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whitesinhistory · 6 months ago

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Campus Protests Are Called Disruptive. So Was the Civil Rights Movement

On May 1, a half dozen U.S. Senators from both major parties read aloud Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, a yearly ritual celebrating the power of dissent in U.S. history.

Meanwhile, the night before, the NYPD had used riot gear, military equipment, and hundreds of officers to dismantle nonviolent Gaza solidarity encampments at Columbia University and then at City College of the City University of New York (CUNY). In the process, NYPD officers, with authorization from CUNY and Columbia administrations, arrested more than 100 Columbia protesters and approximately 170 CUNY protestors.

The multiracial City College Gaza Solidarity Encampment had drawn students and faculty from across the 25 CUNY colleges, holding Passover seders, Muslim prayers, teach-ins, and art builds. Alongside their demands for divestment, disclosure, and an academic boycott of Israel, CUNY students also called for a demilitarized CUNY and free tuition. Over half of CUNY students come from households that earn $30,000 or less; the university student body is 22% Asian, 26% Black, 31% Latinx, and 21% white.

The juxtaposition of the Senate pageant with the mass criminalization of student protesters was not simply ironic. It reflects how public officials have repeatedly tried to drape themselves in the mis-history of the civil rights movement to oppose and justify the criminalization of protest in the present. Media commentators and public officials have decried the Gaza solidarity encampments and other pro-Palestinian protests with comparisons to King and the civil rights movement. King, many liberals and conservatives claim, didn’t inconvenience people, disrupt things, or make people feel unsafe; by contrast, today’s students are portrayed as reckless and dangerous. Students are protesting Israel's brutal war in Gaza and U.S. investment in funding that war. In January the International Court of Justice found that it was "plausible" that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and in March the U.N. Special Rapporteur determined there were "reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold of genocide...has been met." But two days after the violent NYPD raid, President Biden chastised students—not the police—that “dissent must never lead to disorder.”

Such popular invocations of the movement miss how the civil rights heroes of the past were viewed as dangerous, disorderly, and unwelcome in their own day. King and others who refused to live by the racial status quo were treated as “extremists” in their time, just like their contemporary counterparts are treated in our time.

Read More: Biden Condemns Campus Unrest Over Israel-Hamas War: 'None of This Is a Peaceful Protest’

Indeed, from the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 on, King understood the need for disruptive protest to upset norms of segregation, poverty, and militarism. And he was criticized for it. Many leaders and commentators chastised King and the bus boycott for hurting the bus company and putting people out of work—and the national NAACP didn’t support the year-long bus boycott, finding it too disruptive, only later taking on the legal case.

Even the march that King would later become most associated with after his assassination–the March on Washington (MOW) on Aug. 28, 1963, of 250,000 people—was not supported by many politicians or most Americans at the time, according a Gallup poll done the week of the march.

Those who opposed civil rights activism were not some Southern fringe. The Chicago Sun Times in 1963 decried the “intimidation” of the MOW. The Chicago Tribune, alongside various Chicago politicians, referred to King as an “outside agitator” when he criticized the city’s deep segregation in 1963, saying it was as bad as Birmingham’s.

As King had said for years: “Racial injustice was not a sectional problem. …De facto segregation of the North was as injurious as the legal segregation of the South.” Indeed, a couple of months before the MOW, on June 12, 1963, Dr. King delivered the commencement address at City College and underscored that point.

Located in the heart of Harlem, City College proclaimed its mission to provide a free excellent higher education to the "whole people" of New York. But in reality, King addressed a nearly all-white crowd of 15,000 people that day. Less than three dozen of the 2,800 students graduating in 1963 were Black, though nearly half of the city’s schools were Black and Puerto Rican. Civil rights advocates, parents, and students had been pointing out the problem for years, including City College’s own Kenneth Clark, a sociologist whose research had been crucial to the Supreme Court’s Brown decision striking down school segregation in 1954.

A month after King’s City College address, Black Brooklynites staged pickets intended to disrupt—and ideally halt—construction work at the Downstate Hospital because construction companies excluded Black workers. Protesters even laid down in front of construction vehicles. Hundreds were arrested day after day.

King supported the confrontational demonstrations, stressing they would end “when the Negro feels he is getting a fair deal in housing and job opportunities.” The police roughed up many of the protesters, so King underlined the need for the federal government to create a special civil rights force to prevent police brutality against protestors (in New York as well as Birmingham). King emphasized the role the police played in maintaining segregation and criminalizing protest across the country. He later referred to New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago as sites of “domestic colonialism,” where police and the courts act as “enforcers.”

The year after his address at City College, Black and white moderates called on King to condemn Brooklyn Congress of Racial Equality’s proposed stall-in. Brooklyn CORE had spent the early 1960s challenging housing segregation, school segregation, and job discrimination, garnering little substantive change. Now they sought to draw attention to the city’s rampant inequality by stalling cars on highways leading to the 1964 World’s Fair to be held at Flushing Meadows—to make it difficult for people to continue to avoid seeing racism and poverty. But King refused to condemn the action.

“We do not need allies who are more devoted to order than to justice,” King explained. “I hear a lot of talk these days about our direct action talk alienating former friends. I would rather feel they are bringing to the surface latent prejudices that are already there. If our direct action programs alienate our friends….they never were really our friends.” Allies are not allies who are more devoted to order than to justice, he argued, as he had in the Letter from a Birmingham Jail the previous year.

Read More: The Problem With Comparing Today's Activists to Martin Luther King Jr.

By 1969, City College was still 91% white; while CUNY’s Brooklyn College was 96% white. Alongside student strikes across the country that accelerated in the wake of Dr. King’s assassination, a massive movement at CUNY crescendoed in the spring of 1969. Student protesters challenged CUNY’s segregation, its nearly-all-white faculty, and a biased curriculum. At City College, students engaged in a two-week occupation of the campus. At Brooklyn College, they took over a faculty meeting, had mass demonstrations, briefly took over buildings, and engaged in minor arson and vandalism. And they faced massive criminalization.

The Brooklyn College administration got an injunction against students congregating on campus and the NYPD raided the homes of 17 Brooklyn College activists who then faced multiple felony charges. The media framed them as Communists and terrorizers, and many city leaders and residents saw them as reckless and dangerous. But many Black and Puerto Rican community members rallied around them, continuing the pressure. And these protests ultimately succeeded in the establishment of Africana and Puerto Rican studies departments, the diversification of the faculty, and open admissions at CUNY.

Fast forward 55 years, universities like CUNY and Columbia now celebrate those activists of old, featuring this activism on their websites and praising them in anniversary celebrations of Africana and Puerto Rican Studies. Yet, university administrations brought the NYPD to violently break up the encampments; Brooklyn College suspended all outdoor activities, and Columbia canceled its commencement.

Such actions and the political leaders who misuse the memory of the civil rights movement and student activism of the past have not learned the needed lessons from this history. The young people of this moment—as they protest the war in Gaza, in the face of significant campus and police repression—are picking up that work.

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readingsquotes · 7 months ago

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"A group of students assembled on the University of Texas at Austin campus to call for an end to the war in Gaza. They did not engage in violence. They did not disrupt classes or occupy administrative buildings. They set up tents on a lawn. They were met with a militarized response, ordered by Governor Abbott, and supported by University administrators. Students and journalists were arrested.

Greg Abbott is one of many on the right that has bemoaned the death of free speech on campus. He signed a law to protect such speech in 2019. And then he calls for peaceful protestors to be arrested.

....

The absurdities that follow are almost funny. The University of Austin, the pretend university launched by IDW types like Bari Weiss, is preparing its “Forbidden Courses” for the summer. It stands silently by as the actual University of Texas at Austin is censored, safe in the knowledge that they are regime-approved.

You don’t have to be blind to the real cases of anti-semitism in America to be troubled by accusations of anti-semitism to shut down the most visible protests to a military response that has become increasingly unpopular. The looking glass nature of the argument is reflected back at us: senior Israeli officials who oversaw the destruction of every university campus in Gaza complain that what is going on American campuses is unacceptable. Tarring every objection to Israel as anti-semitism makes it harder to address actual cases of this malign worldview, which unfortunately is not in short supply.

....

But in places where the university administration has not responded aggressively, protest tactics of the kind used in Texas and Columbia have not created unrest. Overwhelmingly, the actual experience of protests on campus has not been one of violence, as Harvard professor Ryan Enos noted:

Some claim that universities are overrun with antisemitic hordes, while others, including myself and my colleagues, have seen only peaceful actions from diverse student protesters, including many Jews, earnestly challenging what they see as a grave violation of human rights. University leaders must be clear about what is happening on our campus, rather than letting social media and opportunistic politicians manufacture narratives.

....

In the long run, student protests are often unpopular in their own era, but have a pretty good track record of being right about major issues of conflict, such as Vietnam, civil rights, apartheid in South Africa, or the war in Iraq. The students in Austin should retain mementoes of their arrests for when the university runs a retrospective event applauding their courage decades from now.

...

Here is a very simple test: The next time you read an opinion piece about protests on campus, ask yourself if the author bothered to engage in the basic question of whether the war should continue, and whether the US government should continue to provide arms for it.

It says something truly profound about the blinkered view of the American pundit class that they only way they can understand a real war is through their own worn culture war framings. They squint just enough to be outraged by the fact that students are protesting but refuse to engage in a discussion of what the students are protesting about.

#palestine #free palestine #isreal #gaza #genocide #apartheid #colonization #us politics #american imperialism #police state #settler colonialism #settler violence #student activism #student protest

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paradigmkrp · 1 year ago

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ೄྀ࿐ ˊˎ 𝐆𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐏 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐆: #8 ೄྀ࿐ ˊˎ 𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐄: June 18, 2023 ೄྀ࿐ ˊˎ 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆: The following post contains mentions of sex, abduction, injury, classism, vomit, and civil unrest. ೄྀ࿐ ˊˎ 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄: All writers consented to have their muses featured in the gossip blog.

ೄྀ࿐ ˊˎ Dearest Readers,

There’s no time quite as exciting across campus as the month of June! On and off campus parties to celebrate the end of finals, championship successes for many of Arcadia’s premier sports teams, and most certainly debauchery galore for those of you who feel particularly inclined to get up to no good now that the weather is good.

Campus has been wilder than ever before as students prepare for their one final hoorah before they are ushered off home to their respective nations for the rest of the summer.

From the sounds of it, it seems as if some of you have wasted no time making the most of your summer. When we say sounds, we mean it quite literally.

According to some disgruntled students on the tenth floor in the school’s luxurious Winthrop Court, there has been no shortage of noise on their floor at all times of night. As we’re sure many of you can imagine, late-night ruckus coming from the dorms of particularly active students. For the most part, fellow Winthrop Court residents are understanding of the occasional – or more frequent for the wanton ones – late-night escapades.

It isn’t often that noise complaints are actually issued at Winthrop Court, even less so that so many complaints are filed that it reaches our ears. Indeed, our team has received an influx of complaints from disgruntled students about incessant jarring screams coming from a certain room on the tenth room. Upset with the administration’s action – or lack thereof – this poor group of students has felt as if they have no choice but to turn to the pages of our blog to bring an end to their pain and suffering.

After a bit of digging and some coercion, we were able to identify the exact room in question, and after some cross-checking with a few of the complaining students and Winthrop Court records, we’ve found out that the room belongs to none other than Lord Ruairi Lor Sombre.

For those of you not from Sora, it may be a rather unfamiliar name, so allow us to give you a brief background. The Sombre family is of direct relation to none other than the Sora Royal family. If you’re wondering why you may have never heard of Lord Ruairi before then no fret as it comes down to one devastating reason: Lord Ruairi mysteriously vanished in his youth for over a decade, only to recently resurface.

Mysterious, right? And our dear readers, there has been no explanation around his disappearance.

It’s the type of story that authors dream of writing.

Mystery or not, it sounds as if Lord Ruairi has wasted no time getting back into the swing of things, fully immersing himself as a student on Arcadia University in the best – or possibly worst – way possible.

Could it truly be that Lord Ruairi is simply prone to incredibly vocal bed partners? Or better yet, that he just has a habit of turning them into vocal lovers for the night?

Some might say it’s a remarkable skill, indeed, but others… well, others might claim that it suggests the lord has too much practice in the bedroom which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, it could lead some to spread the rumor that the lord isn’t quite a suitable future spouse if he does have such a long history of bedding people left and right.

But that isn’t the only rumor likely to come out of this.

There has also been another rumor afloat, albeit far less spread than simple claims of Lord Ruairi being prone to lustful activities. At least one person has claimed that the source of the screams isn’t from the lord’s wanton desires, but rather that there is something slightly more nefarious at work than lust and pleasure.

Our source claims that Lord Ruairi is particularly prone to night terrors, which can possibly be traced back to his mysterious disappearance. Yes, the same disappearance that none of us have any information about.

The mystery grows thicker, but of course, without the details to back it up, we can only assume that Lord Ruairi has chosen to send his nights with any soul he can find.

That being said, if the young lord would like to clarify the mystery behind his late-night screams – and go deeper into his disappearance altogether – then well, we would love to give him an exclusive interview.

Don’t temperatures have such a way of running hot towards the end of the year?

While the heat may or may not be rising in Lord Ruairi’s dorm room, we can say for certain that it’s rising between two rather intriguing individuals on campus.

Several witnesses report having seen none other than Pardis’ very own Yasin Ali eyeing a certain Nanami noble all throughout a shared class. And when we say eye, perhaps the better word to use would be staring. It seems as if the museum heir has quite the eye for beauty and art, and he may have found his latest source of inspiration in the form of physical beauty himself.

Who’s the lucky person to have caught the Pardis heir’s eye?

Lord Ashley Erik Hvalman of the Nanami’s longtime noble Hvalman family.

According to our eye witness reports, the moment class concluded Yasin wasted no time in approaching the Nanami lord to apparently work his magic. By all accounts, there appeared to be some type of sexual tension brewing between the two. Though they weren’t able to get close enough to overhear the conversation, from facial expressions and interaction alone, it led many of their fellow classmates to believe that the two may be involved beyond that of two flirtatious students.

Interesting indeed, and it certainly wouldn’t be all that bad of a match.

After all, Pardis is the staple museum of Sirius, and while Yasin holds no noble title of his own, the notability of the museum speaks for itself. In fact, we have nothing bad to say about the potential match between these two. New rich and noble couple pairings are far from a rare occurrence. With nobility bringing the titles and new rich families bringing the new money wealth, for many it simply makes sense, so long as it’s mutually beneficial for both households.

Perhaps, Lord Ashley may find himself on the end of a courtship from Yasin, and if he does, we will be there to take you all on the couple’s journey. Good luck to the possibly blossoming couple and word of advice, keep your public displays of affection to a minimum lest you desire to find yourselves on these pages for unsavory reasons.

While some people are busy looking to kick off summer flings and possible romances, others appear to be striking up curiously timed alliances.

The Spring play has had no shortage of coverage in our publication, and yet as details slowly begin to finalize for the long awaited play, so does the most important aspect of all – the official assigned role list. While many fans of the Young Thespians have long anticipated that Sora royal Prince Erasmus Weiss would take to the stage as the leading man, there has been quite a bit of discourse and speculation surrounding who would take the highly coveted spot of the leading lady.

While it’s a mystery to most, some fans have started to insist that it is, in fact, no mystery at all.

We received an eye witness report that Lady Nevaeh Ahn was seen speaking with Prince Erasmus Weiss early one morning before them Young Thespian’s club meeting. Considering the fact that our witness claims the two were alone and eager to keep their conversation private, it only makes sense that devoted fans of the club have begun to speculate that Lady Nevaeh is hard at work trying to corner the role for herself.

Some of the more particular among fans have claimed that the Avani noblesse is trying to establish some sort of secret deal to ensure she protects the role for herself. Collusion much?

It wouldn’t be the first time that secret deals and conspiracies have meddled in club affairs. One might even be quick to say that it’s the very backbone of clubs on Arcadia University’s campus.

While it would seem foolish for Prince Erasmus to risk his seemingly pristine reputation on this campus for the sake of hearing out Lady Nevaeh’s pleads to be the leading lady, perhaps it isn’t all that ridiculous after all. A kind heart can often put weaker-willed individuals in between a rock and a hard face.

Not to mention, Sora’s prince is only human. Would it be so awful to desire to see himself partnered with a beautiful face? Indeed, Lady Nevaeh is just… beautiful.

Though we have no evidence to speak towards her acting abilities. If this deal works out, we’ll all be able to see for ourselves whether beauty is all she has or if she’s a surprisingly sharp actress.

God speed, Lady Nevaeh on your quest. The rest of us may watch this year’s Spring play behind shaky hands and uncertain eyes.

Odd interactions and intriguing happenings have come in abundance ahead of this year’s Spring play, and it sounds as if Lotus Library is the latest spot to bear witness.

Being in Lotus Library this time of year is weird enough. With finals concluded, the campus library is more of a ghost town, a mere shell of its packed self with overflowing tables and students during exam season. It takes a particularly ambitious, studious student to be in the library during the week of Summerfest. Avani heiress Aelrie Elanorin, is simply one of those students. Hearing of Aelrie in Lotus Library even this time of year isn’t all that strange. She has a reputation on campus as an avid reader, and certainly the campus library makes for the perfect backdrop for whatever her book of choice may be. However, it wasn’t Aelrie’s presence that drew eyes, but rather that of the man who approached her.

Nanami’s most eligible bachelor Lord Alon Lee was spotted walking up to Aelrie at her table, reportedly like a man on a mission.

That sentence alone is breathtaking. Lord Alon in the library during Summerfest of all weeks. The man is remarkable in many ways – with his physical features that have made him the envy of just about every man on this campus – but anyone who’s ever shared a class or conversation with him would remark that he simply isn’t much of a studier or honor student or even… a reader.

So what, pray tell, was Lord Alon doing in the library?

Well, we can only draw the conclusion that he was there solely for the sake of speaking with Aelrie. Our brave witness reports that upon drawing closer to the two, they overheard Lord Alon asking for a conversation with Aelrie in private, during which he offered an apology.

An apology for what exactly?

A date gone wrong? A foul misunderstanding? A fatal slip-up?

Well, our dear readers, it seems as if that will remain an unfortunate mystery for now as our witness couldn’t get close enough to hear. Something about not wanting to risk it with an Earth elemental and their ever meddlesome seismic sense. A missed opportunity indeed! But fret not, we will continue to investigate thoroughly on our end.

If you have any tips as to the history shared between these two seemingly completely separate souls, please do reach out to our tiplines. We are simply dying to know.

Whatever it is, we hope that Lord Alon hasn’t found himself in the thick of a sticky situation. It’d be a shame to ruin his newfound reputation to one misunderstanding with an Avani heiress, but Lord Alon if you’re eager to get ahead of any story leaks, our private line is always open for exclusive interviews.

While Lord Alon seems to find himself at risk of a bad situation with Aelrie, one poor soul has certainly lost it all thanks to a series of unfortunate events.

Arcadia University’s very own acorn-hating Sora native has found all eyes on her yet again. Yes, totally unforgettable, eccentric Avery Poppy has managed to draw our eyes once more following claims of a breakdown following football practice recently.

For our more avid blog readers, this will likely come as no surprise. Avery has quickly built a reputation on campus as being a rather emotional young lady who simply seems incapable of keeping her emotions to herself.

When she’s not busy losing her marbles over a singular acorn in a baking class, then she’s bursting into tears after football practice for… well a valid reason this time at least.

According to particularly dedicated fans of the Arcadia University women’s football team, Avery may be on the chopping block soon. Arcadia’s sports teams are known for being rather cut-throat. Only the strongest players onto the university’s varsity teams. There’s never been any doubt that Avery has long been worthy of her spot.

At least not until now.

Avery was seen limping her way out of the locker room following the team’s practice with tears in her eyes. Following behind her was the Women’s football team captain herself, Princess Eden Kobayashi who seemed particularly determined to convince Avery that she had no reason to cry and that everything would be okay.

Despite the captain’s assurances, an inside source with the team has revealed that it really is that bad. Apparently Avery is prone to recurring injuries, making it impossible to keep her on the field for long. One injury surely isn’t enough to warrant expulsion from the team, but a series of bad injuries may be enough to take her from starting player to deadweight.

Unfortunately for Avery’s football fanbase, it sounds as if her time on the team may be dwindling to an end. We’d suggest buying tickets to see final games ahead of time, if you want to ensure you’re able to bear witness to Avery’s football prowess before it’s the end of the road to her.

Perhaps she’d be better suited on a less strenuous sports team. Surely, the golf team could use some additional players.

The women’s football team is bound to find themselves down a player before long, but the men’s team appears to be doing just fine. In fact, more than fine.

It’s that time of the year, our lovely readers. The most highly anticipated, competitive day of the entire school year for avid fans and casual enjoyers of the men’s football team alike. Yes, indeed, the football team’s annual fundraising event has arrived!

There has been no shortage of excitement for whatever they’ve had in the works. Rumors have swirled of just about every possibility, from shirtless calendars to kissing booths, as fans find themselves competing amongst each other ferociously for a chance to shamelessly admire one of the famously beautiful players headed by Sirius’ very own Lord Emrys Narelle.

While speculation has been afoot, our investigation team has been hard at work trying to get a sneak peek into the team’s planned fundraising event for the club fundraising showcase this Summerfest, and finally we did it.

Drum roll please…

This year’s football team fundraiser will be none other than an exclusive host club.

Yes, you’ve read it right. A host club. Waste no time readying your wallets to hand out exorbitant amounts of money to live the date of your dreams with one of the football team’s handsome members. From the striker to the midfielder to the goalie, every single one of these men will be on full display and ready to court you for a day… with the right price.

And we don’t think it’s wrong to say that no member will come with a heftier price than the team captain himself, Lord Emrys.

With his sizable, admittedly intimidating fandom, the Sirius noble is bound to fetch the heftiest fee of the day. We wouldn’t be surprised if the football team comes back with diamond encrusted jewelry by the end of their fundraising efforts. Their fans have a habit of sparing no expense when it comes to them, whether that be financial or physical… and we do expect this to get rather physical.

We wouldn’t be surprised if fights break out in line for the sake of being the first to place their bid.

Good luck to any of our readers who plan to participate as it’ll certainly be a nasty sight.

And speaking of nasty sights… look down there.

It’s a squirrel!

It’s a raccoon!

No… it’s a Snell Hall Resident!

In fact, it’s a shameless, dumpster diving, Snell Hall resident.

Before you’re all so quick to get nauseous, vomit, and judge the trashy resident who sees fit to dumpster dive, we’d like to encourage you all to remember that not everyone is born into wealth. Certainly, it can be so easy to forget that not every student on this campus is blessed with wallets that can afford new items that haven’t seen the inside of a dumpster.

Allow this sad, pathetic story to serve as a reminder of that.

Infamous Sora citizen Fiona Choi was seen dumpster diving outside Winthrop Court late one evening. A concerned Winthrop Court resident wrote in with their statement after initially hearing the ruckus while seated for evening tea on their balcony. They said, and we quote, “I thought it was an abnormally large raccoon but then I looked closer and saw that it was actually some girl??! I snapped a picture because I could hardly believe it, I mean… it’s pretty scary!”

Upon review of the photo attached to the report, we were able to identify the dumpster diver as one of the school’s more troublesome citizen students. Fiona Choi is one of few citizen students who is interesting and odd enough to find herself written upon these pages more than once.

It’s certainly not a bad thing… but not good either, we’d reckon.

Our concerned Winthrop Court resident was not able to get a full view of the trashy treasures that Fiona was able to dig up from the trash, but she did note that she seemed to be pulling out garments of clothing.

Perhaps the dear citizen was only looking to scour up an outfit for Summerfest, as to not be seen in old rags that have been long overdue for a replacement. Better last season’s trash than barely surviving rags, right?

It nearly brings a tear to our eye. Trash theft is never okay, but perhaps this speaks to a deeper issue on this campus. The poor students like Fiona who never have a chance because their pockets are limited only to whatever coins they may earn from their long, menial jobs. Tragic indeed.

If you see Fiona on campus, we beg you to not judge her so harshly. Perhaps, instead, put yourself in the shoes of someone who’s never seen opportunity… or the inside of even a simple department store. Think twice before you toss out last season’s clothing. Instead of sending it straight to the dumpster of Winthrop Court, send it to the biggest dumpster on this campus – oops, we meant to say… Snell Hall.

While some of us are opening our eyes to the sad eyes of some of the citizen students on this campus, one group in particular seems determined to force change for the citizens by any means necessary.

United Citizens for a Better Future is far from a popular club on campus. Known for constantly causing a ruckus and making the lives of noble and new rich students unnecessarily difficult, it should come as no surprise that they’re back at it again ahead of this year’s Summerfest.

What’s the issue this time? A supposedly inexcusable classism issue in the fest itself.

All eyes have been on UCBF, and the club’s President, Nanami’s Prince Yue Ying, as rumors circulate about a proposed plan to protest and petition against Arcadia University’s beloved Summerfest.

While citizen students have unsurprisingly taken to admiring UCBF for their action in the face of inequities, the overwhelming majority of noble and new rich students have scrutinized the club for seeming determined to ruin their long-awaited festivities. Tensions continue to grow between the social classes on campus day by day, with the bulk of attention falling on Yue Ying to resolve the issues that UCBF has begun to raise.

It’s an interesting conundrum indeed.

Prince Yue Ying has been a dedicated leader to all of UCBF’s prior causes, positioning himself as the most beloved royal on campus by citizens. However, many fellow title and wealth holders have begun to feel betrayed by his constant siding with citizens when it comes to any issues that arise on this campus.

As tensions continue to grow, will Prince Yue Ying find himself stuck between loyalty to his club and the weight of his title as a royal? We certainly don’t envy the prince, it’s far from an easy situation to navigate. However, it is most certainly quite interesting to bear witness to.

It leaves us wondering… what’s next?

However, much to the relief of many of our readers, protests and petitions alike seem to show no sign of stopping the Summerfest fun. In fact, it seems as if some people have little concerns about the supposedly classist nature of the fest. As many social climbers across this campus have a habit of doing, particularly brave souls seem eager to make their way into the highest rings of society for this year’s festivities in order to enjoy the famed, luxurious VIP plaza.

Summerfest does have a way of bringing out the worst in people, and the VIP plaza has long been the greatest example of that. Limited only to the highest of nobility and royalty, there is simply no amount of money capable of purchasing access to the VIP plaza, disgruntling even the richest of new rich students.

However, there are other, far more shameless ways to get in and it seems as if Sora candy heiress Valentine Ryu is determined to get in by any means necessary.

Valentine was reportedly seen batting her eyes at a male noble just a couple of days before Summerfest. Notably, the man in question had a shiny, golden wristband on, indicating his status as one of the chosen ones who’ll be able to enter the VIP plaza come festival day.

Our witness was not able to get a good look at the man’s face, however, they did manage to snap a blurry photo from him. It took quite a bit of sleuthing and deduction, but we feel confident in labeling the noble apple of Valentine’s eye as none other than Lord Blaine Beaumont of Avani. Yes, the kindhearted, notably considerate Lord Blaine.

Undoubtedly, Valentine chose the perfect person to chat up, like a true expert manipulator… or mere flirter. But it’s not unfair to question Valentine’s true intentions.

Was she truly interested in Lord Blaine and who he is at a person? Or was Valentine only looking for guaranteed entry to the VIP plaza for this year’s Summerfest?

Only time will tell if Lord Blaine is an unfortunate victim of a pretty face and a shallow heart, but we plan to keep eyes on him and Valentine both. Let us hope we are bearing witness to the start of a genuine connection, and not a mere hare-brained scheme to enjoy the luxuries of VIP.

While some may or may not be looking to sneak into the VIP plaza for the music festival, it seems as if others are finding their enjoyment in other ways.

Could it be that Lady Amira Sema is not like other girls?

Several witnesses separately reported having seen the fire noblesse constantly on campus with a notepad and pen in her hand. Even as the student body grows increasingly chaotic in the days leading up to Summerfest, looking for their fill of vices and poor decisions now that they’re free of academic responsibility, Lady Amira is always spotted some distance away from the rest simply observing. And observe she does.

Notoriously soft spoken, what Lady Amira seems to lack in conversational skill and social interaction, she makes up for with a curious eye and proper demeanor. While the rest of her classmates seem eager to get up to debauchery, she seems to take a more intellectual approach to the world around her.

Certainly, we can anticipate that she’ll have that very same notepad and pen in hand at Summerfest as she watches the chaos take place around her.

While we’re certain our readers may be quick to try and label Lady Amira as strange, we’d like to offer another perspective… that she sees opportunity in the happenings around her like any scholar would. She’s busy observing and taking notes, and after some consideration with our team, we have one conclusion we’re ready to draw: Lady Amira seeks to be a reporter like none other than yours truly.

A sweet thought indeed.

It is not often we do this, and with good reason as no student has ever given us reason to, but we’d like to extend our official stamp of approval to Lady Amira. She could learn to be a little more discrete as a reporter, but we all must start somewhere, and we must say we’re pleased with where the fire noblesse has made her start.

She’ll only get better with time and practice, and for the first time in outlet history we are ready to offer a once-in-a-lifetime internship opportunity with us. Join us, Lady Amira, and learn to be a sage of truth from those who do it best.

You may send your resume into our official email.

Summerfest appears to be gracing all of us with interesting coincidences and remarkable times already. While you all take to Rosemary Plaza to party to your heart’s content, just remember one thing – we are always watching. There are no NDAs at work at Summerfest.

Everything you do is ours to see and write about.

Trust us when we say we wait with baited breath to fully cover every single moment, high and low, from this year’s Summerfest.

Have fun, our lovely readers!

Yours Truly, Lady Astor

#gossip blog #krp #krp ads #mewe rp #literate roleplay #oc roleplay #fantasy roleplay #supernatural roleplay #magic roleplay #university roleplay #ocrp #oc rp #lit rp #mewe roleplay #magic rp #supernatural rp #royal au #uni au #fantasy au

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creatiview · 2 years ago

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[ad_1] Democrats in the US House of Representatives issue a letter denouncing Peru’s deadly crackdown against protesters.A group of Democrats in the United States House of Representatives has urged the Biden administration to suspend all security assistance to Peru over a “pattern of repression” against antigovernment protests that has resulted in more than 50 civilian deaths. Their letter, a copy of which was shared with The Associated Press news agency, asked the Biden administration on Monday to halt its security assistance until the government can confirm that the crackdown in Peru has ended and the Peruvian officials responsible for human rights abuses are being held accountable. Peru’s foreign minister is in Washington, DC, this week seeking international support for President Dina Boluarte’s increasingly besieged government. Pressure has been mounting on Boluarte, formerly the vice president under ex-President Pedro Castillo, to resign the post she inherited last month when Castillo was impeached and arrested for his ill-fated attempt to close Peru’s Congress. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0CIZ7_EQf8[/embed] “Security forces have indiscriminately responded with almost no regard for protestors’ human rights,” according to the letter, which was signed by 20 mostly progressive House Democrats. “Rather than working to deescalate tensions, the Boluarte government has substantially increased tensions — including classifying protesters as ‘terrorists’ and limiting citizens’ right of movement.” The US provides more than $40m annually to Peru in security assistance, according to the Washington Office on Latin America, a research nonprofit. The vast majority is aimed at helping Peru counter drug trafficking. While protesters were initially demanding Castillo’s release from jail, the unrest has spread across the country, galvanising the support of many poor, Indigenous Peruvians who have benefitted little from Peru’s mining-driven economic boom. Protesters demand that both Boluarte and Congress stand down and that new elections be held this year. Legislators rejected that on Friday. But after another protester died and Boluarte urged them to reconsider, Congress narrowly agreed on Monday to debate a proposal to hold elections in October, with 66 votes in favour, 49 opposed and six abstentions. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKjwMLncQ9w[/embed] Meanwhile, as the protests stretch into their second month, beleaguered security forces have become more forceful. Among the incidents cited in the letter, organised by Representative Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, was the national police raid on student dormitories at San Marcos University in Lima, which included the mass arrest of nearly 200 people. That shocked many Peruvians because campuses have long been off-limits to security forces except when crimes are being committed. The campus invasion drew sharp condemnation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which said it collected testimony from civil society groups who alleged law enforcement officers invaded the bedrooms of student leaders, slung racist remarks at Indigenous activists, and forced women to strip naked and do squats. Officials from the United Nations and European Union have strongly condemned what they consider the disproportionate use of force. The Biden administration has been more measured, calling for impartial investigations into abuses while also expressing support for Boluarte’s efforts to restore calm and seek a political solution. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbXwTjcYYmM[/embed] Amid the unrest, outgoing US Ambassador Lisa Kenna announced an additional $8m in US support for coca eradication efforts in the remote Upper Huallaga valley, part of the Amazon basin in Peru. Kenna has also met with the defence minister and other Cabinet members. Such actions send an “ambiguous message”, according to the letter, which was also signed by representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of

New York, Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, and Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, a longtime voice for human rights in Latin America. “The US government can and must do more,” they wrote. “We believe our proposed actions would send a powerful signal in support of fundamental rights and help promote effective engagement for a political resolution.” A copy of the letter was also sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. [ad_2] Source link

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pretensesoup · 1 year ago

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Anything for @tryxyhijinks.

Okay so to begin with, I just want to say I'm old enough that I don't really put any faith in institutions to do the right thing when they can possibly avoid it. I don't know why I feel the need to say that--maybe because I'm constantly reminding myself/being reminded of it? Just looking at Madison politics you can see this, from the origins of Mifflin Street Block Party in the late 60s with Paul FUCKING Soglin as one of the founders, and the police trying to shut it down, tear gassed people, etc., to him trying to shut it down when he was mayor.

But I don't want to talk about contemporary Madison politics too much. It's too depressing and also I'm afraid if I slander the DA I'm gonna get my ass handed to me somehow. Instead, let's look at the 60s. (OKAY in the following I somewhat conflate UW and Madison as entities. I…am not going to unpick this. Sorry. When you have a big governmental entity like the university and also a city, there's always a push-pull between them, but also you have to believe that a lot of things, like policing etc., are done collaboratively. Also I didn't even get to policing in the below but anyway you should read this if you're interested.)

Madison made history by adopting Wisconsin's first fair housing regulations in 1963. At the time, only 27% of rentals and 12% of houses were available to people of color. The new ordinance forbade discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, or ancestry. (https://www.channel3000.com/madison-magazine/city-life/madison-made-civil-rights-history-in-1963-by-adopting-the-first-fair-housing-ordinance-in/article_2986059b-3ab2-5850-ab9e-373e34cbaf4e.html) But if you go and read that article, you'll see that there was a lot of opposition from realtor groups and even an alder whose district was FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT BLACK. The vote was eventually 11-11, with the mayor breaking the tie. Because of exemptions added in the negotiation process, about 60% of the city's housing stock was exempted from the rule.

Moving forward to 1969. I actually allude to the Black student strike in January/February of that year in the book's opening paragraphs! (https://news.wisc.edu/black-student-strike/) Students had thirteen demands, including the creation of a Black Studies department, more Black student power over the administrators/teachers that had power over them, an increase in Black student admissions, and more. The university responded with a lot of mealy-mouthed "we are definitely failing these students and we're sorry" rhetoric. Although they managed to organize a 10,000 person protest that didn't devolve into a riot (a really big achievement), TWO-THIRDS of the professors sided with the administration, and ultimately the demands weren't really met at the time (in March 1969, a Black Studies Department was established). Up until WWII, UW departments had "implicit quotas" on the number of Jewish faculty they would hire, and during the same time period as the Black student unrest, administrators capped out-of-state admissions "to drastically reduce the number of Jewish students attending UW" (source: https://asset.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/NK4EX2U5W4HBN9A/R/file-a0783.pdf?dl, p. 9; I would imagine this had a similar affect on the admission of Black students, because Wisconsin is a VERY white state. ANYWAY if you're like "why did every Jewish person during this time period go to University of Chicago?" It's because they were the one that didn't have a quota.)

There were, unsurprisingly, protests about the presence of the ROTC on campus as well, starting in like…let's say 1966. In 1989, faculty voted to kick them off campus for anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, but the board of regents declined (https://www.tumblr.com/madisonlgbtq/616656471749443584/30-years-ago-5-days-of-protests-against-the-rotc). In the early 2000s, I still had friends who were protesting the ROTC on campus.

The TAA, one of the first teaching assistant unions in the country, was agitating for same-sex partner benefits very early on (1993), but because they had to negotiate both with UW and the state, they didn't actually get it until like 2008!!! (Source: https://taa-madison.org/history/) Wisconsin codified sexual orientation as a protected class in 1982 (the first state in the nation to do it!) but to satisfy conservatives, the bill also condemned premarital sex (link: https://www.channel3000.com/madison-magazine/looking-back-uncovering-so-called-gay-purges-at-uw-madison/article_d4b1dbd0-e2af-11ed-95c3-fb4a2c4bf0e4.html). Sigh. (BUT! As an upshot because of early LGBTQ+ political organizing, I am currently represented by both a gay congressman and a lesbian senator! Like as a direct result--the earlier generation inspired Mark Pocan and Tammy Baldwin to go into politics.)

And--I really wanted to talk about this in the book, but the book is not about the protest movement. Those few paragraphs (and giving Dionysus to the underdogs and the marginalized, which is…not necessarily a bad claim to make? Like his followers in The Bacchae are women, but we also don't really know much about his cult because it was a mystery cult, so nothing was written down) were really the best I could wedge it in there. As I move into the second book and start thinking about Ulysses's discomfort at becoming part of the establishment, this is one of the things I've been turning over in my mind.

It's not like everyone involved at UW or in the community as a whole is terrible. There were plenty of professors who opposed this shit, and also people who were students at the time who went on to become the old radical professors I studied under. But it's easy to see, looking at the history, that administrators and city officials are again and again handed the chance to do the right thing, and again and again they just throw it the fuck away.

So that's, like, a very brief overview. TL;DR I have three degrees from UW and on a good day I'm only mildly embarrassed by this fact.

Queer books, day 30/30

Okay I have owed this post for like a while now. This was supposed to be over July 1st and I didn't do it and now it's hanging over my head like some kind of sword situation.

So like I did write this, and I do feel a little bad for promoting it here, but on the other hand it's a really good book and I have to tell people about it.

Dionysus in Wisconsin follows Ulysses Lenkov and Sam Sterling around Madison in late 1969. Ulysses is a grad student in the Department of Magic Studies, with all the regrets and avoidant behavior that entails, but also a magician and a member of the magic community in Madison, and he tries to help the people he runs into. (Also ghosts. He helps ghosts.) At the beginning, he gets a warning that something big/dangerous/bad is coming, and quickly figures out that the something is tied to Sam somehow. Sam is an otherwise very innocuous archivist who works at the State Historical Society and is involved in community theater in his spare time.

Side note, I learned that there is a woman in my aikido dojo who also works for the historical society and I feel weird about having written about it, but as she said herself, "It's a weird place."

After initial suspicion, the two of them work together to fight demons and try to figure out how to deal with the something, which turns out to be Dionysus (yes, the god) who is set to take over Sam's body.

Key quote:

Oh, also it's funny. Not quite a romcom (unless com means communism), but it's funny.

Anyway, this was a book that I wrote because I really wanted to read a romance that didn't have a third-act breakup, where there was a lot of chemistry and vibes between the MCs, no homophobia to worry about really, and also there was like magic and creepy stuff going on in the plot, and the plot had like a satisfying conclusion to it, which doesn't always happen in romances. And then I populated the book with people who were people that I know--the kind of weird Madison people I run into every day. I have a lot of mixed feelings about Wisconsin in general (like, it's not bad if you don't mind sometimes it's -20 degrees F and there's a lot of liberals but also a lot of NIMBYism and I could fill a dictionary with the sins of the city, that's not the point), but I have come to a renewed appreciation of the place after writing about it. For example, the house Ulysses's family lives in is real, it looks like this, it's in a place that's really called Mansion Hill, and I just find it incredibly funny to let a large family of Bohemian Bolsheviks live in it.

Anyway, 10/10, go read it. You can buy it on Amazon, or on other platforms (the ebook is $3.99, the paperback is $13.99), or if you want a signed copy you can send me a message. I'm selling them for $15. Also, I have free postcards of the cover if you would like one.

In the Madison area, there are (or were) copies at Kismet Books in Verona (an extremely trans- and queer-friendly store and super adorable!) and A Room of One's Own might have sold their copy but they can order it if they have the ISBN.

(Oh, I painted the cover, too. You can get it on a T-shirt or a sticker if you like that kind of thing.)

#history #uw madison #madison wisconsin

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auskultu · 7 years ago

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Wednesday, May 1, 1968

George W. Ball, addressing a United States Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Washington yesterday, said that the United States could not afford to “lead from weakness or out of a sense of discouragement or despair” in dealing with North Vietnam. Mr. Ball, who will succeed Arthur J. Goldberg as chief U. S. delegate to the United Nations later this summer, said that “patience and a sense of perspective" will be required in order to achieve an honorable peace. through protracted negotiations.

The United States mission in Saigon reported that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong slaughtered more than 1,000 Government workers, priests and women in Huế during the Lunar New Year offensive.

The American Negro fighting in Vietnam has achieved a blood-splattered equality while being praised by some Americans as a hero and by others as a mercenary. Discharged from the service, he is often approached by black ultra-militants eager to capitalize on his battle skills and on his resentment that at home America has not reached the state of racial integration that Vietnam America has.

Governor Rockefeller announced at a nationally televised news conference in Albany that he was entering the race for the Republican nomination for President and promised to campaign “down to the last vote" at the national convention. He said he had decided to run, only 40 days after declaring that he would not be an active candidate, to give the Republican party a “choice of candidates and of programs.”

Richard M. Nixon said Mr. Rockefeller’s candidacy “will make for a lively convention and a full discussion of the issues."

Confronted with a choice of official neutrality in the contest for the Democratic nomination for President or resignation, most of President Johnson’s senior aides have decided to remain in their posts and keep silent. Mr. Johnson had ordered all political appointees — mostly men of the rank of Assistant Secretary or higher—to remain aloof from politics so as not to hinder the Administration’s effectiveness.

The Rev. Ralph David Abernathy told the Senate Subcommittee on Manpower, Employment and Poverty during the second day of the Poor People's Campaign that two million jobs must be created. He also urged Congress to set a fair Federal standard of need for welfare payments.

Columbia University was encircled by hundreds of picketing students in the wake of an early morning police raid that cleared demonstrators from five buildings they had occupied since April 23. More than 700 persons were arrested and about 150 injured during the raid. The university’s administration announced that the institution would be open today but that there would be no regular classes. Student strike leaders did not indicate if they would accede to an invitation from the senior faculty and the administration to “meet and reason together.” Mayor Lindsay called upon Police Commissioner Howard R. Leary to submit a report on alleged police brutality in the campus raid. Mr. Lindsay said the students who seized the buildings "exceeded even the most liberal perimeters of the right to assemble and dissent.”

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graymanbriefing · 2 years ago

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Civil Unrest Brief: National BLUF: Gun control protests increase, pro-life protests continue, far-left LGBT riot against conservative speakers. Pro-life activists affiliated PAUU protested in Washington DC in an effort to bring awareness to the "Justice for Five" cause (centered on a late-term abortion doctor's illegal action). The protestors blocked traffic in front of congressional offices, 7 were arrested. Far-left LGBT activists rioted outside of UC Davis in California in opposition of a speaking engagement by conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. Rioters broke past police barricades, broke glass windows/doors and entered the building. The Turning Point host faced criticism from the left for his viewpoints against the transgender movement. Riots were organized by "Cops off Campus" which said they are "committed to direct action; we are not interested in conversations with administrators who at any moment can call upon campus police to defend their positions". 400+ gun control activists rallied in Harrisburg, PA and 250+ rallied in Sacramento, CA to oppose 2nd Amendment rights and bring awareness to their claims that semi-automatic rifles are "assault weapons". CeaseFirePa and March for Our Lived protestors called for more "gun control" and speakers said "It is so simple: Pass laws that restrict" and "Extreme risk protection orders work. Background checks definitely work”. Get full unredacted briefs in real-time at www.graymanbriefing.com

#News #Intel #Situational Awareness #Prepping

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eleventybiillion · 4 years ago

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I had an exam today, one you have to take in person

My campus is downtown. West of the true heart of downtown, but downtown enough

My class is 5:00-6:15pm, so nighttime by the time I get out

It's Election Day and I had been hearing lots of rumors about civil unrest, regardless of the results

Last night, I email my professor and tell him that I don't feel comfortable being downtown, at night, on Election Day

I get an email response with half a dozen reasons why he's not concerned, which means I shouldn't be concerned

(One of those reasons was that he'll be on campus later than I will be. He's an old, white man. I am a young woman on a campus that has way too many rape reports)

So basically just invalidated my feelings of safety

I'm downtown. I take my test. I get a message from a friend who is also on campus that two armed persons were spotted, carrying rifles

Where were they spotted?

Right next to my building 🙃

#im fucking livid #im okay and i made it home okay but jfc #im This Close to filing an official complaint #and i dont want to because i like that professor #but come on #unbelievable #politics #election day #college #rape cw #let me know if i need more cw tags

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acrostical · 4 years ago

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Safe Haven

On December 8, 1941—the day after “a date which will live in infamy”—then-president Aurelia Henry Reinhardt wrote a letter to all Mills families. With the hindsight of nearly 80 years, it’s a surreal read; the main point of the letter was not to offer solace or organize war efforts, but to reassure parents that the Mills campus was unlikely to face any danger from a Japanese attack. “The English Channel is 26 miles wide; New York is 3,500 miles from Europe; California is 5,500 miles from Japan and 2,500 miles from our nearest possession in the Hawaiian group,” she wrote. “May I assure you that there exists no reason to change in any way the schedule and curriculum of this college in the spring term which begins Monday, January 5.”

At that point, no one knew that many students of Japanese descent would soon opt to leave Mills, hoping to avoid separation from their families as they were forced into internment camps across the United States. In the years leading up to World War II, President Reinhardt had approached a number of European artists and intellectuals to offer them a place at Mills as the Third Reich marched across the continent and sent to concentration camps anyone it deemed a threat, including Darius Milhaud and other notable figures in the College’s history, but that welcoming spirit couldn’t protect some of her own students.

When it comes to political and cultural forces outside the campus gates, the College has historically been limited in what it can do to protect its students. But as an institution, Mills has long welcomed members of marginalized communities, and outside restrictions have not altered the campus culture of acceptance.

In recent years, the term “sanctuary” has become a buzzword in our charged political environment. But in a historical sense, the concept originated with the sacred. In ancient Greece, spaces that honored the gods provided some measure of immunity to individuals escaping laws of the state (with limited success), and in Rome, Romulus established a zone on Capitoline Hill where asylum seekers from other places could find refuge. For centuries, places of worship have operated as spaces where people could take shelter, and it’s still happening today—churches around the world house migrants seeking to avoid deportation back to war-torn homelands.

The idea of sanctuary gained popularity in the United States in the 1980s when Central Americans began to flee their home countries in the wake of civil unrest, but Mills took on the responsibility of offering it 60 years earlier in the early days of World War II. In the 1961 book Aurelia Henry Reinhardt: Portrait of a Whole Woman, Chaplain George Hedley wrote that President Reinhardt contacted the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars (later Foreign Scholars) to invite intellectuals to Mills as soon as Hitler took power in Germany in 1933. Hedley noted that legends were told of Reinhardt physically transporting those scholars to campus herself.

A number of professors soon made their way to Oakland, including Alfred Neumeyer, who taught art history and directed what was then the Art Gallery, and the married couple Bernhard Blume and Carlotta Rosenberg. A German playwright, Bernhard headed up the German Department at Mills until 1945, and Rosenberg was a proponent of educating workers and women.

Of course, the most well-known Mills expats were the musician Darius Milhaud and his wife, Madeleine. In speaking with the author Roger Nichols in 1991, Madeleine detailed her family’s reaction when the Nazis entered Paris in June 1940: “We knew… that Milhaud was among the first on a list of intellectuals to be arrested because he was well known in Germany as a Jewish composer, and also because he did not share their right-wing ideals.”

The Milhauds made their way to Lisbon with plans to fly to New York, using an invitation from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to obtain visas. But upon arrival in Portugal, their plane tickets were declared invalid because they had been bought with French francs. The three—Darius, Madeleine, and their son—were just about to board an American freighter to cross the Atlantic when a telegram arrived with an offer to teach at Mills. The San Francisco-based French conductor Pierre Monteux had contacted President Reinhardt after learning that Milhaud was fleeing to America and connected the two.

Milhaud cabled his acceptance of the position and, a few months after arriving on campus, Dean of Faculty Dean Rusk (later US Secretary of State during the Vietnam War) wrote to the State Department to plead his case for Milhaud’s continued residency in the United States, which hinged on his history of contribution to the arts. Milhaud taught on and off at Mills from 1940 until 1971.

Milhaud’s influence on the Music Department (and the rest of the College) is well known, though he was not the only academic who molded Mills in indelible ways during this time. Helene Mayer, a champion German fencer at the 1928 Olympics, was studying at Scripps College when Hitler rose to power in her home country. She then enrolled at Mills for a master’s in French. While on campus studying for her MA and, later, teaching German literature, she founded the Mills College Fencing Club, jump-starting an organization that lasted for decades. And it’s to the credit of these scholars that the German Department at Mills built a strong enough foundation to eventually send many of its students abroad as Fulbright scholars.

The situation with students of Japanese descent was not nearly as easy to solve, however, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishing internment camps less than three months after the Pearl Harbor attack.

Alumnae who were at Mills during the attack remember that day as a sunny one, with word of the incident filtering in as they arrived back in their residence halls after Sunday chapel service. Japanese American students soon found their freedoms curtailed bit by bit, starting with an Army-ordered curfew that restricted their movement even on the Mills campus.

May Ohmura Watanabe ’44, who was born in California to American citizens, wrote about her experiences in multiple issues of the Quarterly. “I remember Dr. Hedley, the chaplain, was very upset and angry. I can still feel his hand tightly holding mine, his body slightly bent forward as he hurried to look at the curfew proclamation posted on the telephone pole just outside the campus,” she wrote in 1985. “He even took me to the Army’s headquarters in San Francisco to protest and to state his disbelief. All in vain.”

Watanabe soon left Mills and returned home to Chico so that she wouldn’t be sent to a different internment camp than her parents and brother. She spent a year at the Tule Lake Relocation Center near the Oregon border, then was released as part of a program allowing some detainees to work or attend school in special approved zones. Watanabe was allowed to transfer her credits to Syracuse University, where she studied nursing. “I remember the special arrangements Mills made for me before evacuation to take my exams in Chico supervised by my high school dean,” she wrote.

The late Grace Fujii Kikuchi ’42 made a similar choice to leave Mills to avoid separation from her family. As a senior, she was more easily able to bring her time at Mills to a close, though it wasn’t a happy time. “My professors at Mills had arranged for me to take my [exam] at a nearby high school,” she wrote in the same Quarterly issue. “All I know is that I was graduated in absentia with my class. Not to be able to attend my commencement after four hard years of work was a bitter disappointment to me.”

The frustrations of the Mills administration during this era were captured in a play by Catherine Ladnier ’70, which she based on actual letters President Reinhardt received from students who left the College due to World War II, including Japanese American students in internment camps. Titled A Future Day of Radiant Peace, the play details the personal turmoil these students experienced as they abandoned their bustling lives at Mills for the uncertainty of the camps. It also demonstrates what little power anyone on campus had to prevent the exodus.

In the aftermath of the war, however, Mills was able to provide sanctuary to several students whose home countries were suffering. Catherine Cambessedes Colburn ’47 and Noramah Sumakno Peksopoetranto ’56 traveled to the College from France and Indonesia, respectively. In the spring 1997 issue of the Quarterly, Colburn wrote about the strangeness of going from a country recovering from war to a land of plenty.

“Mills had sent a list of what I would need, and I owned next to none of the items, nor could I get them. Coupons, given out rarely, were required to buy anything. Besides, the stores were next to empty,” she wrote. “I exchanged my wine ration with a friend for her fabric coupon and my cigarette ration with another for hers, and got enough material for two clothing items.”

Peksopoetranto earned her opportunity to attend Mills through a one-year scholarship from the Edward H. Hazen Foundation. At the end of the year, Dean Anna Hawkes offered her room and board for a bachelor’s degree in education; she spent that summer staying in the home of Librarian Elizabeth Reynolds.

On October 29, 2018—two days after 11 were killed in a shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—President Elizabeth L. Hillman sent an email to the Mills community. In it, she harkened back to the College’s history of providing sanctuary to Jewish scholars during World War II and the inspiration they provided to generations of students. “Higher education institutions like Mills have a special role to play in creating and sharing knowledge across boundaries of faith, race, gender, and background,” she wrote. “We can only fulfill our mission when everyone in our community is safe, respected, and able to grow and learn.”

In the last few years, President Hillman has sent a number of similar emails to the campus community after attacks, in the United States and abroad, that have targeted historically marginalized groups. According to Dean of Students Chicora Martin, the typical campus response finds its roots in Mills history. “Whenever an incident happens, we’re among a community where people may not always know what to do, but they are prepared to do something,” they said. “It’s part of our culture.”

“In times of immense crisis and identity-based violence, there is this depth of emotion and despair, but also a desire to be in community,” says Dara Olandt, campus chaplain and director of spiritual and religious life. “It has been very moving for me to see the ways in which students have offered leadership and shown up for each other.”

Olandt attributes the campus-wide attitude of acceptance and protection to the College’s past religiosity—in particular, President Reinhardt was the first woman moderator of the American Unitarian Association. (Olandt herself was ordained by the Unitarian Universalist church.) The chapel “is a refuge, and a place of deep hospitality. That’s what the forebears [who created] this chapel were really about,” Olandt says. “There’s power in this symbolic place where people are welcome in the fullness of their lives, no matter their identities.”

She also counsels those who travel to Mills from outside the country and hail from distinctly different societal and religious backgrounds than their US-born peers. That demographic has naturally been part of the student body for decades, but provides a different set of challenges due to the requirements of F-1 and J-1 student entry visas. Dean Martin serves as the principal designated school official on the Mills campus, so they are the first point of contact for the US government. “Every year, we have someone who can’t make it here because they can’t get a visa,” they say. “There are lots of restrictions with international students, and there’s a lot of documentation that you have to provide just for them to do normal-ish things, like getting a Social Security card or a driver’s license.”

Over the last four years, the legal status of undocumented students has been called into question across the country, and as a Hispanic Serving Institution, Mills has been prompted to respond. Under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which began in 2012, undocumented immigrants who arrived in the US before they turned 18 could be granted renewable two-year periods where they would not be deported. When Donald Trump was elected to the presidency, he pledged to end the program—and set off a chain reaction at colleges and universities across the country, which became known as the “sanctuary campus” movement.

On November 16, 2016, President Hillman was one of hundreds of signatories to the Statement in Support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program, which underscored the contributions that its recipients have made to college communities across the country. “America needs talent—and these students, who have been raised and educated in the United States, are already part of our national community,” the statement reads. “They represent what is best about America, and as scholars and leaders they are essential to the future.”

Hillman also joined with more than two dozen college leaders in December 2017 as founding members of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, which advocates for fair treatment of DACA and international students, and she continues to contribute to amicus briefs compiled by the alliance on behalf of DACA students.

In practical terms, Martin says that Mills provides grants to affected DACA students to cover the legal paperwork required to renew their statuses, and the College will provide financial assistance to any undocumented student in the same amount the student would have received from a Pell Grant, which is a federal program and therefore off-limits to non-citizens.

But in terms of sanctuary? If immigration officials asked Mills to turn over student records, the College is theoretically protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which prohibits the disclosure of student information, including immigration status, to parties beyond those that need to know for the purposes of that student’s education. Nothing like that has happened yet, but administrators say that it’s really not the point. The last few years have, in the end, cemented the kind of institution Mills wants to be.

“We were asking questions about our own values. The government’s now actively not supporting [these] students, so we have to come out very strongly with concrete statements and actions that clarify for our community where our values lie,” Martin says.

“Aurelia Reinhardt was deeply motivated by her values, which had roots in her religious and spiritual background,” Olandt adds. “She was very much anchored in a spirit of service and what we call today solidarity with marginalized folks. How can we uphold the best of humanity and live a moral and ethical life in the face of challenge?”

#writings

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kuramirocket · 4 years ago

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Carlos Muñoz, Jr. remembers when he first began to ponder the meaning of his Mexican roots.Muñoz, now 80, was living in the crowded Segundo barrio of El Paso, Texas. His family—like thousands of other émigrés—had settled there decades earlier, refugees fleeing violence spawned by the Mexican Revolution.Neither of his parents had made it past elementary school, but they wanted more for their son. So young Carlos walked across town every day to an Anglo neighborhood where the local school had more resources than barrio campuses.In that world, Carlos became Charles—rechristened in fifth grade by a white teacher in an attempt to “Americanize” him.

His school records were altered to label him Charles. But nothing else about him changed. “I began to wonder about what that meant,” he recalls. “That was the first time that I started thinking about identity and culture and that kind of stuff.”

It wouldn’t be the last.

The next year his family moved from El Paso to Los Angeles, where they hopscotched among barrios from the Eastside to Downtown to South Los Angeles. And no matter whether his teachers called him Carlos or Charles, their ingrained attitudes about his Mexican heritage narrowed his path.

The counselors at Belmont High School steered Charles away from college prep and toward vocational ed, even though he was an honor student. They suggested he become a carpenter, like his dad.

“If you were Black or Brown and a male at that time, you automatically got to be an industrial arts major,” he says. “You take the basic courses in English, history and government, but you don’t get the algebra and the biology courses.”

He didn’t realize until after he graduated with honors in 1958 that those courses he missed were required for admission to California’s public universities.

It would take six years for Charles to navigate a route—through community college, military service and a white-collar job that paid well but left him unfulfilled—to the campus of Cal State LA.

There, in the midst of a nascent Chicano rights movement, Charles reclaimed Carlos and played a key role in a history-making venture that would create new paths for Latino students: the creation at Cal State LA of the first Mexican American Studies program in the nation.

Its launch five decades ago—which Muñoz, then a graduate student, helped lead—would usher in a new era of ethnic studies across the Southwestern United States and ultimately around the country. Today more than 400 universities have programs dedicated to the study of the history, circumstances and culture of Latinos in America.

“Right now, there’s an awareness of ethnic studies. … But the beginnings of ethnic studies, as a discipline, were right here at Cal State LA,” says Professor Dolores Delgado Bernal, chair of what is now the Department of Chicana(o) and Latina(o) Studies.

“The discipline offers a lot to students, in terms of their identities, their intellect, what interests they pursue. Taking these courses allows students to say, ‘I can claim and be proud of who I am, and that allows me to better understand and accept others who are not like me.’ ”

“It’s becoming increasingly important to have that interdisciplinary background, and an understanding of other cultures and races,” Delgado Bernal says.

Today Muñoz is a professor emeritus in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. He’s an author, political scientist, historian and scholar, specializing in social and revolutionary movements.

But the challenges Muñoz encountered on his journey from the barrio to the ivory tower typify the struggles that many Latino students still face today—and illustrate why Chicano Studies was necessary decades ago, and still has an important role to play.

In its early years, the Cal State LA program was a resource for local students who felt intimidated by college and invisible on campus.

The spotlight on Chicano history and culture allowed them to see themselves through a new lens, one scrubbed of stereotypes. And its sweeping scope connected them to other marginalized groups, illuminating struggles for equality that students found ultimately empowering.

“To me, the thing about Chicano Studies is that it was eye-opening to the truth and history,” Carmen Ramírez, an Oxnard city councilwoman who attended Cal State LA for two years in the 1970s, says. “If you don’t know the truth, you can’t fix the future. … We need to know our history.”

And the dividends spread far beyond the campus, the student body and local communities. By its very existence, the Cal State LA program gave national credibility to the concept of ethnic studies as an intellectual pursuit.

“Chicano Studies opened the door to possibilities of employment on university faculties,” said Raul Ruiz, professor emeritus in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at Cal State Northridge, which hired him in 1970. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Cal State LA in 1967, and went on to earn his master’s and Ph.D. at Harvard. Ruiz died this year at 78 years old.

“Chicano Studies gave us opportunities to teach at the college level. And that was very significant in an era when many of us never had a Latino professor.”

At that time, “there were only about five Mexican Americans in the country with Ph.D.s in the social sciences,” recalls Muñoz, who earned his B.A. in political science from Cal State LA and a Ph.D. in government from the Claremont Graduate School.

Like Ruiz and Muñoz, several of the campus movement’s leaders went on to become college professors and scholarly experts in the field.

But even when they were offered faculty positions in Latino Studies, their contributions were often minimized or disregarded.

“Now we’re very visible at universities across the nation,” Muñoz says. “But during my career, I often had to face that perspective— you’re just ideologues, not scholars—from conservative faculty. It was not an easy path.”

For students like Ruiz, the path was equally challenging.

Ruiz had moved to Los Angeles from El Paso as a child in the 1950s. Told he wasn’t “college material,” Ruiz enrolled in Trade Tech, studied mechanical drawing and took a job drafting engineering plans for aviation systems. A year of that made him miserable, so he quit and in the mid-’60s applied to Cal State LA as an English major.

Then, as now, the Cal State LA campus was walking distance from one of the largest urban Mexican American communities in the United States. But few students in that community were being prepared for college.

The university experience seemed so remote that Eastside parents who could see the hillside campus from their yards thought “the building on the hill was the Sybil Brand Institute” for incarcerated women, Cal State LA Professor Ralph C. Guzmán told the University’s College Times newspaper in 1968.

Guzmán, who helped draft early Chicano Studies proposals, was one of just a handful of Latino faculty members then.

Ruiz was the only Mexican American kid in most of his classes, he said.

“I remember as an English major, the sense of me being up against everything. I remember making a presentation and the other students came at me hard with criticism,” Ruiz said. “I remember saying to myself, ‘Next time you’re going to know more than everybody else.’ ”

Ultimately, that would motivate him to develop a rigorous background in research. But as a new student, he found the social isolation to be a destabilizing experience.

After a professor told him he was smart “but basically illiterate,” Ruiz spent hours alone in the library—after classes and before his post office job—teaching himself to write.

“I would practice writing sentences and improving them until I could write a paragraph, and then an essay,” he said. It took him six months to develop the skills he needed. The skills he should have been taught in high school.

Cal State LA already had a robust interdisciplinary program of Latin American Studies, with classes that focused on Mexican culture but had little connection to the American experience.

“It was a marvelous program. It opened up my consciousness,” Ruiz said. But he came to realize that he knew more about Mexicans in Mexico than he did about families like his, “Mexicans in my own community.”

Beyond the University, in his own community, unrest and outrage were brewing. Mexican Americans had found their voice and were beginning to challenge the status quo. And nowhere did that coalesce more vividly than in the neighborhoods around Cal State LA.

“It was actually right here in the city of Los Angeles where the Chicano movement started,” noted legendary civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, when she visited campus to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Chicano Studies in September 2018.

The Chicano Studies program helped empower young activists and bring national attention to the challenges and concerns of Mexican Americans, she said.

Ruiz remembered what that felt like. “We were becoming part of this growing social movement that was sweeping the country, with massive anti-war protests and civil rights marches,” he recalled.

Community organizers rallied Eastside families to join the demonstrations. Student groups on campus worked together behind the scenes for change.

“I was not a radical person,” Ruiz said. “But you couldn’t help but become involved, or at least think about it.”

In March 1968, that awareness came to a head, as thousands of students at five high schools within a six-mile radius of Cal State LA walked out of classes and took to the streets, to challenge an educational system that didn’t recognize their worth or value their needs.

Thirteen adults would be arrested, jailed and charged with conspiracy for helping organize the walkouts. Muñoz—who’d proudly changed his name back to Carlos—was among them.

By then Muñoz was a Cal State LA graduate student and a U.S. veteran, who understood why students were walking out. The kid whom counselors steered away from college prep classes in high school was now on his way to becoming a university professor—and he was on the front lines of the battle to improve education for younger Latinos.

Police arrested Muñoz at gunpoint three months after the walkouts, as he sat at the kitchen table in his apartment doing his political science homework, and his wife and two young children slept upstairs. Muñoz spent two years on bail and faced a possible prison term of 66 years, until an appellate court dismissed the charges as a violation of the defendants’ First Amendment rights.

The walkouts alarmed the educational establishment, but energized the local community and moved education to the front of an activist agenda.

Cal State LA students, faculty and administration partnered with community groups to help broaden opportunities.

That summer Cal State LA’s student government voted to allocate $40,000 for an Educational Opportunity Program that would provide the support needed by students who were motivated but underprepared. Sixty-eight Latino and Black freshmen were admitted through the program that first year.

And University leaders agreed to work with student activists to get the Chicano Studies program up and running. The pioneering program was launched in the fall of 1968—with four courses and funding from student government.

Muñoz wound up teaching the program’s introductory course in the fall of 1968: Mexican American 100. Graduate student Gilbert Gonzalez taught Mexican American 111, a course on Mexican American history, and Professor Guzmán taught two upper-division classes.

“I was a first-year grad student in political science,” Muñoz recalls. “I had no teaching experience. I didn’t even know how the University worked. … We were very, very fortunate that there were progressive people in the administration. They were very helpful in generating support.”

In fact, the Chicano Studies movement at Cal State LA created a blueprint for collaboration—in an era when campus clashes were the primary tools of social and academic change.

Students worked with parents and with University leaders. Chicano and Black student groups supported one another. Both groups wanted a voice, a bigger presence on campus and a curriculum that reflected their culture and history.

Today, the Department of Chicana(o) and Latina(o) Studies offers more than 150 courses, taught by scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Its academic legacy is strong and its graduates have contributed immeasurably to the University, the region and beyond.

The number of students majoring in Chicano Studies has grown by almost 40% over the past 18 months, said Department Chair Delgado Bernal at the anniversary celebration.

“Maybe that’s because of the political climate,” she surmised. “Students are looking to understand it, and to have the skills, knowledge and rhetoric to respond.”

Over the years, the department has opened new career paths for students, elevated the status of Chicano scholarship and empowered successive generations in ways that only understanding your culture and history can do.

Its success reflects the foresight of its founders and the University’s ongoing commitment to academic rigor, inclusion and equality.

“Our whole purpose was assisting our community, supporting the aspirations of students and asserting our right to be here,” Muñoz says of the department’s creation a half-century ago.

“We said let’s do something so our younger brothers and sisters won’t be victimized by racism, the way we were.”

#mexican american studies #ethnic studies #usa #united states #chicano studies #history #long post #🇲🇽#mexico

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spiritualdirections · 5 years ago

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Interpretive Charity and the two paradigms of the pandemic

In the Gospel today, the woman at the well and Jesus begin by talking past each other. The woman thinks Jesus is interested in water, or perhaps she thinks he’s interested in being her next husband. Jesus is interested in her conversion. She doesn’t get what he’s saying, at all. She lacks the imagination to consider this conversation the way that Jesus does.

A lot of us are talking past each other: At MIT this week, the administration managed a giant operation to shut down the university within a few days. Every so often, there would be a conference call where exhausted members of the administration would explain what they were doing and why, receive feedback in the form of “have you thought of this?”, and then give an answer (which, as often as not, would be changed within a few hours). Their work and efforts were really quite intelligent, and earned praise from MIT’s president. Also at MIT this week, students protested the various decisions of the Institute, often in vulgar language, which really hurt the feelings of the men and women who were working long hours to evacuate (sorry, “de-densify”) the campus. But, of course, the decisions of the Institute hurt many students in obviously real ways. Both sides had a point, and yet neither was really able to get inside the mind of the other and interpret the other’s actions charitably.

A poll just came out which shows that Republicans and Democrats view the facts and dangers of the pandemic in extremely different ways. There’s a popular saying, that you're entitled to your opinions, but not to your own facts. But, the fact/opinion dichotomy is not sustainable, as anyone who ever studied the great MIT philosopher Thomas Kuhn’s work on scientific revolutions knows.

What we seem to have here are (at least) two different paradigms for looking at the pandemic:

One paradigm, expressed really effectively in this article, is that the pandemic is really big, really scary, and that the more governments act in a dictatorial fashion, the better we’ll all be.

The other paradigm is that over 80% of those who catch the virus get the sniffles and can be treated with DayQuil, that of those with the virus in South Korea (where they have the best testing and thus best data) only .06% die from this, and that it’s harder to catch than the average flu because you can’t infect anyone else unless you’re coughing and sneezing. People under 50 have little to worry about unless they have a preexisting respiratory, heart, or immune condition, and young people under 20 don’t have anything to worry about at all.

I’ll call those who subscribe to the first paradigm Team Pandemic (slogan: “Act now to avert the catastrophe!”), the second group I’ll call Team Don’t Panic (slogan: “You can’t spell ‘pandemic’ without ‘panic’!”).

Each paradigm looks at the information available to us and evaluates things differently. Each has important “facts” to build their theory upon: Team Pandemic can point to the limited number of respirators and hospital beds and point out that there’s an absolute number of severe cases that our healthcare system can handle before being overwhelmed, even if the percentage of cases that are severe is low. Team Don’t Panic can point out that we don’t need to isolate everyone, just those who are likely to develop severe cases because of age and pre-existing conditions, and those who are symptomatic. Team Pandemic worries that you can transmit the virus without being symptomatic; Team Don’t Panic points out that no evidence supports this. Team Pandemic points out that the regions that instituted strict policies quickly have the virus spread under control; Team Don’t Panic responds that we should adopt China’s approach of having huge numbers of “contact tracing” teams tracking down the network of those exposed to the already infected, which is a scalable response (interviewers can be trained and deployed quickly). Team Pandemic points out how one woman, Patient 31 in South Korea, who ignored social isolation policies infected thousands of people. Team Don’t Panic points out that she was symptomatic (including feverish) for over a week and didn’t self-isolate--that hardly justifies asymptomatic people being forced into isolation. Don’t Panic points out that isolating policies are likely to have devastating effects on the local and global economies. Team Pandemic points out that a global health crisis might be even worse.

I’m not the guy to adjudicate the debate. Actually, it’s not just a debate, but a deliberation about how we should live together right now. Academics can analyze and debate things for years. But we have to make decisions about how to behave right now based upon very incomplete information. We also can’t just adopt a “live and let live” attitude, since my neighbor’s mistaken decisions might affect me. So we need to deliberate together. Unfortunately, as the philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre has shown, our society’s capacity for moral argument across competing paradigms is quite low.

I do think that in the days and weeks to come, we should work to try to understand the other side’s paradigm. This past week, I’ve seen both sides be extremely focused on solving problems within their own paradigms, while being completely unsympathetic to the viewpoint of the other team. Because the authorities have largely joined Team Pandemic, most people on Team Don’t Panic are actually quite aware of the arguments on the other side; they just see things differently. I think most people on Team Pandemic are oblivious to the critique of their own position. That sort of imbalance in listening is a recipe for social unrest, civil disobedience, and riots. If the authorities on Team Pandemic continue to order people around without listening and responding to the arguments from Team Don’t Panic, they might lose their ability to lead. If Team Pandemic happens to be right about the necessity of social isolation, and yet people start disobeying them because of their own unwillingness to listen, they might bring about their own worst nightmare.

But I’m a priest, and chaplain of hundreds of college students, and so my more direct concern is that people make the effort to be charitable to one another. If you are squarely on one team, don’t yell and scream at people on the other team. Try to see the world from their perspective. Try to focus on the “facts” that are most weighty in their opinion, and see if there’s some sort of compromise you can make about your own views. Investigate the facts that are under dispute, analytically, with an openness to new evidence. Check your blind spots, by broadening your vision to think about other aspects of the situation than those you usually do. Love the people on the other team, not in a condescending way, but as people who also are seeking the truth about how to live under these circumstances. If you continue to disagree, don’t be disagreeable. Bear with the faults of others, and apologize if you realize that you lost your temper or argued disrespectfully.

And, if, like me, you’ve been forced into working from home--don’t be resentful about it. Assume God has a plan!

#pandemic #coronavirus #sars 2 #ars technica #3rd Sunday of Lent 2020 #charity #alasdair macintyre #thomas kuhn #scientific revolution #paradigm #samaritan woman

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