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In Columbus, the looming Donald Trump presidency has added urgency and intensity to protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline. On November 16 the student group Socialist Students organized a demonstration on the Ohio State University campus.

“They’re building the pipeline through sacred Sioux burial grounds,” said Socialist Students member Mia Zerkle.  “This is the equivalent of destroying somebody’s church, or disrupting the Arlington National Cemetery. This is infringing on their rights and everything they believe in.”

 “This isn’t only an issue about the environment,” said Rachel Rouwenhorst, who studies ecology and evolution at OSU. “This is about Native American sovereignty. Corporations shouldn’t be putting pipelines through their burial grounds, prayer sites, and water supply.”

Rouwenhorst called for a boycott of the banks that are investing in the pipeline, including CitiBank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, US Bank, PNC Bank, JP Morgan Chase, UBS, and Goldman Sachs. “You can close your account with them and use a credit union, or a bank that is not funding this pipeline,” she said.


 

Remember the satirical "Billionaires for Bush" protesters? Around this time in 2008 I asked them to become Oligarchs for Obama, and they refused. But I predict Tycoons for Trump will be born this month. Inequality, like war and climate destruction, has its face now.

Chuck Collins' book, Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good, presents the problem of inequality as well as any I've seen. Collins was born into wealth, gave it away, but still refers to himself as one of the wealthy, perhaps because of all the lasting privileges wealth brought him. Collins sites other examples, as well, of the wealthy putting their wealth to better use than hoarding.

“All great changes,” said Deepak Chopra, “are preceded by chaos.”

That starts to get at it — how to understand, and start healing, the national wound inflicted on this country, and the world, by the 2016 presidential election. But I need to throw in a little John Oliver as well.

“We are faced,” he said on his TV show, “Last Week Tonight,” “with the same questions as the guy who wakes up after a Vegas bachelor party deep in the desert, naked, tied to a cactus and a dead clown. Namely, how the fuck did we get here and what do we do now?”

We’ll be struggling to answer the second question for the next four years, but the question of how we got here can be addressed with a certain troubling clarity. It took more than Donald Trump’s spur-of-the-moment racist populism. The groundwork for the results of the 2016 election began with the nation’s founding — and the racist elitism that was deeply a part of it.

Two young women out in a field

US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack recently announced 2016 USDA Rural Development grant awardees including just two recipients in Ohio. Kate Hodges and Rachel Tayse of Columbus urban farm Foraged & Sown are among this year's Value Added Producer selection, for their project Preserving Wild Flavors and Nordic Traditions.

People with their fists in the air at an anti-Trump rally

Last Wednesday morning, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. On Wednesday night there began protests against the idea of a President Trump all over the country. These demonstrations have spread here to campus.

There are protests because people feel like they have something to say. Or at least, that they have to say something. What is being said is not groundbreaking, but it serves as an affirmation that the words have not lost meaning since Nov. 9. People shouting at Trump Tower and proclaiming “#NotMyPresident” know both that this will not cause him to change his behavior, and that he actually is their president. But they also know that the most feasible future for Progressives is a remaking of the Democratic party. And considering the cluelessness of party “elites” (to adopt the nom de guerre of the campaigns) on Tuesday night, it must be a remaking by the people.

The words hashtag activism

Did you miss the Free Press Second Saturday Salon and still want to know more about using your devices and social media for activism?

Even if you attended, you still need this link to the information by our good friends Trane and Kimmy DePriest.

How to Use Social Media for Activism

Some helpful infographics that go further in boosting your social media activism!

Happy Facebooking and all that jazz!

 

On October 9, I was in the Nevada desert with Catholic Workers from around the world for an action of prayer and nonviolent resistance at what is now called the Nevada National Security Site, the test site where between 1951 and 1992, nine hundred and twenty-eight documented atmospheric and underground nuclear tests occurred. Since the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and the apparent end of the Cold War, The National Nuclear Security Administration, NNSA, has maintained the site, circumventing the intent of the treaty with a stated “mission to maintain the stockpile without explosive underground nuclear testing.”


In early 2011, as the Arab Spring was moving across North Africa and the Middle East, small groups of nonviolent activists in Syria, which has been under martial law since 1963, started protesting against the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad and demanding democratic reforms, the release of political prisoners, an increase in freedoms, abolition of the emergency law and an end to corruption.

By mid-March these protests, particularly in cities such as Damascus, Aleppo and Daraa, had escalated and the 'Day of Rage' protest on 15 March 2011 is considered by many to mark the start of the nationwide uprising against the Assad dictatorship. The dictatorship's reaction to the protests became violent on 16 March and on 18 March, after Friday prayers, activists gathered at the al-Omari Mosque in Daraa were attacked by security forces with water cannons and tear gas, followed by live fire; four nonviolent activists were killed.

The corporate media has been on a feeding frenzy over the assault of an anti-Trump protester on the Ohio State University campus yesterday. Sensationalism drives page hits and ad revenue, so local and national media have focused almost entirely on the violent incident. Missing from the coverage is why the protesters were there in the first place — what they were trying to accomplish politically.

The OSU Lantern broke the story with a Twitter video which described the incident as a “tackle.” It’s understandable that a student newspaper that covers the OSU Buckeyes would use a football metaphor. But CNN and many other outlets picked up the innocuous-sounding word in their headlines.

It was not a tackle. Timothy Adams (called Timothy Joseph in some reports) was not wearing protective gear. He didn’t land on grass or Astroturf. He landed face-down on hard concrete. It was a violent attack that Adams was fortunate to walk away from with only bruises.

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