YoungVoteTheYoungVoteTheYoungVoteTheYou

As the New York Times reports, the City Council voted overwhelmingly on June 30th to add two Muslim holidays to the NY public school calendar. As of now, no Muslim holidays are on the calendar although about 12% (> 100,000) of the public school system's students identify as Muslim.  This would have been fine and dandy but Mayor Bloomberg, who became the autocrat of NYC's public schools in 2000 and ultimately designates days off from the NYC public school calendar (and pretty much everything else) has opposed the measure.
Bloomberg explains that: "If you close the schools for every single holiday, there won't be any school," G. Oliver Koppell, one of the few council members to vote against the measure, explains that if one would accept these days, then other holidays on the schedule would have to be trimmed.
God forbid anyone took one day off Hanukkah, what would that menorah look like?!?
Koppell goes on to explain that if other religious groups in NY start demanding their own days off then "Where are we going to end with this?"
In other words, if non-authoritative religious groups in NYC begin demanding their fair share of recognition and respect then we may just swirl into a chaotic abyss of truancy. Worse yet, it might even expose how ludicrous it is to force unwilling individuals to sit in buildings for 9+ hours a day, 5+ days a week, 9+ months a year.
The argument "Where are we doing to end with this?" smells terribly familiar. Oh yes, it reminds me of the arguments against gay marriage and legal recognition of one's non-conforming gender expression. Usually the arguments sounds something like this: "But if we allow two men to marry then the next thing that will happen is that women will marry frogs and llamas will marry blenders" and "If we allow men to identify as women on their driver's licenses then where will it end? Soon women will identify as frogs and llamas as blenders."
Oh the Judeo-Christian organization of the world. Will it ever deconstruct?

In case you were wondering about the state of international student activism, Mo from the International Students Movement  breaks the last few days down:

Monday [15/06]:

• "Campus-Camps" were set up on various campuses in about 15 cities
• the Institute for Philosophical studies in Heidelberg was occupied + later that day the Romanic Institute was occupied as well
  
• the main building of the Ruhr - University in Bochum was blocked by activists
• all entries of buildings on campus Grifflenberg of the University of Wuppertal were blocked by students
• the complete Otto-Suhr Institute for political sciences [which is part of the Free University Berlin] together with the Institute for Eastern European studies were occupied in Berlin
• the institute for architecture of the Technical University of Berlin
• sit-in (~ 30 people) blocking the entry of the state chancellery in Düsseldorf
• more than 100 people at the warm-up demonstration in Düsseldorf
• about 500 people gathered on the campus in Bochum for a spontaneous demonstration
• an "alternative university" was kicked off in Mainz with more than 60 alternatives seminars and workshops + the main university building was blocked with barricades
  
• entries to the Philosophical Institute of the University of Münster were blocked with barricades
• the whole University of Hamburg was on strike + various entries were blocked and one building [Raue Haus] occupied + various streets were blocked
  
• various buildings at the University of Hildesheim were blocked
  
• a protest camp set up by pupils was broken up by the school administration of the Christophorus-Gymnasium (secondary school) in Verne
• a street party took place an blocked the university street in Berlin
• after a general assembly at the Technical University of Berlin 1,200 students spontaneously took to the streets and blocked streets; some students were arrested (news report + pictures)
• students at the "Kunsthochschule Weißensee" [University of Arts Weißensee-Berlin] removed all tables and chairs inside the halls and created space for alternative circles of discussion
• students occupied the 4th floor of a lecture building of the Humboldt University in Berlin
• during a general assembly students at the University of Kassel agreed to join the "educational strike" + a computer hall as well as the chancellors' office were occupied
• faculty of humanities at the Leibniz-University in Hanover was occupied
• the largest lecture building of the University of Halle was occupied by students at night
• more than 150 school students demonstrate against cutting the time frame to achieve A'levels by one year in Düsseldorf
  

• the complete faculty of social sciences at the University of Hildesheim went on strike + later on 3,000 people joined a rally in the city centre
  
• all entries to the universitiy presidents' office were blocked in Göttingen
• various buildings on campus of the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena were occupied; video 1, video 2
  
• blockades at the University of Wuppertal continue
• all tables and chairs were removed from lecture halls and put inside the cafeteria by activists at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf
• various institutes at the University of Halle were occupied, including the Institute for Ethnology and the Institute for Speech Communication
• a lecture building at the Free University of Berlin was occupied
• the whole Alice-Salomon University of Applied Sciences was blocked and partly occupied + alternative seminars were arranged
• 100 students spontaneously decided to kick off a demonstration on campus in Dresden
• the university presidents' office at the Free University of Berlin was occupied by hundreds of students + a few hours later they were evicted by police forces; pressure from students outside was too strong, so no IDs were checked and the three students arrested were freed again
  
• hundreds of students went to visit schools at asked school students to join the "educational strike" in Hanover
  
• close to 100 students dressed as sheep protested against the Bachelor degree in Essen
• close to 1,000 students and pupils took to the streets for free education in Giessen, main junctions were blocked for hours
  
• after a general assembly at the University of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt (Main) 300 students spontaneously expressed their protest on the streets
• more than 30 students at the University of Tübingen occupied the rectors' office
• 200 students joined the university senat hearing and declared the "Free University of Heidelberg" together with lecturers
• in the early morning some 40 students blocked the rectors' office in Göttingen with bike locks, sit-ins and bicycles + the blockade was kept until the afternoon
• the federal parliament of Lower Saxony (in Hanover) was blocked by students in protest against education policies

• Protests and demonstrations in 100 cities across Germany; in the end more than 250,000 students, pupils, parents and teachers took to the streets; a complete list of the demonstations and the sizes can be accessed here: http://www.bildungsstreik.net/demozahlen; for example clips from Heidelberg, Hamburg, Münster, Hanover, Wiesbaden, Berlin, Munich, Halle, Göttingen, Augsburg, Cologne
  
• in Dortmund students stormed the town hall and occupied it temporarily
• some school directors prohibited pupils from joining the demonstrations; they were locked inside the schools
  
• the federal parliament of Rhineland Palatinate (in Mainz) was occupied during a demonstration, the demands were read out and two people arrested during the protest, video
  
• the university presidents' office in Göttingen was occupied by students
• a branch of the Deutsche Bank was blocked by hundreds of students in Minden
• the ministry for science and arts in Dresden was occupied
• a prestige building of the Technical University of Darmstadt was barricaded to protest against a "two-class" public education system and the state support to create an elitist group of universities/schools
• 700 students occupied the rectors' office at the University of Heidelberg
• a local goverment building was occupied in Münster
• during an attempt to get pupils from schools in Nürnberg to join the demonstrations some pupils were attacked by police forces with pepper spray
• 2,000 students blocked streets in Essen and were attacked by the police; at least 10 students were detained and IDs recorded
• the local education authority in Marburg was occupied by more than 100 students and pupils; they drafted a press release together and left the building one hour later again
  
• at least one protesters was injured and arrested in Bielefeld during a police attack
• hundreds of students blocked the access road to the highway in Marburg for one hour after students were attacked with pepper spray and one was detained
• one student was arrested during a spontaneous demonstration in Würzburg
• during a demonstration near the town hall in Hamburg pupils were attacked by the police and six 14years old pupils were detained; all together close to 20 students and pupils were detained in Hamburg during the protests
  
• various buildings on campus of the Technical University of Berlin were occupied and barricaded
• hundreds of pupils temporarily occupied some school buildings in Augsburg
• the inner city of Tübingen was blocked by hundreds of students for 4 hours by a student sit-in
• two students were temporarily arrested during road blockades in Eberswalde
• the academic examination office of the University of Hanover was temporarily occupied
  

• the main lecture hall at the University of Konstanz was occupied; consequently the university had to call off a PR event
• the Institute of Political Sciences was occupied in Marburg
• the AfE Tower on campus of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt was occupied by hundreds of students
  
• entries at the ministry of science in Potsdam were blocked by students; video
  
• hundreds of students blocked tram rails in Würzburg; police broke up the blockades and arrested 7 students
• banks across Germany were "visited" and blocked to protest against the billions of Euros of tax payers' money going to banks, although for years we are told that there is no money for public education; during the actions students were arrested in some cities; since these actions were announced in advance many banks were closed or protected by police forces for the whole day
  
• 150 students gathered for a protest on bicycles through the city centre of Berlin
• activists disruppted a speech by the director of the Commerzbank (Mr. Blässing) at a school; each time he mentioned the need to support the development of an elite in science and education the activists cheered and applauded loudly
• the main entrance to the University of Bielefeld was blocked by more than 100 students
• all chairs and tables were removed from the lecture halls at the Evangelical University of Applied Sciences in Bochum and sculptures were build with them outside
• more than 1,500 pupils demonstrated in Soltau-Fallingbostel
• more than 50 pupils entered the town hall in Augsburg, enrolled a huge banner and declared it to be the base of the "board of students"; shortly after the activists were removed by the police
• 1,000 people blocked a branch of the Deutsche Bank and Hypo-Real-Estate in Berlin; video clip 1, video clip 2, video clip 3
  
• in Hamburg 50 education activists temporarily occupied a ship; shortly after they were evicted and surrounded by police
• all together 9 banks were "visited" in Hamburg alone, video 1, video 2
  
• during a session on the "educational strike" within the state parliament of Hesse (in Wiesbaden) activists enrolled a big banner and shouted their demands; the session had to be stopped and the activsts violently removed

• the "Conference of the Ministers for Education and Cultural Affairs" (KMK) held a meeting in Berlin today; a rally "Block KMK - Fight Bologna" was arranged; close to 1,000 people attended it and the conference was aborted prematurely due to the protests
• the occupation of the rectors' office in Heidelberg was evicted - details of all 150 students were recorded; the administration withdrew the charges

The News and Observer reports that: "The House approved by a one-vote margin a bill that would ban bullying against school children for actual or perceived differences including sexual orientation."

I actually find this to be repulsive that the bill wasn't approved by a much wider margin. Apparently the reason is that...

 "Opponents, particularly Republicans, have said the bill should not name special categories of victims and have said the bill should simply ban all bullying. Supporters, mostly Democrats, have said the bill focuses attention on children who are the most likely targets in schools across the state."

In reality, GLBTQ and gender-nonconforming young people need special protections because they receive special abuses. Of course it is imperative that all young people feel safe in schools, and that the onus is on EVERYONE to ensure that school spaces are safe spaces, but it is a fact of reality, uncovered in oh so many studies, that GLBTQ and gender-nonconforming young people are particularly trageted and abused physically and emotionally in schools and are thus more likely to have a lower self-esteem, abuse themselves, and committ suicide.
The dismal state of this bill proves that our homophobic and/or ignorant representatives need to be educated.

The New York Post recently put out a news story uncovering one of the better kept secrets in NYC, that while students of the City University of New York (CUNY), who are predominately people of color and/or working class, work multiple jobs to stay in school, "The presidents of five City University of New York colleges and the dean of the university's law school get free housing in lavish homes in top-notch neighborhoods.

"Another 15 CUNY presidents and deans receive monthly $5,000 housing allowances, enough collectively to cover a year's tuition for nearly 200 students. Matthew Goldstein, the CUNY chancellor, earns $450,000 and gets an extra $90,000 a year for housing, giving him the highest allowance in the nation along with the new State University of New York chancellor and a college administrator in Kentucky."

All of this goes is someone legitimized despite the upcoming $600 increase in tuition for CUNY students, an increase that will purge thousands of students from the system.

Another bashing of CNN follows.

CNN has a news story on young Chinese prostitutes, mainly women, who are duped by their pimps into believing that an injection can prevent HIV, and thus make sure to inject their dosage prior to ever sex act. What they don't know (and what a fair amount of American youth probably don't know) is that such an injection is a bigger crock of shit than the 2009 Iranian election.

What CNN fails to report, albeit it would have been an excellent opportunity, is that an overwhelming amount of young people in America, who have been systematically denied very available information about their own bodies, believe that condoms don't work, or that you cannot contract and STI (sexually transmitted disease) your first time. what about here in the US? Let's not even mention the lies told about abortion. Shall we revisit the teen pregnancy map?

CNN has a news story about Jaylen Arnold, a young person with Tourette's syndrome, which is classified as a neuropsychiatric disease characterized by physical and/or vocal tics. Bullies tease him in school because, according to his mother, “its something different, and nobody likes anything different.” Although I wouldn't dismiss the fact that this particular difference might overstimulate other young people because it presents a young person doing what young people are strictly forbidden from doing: being uncontrollably seen and heard. The obvious biases become evident with Arnold referring to those without Tourette's as "normal people."

Regardless, Arnold has created a website called Jaylen's Challenge, the goal of which is to acquaint people with Tourette's syndrome and also to stop bullying of all kinds.  CNN seemed to miss this last point and presents the story as though Jaylen is a hero for individually combating bullies at school. Not exactly, but it is so typical that MSM would turn a very universal issue, bullying, into an individualized issue. The implication is that students have to figure out how to take care of on their own.

This news story made me think of Mean Girls, a movie with the fabulous Lindsay Lohan and well equipped with so so many memorable quotes. Anyhow, Mean Girls similarly enforces the idea that bullying is something that each young person needs to figure out how to deal with on their own, and is possibly even good for them because it will help them grow spiritually. It's a crock of shit, because lots of research demonstrates that bullying negatively impacts self esteem and that the effects are long-term. Bullying is mainly ritualistic public humiliation that functions to institutionalize already existing societal mores. Young people tend to bully women, homosexuals, genderqueer folk, and disabled people because SOCIETY AT LARGE hates women, homosexuals, genderqueer folk, and disabled people, i.e. all those people seen as less than "normal people." The individualized conception is also a crock of shit because it completely takes the onus of bullying off adults. Meanwhile, and I quotes from Safe Youth, “Research has found that bullying is most likely to occur in schools where there is a lack of adult supervision during breaks, where teachers and students are indifferent to or accept bullying behavior, and where rules against bullying are not consistently enforced.”

16ToVote and an awesome new YOUTH movement!

Cross Posted from StudentActivism:

A group of Florida high school students is waging war against a local curfew.

The law — which bars under-18s from downtown West Palm Beach after 10 o’clock on weeknights and eleven on weekends — is, they say, unconscionable age discrimination. But that’s not all.

The law exempts married young people, but not those who are out with parental permission. On the contrary, it imposes fines on parents who “knowingly permit or by insufficient control allow” their children to break the curfew. “Insufficient control” is apparently nowhere defined — is a parent whose 17-year-old is in college expected to exercise “sufficient control” to keep him or her indoors at night? 

The most bizarre — and, in a bizarre way, comforting — provision of the two-year-old law is one which exempts young people who are “attending or traveling directly to or from an activity that involves the exercise of rights protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution” from the curfew.

That’s right. The curfew as written only applies to those young people who don’t intend to speak while they’re out on the town. If you’re going to be exercising your freedom of speech (or assembly, or religion, or the press, or, you know, petitioning the government for redress of grievances), you’re golden. If you’re heading out to sit by your grandmother who’s in a coma, though, you’re getting a ticket.

(Only not really. The city is mostly just using the law as a mechanism for rousting young people rather than going through the hassle of ticketing them — as of the end of March it had issued a thousand warnings but only five citations.)

It’s ridiculous, is what it is, and the National Youth Rights Association of Southeast Florida is doing something about it.

NYRASEFL leaders Zach Goodman and Jeffrey Nadel (both 16) spent a big chunk of the spring explaining to the mayor and city commission just how farkakte the law is, but didn’t get anywhere. Then in late March they retained local civil rights attorney Barry Silver, who managed to get a law that criminalized feeding the homeless (yes, really) overturned last year. But so far he hasn’t had any luck either.

So on the evening of May 1, they took to the streets, letting the city know when and where they would defy the curfew.

During the protest they were tailed by two officers on Segways, but otherwise left alone. Their presence does seem to have gotten under the cops’ skin, though, as police ticketed several teens who were waiting for their parents outside a nearby movie theater as the protest was going on.

NYRASEFL intends to make one final effort to convince the city commission to repeal the curfew law before filing suit against the city. We’ll keep you informed as the story develops.

Those Pesky Liberals!

Yoday's editorial cartoon on the Onion demonstrates the truth about Dr. Seuss and the Liberal (read: gay) agenda.

I know that some say that MSNBC is the liberal response to Fox, but I truly believe the Onion is...

"Whose Schools/Our Schools: A Strategic Round Table on the NYC Student Movement at the Brecht Forum"

Check out a panel on activism at NY schools at the Brecht Forum this Sunday featuring a good friend and fellow activist, Tara Mulqueen. Whoa!

Featuring organizers at the forefront of the student movement in New York, this event will address the successes and failures of student organizing from the perspective of activists engaged in ongoing struggles against university administrations across the city. Along with long term strategic questions for student organizers, we will be discussing the relationship between universities and capital, and the role of student organizing for the left in general.

 

Sunday April 26th, 4pm
Sliding scale

 

With:
Tim Hearin - New School
Yotam Marom - Radical Student Union (New School)
Tara Mulqueen - CUNY Movement
Drew Phillips - Take Back NYU!
Banu Quadir - Take Back NYU!
Doug Singsen - CUNY Movement

 

The Brecht Forum is located at 451 West St. on the West Side Highway between Bank and Bethune Sts in the West Village. for more info and directions visit www.BrechtForum.org

Student Solidarity with Workers at Harvard

Over the past several months, Harvard's Student Labor Action Movement has been fighting layoffs in solidarity with Harvard workers with support of many members of the student body, alumni, faculty, staff, parents and more. Through protests, a petition, vigils, letters, and more, SLAM has brought the message that workers are valuable members of the Harvard community to the forefront of campus and even Cambridge politics.
Recently SLAM worked with the Harvard College Democrats to produce a video about the human cost of layoffs: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/slam/node/182