Protest Reports

Since the April 6 occupation of Bricker Hall, a coalition of student groups has kept up the pressure on the university to end its plans to privatize its energy services and outsource more of its employees.

On April 21 the #ReclaimOSU coalition joined forces with members of Communication Workers of America (CWA), the labor union that represents many OSU workers as well as Verzion employees who are on strike. They gathered at the South Oval and marched to the Ohio Union, shouting, “Hey Drake, step off it! Put people over profit!”

 “When the university sells out energy, that is a direct attack on minority and other workers at Ohio State,” said Maryam Abidi of the OSU Coalition for Black Liberation during a speak-out in the atrium of the Ohio Union. “Privatization is also an attack on the minority communities of Columbus,” she said.

“What good fortune for those in power that the people do not think.” -- Adolf Hitler

“It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them.” -- Adolf Hitler

"The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists." -- J. Edgar Hoover, former head of the FBI and co-conspirator in the JFK and MLK assassinations, as well as other acts of extra-judicial violence.

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."– William Colby, CIA head during the Nixon and Ford administrations, quoted by David McGowan, in his book Derailing Democracy(2000)

"Through clever and constant application of propaganda people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise." -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1923

What happens when there are endless wars accompanied by militarized policing, spreading racism, erosion of civil rights, and concentration of wealth, but the only news is election news, and none of the candidates wants to talk about shrinking the world's largest military?

By David Swanson

The new book This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Mark Engler and Paul Engler is a terrific survey of direct action strategies, bringing out many of the strengths and weaknesses of activist efforts to effect major change in the United States and around the world since well before the twenty-first century. It should be taught in every level of our schools.

This book makes the case that disruptive mass movements are responsible for more positive social change than is the ordinary legislative "endgame" that follows. The authors examine the problem of well-meaning activist institutions becoming too well established and shying away from the most effective tools available. Picking apart an ideological dispute between institution-building campaigns of slow progress and unpredictable, immeasurable mass protest, the Englers find value in both and advocate for a hybrid approach exemplified by Otpor, the movement that overthrew Milosevic.

The basic story of the poisoning of the children of Flint, Mich., through the water they drink is now pretty well known, but as more details come out, it keeps getting worse. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, after passing a big tax cut for the rich and corporations on coming into office, had to find cuts to make up for the lost revenue.

In Flint and other cities, he essentially nullified democratic elections, deposed elected mayors and city councils and installed his own agents with virtually dictatorial powers. The “emergency manager” of Flint decided that the city could save money by discontinuing its water supply from Lake Huron and instead drawing it from the toxic Flint River. He then failed to treat the new water with additives needed to keep the city’s old pipes from leaching lead. When people objected to the brown, smelly water filled with particles that was coming out of the taps, the governor’s men reassured them the water was safe. All of Flint’s children were exposed to water with elevated levels of lead.

Jerry Berrigan, who died on July 26, 2015 at the age of 95, was a husband, a father, a brother, a teacher and someone who – like his brothers Dan and Phil – dedicated his entire life to Jesus’ command to love one another. Jerry came to the base on a bi-weekly basis whenever he was able, in Jerry’s words, “to remind the base commander of our government’s pledge under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, a treaty to safeguard non-combatant’s well-being in any warzone in which U.S. forces are engaged in combat.” And further, “to register horror and indignation at reports of bombing missions by drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan which resulted in the deaths of many innocent civilians; men, women and children.”

As more and more evidence mounts regarding the illegality of U.S. drone policies, from the “Drone Papers” published by The Intercept, to the four drone pilots who have come forward to speak out about what this policy is doing, we bring Jerry’s image here to the gates to remember that this is where he would be, speaking out and putting his body on the line to say a clear “NO” to killing. Because Jerry Berrigan knew that it matters where we put our bodies.

     Every year that I am able I pay a visit to Big Sur, California, one
of my favorite places since I was very small. I love the scenic drive
up the rugged coast on the winding WPA-era highway One through the
land where the mountains meet the sea. You've seen it in car
commercials, and the famous chase scene from North by Northwest, and
the picture in your mind, no doubt, is of the azure Pacific waters
glistening in the sun as waves lap the rocky coast line below sloping
Emerald meadows. As a kid I took all of this for granted, but I
gradually came to realize that the ribbon of highway isn't the only
feature there that is foreign to the natural landscape. The fact is
that those brilliant swaths of Green shouldn't be there – and they
wouldn't be were it not for the small herds of cows that regularly
scour the fenced-in private ranches, allowing grasses to flourish
where once there were coastal prairies and thickets of woods. The
fact is  that the Big Sur we have all seen in pictures and post cards
for as long as we can remember is, in reality, a severely altered

The project is caught in a Catch 22, and Medina County knows it. Without the permit, the pipeline has no right to access private land. But the company needs to complete the land surveys in order to qualify for the permit. Amidst this legal ambiguity, some opponents have even gone as far as arming themselves to keep persistent surveyors off their land.

In response to the growing intolerance against Islam expressed in Donald Trump’s call for a ban on all Muslims entering the U.S., Jewish activists in 15 cities are celebrating Chanukah by holding vigils against Islamophobia and racial profiling.

Members of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) gathered at the Ohio State University on December 12. They held eight signs representing the candles of the menorah, each with a statement opposing a different form of racism or religious intolerance.

“Islamophobia is a frightening and terrible thing,” said JVP member Charlene Fix. “I don’t want any people to be hurt that way my people were hurt.”

Mindful of the violent reactions from Donald Trump supporters at recent campaign rallies, a small group of protesters took a more subtle approach when the presidential candidate spoke at the Greater Columbus Convention Center on November 23. When Trump got to the podium and began to speak, the protesters turned their backs on him.

As Trump pitched his anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-Muslim agenda to a cheering crowd, the protesters took out books by classic and modern socialist authors and quietly read through the first 40 minutes of the rally. They stood about 200 feet from the podium, surrounded by thousands of ardent Donald Trump supporters.

The action was organized by Hayley Cotter, who supports Bernie Sanders’ run for President. “My inspiration was from Johari Osayi Idusuyi, a woman who read a book through another Trump rally,” she said. “It was a very powerful statement in opposition to Trump’s fascism.”