Ohio Student Environmental Coalition takes action against Coal

Below is an article about a recent climate justice action in Columbus Ohio where students had a substantial win in the struggle against Coal plants that dominate the lives and lungs of Ohio citizens.

Mountain Justice Takes on King Coal in Columbus

How often do you get to witness a band of activists deploy a direct action and successfully pressure the CEO of a corporation into agreeing to their demands – before the police even arrive on the scene?

On Friday afternoon, student activists with Ohio Student Environmental Coalition and members of Mountain Justice occupied the lobby of American Municipal Power and forced an impromptu meeting with CEO Mark Gerken – who was not a happy camper.

AMP is planning to build a 1000 MW pulverized coal power plant in Meigs County, Ohio – one of the most impoverished counties in the state, with some of the highest lung cancer and premature death rates due industrial pollution in the country. There are already 4 coal power plants within 10 miles of Meigs and the coal barons of the Midwest are planning on building five more – the largest and dirtiest being the AMP project.

Determined to put an end to this economic and social injustice, concerned Meigs residents have been working with student and youth activists to organize and empower communities to break out of the socio-economic slavery of king coal. Mountain Justice Spring Break – an event where many students, rather than spending their holidays in Florida or Cancun, have opted instead for more meaningful pursuits in building solidarity, developing consensus, discovering affinity and exploring nonviolent direct action – showcased this collaboration over this last week.

Today marked a watershed moment in the movement against King Coal in Ohio. The activists’ demands were simple: cancel plans to build the coal plant, fund renewable energy, and schedule a meeting between the AMP Board of Trustees, local students, and frontline community activists to discuss how AMP can best chart a course towards these goals.

So, this morning, about fifty student and youth activists – most of whom had never participated in a direct action – marched to AMP headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, at which point a group of four negotiators entered the building and demanded a meeting with Gerken. Even when confronted by irate AMP employees, the youth negotiators kept their cool and stuck to their demands. They not only managed to meet with Gerken, but also got him to commit to a meeting between students, Meigs County activists and the AMP Board – and to agree that AMP wouldn’t begin construction on the plant until after this meeting has taken place.

This action was part of an ongoing campaign by activists – including residents of frontline communities, and student activists from groups like Mountain Justice, Ohio Student Environmental Coalition, Earth First, and Student Environmental Action Coalition – against AMP’s plans to bring further destruction to Southern Ohio. On a Sunday morning in early March, a group of concerned citizens visited the home of CEO Marc Gerken, and demanded that AMP reconsider its plans to move forward with the plant. (At that point, Gerken brushed off their requests for a meeting.) Earlier this week – as part of the Listening Project – several students visited the homes of Meigs County residents, listened to their concerns about the AMP project, and empowered them to take action and join the campaign against the coal plant.

Today’s action was the biggest step to date in this campaign, and has laid the groundwork for even bigger victories against King Coal in Ohio. Stay tuned for updates on what this collaboration will do next!

Adrian & Ananda in Columbus

William and Mary Campus still in outrage

After the Board of Visitors at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg Va forced President Nichol to resign, students and faculty decided to go on strike and have since been having rallies, vigils, and teach-ins. The chapter of sds at William and Mary called the student strike shortly after a section of the faculty called for a faculty strike. WM sds also put on a teach-in that saw over 400 students talking about the importance of reclaiming our education for ourselves.

Since the WM campus is still extremely upset and angry about the undemocratic decision of the Board of Visitors, students are putting on a forum about the role of the public university. Students are inviting anyone who can come to be a part of this very important discussion and are emphasizing that the current situation at WM isn’t unique. Secretive decisions are the norm for colleges and universities where those most involved in the educational process(students, faculty, and staff) have little to no input in how their campus runs, while absentee boards make the majority of steering decisions.

The event will be happening this Saturday, February 16th from 4pm-6pm in the University Center Atrium. Folks with questions should direct them to Sean Walsh of WM sds (spwals[AT]wm[DoT]edu).

I will do my best to keep this blog updated about all of the unfolding events going down at William and Mary.

Student and Faculty Strike at the College of William and Mary

On Tuesday morning, February 12th, the widely-popular and progressive Gene R. Nichol, President of the College, tendered his resignation, following a decision by the Board of Visitors to not renew his contract (set to expire at the end of the academic year). President Nichol bravely denounced the Board of Visitors and their attempt to purchase his silence as to the true reasons for which he was Fired – free speech and broad-minded Change to a traditionally conservative institution. The Board of Visitors, the governing body of the College, is composed of the political appointees of the Governor of Virginia. The majority is not otherwise active members of the William & Mary Community, and has in their decision-making process continuously silenced the Voices of students, staff, faculty, and alumni, who are overwhelming in support of President Nichol and the substantive, progressive Change he has made to this institution in three, short years.

In the wake of the shock of President Nichol’s sudden resignation, members of the Faculty of the College of Arts and Science issued a call for fellow faculty-members to join them in a “Strike”, refusing to hold regular classes on Wednesday (2/13) and Thursday (2/14), during a spontaneous rally of over 500 students, staff, and faculty in support of Our President. Following this announcement, members of the William & Mary Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) announced a student strike in Solidarity with their professors and, unequivocally, Comrades-in-arms. That night, over 1500 students expressed their grief for our community’s loss of a great man by congregating in front of the President’s House to intone to Gene Nichol the Alma Mater of Our College. Students – stunned, grieved, incensed – are experiencing ‘the fierce urgency of Now’.

On wednesday, February 13th, over 400 students and faculty occupied the lobby of the University Center in an informal sit-in to voice their opposition to the dismissal of President Nichol and to the blatant disenfranchisement of their voices at the highest administrative level of Our College. At a subsequent student- and faculty-organized Town Hall Meeting, over 700 members of the William & Mary community gathered to organize their Resistance to the Gross Injustices committed, adopting a list of five tentative demands, overarching points of unity to amalgamate the disparaged and channel their grief and anger toward Constructive ends. Those who are affected most by the decisions of the Board of Visitors now actively express their Opposition to the secrecy and egotism of this distant, aloof body.

On thursday February 14th, the day usually devoted to the capitalistic display of ‘love’, the William & Mary SDS put on a Teach-In, inviting Faculty and Students to join in the Sunken Gardens of Our Old Campus – an active reclamation of education, denying the legitimacy of any attempt to circumscribe the academic freedom of students everywhere – young and old. Over 400 people were in attendence.

As events continue to unfold over the following days, the members of the William & Mary SDS ask our comrades and compatriots throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia and across the country to stand in solidarity and to support our struggle to regain control of Our College. Our message permeates well beyond the confines of our campus. It touches at the very Heart of what it means to be a student of life. Knowledge and the pursuit thereof should be in the hands of those who actively Engage it. Allowing our lives to be dictated by detached strangers amounts to a Denial of the Truth we seek – Freedom.

This was written by Sean Walsh of William and Mary sds, and editted slightly by me.

For interviews with Students, Faculty and Workers at William and Mary about the forced resignation of President Nichol, check out this amazing blog http://wrengateblog.com/

The Students of William and Mary have issued the following set of demands:

Over the past three years, the College of William & Mary has blossomed with increasing civic involvement, expanding academic horizons, and deepening cultural breadth. As students, staff, faculty, and alumni, we are sincerely wed to the direction of this storied institution. A lack of transparency at the highest level regarding recent personnel decisions ignores our profound desire for engagement.

 

Our love of the College drives us to ask for answers, explanation, and course. The events of the previous days have illuminated that the majority of students, staff, faculty, and alumni of the College of William & Mary have been denied a voice.

 

We, William & Mary, demand:

 

1. Full disclosure regarding the decision not to renew Nichol’s contract, including any vote that took place, and how that vote was influenced.

2. A review of the process by which the decision was made, in secret, to dismiss Nichol and appoint an interim President.

3. Rector Powell and the Board of Visitors to come to campus to explain their actions and answer student, staff, and faculty questions. We do not find Rector Powell’s explanation Tuesday morning to be sufficient.

4. A strong public re-affirmation from the Board of Visitors that the process to choose our next President will fully incorporate student, staff, and faculty voices and concerns in a transparent fashion.

5. That the staff of the College, like the students and faculty, have a permanent position on the Board of Visitors.

6. A commitment to continuing the diversity initiatives and dedication to academic freedom and free speech championed by Gene Nichol.

 

 

 

 

 

Baltimore Algebra Project Die-in at State Capitol

The Baltimore Algebra Project, a student-led inter-school coalition of inner city youths, called for a die-in at the State House in Maryland’s state capital of Annapolis. Chanting “No Education, No Life!” 25 members of the Baltimore Algebra Project and their supporters were arrested for presenting a coffin to Governor O’Malley in absentia, representing the social death (and, chillingly pointed out by the picture on the coffin of Zachariah Hallback, a Baltimore Algebra project member who was recently shot to death in a robbery, actual deaths) of students who are denied a proper education. No charges were filed on any of the participants.The Baltimore Algebra Project has been organizing for years around the hundreds of millions of dollars denied to their public school system by current Governor O’Malley. This action was part of a Baltimore City Schools fieldtrip about the current state of affairs of public education in Maryland and on the Southern Freedom Movement of the 1960’s. DC sds accounted for 7 of the 25 arrested on the steps of State House (myelf included). DC sds is very excited to support BAP in all of their amazing organizing efforts and we look forward to future action as a means to building student power in this country and as a way for us to learn from our comradicals to the north who have their shit together.(for expediancy’s sake, some of this text was taken from the DC sds reportback written by Daniel Meltzer, and some of it is mine)

Coverage:

http://www.lizardelement.com/dcsds/ – DC sds website
25 education protesters detained – Baltimore Sun
Education and Life Celebrated in Streets of Annapolis – Baltimore Independent Media Center
No Education, No Life goes to Annapolis – Epiphany in Baltimore
About 24 youths detained in Md. State House protest – WTOP News (Kristen Wyatt, AP)

Audio:
24 Students Arrested in Maryland Protesting Funding Cuts (10:53-11:12) – Democracy Now

Video:
Students Arrested During Protest in Annapolis – ABC 2 News Video

Pictures:
Students stage protest in Annapolis – Baltimore Sun/AP

FUNK THE WAR

So here is a reportback from our recent DC sds Dance Party Against the War, written by a Fairfax highschool student Rassah Ostad. The action was a part of Iraq Moratorium, coordinated actions against the war on the third friday of every month. Click the link to check out the new DC sds website with lots of footage and info about our next Dance Party Against the War on February 15th.

Funk the War! Drop Beats not Bombs!

Dupont circle renedz vous.

The emails went in and the people came out ready to dance. Last minute news filled inboxes around the city, and on Friday night, January 18, our music filled the streets.

We started at five and ended accomplished and ready for more and awesome three hours later.

Starting in the well-to-do Dupont circle and dancing our rout to the recruitment center about five blocks away. Stopping only briefly in front, we onward danced to the close by atrocity operating under the name Lockheed Martin. After a boot-out from the lobby, we overtook the entrance and soon after the street, adding to our ranks a few passer-bys, including one of the security guards in the lobby. Once we got it going in the street, showing both traffic and the police we were a force not to be reckoned with, we headed back to Dupont circle where we triumphantly and musically ended our party, and Funked the war.

Check out the video!!

sds in the press again

So before we get to the actual content, I just want to let folks know that I am one view away from crossing the 100 views threshold. Thats right, the big time.

This article was written by a member of the French Press (not the coffee sort, the
news sort), Karin Zeitvogel about the youth movement and young voters. An
sdser, who shall remain nameless, said that this was “maybe one of our best pieces of media ever.” She will remain nameless because it makes her comment more intriguing, and intrigue is the key to successful blogging, so I hear.

Although I’m not sure I agree that this is our best media coverage yet, it definitely shows us looking smart and on top of things. Word to Samantha Miller (DC sds) , Lindsay (Tuscarura High School sds, Frederick MD), and everyone else who did solid press work and made us look so awesome.

Candidates take note as young Americans re-embrace politics

WASHINGTON (AFP) – America’s youth are undergoing a political rebirth, and politicians have noticed.

People under 30 are flocking to the polls and leaving their mark on the 2008 White House race. Long moribund activist groups are being revived. Nickelodeon, a television station geared to teens, is holding mock primaries.

“We’ve been hearing for years, ‘Where is the youth movement?’ Well, it’s been growing slowly and now it’s here,” said Samantha Miller, 22, who helped to revive Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a left-wing group that has lain dormant since the late 1960s.

A report issued late last year by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) and the Charles F. Kettering Foundation showed that university students in the United States today are “hungry for political conversation” that is “free of ‘spin’.”

That contrasts sharply with the attitudes of students surveyed by a parallel study in 1993, who said politics were “irrelevant to their lives”, the report said.

Paul Buhle, a lecturer at Brown University in Rhode Island, confirmed what the report said.

“The view from my students in the 1990s was that everything was going to hell in a handbasket but they couldn’t do anything about it and ‘I’m going to have a great career’,” the 63-year-old told AFP.

“Jump up to now and you have the war, the US doing stupid things in the world and global warming on the front page as opposed to banished to page 78.

“It reminds me of watching the Cuban missile crisis unfold in 1963,” said Buhle, who was an activist in the left-wing SDS the first time around.

“A lot of young people said to themselves then and are saying now: ‘We can’t wait around because adults are going to blow up the planet and we’d better do something.'”

Sixteen-year-old Lindsay was drawn to politics by her concern over global warming.

“It got me mad that people were denying it or doing nothing about it,” she said during a weekly meeting of her high school’s SDS chapter, which was attended by half a dozen members aged 14 to 18.

“It’s definitely worth my time to be politically active because if I’m not paying attention to these kinds of things, how can I change them?” Lindsay said.

Karlo Marcelo, a researcher at CIRCLE, said that, for the first time since 1972, candidates for the White House are paying more than lip-service to the youth vote.

“They’ve mentioned young people and young issues in debates and their speeches,” he said.

“They are actually speaking seriously to young people about their issues, and that engagement between young people and politicians is something that hasn’t happened since 1972.

“Several of the Democratic candidates have full-time youth directors, and among the Republicans, John McCain has a part time youth director and has his daughter blogging. Everyone’s realizing they need to focus on this generation,” Marcelo said.

This month’s primaries in New Hampshire and caucuses in Iowa saw a sharp rise in the under-30 turnout compared with four years ago, with the youth vote credited for helping Democrat Barack Obama prevail in Iowa.

In Iowa, 13 percent of voters under 30 turned out for the caucus, against four percent in 2004, while youth turnout in New Hampshire surged ahead from 18 percent four years ago to 43 percent, according to CIRCLE.

No comparative figures were published for the Michigan primary, which was not contested by the Democrats.

“This generation, for pretty much all of their political lives, has known only one president, and for a lot of young people, the reaction to that president hasn’t been good,” said Michael Dimock of Pew Research Center.

“The idea of participating in this election — in which no matter which way you vote, it’s going to be for a new president– is particularly engaging to younger voters.”

The rising tide of youth activism is benefiting the more liberal Democrats and groups that are further to the left, such as the SDS.

A report issued this month by Pew Research called today’s youth the “least Republican generation,” with only one-third of young voters identifying with the Republicans and nearly half with the Democrats.

Charlie Smith, the 23-year-old head of College Republicans, a broad grouping of conservative students, tried to put a positive spin on young people jumping the Republican ship.

“It’s in the nature of our demographic — we’re more idealistic.

“But they’ll have time to turn away from their chemistry books or work-study jobs to study the key issues like Iraq or government-funded healthcare, and make a decision by election day.

“I think they’ll come back to our side,” he said.

An Article by Jonathan Barry on collective liberation(Boston sds)

So the following is an article by Jonathan Barry (Boston sds) discussing how our work toward collective liberation needs to be informed by an understanding of our own personal histories and experience with identity.

Here is a link to Jonathan’s blog, and below is his article.

Interrogating White Patriarchy- Constructing Personal Histories

Often, as a white male activist, I find myself wondering where my energy comes from. Maybe I should rephrase that… when I have the time I often find myself wondering where the root of my tireless commitment to “the movement” comes from. This is never something I have allowed myself to explore because the answers are pessimistic and discouraging, not to mention difficult to come by. For me, when I sit alone, there is an omnipresent pain and anxiety at the core of my being. I believe activism, as with most endeavors in my life, is a way to channel my fear of confronting the terrifying realities of my past into another space. Just as somebody would self-anesthetize with drugs or booze; I self-anesthetize with organizing, among other things.

Organizing is in and of itself is not a destructive activity, however, coming from a place of anxiety and urgency, rather than love and conscious intentionality, I believe it can do more harm than good. I could also add guilt into the equation for most white folks. I believe, correctly or incorrectly, that fear and anxiety and the urgency to be rid of them lie at the heart of what drives most men in our society. I must be conscious of this or my life becomes a means of displacing these emotions on others. This urgency, often combined with white guilt, can become a primary vehicle for re-enacting oppressive modes of thought and being, particularly in progressive circles. The tendency to look at other people as objects of oppressive systems rather than people with agency can lock interpersonal relationships into the framework of white supremacy or sexism (or any oppressive system for that matter).

It has also been my experience that over-intellectualization of anti-oppression work further distances my analytical perceptions from actual lived experience. By just “keeping me busy,” organizing work can be a tool to challenge white supremacy and patriarchy on an institutional level while also maintaining the distance between my conscious (often intellectual) worldview and the core of my being (for me, my emotional being) that is most handicapped by patriarchy and white supremacy. I believe binary thinking like this is a product of our society and forces many institutionally privileged people who study or think about systems of oppression to separate lived experience from ideological framework instead of one informing the other. For example, many white people or men who think about white supremacy or patriarchy frame sexism as a “women’s issue” or racism as “something that I don’t live through”. While men and whites are by no means the targets of such systems of oppression, the personal and psychological wounds for people who are “privileged” are real and by connecting personal experience to theoretical framework, I believe it is possible to gain a much more real understanding that can inform actions and activism. Unfortunately, the drive for consumption and immediate gratification that is instilled in us by a capitalist system works to placate deep pain and drive a deep wedge between what we think of ourselves and who we are. In my opinion, unless there is a conscious effort to bridge the gap, I believe the divide deepens over time, fed by a drug that draws from the exploitation of others to ease the pain of those in power.

In this way, I disagree with those who stress the critical importance of strategic planning of organizing in liberation work but do not acknowledge the centrality of the healing process in the life of an activist like myself. Combining theory, action and reflection in a cycle of praxis, as is outlined by Paolo Friere in his famous book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, is essential to a process of developing critical consciousness. We must embody the change we hope to make. I believe in this statement wholeheartedly. As men and white people, or anyone who benefits from institutionalized privilege, we must come into touch with the fears, anxieties and guilt of what it means to be ourselves in a white patriarchal capitalist society. The process of interrogating who we are and critically evaluating past experiences can be a tool for developing fuller understandings of what we are fighting against, just as research into social constructions of whiteness can illuminate the shadows of its historical specificity.

My own conception of colonization stems from my experience growing up with a father who handcuffed my own development as a person by (sometimes) violently enforcing his vision for my own growth and imposing his own boundaries on what I could think or how I could act. I now see his desire to “help” me become a man is couched in his own inability to be his own man in the most tender and loving send of what it means to be a man. He needs to deal with his own anger, fear of loss and pain before he can ever think about helping me or before we can ever again have a functional relationship. His need to help is a prison cell for my own growth. This experience has shed light on what my own presence may mean in non-white and feminist activist circles.

In addition, my experience and reflections on traveling home this fall to see my parents (mom and step dad) have helped me to more fully understand the pain of what it means to be tokenized. Going home is painful for me. It is not a friendly place. My parents are friendly to me but it is not a place where I can feel at ease with who I am. It is hostile, for whatever reason. Yet still, my parents want me to come home. When I am home, they do not take the time to sit and see how I am or how I have changed. Though they lament that I do not seem happy. When I attempt to articulate my feelings, I only offend them and then am left feeling guilty. At a deep level, my parents are not interested in who I am as a person, only the spectacle of my happy presence in their home, just as most straights enjoy and crave the spectacle of a queer presence to subsidize their own sexual emptiness.

These connections are real for me although they may not make sense for the outsider. In sharing these stories, I hope to lay groundwork for other white people and men to delve into their own histories- either personal or collective- to better understand the context in which our identities are born and the privileges they carry.

I find that the only way I can bring something new and valuable to the discussion on race, gender, sexuality (and capitalism) is to come in touch with my own emotions and how I was formed in this society. While the archive of work on these subjects is extensive, I believe it is essential for all white people, men and straight folks to make the connections personal so as to embody the discourse we espouse. In this way, I (we) can bring can bring something real to the conversation, articulate on my (our) own terms that which I (we) consume as part of organizing for power and the liberation of all peoples everywhere. For me then, counseling, quiet reflection, and scary messy conversations with others about common past experiences is also the work of revolution. This is not to say it can take the place of real struggle against oppressive institutions to build power and win concrete objectives, but it is work that must be done.

Apache Land Owners Resist Militarization of Mexico/US Boarder

I promise this blog will shortly be more than news clippings, but organizing takes lots of time, so the blogging is still just news.

Apache folks living on the Texas/Mexico boarder are being threatened with eminent domain by the Department of Homeland Security which has plans to build a wall through their land. This is just a piece of the wall planned by the US government to keep folks from Central America from migrating to the US.

So while the US continues to coerce countries around the world into accepting the neoliberal structural adjustments of the IMF, they refuse to accept that this will destroy local economies and force local folks to migrate to find better jobs. The United States seems to want to drop all boarders when it comes to capital, but build walls when it comes to people.

The US boarder wall is just one more example of militarization as a means to protecting the interests of global capital at the expense of whomever doesn’t have the power to resist.

Its interesting to read this article because it focuses on how folks north of the proposed wall are having their lives disrupted and destroyed which is not frequently a part of the current discourse. So having said its interesting, you should feel compelled to read it.

“Ya Basta! Enough is enough!” Blount said, repeating the phrase that became the battle cry of the Zapatistas in Mexico struggling for Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

NYC sds featured in the New York Times

The New York Times just wrote a rather lengthy article about sds, focusing largely on internal dynamics and our ideas about how change is made. The article quotes Pat Korte (New School, NYC) extensively but also includes lots of insight from Raychel Haut (Queens College, NYC) and Jessica Rapchik (Antioch College, Yellow Springs OH) as well as an interesting anecdote from Aaron Petcoff (Wayne State University, Detroit MI).

Check out the article here.