JacketFlap connects you to the work of more than 200,000 authors, illustrators, publishers and other creators of books for Children and Young Adults. The site is updated daily with information about every book, author, illustrator, and publisher in the children's / young adult book industry. Members include published authors and illustrators, librarians, agents, editors, publicists, booksellers, publishers and fans. Join now (it's free).
Login or Register for free to create your own customized page of blog posts from your favorite blogs. You can also add blogs by clicking the "Add to MyJacketFlap" links next to the blog name in each post.
Blog Posts by Tag
In the past 7 days
Blog Posts by Date
Click days in this calendar to see posts by day or month
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Protest, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 21 of 21
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: Protest in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
On Saturday 17th October, 16,000 people marched to protest against the new junior doctor contracts in London for the second time. The feeling at the protest was one of overwhelming solidarity, as people marched with placards of varying degrees of humour. Purposely misspelled placards reading “junior doctors make mistaks” were a popular choice, while many groups gathered under large banners identifying their hospital, offering 30% off.
When I ask college students what they know about the origins of Labor Day, the answer is usually straightforward: not much. But if the labor movement’s story is not on the tip of their tongues, it says less about them than it does about our era.
I went to the Anti Austerity Protest today and took my sketchbook.
The march started at Bank. Here are some people assembling and wondering if they are in the right place.
Here they worked out that they are in the right place.
Still at Bank. The streets are closed. The athmosphere is friendly. Drumming, chanting, leafletting. Every few minutes a sudden cheer goes through the crowd, not sure why.
Lots of families here. The crowd is starting to move.
There's not much police, surprisingly. Much less than I expected. A lot more protesters than I expected... really a lot.
Some surreptitious tagging going on at Bank. There's the first helicopter.
The chap in the background is inviting people to join the Socialist Party, I think.
Moving into Fleet Street.
There's an overwhelming amount of groups. Goths against austerity, Chefs against austerity (here in the foreground). The blimp is tethered to a fire engine crewed by the Fire Fighter's Union. Lots of local groups turned up to protest about hospitals, council housing and assorted public services (there's Haringey).
Here's a cluster of artists, mostly.
And some music.
Someone was asking "why don't they chant back?" Because they are the National Union of Sign Language Interpreters. They are chanting, look.
The Strand is packed. There's a tired child with a CUTS KILL paper hat, she perked up afetr a few minutes of being carried.
Sisters Uncut had an impressive presence, their crowd spanned the width of the road.
Some masked people. Most wore their masks on the back of their heads, like this girl with the princess backpack and the YOUTH FIGHT AUSTERITY placard, and her mum.
That dragon statue is quite alarming from the back.
I've never seen so many people marching together, and I didn't see anyone being aggressive to anyone else. I just watched the news, they did get some footage of "fireworks" (smoke bombs, the colourful sort, I stepped over a pretty bright purple one in passing) and people dressed in black with masks trying to block a road. They didn't try very hard. No point anyway, the city was full of people peacefully protesting.
(This is all scanned with my handheld scanner, excuse any wobbles.)
0 Comments on Anti Austerity Protest: SKETCHES as of 1/1/1900
The term slacktivism is based on a question that should never have been asked: are digital activists doing anything worthwhile, or are they mere “slacktivists,” activists who are slacking off?
The word arose from a debate about what value there was to all those people who were willing to click a few buttons to express their outcry over the shooting of Trayvon Martin or participate in the ALS ice-bucket challenge—but do nothing else. While some have hailed this new era of digital activism as a great democratizing force, opening up the political process and giving voice to people in a new way, others have scoffed at its impact. “The revolution will not be tweeted,” Malcolm Gladwell famously wrote.
Asking whether digital activism is a meaningful lever for social change is the wrong question to ask for several reasons.
First, the forms and capabilities of digital activism itself are changing rapidly, so that answers to the question become obsolete almost as fast as the technologies on which they are based.
Second, the types and uses of digital activism are as diverse as traditional forms of activism, ranging tremendously in what they can accomplish. So there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Digital activism, like regular activism, can be both effective and ineffective, both thin and thick.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, focusing on digital activism puts the emphasis on the tools, not the people who use the tools. The success of any change effort has always depended on the capabilities of the people who use whatever tools are at their disposal.
The right question to ask, then, is not “How good are the tools?” but instead “How good are the people and organizations who use those tools?” Lots of organizations, campaigns, and movements all over the world try to get people engaged in activism every day. Some are better than others. Why?
Conventional wisdom might argue that an organization’s ability to engage activists depends on a charismatic leader, a catchy message, or, in this day and age, its ability to leverage big data and technology. Those things all matter. But after spending two years comparing high-engagement organizations to their low-engagement counterparts, I find that what really differentiates the high-engagement organizations is their ability to create transformative experiences for their activists.
While most organizations focus on trying to get more people to do more stuff by making participation as easy as possible, these high-engagement organizations are doing more. Whether they are doing it online or offline, these organizations are carefully engaging people in ways that cultivate the motivational, strategic, and practical capacities they need to engage in further activism—as a result, everything from the kinds of activities they plan, to the way they structure their organizations, to the way they communicate with volunteers, is different. Combined with a hard-nosed focus on numbers, these organizations are thus able to achieve both the breadth and depth of activism that many organizations seek.
So let’s put the debate about slacktivism to rest. Instead, let’s begin asking how we can use technology to create transformative spaces where people can develop their individual and collective agency. If technology can create the kinds of interpersonal, transformative spaces face-to-face organizations have built for years, then we’ll be able to get the depth we want, but on a grander scale than we’ve ever had before.
Headline image credit: Protest Illustration. Public domain via Pixabay.
Late September and October 2014 saw Hong Kong experience its most significant political protests since it became a Special Administrative Region of China in 1997. This ongoing event shows the inherent creativity of language, how it succinctly incorporates history, and the importance of context in making meaning. Language is thus a “time capsule” of a place.
China, which resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong after it stopped being a British colony in 1997, promised universal suffrage in its Basic Law as the ‘ultimate aim’ of its political development. However, Beijing insists that candidates for Hong Kong’s top job, the chief executive, must be vetted by an electoral committee made up largely of tycoons, pro-Beijing, and establishment figures. The main demand of the protesters is full democracy, without sifting candidates through a selection mechanism. Protesters want the right to nominate and directly elect the head of the Hong Kong government.
‘Lennon Wall’, Hong Kong. Photo by Dr Jennifer Eagleton. Do not use without permission.
The protests are a combination of movements. For instance, the “Occupy Central with Love and Peace” movement is a civil disobedience movement that calls on thousands of protesters to block roads and paralyze Hong Kong’s financial district if the Beijing and Hong Kong governments do not agree to implement universal suffrage according to international standards.
The humble umbrella has become the predominant symbol of the 2014 protests – largely because of its use as protection against police pepper spray. I’m sure you will have seen the now-iconic photograph of a young student holding up umbrellas while clouds of tear gas swirl around him. Thus, the terms “umbrella movement” or “umbrella revolution” came into being.
Yellow or “democracy yellow” as the colour became known, became the symbolic colour of the 2014 protests. As the protests wore on, yellow ribbons have been tied to fences, trees, lapels and Facebook profile pictures as indicators of solidarity with the “umbrella movement”.
How yellow and the crossed yellow ribbon became the symbol of the campaign for democracy in Hong Kong is unclear. The yellow ribbon often signifies remembrance (“Tie a yellow ribbon round that ole oak tree”, a hit song from 1973 about a released prisoner hoping that his love would welcome him back). Perhaps it relates to the fact that in 1876, during the U.S. Centennial, women in the suffrage movement wore yellow ribbons and sang the song “The Yellow Ribbon”. Interestingly, one political party in Hong Kong’s uses the suffragette colours (green, white, and violet) as its political colours.
‘Wanted! Traitor, 689 CY Leung’, Hong Kong, Photo by Dr Jennifer Eagleton. Do not use without permission.
From previous colour revolutions, we know that colour is significant (Beijing saw it as a separatist push, and the interchangeable use of “umbrella movement” and “umbrella revolution” did not help). Historically, in imperial times only the emperor could wear yellow. Nobles and commoners did so on pain of death. Yellow has now become a colour for the masses.
A blue ribbon movement also arose, signifying support for the police and against the action of the occupiers; the “blue ribboners” were also known as the “anti-occupiers”. Currently, Hong Kong society seems divided between the pro-occupiers and the anti-occupiers. Subsequently, there has been massive “unfriending” of people on Facebook. Thus arose a new verb: “to go blue ribbony”; as in “my friend said the group chat [FB] has gone blue ribbony so she left.”
Numbers have always been important in Hong Kong’s recent history. In 1984, with the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the year 1997 became important as that was the date of day Hong Kong “reverted” to Chinese sovereignty. The first opportunity to ask for universal suffrage was 2007 (denied), and then 2012 (also denied).
“689” is the “the number that explains Hong Kong’s upheaval” (quipped The Wall Street Journal). Invoked constantly in the streets and on social media, “689” is the protesters’ nickname for Hong Kong’s leader. The chief executive is elected by a 1,200 member Election Committee made up mostly of elite, pro-Beijing individuals after first being nominated by that committee. C.Y. Leung, the current chief executive, was elected by 689 members of that committee. This small circle election is at the heart of protesters’ frustrations, so they use “689” as an insult that emphasizes Leung’s illegitimacy. When they chant “689, step down!” they indict Mr. Leung along with the Beijing-backed political structure that they see threatening their city’s autonomy and freedoms. There is an expression “689 冇柒用” (there is no 7 in 689), where “柒” means “7” and “7冇柒用” means “(he is) no fucking use.” Interestingly, “689” could be read as “June 1989”, the time of the Tiananmen protests in Beijing.
Jennifer’s post-it note, Hong Kong. Photo by Dr Jennifer Eagleton. Do not use without permission.
In addition to protest songs such as ‘Umbrella’ by Rihanna (naturally), ‘Do you hear the people sing’ from Les Miserables, and John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, just to name a few, a very mundane ditty served as a tool of antagonism. This was the song “Happy Birthday”. Employing the happy birthday tactic was used by protesters when others shouted abuse at them. Singing “happy birthday” (sàangyaht faailohk, in Cantonese) to opponents, which served to annoy and disorientate them no end.
Chinese characters are made up of components called ‘radicals’. After the now iconic photograph of a young student holding up umbrellas while being tear-gassed, an enterprising individual came up with the following character扌傘, a combination of two ‘radicals’: 手 for “hand” → becoming 扌 on the left and the character for “umbrella” (傘) literally, a hand raising an umbrella. The definition for this character is to “to protest and persevere with peace and rationality until the end”, explaining that “with the radical ‘hand’, the word symbolizes the action of opening an umbrella”. The character ultimately has the meaning of “withstanding, supporting and not giving up the faith”.
The protests in Hong Kong are an ongoing phenomenon. The outpouring of linguistic and semiotic creative has been breath-taking.
Feature image credit: Hong Kong Protests, by Leung Ching Yau Alex. CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0 via Flickr.
Now that the National Guard and the national media have left, Ferguson, Missouri is faced with questions about how to heal the sharp power inequities that the tragic death of Michael Brown has made so visible. How can the majority black protestors translate their protests into political power in a town that currently has a virtually all-white power structure?
Recent experiences demonstrate that moving from protest to power is no easy task. For 18 days in 2011, hundreds of thousands of protestors filled Tahrir Square in Egypt to bring down the government of Hosni Mubarak, but three years later, the Egyptian military is back in power. Hundreds of Occupy Wall Street protestors encamped in Zucotti Park for 60 days in the fall of 2011, but few policies resulted that help ameliorate the income inequality they protested. Both of these movements, and many others like them — from Gezi Park in Turkey to the Indignados in Spain — were able to draw hundreds or thousands of people to the streets in a moment of outrage, but lacked the infrastructure to harness that outrage into durable political change.
Protestors in Ferguson risk the same fizzle unless they can build — and maintain — a base of engaged activists and leaders who will persist even after the cameras leave. Transformation of entrenched power structures like a military regime in Egypt, or structures of inequality and state-sanctioned police force in the United States happens only when there is a counterbalancing base of power. That counterbalancing base of power, has to come from the people.
How do people, in these instances, become power? Research shows that building collective power among people depends on transforming people so that they develop their own capacity as leaders to act on injustices they face. Transforming protest into power, in other words, starts with transforming people.
“Howard University Ferguson Protest” by Debra Sweet. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.
So how are people transformed? Research shows that 79% of activists in the United States report becoming engaged through a civic organization. Every day, thousands of civic organizations across the country, from the NAACP to the Tea Party, work to transform people into activists to win the victories they want.
Yet many of these organizations are still unsure of the best way to build the kind of long-term activist base needed in Ferguson. Many organizations know how to craft messages or leverage big data to find people who will show up for a rally or one event. Few organizations know how to take the people who show up, and transform some of them into citizen leaders who will become the infrastructure that harnesses energy from a week of protest into real change.
I spent two years comparing organizations with strong records of ongoing activism to those with weaker records to try to understand what they do differently. I found that it comes down to their investment in building the motivation, knowledge, and skills of their members. Turning protest into power begins with creating opportunities for people like the residents of Ferguson to exercise their own leadership.
Consider Priscilla, a young organizer working in the rural South to engage people around shutting down coal. When she first started organizing, Priscilla spent all of her time finding people who would show up for town halls, public meetings, and press events. She devoted hours to writing catchy messages and scripts that would get people’s attention, and asked her volunteers, mostly older retirees, to read these routinized scripts into the voicemail of a long list of phone numbers.
After several months of this work, Priscilla was exhausted. She wanted something different. An experienced organizer told her to invest time in developing the leadership of a cadre of volunteers, instead of spending all her time trying to get people to show up to events. Others scoffed at this advice: volunteers don’t want to take on leadership, they said. They want to take action that is easy, makes them feel good, and doesn’t take any time.
Priscilla decided to give it a try. She reached out to a group of likely volunteers to ask them to coffee. She began to get to know them as people. When some agreed to volunteer, she sat them down and explained the larger strategy behind the town hall meeting they were planning, instead of handing them a long list of phone numbers to call. Then, she asked the volunteers what piece of the planning they wanted to be responsible for.
Priscilla started spending her time training and supporting these volunteers in the tasks they’d chosen to oversee. With her help, these volunteers developed their own strategies for getting media for the event, identifying a program of speakers, and leveraging their own social networks to generate turnout. When the big day arrived, more people showed up than Priscilla would have been able to get on her own. More importantly, after the event was over, she also had a group of volunteer leaders exhilarated by their experience running a town hall and eager to do more.
Instead of just getting bodies to fill a room, Priscilla had begun the process of developing leaders. Instead of just coming to one rally, those leaders stayed with and built the campaign that eventually shut down the coal plant in their community.
There are talented organizers on the ground in Ferguson trying to do just what Priscilla did: give residents opportunities to develop the skills and motivation they need to make the change they want. Only by developing those kinds of leaders will organizations in Ferguson develop the infrastructure they need to turn the protest into real power for the residents who feel disconnected from it now.
When Alexis de Tocqueville observed America in the 1830s, he famously wrote that civic organizations are the backbone of our nation because they act as “schools of democracy,” teaching people how to work collectively with others to advance their interests. De Tocqueville is as right today as he was 174 years ago. We have always known that people power democracy. What protests from Occupy to the Arab Spring to Ferguson are teaching us is that democracy can also power people.
Headline image credit: “Occupy Wall Street” by Darwin Yamamoto. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Flickr
Today, a broad coalition of interest groups, websites, and people around the world are joining together to fight back against government surveillance. We’re supporting the “Day We Fight Back” on WordPress.com and have created a banner that you can easily add to your WordPress.com blog to get involved, too.
The “Stop NSA Surveillance” banner shows support for this important cause and provides a link to a page of resources to help visitors to contact members of the US Congress to support much needed anti-surveillance legislation. For more information, please visit thedaywefightback.org.
How to add the banner to your site
Here’s how to add the banner to your site in three steps:
In your WordPress.com dashboard, go to Settings → Protest NSA Surveillance.
Click on the checkbox labelled Protest Enabled.
Click on the Save Changes button for the change to take effect.
The banner will remain on your site until midnight on your blog’s time zone. Here’s what it will look like:
Thanks for the banner – not too intrusive – However, maybe next time send it out a few days early?
eideard said, on 2/11/2014 10:36:00 AM
Since you started downrating diarist blogs, the NSA, FBI and CIA are half the traffic I get, nowadays.
zimmett said, on 2/11/2014 10:44:00 AM
I haven’t blogged about this yet but I just called my senatorsand representative about this https://thedaywefightback.org
vera ersilia said, on 2/11/2014 10:49:00 AM
The banner looks good but the STOP NSA is NOT visible enough and the Latin although appropriate will not be understood by many. I will try to put it on my blog.
borderlinelunatic said, on 2/11/2014 11:05:00 AM
Cheers, stuck it on my blog.
dandelionsalad said, on 2/11/2014 11:19:00 AM
Thank you so much for doing this; it is now enabled. Already blogged about it and made a text widget with a link to The Day We Fight Back’s website.
Laith said, on 2/11/2014 11:35:00 AM
Thanks for doing this. I do agree that it would be good to let WP bloggers know ahead of time, since I only just learned about it there are only about 10 hrs left to display it in my timezone.
I would have liked to have it up all day.
hf556 said, on 2/11/2014 11:56:00 AM
Now they’re spying on blogs? This is going to far. I’m singing the thing and adding this banner to my blog. Glad to hear you’re supporting it to!
wildninja said, on 2/11/2014 11:59:00 AM
YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Love it! Go WordPress! Posted it and proud!
Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost. -Jean Jacques Rousseau
A protestor holds a picture of a blood spattered Neda Agha-Soltan and another of a woman, Neda Soltani, who was widely misidentified as Neda Agha-Soltan.
It was agonizing, just a few weeks before publication of Martyrdom: A Very Short Introduction, to discover that there was a minor mistake in one of the captions. Especially frustrating, as it was too late to make the necessary correction to the first print run, though it will be repaired when the book is reprinted. New research had revealed the original mistake. The inaccuracy we had been given had circulated the web and had been published by numerous press agencies and journalists too. What precisely was wrong?
To answer this question it is necessary to go back to Iran. During one of the demonstrations in Tehran following the contested re-election of President Ahmadinejad in 2009, a young woman (Neda Agha-Soltan) stepped out of the car for some fresh air. A few moments later she was shot. As she lay on the ground dying her last moments were captured on film. These graphic pictures were then posted online. Within a few days these images had gone global. Soon demonstrators were using her blood-spattered face on posters protesting against the Iranian regime. Even though she had not intended to be a martyr, her death was turned into a martyrdom in Iran and around the world.
Many reports also placed another photo, purportedly of her looking healthy and flourishing, alongside the one of her bloodied face. It turns out that this was not actually her face but an image taken from the Facebook page of another Iranian with a similar name, Neda Soltani. This woman is still alive, but being incorrectly identified as the martyr has radically changed her life. She later described on BBC World Service (Outlook, 2 October 2012) and on BBC Radio 4 (Woman’s Hour, 22 October 2012)how she received hate mail and pressure from the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence to support the claim that the other Neda was never killed. The visual error made it almost impossible for Soltani to stay in her home country. She fled Iran and was recently granted asylum in Germany. Neda Soltani has even written a book, entitled My Stolen Face, about her experience of being mistaken for a martyr.
The caption should therefore read something like: ‘A protestor holds a picture of a blood spattered Neda Agha-Soltan and another of a woman, Neda Soltani, who was widely misidentified as Neda Agha-Soltan.’ This mistake underlines how significant the role is of those who are left behind after a death. Martyrs are made. They are rarely, if ever, born. Communities remember, preserve, and elaborate upon fatal stories, sometimes turning them into martyrdoms. Neda’s actual death was commonly contested. Some members of the Iranian government described it as the result of a foreign conspiracy, while many others saw her as an innocent martyr. For these protestors she represents the tip of an iceberg of individuals who have recently lost their lives, their freedom, or their relatives in Iran. As such her death became the symbol of a wider protest movement.
This was also the case in several North African countries during the so-called Arab Spring. In Tunisia, in Algeria, and in Egypt the death of an individual was put to use soon after their passing. This is by no means a new phenomenon. Ancient, medieval, and early modern martyrdom stories are still retold, even if they were not captured on film. Tales of martyrdom have been regularly reiterated and amplified through a wide range of media. Woodcuts of martyrdoms from the sixteenth century, gruesome paintings from the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, photographs of executions from the nineteenth century, and fictional or documentary films from the twentieth century all contribute to the making of martyrs. Inevitably, martyrdom stories are elaborated upon. Like a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean, they collect barnacles of additional detail. These details may be rooted in history,unintentional mistakes, or simply fictional leaps of the imagination. There is an ongoing debate, for example, around Neda’s life and death. Was she a protestor? How old was she when she died? Who killed her? Was she a martyr?
Martyrdoms commonly attract controversy. One person’s ‘martyr’ is another person’s ‘accidental death’ or ‘suicide bomber’ or ‘terrorist’. One community’s ‘heroic saint’ who died a martyr’s death is another’s ‘pseudo-martyr’ who wasted their life for a false set of beliefs. Martyrs can become the subject of political debate as well as religious devotion. The remains of a well-known martyr can be viewed as holy or in some way sacred. At least one Russian czar, two English kings, and a French monarch have all been described after their death as martyrs.
Neda was neither royalty nor politician. She had a relatively ordinary life, but an extraordinary death. Neda is like so many other individuals who are turned into martyrs: it is by their demise that they are often remembered. In this way even the most ordinary individual can become a martyr to the living after their deaths. Preserving their memory becomes a communal practice, taking place on canvas, in stone, and most recently online. Interpretations, elaborations, and mistakes commonly cluster around martyrdom narratives. These memories can be used both to incite violence and to promote peace. How martyrs are made, remembered, and then used remains the responsibility of the living.
Jolyon Mitchell is Professor of Communications, Arts and Religion, Director of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues (CTPI) and Deputy Director of the Institute for the Advanced Study in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh. He is author and editor of a wide range of books including most recently: Promoting Peace, Inciting Violence: The Role of Religion and Media (2012); and Martyrdom: A Very Short Introduction (2012).
The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday!
Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only VSI articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only articles on law and politics on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Image credit: A protestor holds a picture of a blood spattered Neda Agha-Soltan and another of a woman, Neda Soltani, who was widely misidentified as Neda Agha-Soltan, used in full page context of p.49, Martyrdom: A Very Short Introduction, by Jolyon Mitchell. Image courtesy of Getty Images.
I was having tea in Gloucestershire with a friend, and we got to talking about protesting. I don't mean complaining about bad service, or curly sandwiches, I mean real protesting, the sort that stops councils from closing libraries.
"I've written so many emails, I can't do it any more," said he. "I'm exhausted. It never stops. If it's not libraries it's the unemployed being made to work for nothing, or whales being harpooned, forests uprooted or our health service being wrecked. And really, in the end, what does it all achieve? Once they've worn us out, governments just go back to doing what they want. Protesting never does any good in the end."
I remonstrated with him, but maybe not very much, because I was feeling pretty discouraged myself. Then something
happened that made me think again.
I went to Texas.
I'd never been to Texas before, and no doubt my idea of the place was fairly similar to many another Englishwoman who has never visited. Cowboy hats and boots, tumbleweed, twangy accents and cattle. Of course I knew that there were cities in Texas, and skyscrapers, freeways and shopping malls, but I'm a child of the fifties, and was brought up on Dick West and the Lone Ranger. So of course I looked for signs of cowboys. They were easy enough to find. And along with the whites, in cowboy hats or not, there were of course Blacks, Hispanics, Chinese, the whole rainbow of peoples that makes a place vibrant.
The first evening we were in a packed restaurant. "Years ago that wouldn't have been possible," said my companion, as a young black family came in and was shown to the last empty table. I engaged my mouth before my brain. "Why not?" I said. And then I remembered. Being a child of the fifties wasn't just cowboy films. It was also segregation. So we started talking about protest. We weren't drinking tea. She had watermelon juice and I had rice milk wit
Absolutely. As someone who only experienced the sixties for two months (born late '69) I look on those early civil rights protestors with profound admiration and awe. So much is about trying to change people's mindsets or bringing awareness, not just bringing about concrete changes (a point missed in lots of the commentary about Occupy). And Small Island (like Andrea Levy's other books) is a brilliant choice.
A really thoughtful and thought provoking post - thanks, Cindy! It's very easy to succumb to protest fatigue - the trouble is, even when there is a victory, the other side just bides its time and so often gets its way in the end almost without anyone noticing. But sometimes it does work, sometimes the protesters do win.
Never ever doubt the power of peaceful protest, peaceful petitioning and a well reasoned, well written letter. Do not ever give up if your really believe in something. I know it works. (But yes, it can take everything you have and then some more as well.)
A thought-provoking post - thank you, Cindy. It's always worth saying and standing up for what you think. Even if it doesn't have an impact, it's important to speak out. And the really important things often do get changed in the end. Black people and women have votes. We don't own slaves. Every child is entitled to a free education. We (so far) get free healthcare when we're ill.
To be honest, the canine protesters came first. Their owners, incensed by the university’s plan to demolish a small Japanese garden, a dog run and other open spaces surrounding, or enclosed by, the present superblocks of faculty housing south of Washington Square Park, led the dogs to Judson Memorial Church on the southern edge of the park in a camera-ready show of disapproval. But this was just the prelude to more serious mobilizing.
The protest was called by Deborah Glick, the district’s elected representative to the New York State Assembly. She spoke strongly against the university’s plan and introduced other local elected officials — State Senator Thomas Duane; Brad Hoylman, the chair of Manhattan’s Community Board 2; and representatives of several block and neighborhood associations — who promised to support the community’s interests against NYU’s all-out campaign to win approval for the expansion.
“This project is just too big,” Senator Duane said.
“Never before has a residential neighborhood been asked to give up its historic character in favor of a commercial-retail complex to benefit a large private university,” another speaker exclaimed.
“Save the Village,” chanted Assemblymember Glick.
“Light, space, green,” the crowd responded.
Photo by Sharon Zukin.
Greenwich Village does have a strong sense of its own history and identity, which is in large part founded on the David-and-Goliath legend of one of its most famous residents, the urbanist Jane Jacobs, who worked with her neighbors to defeat Robert Moses’s audacious plans to ruin the neighborhood by urban renewal. During the 1950s and early 1960s Jacobs and other residents of the West Village engaged in vociferous though nonviolent protests against the building of a road through the middle of Washington Square Park, against high-rise public housing projects and against a cross-Manhattan expressway, all of which would have torn through the dense grid of small blocks that make up lower Manhattan.
Speakers at the NYU rally could not avoid evoking Jacobs’s spirit. “Thirty-five years ago,” the chair of the community board said — erring by two decades but getting the crowd’s attention — Jacobs fought powerful forces and won. We have to “embody her spirit” now, he said. “We’re going to fight just like Jane Jacobs did.”
Jane Jacobs, chairman of the Community to save the West Village. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
But this is not a fight of poor people or defens
0 Comments on Memo From Manhattan: Town vs. Gown in Gotham as of 1/1/1900
Until the early morning of November 15, a few hundred Occupy Wall Street protesters spent the chilly nights of a glorious autumn camping out in Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. Despite Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s disapproval with their politics and under the New York City Police Department’s anxious eye, the occupiers captured public attention in a remarkably peaceful way. Regrouping for the winter, they will take stock of what they have achieved so far and the work that remains.
Though the occupation was initially ignored by mainstream media after it began in September, the protest movement attracted favorable attention both nationwide and internationally. Arrests flared in other U.S. cities, notably Oakland, California, where protesters tried to recall a famous general strike of 1946 by marching to the port. But unlike in Oakland, and Portland, Oregon, the encampment at Wall Street survived the constant threat of being rousted by police action on the one hand and cold weather on the other without death, disaster or dishonor.
An official order to clear Zuccotti Park was squelched in October by the intervention of local city council members and other politicians—some of whom, not coincidentally, plan to run for office in the 2012 elections. Many local labor unions support the movement, suggesting that alliances may be possible across “police and firefighter” lines. This kind of alliance recently won a referendum in Ohio overturning a state law that would have limited public unions’ collective bargaining rights.
In Zuccotti Park protesters formed a tiny city within the city. Food, clothing and books were donated and handed out. Electric generators that were confiscated by the fire department were returned after volunteer attorneys complained on the protesters’ behalf. For public safety the occupiers relied on volunteer security guards who used nonviolent techniques to confront, isolate and occasionally expel troublemakers. Women and transgender protesters could, if they wished, sleep in separate tents. Before November 15, few people were arrested by the police for allegedly committing sexual or physical assault.
New Yorkers quickly became accustomed to this remarkably peaceful microcosm of urban life. On sunny weekend afternoons tourists thronged Zuccotti Park and its celebrated neighbors, the World Trade Center site on one side and the financial district on the other. I have never seen Lower Manhattan look more vibrant.
But Occupy Wall Street was only one of Manhattan’s tourist attractions. To put support for the movement’s proposed reforms in a realistic perspective it is suggestive to look at other sites in the city and the desires that they apparently fulfill.
Nearly 50 million men and women are visiting New York City this year. Nearly 50,000 of them ran in the recent New York City Marathon sponsored by ING Bank .
In 1970 I organized a protest march against the wearing of fur at a fashion show. This was the first of its kind in Anchorage, Alaska at the time, so the media turned out in force, even though there were only about 12 of us marching on that March day. Nearly all my social sorority sisters were inside that fashion show that day, wearing their furs. They stared at me in shock and horror as they crossed our line to enter the hotel that day. Some spoke to me. And that was the first time I heard the argument that a person could not protest the wearing of fur if she ate meat or wore leather. "What are your shoes made of?" Apparently, if a protestor wore a speck of leather, she had no right to protest the clubbing of baby seals -- which was rampant at that time in Alaska. My hand-made sign had a picture of a baby seal, and the words "He died for your skins!" Now all of PETA is overly familiar with fur wearers arguments. Those arguments probably contributed greatly to veganism. Fine. I have no problem with veganism and pleather and options to wearing animal skins. I'm a vegetarian. I was then. Here's the thing though. This is a free country. We have the right to free speech. We have the right to protest whatever we feel is wrong. And we do not have to be pure before we can speak out. So, please if you feel in your heart that you should say something about the fact that the makers of UGG boots are using the skins of raccoon dogs that have been SKINNED ALIVE (see www.hearldsun.com.au), but you eat meat and wear leather shoes, don't let that stop you. Okay? If you want to join with other protestors in Pioneer Square this Thursday at noon October 6, and protest Wall Street, but you happen to own stocks, or invest your money in bonds, or some combination that you don't even understand, but you still don't believe that the people who brought this country to its knees should get away with it -- well go protest! Remember the last line from "Some Like it Hot": "Nobody's perfect." That's right, none of us are, and if we all speak up, stand together, do our part, we CAN make this world a better place.
2 Comments on The Purity Argument, last added: 10/6/2011
The United States was plagued by social unrest throughout the 1960’s. 1968 stands out as the most militant and contentious year of the decade with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. In that same year, the Selective Service office announced that its December quota for the draft would be the highest thus far, leading countless Americans to engage in acts of civil disobedience. American Catholics, who were led to accept mainstream cultural values and unhesitatingly support foreign policy faced a changing identity brought on by a remarkable act known as the Catonsville Nine. Led by two priests, the Catonsville Nine would set off a wave of other Catholic protests against the Vietnam War. The following excerpt from Mark Massa’s The American Catholic Revolution describes this transformative moment in American Catholic history.
At 12:30 on the afternoon of May 17, 1968, an unlikely crew of seven men and two women arrived at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Catonsville, Maryland, a tidy suburb of Baltimore. Their appearance at 1010 Frederick Road, however, was only tangentially related to the Knights. The target of their pilgrimage was Selective Service Board 33, housed on the second floor of the K. of C. Hall. The nondescript parcel they carried with them contained ten pounds of homemade napalm, whipped up several evenings before by Dean Pappas, a local physics teacher who had discovered the recipe in a booklet published by the U.S. Special Forces (two parts gasoline, one part Ivory Flakes). On entering the office, one of them explained calmly to the three surprised women typing and filing what was going to happen next. But either out of shock or because they hadn’t heard the announcement clearly the women continued about their business until the strangers began snatching up 1-A files, records of young men whose draft lottery numbers made them most likely to be drafted to fight in Vietnam. At that point one of the women working in the office began to scream.
The raiders began stuffing the 1-A files (and as many 2-As and 1-Ys as they could grab) into wire trash baskets they had brought for the purpose. When one of the office workers tried dialing the police, Mary Moylan, one of the nine intruders, put her finger on the receiver button, calmly advising the distraught worker to wait until the visitors were finished. The burning of the draft records was intended to be entirely nonviolent, although one of the office workers had to be physically restrained from stopping the protesters, in the course of which she suffered some scratches on her leg. With that one exception, the raid went according to plan. Indeed, as Daniel Berrigan, S.J. one of the leaders of the event, later remembered it.
We took the A-1 [sic] files, which of course were the most endangered of those being shipped off. And we got about 150 of those in our arms and went down the staircase to the parking lot. And they burned very smartly, having been doused in this horrible material. And it was all over in 10 or 15 minutes.
Once Berrigan and the others left the office, Moylan said to the office worker with the phone, “Now you can call whoever you wish.” But instead of calling the police she hurled it through the window, hoping to get attention of workmen outside the building, which she did: one of the workmen quickly rushed up to the office to see what the ruckus was. But his arrival on the scene came too late to interrupt the protest. A small group of reporters and photographers, as well as a TV crew, had already gathered, having been tipped off by a memb
It is noteworthy when eight ideologically diverse justices of the U.S. Supreme Court all decide a First Amendment case the same way. Thus, Snyder v. Phelps is a noteworthy decision. The Westboro Baptist Church is well-known for its demonstrations at military funerals. Indeed, the Westboro Church, led by (and, some say, principally consisting of) the Phelps family, has the rare distinction of having been denounced by both Jon Stewart and Mike Huckabee.
Members of the Westboro Church demonstrated near the Maryland funeral of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, killed in action in Iraq. Mr. Albert Snyder, the corporal’s father, sued the Westboro Church and its members for various torts including intentional infliction of emotional distress. Mr. Snyder prevailed in a jury trial. In invalidating the jury’s verdict, the U.S. Supreme Court, except for Justice Alito, said that the Church and its members were exercising their free speech rights in a constitutionally-protected fashion.
As the Court described the facts of the case, it is hard to disagree with this conclusion. According to those facts, the Westboro Church and its members told the local authorities of their intention to demonstrate at the time of the Snyder funeral and “complied with police instructions in staging their demonstration.” The Westboro demonstrators stayed “behind a temporary fence…approximately 1,000 feet from the church where the funeral was held.” The demonstrators went neither to the church where the funeral was held nor to the cemetery, and were nonviolent throughout their demonstration.
The problem is: Those were not all the facts of the case. Only Justice Alito confronted this reality. After the funeral, a member of the Westboro Church posted on the Church’s website a hate-filled message aimed specifically at the Snyder family. Among its other assertions, this website message accused Mr. and Mrs. Snyder of having “raised [Matthew] for the devil.” The Snyders, the web message continued, “taught Matthew to defy his Creator, to divorce, and to commit adultery.” Then the Snyders sent their son “to fight for the United States of Sodom, a filthy country that is in lock step with his evil, wicked, and sinful manner of life.”
Media accounts of the Court’s decision have largely ignored this web-based attack on the Snyders. Media accounts have also largely ignored the eight Justices’ acknowledgment that, if this web-based attack is considered, Westboro and its members may indeed have stepped over the line, forfeiting First Amendment protection by this vicious internet attack on the Snyder family. As Chief Justice Roberts put it in a footnote to his majority opinion, this “Internet posting may raise distinct issues in this context,” issues which the Court declined to consider because of the failure of the Snyders to press this point in their petition to the high court.
Justice Alito disagreed with his colleagues in his willingness to confront the facts of the case as they were presented to the jury: Westboro and
0 Comments on The Westboro Church and Justice Alito: the other side of the story as of 1/1/1900
Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara has targeted manga comic books with a new ordinance, creating stricter regulations for both live action and manga products. Other regional governments in Japan are considering similar policies.
The New York Times reports: “One particularly big target is manga comic books that depict pubescent girls in sexual acts. It a lucrative segment of the $5.5 billion industry for manga … The new Tokyo law, which applies to anyone under 18, bans the sale of comics and other works — including novels, DVDs and video games — that depict sexual or violent acts that would violate Japan’s national penal code, as well as sex involving anyone under age 18. ”
Japanese publishers, lawyers, and manga artists will fight the ordinance. Ten publishers, including Japan’s largest publishing company Kodansha, intend to boycott the Tokyo International Anime Fair in protest–arguing that the law hinders free speech. What do you think?
After Ghandi offers brief introductions to famous incidents of nonviolent protest around the world, and brief biographies of some of the people involved in those protests. It starts with Ghandi leading a protest in South Africa in 1908 in which many Asian residents burned the registration papers that made them register as foreigners. It ends with the February 2003 global protests against the war in Iraq. In between it covers the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Tiananmen Square Protests, the Velvet Revolution, and work done by such groups as the Peace People and the Mothers of the Disappeared.
It's a striking design-- mainly black and white with large pull quotes highlighted in dark red. Most sections end with a black-and-white pastel portrait of one of the highlighted leaders done by Anne Sibley O'Brien. While the portraits are beautiful, I would have preferred photographs.
I liked that it didn't tell the story of Rosa Parks as a woman who got caught up in history, but rather as one who knew exactly what she was doing. (Lets give Parks a little agency, ok? It makes her more awesome.) It mentions that she was not the first person arrested but that her arrest was the one that got the bus boycott going.
I was a little taken aback by the section on the Tiananmen Square protests. Even though it ends with the tanks moving in, it contains several phrases such as "At the time, China was run by an oppressive, corrupt regime that was intolerant of criticism" or "At the time, Chinese citizens had no choice in the election of their leaders." Yes, that's all true. But it's still true. Starting the sentence with "at the time" makes it sound like there's been a radical shift since then, and there hasn't been.
Overall though, it's a great introduction to the ways people have, and can, stand up to injustice peacefully. They're great stories of courage and standing up in the face of fear. I also loved that they included stories of nonviolent protest that didn't always work-- it highlights that just because they didn't get results, people tried and we remember them for trying and we can continue their work for a better world.
It's a great book to highlight on a day dedicated to a man who used nonviolence as a way to dramatically change the world we live in.
Book Provided by... the publisher for Cybils 2009 consideration.
Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.
New Zealand activists are fighting to keep filming for the upcoming The Hobbit adaptation in that country, the same place where Peter Jackson filmed the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. According to these passionate protesters, “New Zealand is Middle Earth.”
The Guardian reports that Warner Bros. executives will decide this week if the shoot will be in New Zealand. Prime Minister John Keys will personally oversee the negotiations, hoping that producers will make a decision in his country’s favor.
The article adds: “A dispute over pay and conditions led producers to hint that they might move filming to another country. Carrying banners proclaiming ‘New Zealand is Middle Earth’ and ‘We Love Hobbits,’ a reported 2-3,000 people gathered in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, and other cities such as Auckland and Christchurch in advance of a visit by executives from the studio Warner Bros.”
This weekend I’m looking forward to a Symposium to be held at Parsons, The New School of Design in New York. On the topic of “illustrative responses to world events… both visceral and intimate”, it will explore “the current state of political and social visual commentary“. The impressive speakers include Steven Heller, Rutu Modan, Peter Kuper,Steve Brodner, Luba Lukova, and Anton Kannemeyer.
Symposium: Saturday, November 15, 2008, 1:00-5:30 P.M.
The New School, Tishman Auditorium
Johnson/Kaplan Hall, 66 WEST 12TH STREET Free and open to the public!
I wish I could make out the illustrator’s name for the image above - best I can do is “Gary ____”. It’s printed tiny alongside it as it appears in blog entry for the Symposium.
There is also an exhibition of illustrated covers for Der Spiegel magazine at 2 West 13th street, 8th floor, from November 14th to November 30th, with a reception happening on November 14th, at 6pm.
(Disclaimer: I’ll be teaching at Parsons next year).
3 Comments on Picturing Politics Symposium - NYC, last added: 11/13/2008
Guy Billout, so damn good. I had the honor of being in his concepts class ages ago.
Another prof that changed my life at Parsons was David Passalacqua.
If you are interested in children's literature and reviewing and publishing, consider applying for the Horn Book internship. As Roger Sutton notes, maybe someday 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast will interview you like they did Alvina Ling (which you should also check out--good interview). (Alvina, I had no idea you also interned at Horn Book. Probably because you were already in New York by the time I was interning, given that I moved to Boston when L,B was consolidating to New York.)
Even if they don't interview you someday, it was a great experience and I learned a lot about the review selection process and was even given the opportunity to write a review for the Guide. Some interns just work for the Guide, some just for the Magazine, and some for both--I worked for both, and it was a great experience. If you're in the Boston area, check it out. You'll meet a lot of good people.
On Today’s Show:
Save Our School : The Children of Selsted Primary
Thank You To:
Jeff Wood, Shannon Blaney, Wayne Serebrin, Yvonne Siu Runyan and Celia Oyler, for commenting on the show, contacting me regarding the show, or pinning my frappr map. And I also want to thank Allyn Kurin for the station ID.
Congratulations To:
Jeff Wood [...]
0 Comments on Save Our School _ CLIP 15 as of 1/1/1900
.jpg?picon=1806)
happened that made me think again.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9539320-6472205908282311522?l=www.jenrothsc
</p>
<div class="post-comments">
0 Comments on <em>Nonfiction Monday: After Ghandi</em> as of 1/1/1900
</div> <!-- end post-comments -->
<a name="commentsforpost773950target" id="commentsforpost773950target" style="text-decoration:none;"></a>
<div id="commentsforpost773950" style="display: none;" ></div><a class = "leavecomment" title="Click Here to Add a Comment" href="/redirect.asp?kind=3&value=450&t=http://www.jenrothschild.com/2011/01/nonfiction-monday-after-ghandi.html" onclick="window.open(){kind=small}
Add a Comment
Thanks for the banner – not too intrusive – However, maybe next time send it out a few days early?
Since you started downrating diarist blogs, the NSA, FBI and CIA are half the traffic I get, nowadays.
I haven’t blogged about this yet but I just called my senatorsand representative about this https://thedaywefightback.org
The banner looks good but the STOP NSA is NOT visible enough and the Latin although appropriate will not be understood by many. I will try to put it on my blog.
Cheers, stuck it on my blog.
Thank you so much for doing this; it is now enabled. Already blogged about it and made a text widget with a link to The Day We Fight Back’s website.
Thanks for doing this. I do agree that it would be good to let WP bloggers know ahead of time, since I only just learned about it there are only about 10 hrs left to display it in my timezone.
I would have liked to have it up all day.
Now they’re spying on blogs? This is going to far. I’m singing the thing and adding this banner to my blog. Glad to hear you’re supporting it to!
YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Love it! Go WordPress! Posted it and proud!
Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost. -Jean Jacques Rousseau
Thanks! Was hoping this would come along!