Posts with the tag student activism

March 4th Roundup: “Make the bosses take the losses!”

pdelatorre — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:56:34 EST

Today, students across the country are taking action as part of the National Day of Action to Defend Education. You can read more about it and find local actions here, read Campus Progress’s statement here, and take action here.
The latest updates

Protestors in Sacramento being beaten, tased, gassed by police as they try tomarch forward.
-via @ CaliforniaAggie on Twitter
500 High School students and supporters in Baltimore, as part of the Algebra Project, marched to a youth detention center in order to draw attention to the “school-to-prison” pipeline. They’re insisting that money for the youth detention center be diverted to education.
-via SocialistWorker.org
Hundreds at UCLA convene in the Chancellor’s office to present their demands to Gene Block: lower fees and less layoffs.
-via Huffington Post
200 students at UMass-Amherst had the same strategy as UCLA. Disrupting the chancellor is a popular tactic today.
18 students arrested at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee after rallying with 250 others to deliver signatures to the chancellor. Police are accused of using excessive force. Video here and here.
400-500 UW students in Seattle marching in the streets demanding to see UW President Mark Emmert.
-via @JayBeeStarkey on Twitter

March 4th Roundup: CA to NY

pdelatorre — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:47:31 EST

Today, students across the country are going on strike, attending rallies, engaging in civil disobedience, and more as part of the National Day of Action to Defend Education. You can read more about it and find local actions here, read Campus Progress’s statement here, and take action here.

The latest updates:

Fire alarms are being set off across several campuses in a symbolic effort to represent the state of emergency in higher education.
- via @reclaimuc on Twitter
Crowds are steadily increasing at CSUN for the March 4 higher education walk out while hundreds more gather at Berkeley and Laney College in Oakland.
- via @dailysundial, @NSNS, and @dailcal on Twitter
A Washington Post article highlights the student protest efforts that have taken place throughout the day noting the increased tuition rates and the drastic budget cuts that have sparked students to protest.
San Diego area college students will meet today at 3 PM in Balboa Park to march to the Governor’s office in downtown San Diego.
- via @cfaCSUN on Twitter
Approximately 2,500 people are already gathered at the State Capitol in Sacramento, CA to protest.
-via @mrdaveyd/loxocele on Twitter
Several hundred students at Hunter College in Manhattan faced police resistance when trying to enter buildings to encourage more walkouts. A march on Governor Paterson’s office may occur after this afternoon’s rally.
-via Socialistworker.org

Stay tuned for more, and take action at campusprogress.org/march4th

By: Yosef Getachew

March 4th Roundup: UCSC Protesters "Run Over" by Commuter

pdelatorre — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:57:52 EST

The latest updates:

The national day of action to defend public education kicked off this morning with a blockade of the entrances to the University of California at Santa Cruz. Approximately 400 students are blocking the entrances to the school, infuriating commuters. As one car tried to tag along behind a police car to get through the crowd the driver has "run over" 4 students ending in at least one broken leg. -Via @occupyca on Twitter

Students protesting at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, demanding free education for poor citizens, were dispersed by the police when they were sprayed with water hoses. -Via iafrica.com

To get students excited about action all over the UC system today a prominent building at UC Riverside has been “decorated” with an encouraging banner. -Via Occupy California
Angus Johnston at StudentActivism.net has spent numerous hours compiling this map of planned actions all over the country. It made an appearance on MSNBC earlier today.
@Callie_hoo: "First picketers have arrived at #ucb. Strike is ON! #ucstrike #march4" -via Twitter

Stay tuned for more, and take action at campusprogress.org/march4th

By: Christian Pittman

Higher Education feeling the heat over coal; students demand an end to dirty fuel on campus

Tristan Fowler — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 22:53:12 EST

Students and environmental groups are demanding that colleges and universities halt the burning of coal on campus, and while some institutions are listening, others see the financial costs as an insurmountable obstacle. The Chronicle of Higher Education excellently reports on the growing demand for clean(er) energy, and explains the cost and difficulties of switching from cheap, reliable coal. For instance, natural gas is expensive and institutions would need to burn larger quantities of wood than coal.

Student groups are organizing through the “Beyond Coal” campaign by the Sierra Club. Beginning in Sept., the campaign gives assistance to more than 60 schools with coal-powered plants located on their campus, by providing sample petitions, templates for letters to the editor and advice.

Trail of DREAMs Makes National Headlines

pdelatorre — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:52:19 EST

On New Year’s Day, a small group of students started a their journey—on foot—from Miami, FL to Washington, D.C., to raise awareness about the DREAM Act and other progressive immigration reforms. These students, who were brought to the U.S. as children, did not want to see their futures, and those of their classmates, put in jeopardy because they lack a viable path to citizenship.

Despite the silence of Congress on immigration so far, people are paying attention to their efforts. Their campaign, which they are calling the Trail of DREAMs, was recently featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Univision, the Miami Herald, and other news outlets.

The students are working with a group called Students Working for Equal Rights (SWER), which is asking for help with this effort (especially if you live in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, or DC). They need people to organize a reception, donate, offer places to stay, etc. You can find out how to get involved.

SWER has received an Organizing Grant from Campus Progress as part of the Action Alliance program. The program awards $200-$1,500 to youth-led organizations that are working on progressive issue campaigns or projects that will help build the progressive youth movement. You can learn more about the DREAM Act and take action.

Major Victory for Anti-Sweatshop Student Activists

pdelatorre — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:29:42 EST

Last Tuesday marked a historic victory for the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) and other labor rights activists when Russell Athletics agreed to rehire dismissed workers and open a new plant in Honduras as a unionized factory.

Just over a year ago, Russell Athletic announced it would close their factory in Honduras in order to prevent their workers from unionizing. As a response, a national campaign was launched by USAS and other student organizations, including Students for Economic and Social Justice (SESJ), in order to protect the rights of the Honduran workers. This effort resulted in an unprecedented victory, in which the coalition of students persuaded one of the nation’s leading sportswear companies to agree to meet worker demands to reopen the factory and re-hire all 1,200 workers who were dismissed.

Video from the UC Protests

Kay — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:50:27 EST

Le Gente (pronounced La Hen-tay), a Campus Progress-sponsored publication, has been gathering video on the ground at UCLA of the protests of a 32 percent tuition hike. Below are videos from the first two days of the protest.

Protesting the Detention of Students in Florida

pdelatorre — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:46:47 EST

Many students across the country are faced with an almost existential challenge. Undocumented students, many of whom arrived as young children and barely remember their country of birth, must often contend with the threat of deportation, being separated from their family, and being forced to live in the shadows.

Students Working for Equal Rights (SWER) is trying to do something about it. SWER Is a student led campaign affiliated with the Florida Immigrant Coalition. It works to both pass the DREAM Act, which would give young people who attend two years of college, or serve in the military for two years, a path to legal status, and challenges the deportation and detention of students that would be eligible for the DREAM Act.

SWER has done some amazing work this month. As part of a statewide day of action, student leaders from across South Florida held a protest outside of the Broward Transitional Center, where several DREAMers are being detained:

Students elsewhere in the state held film screenings and other events, asked their college presidents for endorsements of the DREAM Act, and held a statewide call-in day to urge their Senator to get more involved in this issue.

By the way, if you don’t know much about the immigrant detention “system,” then you should really learn more. The Obama administration recently announced some promising reforms, but there is much more to do.

SWER recently received an Organizing Grant through Campus Progress’s Action Alliance Program. Student and youth-led issue campaigns and movement building projects are eligible for up to $1,500 to organize for progressive social change.

Campus Progress Announces 2009-10 Progressive Partnerships

pdelatorre — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:37:46 EDT

Campus Progress, is happy to announce its Progressive Partnerships for 2009-10. Progressive Partnerships, part of the Action Alliance program, are year-long intensive relationships between Campus Progress and youth-led groups working on issue campaign or movement building projects.

Campus Progress will provide guidance, networking, strategic planning, and training for these organizations in order to help strengthen the progressive movement over the long term, and help young people make concrete change in their communities now. Click here to learn more about the 2009-10 Progressive Partnerships.

Check them out:

Victory for UH Students for Fair Trade, a CP Action Grantee

pdelatorre — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:46:58 EDT

The University of Houston Students for Fair Trade (UHSFT) recently won a major victory on their campus. Their university administration decided this month that Java City, a campus coffee shop located in UH’s student center will only serve fair trade certified coffee starting in the fall. This has been a major request of UHSFT for some time.

Some of UHSFT’s other victories have included:

Made fair trade coffee available in all campus corporate coffee outlets (but not the dining halls)
Made Fair Trade greeting cards available in UH’s Barnes and Noble-run campus bookstore
Helped make a small business, Hope for Women, become an official vendor for all Barnes and Nobles campus stores nationwide
Made fair trade coffee available in campus dining halls
Placed signage and brochures about fair trade coffee at every coffee outlet
Generated quite a bit of local and national publicity,
Received grants from Transfair USA and Campus Progress
Helped a local business, Katz Coffee (owned by UH alum Avi Katz) begin the first all fair trade coffee outlet on the UH campus

On March 30 UHSFT kicked off a new fair food campaign—focusing on just wages and working conditions for tomato pickers—in solidarity with the Student Farmworkers Alliance and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers

UHSFT has received Campus Progress Action Grants for two years now. Action grants make $200-$1,000 available to progressive issue campaigns led by college students and young people. Grantees will also get assistance with events, publicity, training, and other resources.

CP Student Reps in TX: Impeach Judge Sharon Keller!

pdelatorre — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:44:16 EDT

Campus Progress Student Reps in Austin, Texas have been doing some amazing work through Students Against the Death Penalty (SADP) and the Texas Moratorium Network.

One of their biggest issues right now is the impeachment of a state judge that refused to receive paperwork a few minutes for an urgent appeal from a man that was scheduled to be executed the same night. The cause against Judge Keller has received widespread support, including from the New York Times. SADP has a campaign website where you can find more information about this issue.

You can find recent testimony at a committee hearing from Hooman Hedayati, a University of Texas student, and an update from Margaret Haule, a student at Austin Community College, below:

UNL Students Receive Grant for Anti-Genocide Activism

pdelatorre — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:06:54 EST

Divest Nebraska, a student organization at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), was recently awarded a grant of $400 from the non-profit Campus Progress for their campaign to convince Nebraska lawmakers to divest from targeted companies. Targeted companies are those companies operating in Sudan that provide few to no benefits to Sudanese citizens and generate revenue used by the Sudanese government to fund genocide.

Students take action on climate change

canow.environment — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:54:16 EST

"All across the world, in every kind of environment and region known to man, increasingly dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are abruptly putting an end to the long-running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not only is it real, it's here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster."

BARACK OBAMA, speech, Apr. 3, 2006

Students in Universities across the country (and world), are working for change. Many have realized that if we do not change our ways now, we will pay life-threatening consequences in the future.

I wanted to highlight the current waves of "activism in academia" because the two really go hand in hand. Learning about and becoming more aware of environmental issues ignites passion. The following sustainability digest was posted by the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Sustainability at the University of California, Berkeley...please read on and share with others.

Student Reps Fighting Proposition 8 in California

pdelatorre — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:18:11 EDT

Campus Progress Student Representatives at American River College (ARC) in Sacramento, California are working feverishly along with other members of the ARC progressive community to make sure that their campus is not used to support anti-equality policies like California’s Proposition 8.

When the ARC’s Student Council decided to take up a resolution supporting the proposition, which would outlaw same sex marriage, students swung into action by packing the student council meeting to show their opposition. They also collected twice the number of signatures needed for the council members to be recalled. Unfortunately, the resolution was passed, but it is abundantly clear that the vote did not accurately reflect the will of the student body.

You can watch Nancy Dziuba, one of the two Campus Progress Student Representatives on the campus, on the local Fox station speaking about some of the intimidation that members of the progressive and GLBT community have faced at ARC recently:

Berwyn Heights Mayor, 32 lbs of Marijuana, 2 Labs Shot, Nobody Arrested

Irina Alexander — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 02:16:17 EDT

Mayor of the Berwyn Heights community in Maryland, Cheye Calvo, found himself Tuesday evening on the floor of his house with his hands behind his back, wearing nothing but boxers and socks, with his two beloved dogs’ bloody carcasses lying lifeless next to him for hours. The first question that pops into my mind after hearing a description like this is what kind of an evil criminally minded lunatic would go to such disgustingly brutal lengths to torture someone? And what could have Mayor Calvo possibly done that inspired such an attack?

The answer, surprisingly enough, is that it was no criminal at all, at least not according to the government. In fact, it was the Prince George's County Police Department who broke into Mayor Calvo’s house during a no-knock drug raid, shot his two Labrador Retrievers, and interrogated Mayor Calvo and his mother-in-law for hours about a package that had been intercepted in Arizona addressed to the mayor’s wife containing 32 pounds of marijuana. After raiding the house with a SWAT team, and finding absolutely nothing, police released the Calvos, coming out with no arrests. The Calvo family did nothing wrong, and denies knowing anything about the drugs.

The “War on Drugs” has killed yet another two innocent victims. Every day, people’s lives are wrongfully lost to this unnecessary and counterproductive battle.

University of Maryland’s Students for Sensible Drug Policy chapter will be holding a memorial service for the dogs, Chase and Payton, on Saturday at 5pm at Lake Artemesia. We will be inviting the community and surrounding areas to bring their dogs to the event, where we will be giving out ribbons to the dogs and owners to show our solidarity with the Calvos, have a moment of silence for the dogs, and take some time to speak about other incidents in which innocent dogs’ lives have been lost to the “War on Drugs”. More information about the event can be found here.

UMD-SSDP sends our most sincere and heartfelt condolences to the Calvo family for their loss, and pledges to do their part in preventing such violent police tactics in the future.

Sudan Divestment can happen

Adrian Shanker — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:20:47 EDT

Sometimes campaigns at the college level are drawn out and take a great deal of time and energy. In the middle of the summer I began working on a resolution to introduce at the first meeting of the Muhlenberg Student Council. The resolution called for a divestment of Muhlenberg funds from the "highest offending" companies working in Sudan to perpetuation the genocide in the Darfur region.

Hard work pays off, over time. It took a few weeks to get it passed through the Student Council (with all but one vote) followed by meetings with administrators, articles in the student newspaper, and meeting with a group of members of the Board Of Trustees.

Over half a year later, the Board of Trustees voted in favor of the following resolution to:

not knowingly make direct investments with Category One highest offender companies engaging in business in the Sudan as defined by the Sudan Divestment Task Force. Furthermore, if Muhlenberg commingled investments are invested in Category One companies, letters will be submitted to managers of these funds requesting that they consider removing such companies from the fund or create a similar actively managed fund with commingled holdings devoid of such companies.

1,500 Campuses Participate in Focus the Nation

pdelatorre — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:54:41 EST

Yesterday, thousands of students and faculty members participated in Focus the Nation, and national teach-in on global warming. Check out some excerpts of the media coverage below the fold:

More Encouraging LGBT News!

Tanya Paperny — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 19:49:19 EST

I’m so great to see that the Queer Student Union (QSU) and the Campus Democrats at the University of California, Santa Barbara co-sponsored a highly successful ENDA rally last Tuesday.

Divesting from Sudan...kinda

Zach Marks — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 00:31:47 EDT

Getting universities to divest from companies doing business in Sudan in ways that support the genocide in Darfur has been one of the hottest campaign issues for student activists on campuses around the country. (It has also been one of the most closely watched topics on Campus Progress, which has published at least this, this, this, and this on student-led divestment movements.)

Miami University Students Rally for Living Wage

Ramya — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:40:16 EDT

**NOTE: this blog post was written by Stephanie Lee, a Campus Progress Representative at MU-Ohio, and a member of Students for Staff

It is so easy to forget about poverty, when we are so comfortably surrounded by wealth. Most Miami University students come from families with an average household income of over $200,000. Miami University is fairly well off as well, with a total of $47 million in net assets. Yet, there are innumerable staff at Miami who are living at or below the poverty line.

Students for Staff organized a successful rally and protest outside the Miami University student center yesterday. Despite the unusual cold, there was a crowd of about 70-80 students and staff gathered together on the patio, eating snacks and getting to know one another in a different setting.