By Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead in Occupy – Recently, Britain’s less politically vocal under 25s, whose penchant to not vote has long been the bane of politicians, are gathering political momentum and emerging as a potent voice of opposition to the government. The most immediate cause of this movement is the 2015 U.K. Budget, which will be remembered most for leaving the nation’s most vulnerable behind. With no coalition to stifle the Conservatives’ painful austerity agenda, the newly-elected Tory government last month let rip into the welfare state, slashing benefits and targeting not only the sick and the poor – but more injudiciously, the young. In their election campaign, Conservatives talked about making Britain a more optimistic place for youngsters, but the Chancellor’s Budget was a particularly vicious attack on that demographic.
By Ruth McCambridge in NonProfit Quarterly – A recent report by the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice reports that Native Americans are killed by police at a higher rate than any other ethnic group. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that Native Americans make up almost two percent of those killed by police though they are only 0.8 percent of the population. While police kill young black men more than any other group, they kill Native Americans at a higher rate. As with African Americans, these killings are not isolated from the larger problem of police and societal violence, as this devastating article in Counterpunch discusses in the particular context of New Mexico, which in 2014 had the highest rate of police killing in the country.
By Ben Glaze in Mirror – Campaigners will try to pitch tents in Parliament Square tomorrow as they launch an Occupy-style protest. Hundreds of young activists are expected to arrive in Westminster, demonstrating against billions of pounds of cuts announced by Chancellor George Osborne . Youth Fight for Jobs spokesman Ian Pattison said: “Osborne’s Budget represents a declaration of war on young people. “The abolition of student maintenance grants, removal of housing benefit for 18 to 21-year-olds and exclusion of under-25s from the so-called ‘living wage’ all add up to a bleak picture for our generation. “This grim outlook of increasing hardship stands in stark contrast with Osborne’s treatment of the rich.
By Geoff Gilbert in Waging NonViolence – The young black and brown activists descended on Nashville to stand together in resistance against the policies that criminalize them — policing practices that have the effect of racial and socio-economic profiling, like “broken windows” policies; excessive drug sentences and drug enforcement in low-income communities; the systematic separation of immigrant families made more efficient by the post-9/11 creation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the Department of Homeland Security; and the perverse social incentives created by increasing privatization of prisons and detention centers. “Criminalization of young people of color has different guises, but it’s all the same,” said Malaya Davis, an organizer with the Ohio Student Association, or OSA. “[Our] demand was just for the governors to somehow acknowledge our presence and statements.”
By Priscilla Frank in Huffington Post – In 2011, street artist JR made a call to art and a call to action — a call he hoped would reach people around the world. “I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project,” he said. “And together, we’ll turn the world inside out.” “Inside Out” is the name of the project, which challenges people around the globe to share their portrait and a message they believe in. Thus far, the project has attracted over 200,000 people from 112 countries, from Ecuador to Nepal to Palestine. Issues addressed range from climate change to gender-based violence, all communicated through the simple yet striking image of a large, black-and-white pasted portrait.
By Sam Smith in ProRevNews. On no single issue, is the media’s pretension of objectivity more regularly violated. Its true purpose in this matter is to perpetuate the myth of the sacred role of the warrior. In fact, as Joseph Conrad noted, the hero and the coward are those who, for one brief moment, do something out of the ordinary. At least the ones we honor, that is. The career firefighter, the inner city grandmother raising six grandchildren whose father is in jail and mother has a lousy job, or the teacher year after year helping to save those who society has preemptively discarded are not treated as sacred, as heroes, or as worthy of special honor during political campaigns and or on the evening news. But killing some Iraqis, or being killed by them: that’s the real thing.
These are important days, not only for Baltimore, but for the entire country. People had to resort to bricks and fire in order to be heard, but finally the authorities (and the world) can no longer ignore the voices of the youth, the mothers, the fathers of Sandtown, who have much to talk about. They talk about the constant abuse of the police force and the everyday racism that consigns black people to a sub-human status. They talk about how the city authorities have completely divested from these neighborhoods, privatizing the little social housing that was left, closing down the recreation centers and cutting down water provisions to those households that cannot afford to pay the bills, while at the same time spending millions of dollars in TIFs and other subsidies to the big downtown developers. They also talk about jobs, or more precisely the lack thereof, and the absence of perspectives for most of the black youth of Baltimore (and so many other cities in the United States). Because racism is the mask exploitation hides under. It constitutes yet another instrument to oppress marginalized communities and undermine social solidarity.
Genetically engineered crops, or GMOs, have led to an explosion in growers’ use of herbicides, with the result that children at hundreds of elementary schools across the country go to class close by fields that are regularly doused with escalating amounts of toxic weed killers. GMO corn and soybeans have been genetically engineered to withstand being blasted with glyphosate – an herbicide that the World Health Organization recently classified as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The proximity of many schools to fields blanketed in the chemical puts kids at risk of exposure. But it gets worse. Overreliance on glyphosate has spawned the emergence of “superweeds” that resist the herbicide, so now producers of GMO crops are turning to even more harmful chemicals.
YOUNG: I think it was 8,000 kids that really applied. I want to make sure that all 8,000 of those kids get jobs. JANIS: We spoke to the Mayor’s office, who told us that some of the 3,000 applicants may have found work elsewhere, and that the Mayor is also looking for private funding. But earlier this week several groups say the city government itself, not the private sector, should be funding jobs. Among them, former city council president and mayoral candidate Lawrence Bell, who called for more direct government funding for neighborhoods like Gilmor Homes, where Gray was arrested before he died. LAWRENCE BELL, FMR. CITY COUNCIL PRESIDENT: Black men are no different from any other men. Given an opportunity, given an alternative, a good alternative, a living wage, they will choose that over the illegal drug market where they’re risking life and limb.
Baltimore, there was a 3,000 percent increase in volunteers to mentor disadvantaged children in the city. A very small percentage of the protesters were causing damage, and among them were mostly children who were too young to know any better, and people who were in extremely desperate situations. The vast majority of the protesters in the city were peaceful and did not cause any damage to private property. Teenagers in the city were also responsible for “the purge” scare, in which students threatened to start a crime spree of vandalism begining in a Baltimore mall. Luckily, the teenagers were stopped and talked-down by local gang members, who had recently called a truce to keep peace in the community. The fact that so many children were involved in the destruction seen this week, has inspired many residents in Baltimore to reach out and give needy children some much needed support.
This is the scene where it all began. The site of the first clashes between police and juveniles that escalated into a night of rioting and destruction. It thrust Baltimore onto the national stage in the wake of the killing of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in police custody. The governor of Maryland announced a state of emergency and the mayor imposed a week-long curfew. Little was said in the media about what sparked Monday’s outburst. But The Real News has obtained documents from an anonymous source that suggest a pattern of harassment over the past two weeks since the death of Gray. Police officers have been arresting mostly young African-American students after they got let out of schools and after they refused police orders to get on the bus and go home. According to the Baltimore Police arrest reports acquired by THE REAL NEWS, officers arrested teenagers as young as 14- and 15-years-old.
In late February, the American Civil Liberties Union commissioned a global poll surveying millennials (18- to 34-year-olds) in 10 countries, including the United States, about their opinions of Snowden and what the effect of his disclosures will mean for privacy. The results confirmed that surveillance reform, like marriage equality, will come about because of generational change. The poll showed that in every country surveyed — Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Spain and the U.S. — millennials have an overwhelmingly positive opinion of Snowden. In continental Europe, 78% to 86% has positive opinions of him. Even in the United States, where the Justice Department has charged Snowden with espionage, 56% view him favorably.
What are the lessons we can take from these movements that apply to today? With regards to Shays’ Rebellion, we can look at two things: • The protesters had a clear, coherent message and stuck with it • They escalated the situation over time. With regards to a clear message, the best thing student debt activists can do today is to get on the same page with one another so that there is one, coherent message that gets repeated again and again. This will help serve as a guiding point for the goal that is to be achieved. This means activists can up the ante and bring more attention to their cause by doing things like blocking roads and disrupting the status quo in a variety of peaceful, nonviolent ways.
At a time when established progressive organizations are asking about how to loop in today’s tech-savvy youth, some of Forward Together’s youth leaders stressed that the medium isn’t as important as the message itself. “All media is just getting intensified. I don’t think people are throwing out their books,” said 21-year-old Denea Crowell, a junior at NC Central University. “As things continue to happen in the U.S. and our communities, people are becoming more conscious. Not only do they want to learn, they want to do something.” According to 19-year-old Hakeem Dykes, a freshman at Shaw University, younger generations are becoming more turned on to independent media than ever before, simply because it devotes a greater portion of its coverage to stories young people are interested in.
I’m excited because it seems people are waking up—people from low- and middle-income communities, people who have typically been in the margins, who weren’t part of organizations. When we first started mobilizing in 2012, I could have never imagined things would have happened this quickly. On the other hand, this really is something that, if you look back at history, was easy to predict. You have police who do not come from the community and have a culture of contempt for black and brown people, especially when they’re young and poor. You have communities with no say in the way their lives are lived, no educational opportunities, no jobs that will make ends meet. And you have rampant and growing explosions between police and the people that they’re supposed to protect. This is a recipe for disaster. This is 1967. This is 1968, when cities around the country, including Chicago, Newark, Detroit, Oakland and Watts, began to explode.
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