Thousands of students in cities all across Chile hit the streets on May 14 to demand free education. Chilean students, frustrated with President Michelle Bachelet and the government’s lack of progress on the issue, want to have more of a say in how education is reformed. “They don’t listen to us on the reforms,” Maria Jose, a 17-year-old student at the Santiago protest, told AFP. “We want to be heard. We’re disillusioned. It’s the same every time, the reforms get gridlocked before they accomplish anything truly good.” On May 21, Bachelet is set to make a speech addressing her plans for how she will go about making changes to Chile’s education system, and the students hoped to make a statement ahead of that speech. “This march has a direct relation with the fact that we are a week away from May 21,” Valentina Saavedra, president of the Confederation of Chilean Students, or ConFECH
MONTREAL – A student group is denouncing the police after a protester was shot in the face with part of a tear-gas canister at an anti-austerity demonstration. Naomie Tremblay-Trudeau told various media Friday she is considering legal action against the police after video of her being shot at point-blank range in Quebec City circulated on YouTube. Camille Godbout of the ASSE student group says it wasn’t an isolated incident. She said a police dog attacked a protester earlier this week in Quebec City and that another demonstrator was injured after being allegedly struck by a police baton in Montreal.
The UMW Board of Visitors has dismissed the demands of thousands of students, faculty, and people worldwide by refusing to establish a subcommittee to investigate the financial realities of a fossil free endowment. Students are taking action to show that this denial is unacceptable. In February, DivestUMW delivered a detail presentation on divestment to the Board and demanded the formation of a subcommittee, which would provide information and transparency to advance divestment research. A month after the presentation, Holly Cuellar, Rector of the Board, denied the students’ demand without deliberation or a vote. Stand with these students to show Rector Cuellar that this dismissal is unacceptable. We’re counting on your help to build a strong collective voice.
A march is being organized in Charlottesville for 8 p.m. tonight, from the main landmark on campus—the Rotunda—to the police department downtown. Reports: Black UVA Student Beaten by Police for Having Fake ID Charlottesville, VA – On Tuesday night, a third-year student at the University of Virginia named Martese Johnson was reportedly thrown to the ground by police officers and bloodied in public on the main social drag of campus—all apparently because he tried to use a fake ID. Martese Johnson is black. All reports are alleging that he did not resist the officers’ use of force in any way, and the officers continued to brutalize him while onlookers pleaded with them to stop. A graphic photo taken at the scene is now circulating widely on the internet.
In 2013, Illinois passed a lawrequiring schools to ask elementary and secondary students to provide passwords to their social media accounts if they believe that they violated a rule or policy. The policy went into effect this month, and one school district, the Triad Community Unit School District #2, already sent out letters to parents informing them of the new policy. “It’s one thing for me to take my child’s social media account and open it up, or for the teacher to look or even a child to pull up their social media account, but to have to hand over your password and personal information is not acceptable to me,” said Sarah Bozarth, one of the parents in the district. “The district understands student privacy interests,” Superintendent Leigh Lewis told The Washington Post, “and will not haphazardly request social media passwords unless there is a need, and will certainly involve parents throughout the process.”
Protests, demonstrations and “white coat die-ins” at medical schools in New York, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere (see list below) in response to the recent decisions by authorities to not bring indictments in the police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York. We as medical students feel that this is an important time for medical institutions to respond to the violence and race-related trauma, which affect our communities and the patients we serve. We feel it is essential to begin a conversation about our role in addressing the explicit and implicit discrimination and racism in our communities and reflect on the systemic biases embedded in our medical education curricula, clinical learning environments, and administrative decision-making. We believe these discussions are needed at academic medical centers nationwide.
I woke up in fear, and for the rest of the day it controlled my life the way fear tends to control people’s lives. It dominated my thoughts the way it dominates people’s thoughts and actions, paralyzes them until they are deprived from all hope and the very basic human capacity to change the world around them. My fear was provoked by a nightmare, not one I saw in my dreams, but rather a nightmare I have been unfortunate enough to observe with my own eyes and come to know intimately. It was the fear of waking up and realizing my friends have disappeared at night; lifted from their beds by men in uniforms, leaving friends and family behind who from that day on can only guess after the fate of their loved ones. This fear is not imaginary. This is the fear I struggled to understand when talking to my friends and fellow students when I lived and studied in Mexico. It is a fear that is incomprehensible for someone who has not lived in a country where more than 100.000 have been killed and disappeared in less than ten years.
The end of the year is turning out to be among the busiest times since the early days of the occupy encampments. Many Popular Resistance campaigns are coming to fruition and key conflicts around the country and world are at critical moments. After mid-December and through mid-January there should be an opportunity to reflect and plan for 2015, but for now, we are running at full speed on issues that impact all of us. If you can get involved – we need you. The Grand Jury’s announcement in Ferguson is expected imminently and many have issued a nonviolent call to action. The FCC has its next hearing on Dec. 11. The TPP negotiators are coming to Washington, DC on Dec. 7 and campaigns to stop the extreme extraction of fossil fuels are in critical moments. All of this and more means that your involvement is needed however you are able to participate.
It is our responsibility to see that children are able to mature into healthy strong adults whose lives will bear fruit. That means we need to understand child development and carefully craft our lessons and experiences and stories to meet the children where they are. Asking them to do tasks before they are cognitively ready for them is not only ineffective, but directly harmful, bringing stress and alarm into what should be a joyful process of self discovery. Too much stress and alarm, we know now, stops development and maturation in its tracks. A test that makes a child vomit is harmful not only to the child, but to the nation. Children who are asked to do repetitious tasks that are “boring”, who are pushed to meet “standards” that are not developmentally appropriate, will not become children who love learning They may be able to score well on multiple choice tests, but their capacities for independent thought and creativity will be stunted. They may be “career ready”, but will in no way be prepared for the enormous challenges that face us as a species.
We scholars, students and academics from Mexico and elsewhere who live and work outside of Mexico join the voices of concern and distress for the violence that prevails in Mexico. The events that took place in Iguala on September 26, 2014 are one of the most deplorable moments in the country’s history. There are no words to express the horror and fury that we feel at the murder of six people, three of them students at the “Raúl Isidro Burgos” Normal School in Ayotzinapa (one of them by the most savage of means), and by the disappearance, at the hands of the government and the local police, of another 43 students. We express our solidarity with the demands for justice being expressed and we share in the pain of the families, friends and colleagues of the Ayotzinapa students. We are profoundly indignant at the magnitude of the events and the fact that the Mexican government has offered contradictory statements and presented results that are not only meaningless but actually quite worrisome: the irregularities of the investigation grow by the day without shedding any light on the capture of the perpetrators or the whereabouts of the 43 students and, instead, more mass graves are discovered and many more bodies found.
The flames started to engulf the municipal palace of Chilpancingo in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero as the rage built within the students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College who, for over two weeks, have received no answers concerning the whereabouts of 43 of their fellow students. The last time the group of missing students were seen was in the custody of Mexican municipal police forces, who detained them after opening fire on their caravan in an attack that killed six people and injured dozens more. This massacre and subsequent disappearance of the students, known as “normalistas,” has sparked an international movement demanding that the 43 students be found alive. But it has also called into question the deep ties between drug cartels and Mexican politicians. To understand the political significance of the Ayotzinapa case, it’s important to understand who the students are.
This week we are inspired by the communities that are standing up to police abuse and by the students in Mexico and Hong Kong who are placing themselves at risk in order to fight for their rights. Ferguson Protests Inspire Last weekend was the national gathering in Ferguson, MO to demand the arrest of Officer Darren Wilson and justice for the families of slain black men such as Mike Brown and Vonderrit Myers. Thousands of people participated in 4 days of nonviolent actions beginning with a march to the police station on Friday night, a massive march through downtown St. Louis on Saturday, direct action training on Sunday, an occupation at St. Louis University and multiple actions on ‘Moral Monday’ including clergy being arrested at the police station, protests that shut down several Walmarts, an action at a mall, a protest inside the City Hall and protests at political fundraisers.
The occasion was the launch of world tour of the Big Book: Pages for Peace Project. A decade in the making, the book started when middle school students solicited and received original messages of peace from the likes of the Dali Llama, Maya Anelgou, Nelson Mandela, President Jimmy Carter, the late Senator Ted Kennedy and thousands of others from all over the world. It is these letters, poems, and artwork that populate the Big Book: Pages for Peace. “It has taken you ten years to create this extraordinary book,” Ban Ki-moon said in his video address, “at twelve feet high and (twenty feet wide, when open) it truly lives up to its name. You have 3,500 messages of peace from all over the world, and now with mine you have 3,501. What an amazing achievement, and what a fantastic commitment.”
Some ten thousand members of the bases of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation marched briskly through San Cristobal de las Casas on October 8. They gathered on the outskirts of the city, under a blue sky stained with clouds that threateend rain and then walked in long, orderly lines toward the central plaza of the city. The long river of Zapatistas moved fluidly and silently; the only sound was the steps of their shoes and boots. They carried signs that read “Your rage is ours”, “Your pain is our pain” and “You are not alone”. The message was for the students of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero and for the families that found out that on on Sept. 26-27 their sons were killed or kidnapped as they traveled by bus, at the hands of municipal police in complicity with the drug trafficking organization Guerreros Unidos. Two weeks from the attacks there are 6 dead and 43 disappeared.
A group of young people affiliated with the Ohio Students Association and the economic and racial justice network Freedom Side are now occupying the police station in Beavercreek, Ohio, demanding that police chief Dennis Evers meet with them in the wake of the killing of John Crawford III by Beavercreek police officer Sean Williams. A grand jury failed to indict Williams for the shooting on September 24, and the students, who have been organizing around Crawford’s death since August, have moved to escalate. After the news came down that Williams would not be indicted, organizer Malaya Davis tells Salon, the group sat down to consider next steps and came up with three demands.
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