Throughout American history, racial logic has played a terribly and terrifyingly tangible role in how we think and talk about criminality. On Monday night upwards of 700 protesters gathered on the steps of City Hall to demand justice for Trayvon Martin, the slain teenager from Sanford, Fla.
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Everywhere, we are seeing individuals and groups stand up against authority and injustice. From the United Students Against Sweatshops to the revolutions in the Arab Spring, the youth are making sure their voices are being heard. But what is protest? How costly is it and how much are we willing to give for justice? In many cases, individuals are willing to give much more than would be expected: from their time, to their health, to their lives. A couple of weeks ago, Palestinian Khader Adnan’s hunger strike came to end, on its 66th day. Held by Israeli authorities in administrative detention without charge, he fasted from December 18th 2011 – the day he was taken from his village where he served as a baker — to February 21st 2012. His health had reached critical condition, and doctors prompted Israeli authorities...
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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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Students from all over Ohio joined forces on Ohio State University’s campus to speak out against fracking on 11-18-11.
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Read more in Earth Tones, Environmentally Speaking...
Ohio State student activists took a page out of the Occupy playbook when they “mic checked” a panel discussion on shale drilling hosted by the the Subsurface Energy Research Center (SERC) at the Ohio Union on November 18th. The panel, which was made up of several industry experts, a state official and an environmental advocate, was intended to provide information on the oil and gas industry’s new, and extensive, horizontal hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) initiatives in Ohio. Approximately 10 minutes into the event, over thirty-five students from OSU and around the state interrupted state geologist Larry Wickstrom to deliver a message of their own to an audience of students, faculty, and industry professionals. Here is what they had to say (transcript below): Around the nation, activists are hijacking public forums to spread their message. The mic check tactic grew out...
Read more in Earth Tones, The ___ Generation, Uncategorized
So, if I were to get a protest superlative it would be, “Most Likely to Get Chant Wrong,” or, “Least Likely to Get Arrested,” you know, I’m that one kid who murmurs until I’m relatively sure that the noise is picking up. And then I kind of get freaked out when I can hear my own voice blaring. Occasionally, my arm gets tired and the sign droops or I realize that I’ve been holding it backwards for ten minutes. No big deal, no one’s watching me. Then I realize that someone smells like pee, but don’t want to be rude, so it takes a few minutes for me to navigate my escape from their side. Other times I just feel the drums so much that I want to break loose and move to the music and shout the chants...
Read more in Blogs, Un-education
In addition to functioning as a note-taker for the General Assembly held at 2pm on that Saturday, Oct. 15 I formally interviewed five people, and spoke with countless others throughout the day. I’d like to note before getting into the topic directly that not everyone I spoke with was comfortable with being quoted directly or having their names used in print, so I have a limited set of people who I can quote and reference. Subsequently, their voices are disproportionately represented here. In the future, I hope to expand and broaden my coverage to more voices.
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Occupy Columbus is a local manifestation of the now global phenomena of the occupation movement. Begun by those brave protestors at Tahrir Square in Cairo, carried onward by citizens of other nations during the Arab spring, and continued by Israeli youth through the summer, this style of protest has now spread across America. While the events in NYC are highly publicized, those here in Columbus have been slow to get broader media coverage. Attention to the Occupy Columbus movement has been increasing, however, but traditional media outlets have not tried to understand the movement so much as to report ‘the facts’. This series of articles will seek to fill in some of the gaps left by the local news outlets.
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