Tag Archives: protest

When anger isn’t enough

(A little long for the blog, this is cross-posted from the Washington Post.) There’s something exciting, sometimes terrifying, about people taking to the streets to get what they want. In Cairo’s Tahrir Square, they gathered to demand the ouster of … Continue reading

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Crime, punishment, and protest

Tim DeChristopher has been sentenced to two years in jail and a $10,000 fine.  About 2 1/2 years ago, after Barack Obama had been elected president, partly by promising to protect the environment more aggressively than President George W. Bush … Continue reading

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Who’s to blame for increased California university tuition?

Tuition at the public universities in California, including the University of California, Irvine, which pays my salary, continues to skyrocket, even as operating budgets in the University of California and California State Universities erode.  The president of the University of … Continue reading

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Unemployment politics and the organizational deficit

Slid into the Business section of Sunday’s NY Times, Catherine Rampell notes that the number of unemployed in the United States has climbed over 14 million, but that the unemployed are politically invisible: In some ways, this boils down to … Continue reading

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The Fractious Politics of Education, part II

Hundreds of Huntington Park High School students walked out of class yesterday, and marched 7 miles to the Los Angeles School Board’s headquarters.  The Board of Education was discussing a radical reorganization plan for the school, which would include reassigning … Continue reading

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The Fractious Politics of Education

Hundreds of California teachers, declaring a state of emergency, demonstrated in Sacramento yesterday, marched on the Capitol building yesterday.  According to The Boston Globe (!?!), more than 100 rallied in the Capitol rotunda, resulting in 65 arrests. There’s a lot … Continue reading

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Authenticity at the Town Hall Meetings?

Republican members of Congress who supported Paul Ryan’s budget plan (almost all of them) are having to defend their votes against hostile crowds at town meetings.  (Note that there is a lot to get angry about in this budget plan.  … Continue reading

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Where’s the Peace Movement? (Protest is a blunt instrument)

It’s rare that social scientists studying protest get much attention from the mainstream press, opinion or otherwise.  Although the scholars may get a whiff of excitement from the attention, they’re usually frustrated by the distortions and oversimplifications that seem inevitable–almost. … Continue reading

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Global Antinuclear Revival

No nuclear plant outside Japan is less safe today than it was before the horrific earthquake/tsunami combination that unleashed an unfolding nuclear nightmare in Japan. But the accidents in Japan underscore the risks of planning only for crises that might … Continue reading

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It’s not just protest (Madison)

Although those dramatic demonstrations, like the ones we saw in Madison, capture the imagination, by themselves, they won’t change a policy or a government.  Protest signals, supports, and coerces.  Changes in politics and policy depend upon how a broad range … Continue reading

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