Tag: repression

Repression of Palestine Solidarity on Campus Enabled Anti-Migrant Escalation

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Photos of Palestine solidarity encampments have disappeared from the news, replaced by pictures of immigration agents kidnapping university students and community members, but the campus-based battle to force universities to divest from Israel and weapons manufacturing is still underway.

This a long-term, smoldering battle. “The campuses are definitely as active as they were a year ago from my purview,” says Akin Olla, communications director for the anti-militarist youth organization Dissenters. But, he adds, “The actions look different and are generally less media-friendly.”

While this struggle continues, its shape has shifted, as students who were initially on the front lines of pro-Palestine activism experience additional vulnerability due to the Trump administration’s attacks. Many of these students are Muslim immigrants or from immigrant families, while others are queer or trans and confronting a different series of attacks. As a result of these changes, the shape of the work has changed. For one thing, faculty who spoke to Truthout said that campus student groups are working more in coalition to provide some shielding to targeted students, like Students for Justice in Palestine or Muslim student associations.

Faculty across the United States continue to organize: They’re supporting students and their movements; organizing their own events; building aboveground and underground safety networks in response to the presence of immigration police on campus; and pushing their own unions and scholarly associations to take political positions.

I found it so healing to talk to folks on campuses all over who are creating new networks of solidarity and who see the clear connection between Palestine and other attacks on campus. I am not alone, you are not alone. There are many of us.

Read the full story at Truthout: https://truthout.org/articles/repression-of-palestine-solidarity-on-campus-enabled-anti-migrant-escalation/

And consider signing up as part of the Sanctuary Campus Network: https://www.sanctuarycampus.org/

Harvard Dominates Headlines, But Other Schools Are Quietly Battling Trump

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Closed-door committees are forming to investigate whether public universities in North Carolina have fully eliminated diversity practices. Campuses in Utah are being held to neutrality pledges. Accreditation is changing across the Southeast as university systems join a new state-run scheme spearheaded by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. A major political struggle is being waged on university campuses, and faculty are struggling to keep up.

Higher education has been in the news regularly since the emergence of mass pro-Palestine protests on campuses after October 7, 2023, but much of the coverage has been dominated by the likes of elite private schools such as Harvard and Columbia. Right-wing attacks, however, have rocked campuses across the country, escalating with the Trump administration’s executive orders banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices. These orders have been followed by Department of Justice or Department of Education investigations into whether there are any lingering practices of inclusivity. The playbook has been used at institution after institution as a form of pressure to withhold funds and secure concessions.

In the midst of everything going on right now, universities are facing attacks coming fast and furious. It was an honor to talk to colleagues organizing in many cases under really inhospitable conditions and finding a way to fight for a better future, and I’ve got another article coming out in a few weeks that focuses more on faculty and staff movements to support immigrant and international students and a free Palestine.

Read the full article at Truthout here: https://truthout.org/articles/harvard-dominates-headlines-but-other-schools-are-quietly-battling-trump/

After Writing About Prison Censorship, I Got Blocked From Messaging My Sources

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Afew months ago, I logged into my online Securus account to send an electronic message to a friend in a Washington State prison. To my shock, I found the word “blocked” on my account and I was not able to send any messages. The block came just a few weeks after I had published an article with Truthout on censorship inside of prisons and had sent the finished article to some of my sources over the e-messaging system. It’s hard to know for sure, but the block is either the result of my journalism, or it is a result of facilitating a book club that connects people inside with those on the outside. Since my Truthout article was about how difficult prisons make it to access information, especially for LGBTQ+ people, the block seems ironic, to say the least.

People in prison do not have direct access to the internet or to any standard email services, nor can they generally receive phone calls. Instead, any communication other than paper mail (which is increasingly rare) takes place over services managed by for-profit companies like Aventiv, ViaPath and IC Solutions. If one of these services chooses to implement a block on an account, as in my case, an outside user cannot send e-messages, put money on a loved one’s books or pay for phone calls — for anyone who lives in a prison, anywhere in the United States, that uses the service that has implemented the block.

The only remedy for this is apparently to appeal to the state Department of Corrections (DOC), but unsurprisingly, there is no obvious method for such an appeal available to an outside family member or friend. Figuring out how to appeal required several calls and emails, and in the end, did not yield any change to my situation. This block is inhibiting my ability to do my work, and more than that, it’s isolating my friends in prison from contact with the outside world.

My last article of the year was this op-ed for Truthout, about a problem I’ve been dealing with for the second half of 2024. Make sure you take your blood pressure pills before reading, because the prison system is shameless in its cruelty and the results are enraging. Read the rest of the story here: https://truthout.org/articles/after-writing-about-prison-censorship-i-got-blocked-from-messaging-my-sources/