional staffer who barred their entry on the basis that ‘they were not constituents.’ When the protestors delivered their message from the sidewalk, she remained stern and did not take notes, but promised to relay the information to the congressman. The protestors created a human oil spill after being shut out from the office. Activists dressed in black sprawled out on the pavement to visually represent the environmental costs of the planned Keystone XL pipeline. They also dumped Boehner Bills from a simulated pipeline to show...
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While the media focus of the Occupy movement was initially on its message—to stop economic injustice, support direct democracy, and reclaim public space, confrontations with police departments around the country have attracted more occupiers while bringing questions of police brutality and excessive use of force to the fore of the movement’s consciousness. Now the occupy movement’s identity is inextricable from its interactions with law enforcement. While the movement’s core values remain the same as when it began, police busting heads makes good news, and the media has shifted its focus to Occupy’s increasingly hostile relationship with police departments around the country. The nationwide police crackdown on the movement has not only demonstrated the willingness of police to use excessive force, but also the ways in which tactics for policing protests have changed over the years. The occupy movement has...
Read more in Blogs, The Daily Truth, The ___ Generation, Uncategorized