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Courage at It's best.

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I have included the links to only two examples of backlash (there are many more).

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-42730942

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42643504

While these are relevant articles, I am more looking at how those that have stood up for a cause are now facing backlash over it.

I wonder if the publicity surrounding the backlash causes any barrier for those in future that want to demonstrate civil courage, especially given the role media plays in society today.

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Steve Biko and his contribution to the ant apartheid struggle in South Africa

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“The Turkish-German woman Tugce Albayrak died because she stepped in to defend girls being harassed. Not everyone would dare to be so brave: But Kai Jonas, a social psychologist, says civil courage can be learned.” - article gives advice on how to behave and help a person who’s in danger.

The link: http://m.dw.com/en/civil-courage-you-dont-need-to-be-a-social-rambo/a-18108911

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Irena Sendler was a polish woman who saved around 2500 jewish childeren from the holocaust by smuggling them out of the ghetto's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irena_Sendler

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Do people act when they see someone getting wrongly treated? Important video by swedish group STHLM Panda (english subtitle available)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJBdinUyyhQ

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This is an article regarding courageous decision by Muslims in Philippine which saved Christians from militants regardless of their religious differences.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/world/asia/marawi-philippines-islamic-state-christians.html
Other civil courage :
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/world/heroism-altruism-courage-compassion-2017.html

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https://www.everyday-democracy.org/news/practicing-civic-courage-age-civic-anxiety A short text that encourages people to stand up against non democratic actions and views

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The Fight for Environmental Justice and the Rise of Citizen Activism

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The Fight for Environmental Justice and the Rise of Citizen Activism

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This article discusses the plight of the community of Commerce, California (which is 93% Latino) for environmental justice on toxic contamination in their overly industrialized city.  Across the United States there has been growing national conversation about environmental justice--"the idea that communities of all races and incomes should have the same kind of environmental quality and protection."
http://www.governing.com/topics/transportation-infrastructure/gov-mark-lopez-east-yard-environmental-justice-exide-lead-poisoning.html

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Predictors of day to day courage in the workplace

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Predictors of day to day courage in the workplace

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" A recent study published online this month in the Journal of Positive Psychology explored the predictors of day to day courage in the workplace."

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201801/new-research-shows-how-facilitate-social-courage

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https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201208/the-six-attributes-courage I always think to myself that I want to be more corageous but I never do anything about it so I googled a bit about HOW to be courageous to get a different perspective compared to other links here.

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I'm sorry this article is in swedish, although I could not find anything about this in english. At the annual Guldbagge-gala (kind of like the Oscars but in Sweden) actresses showed they had enough of sexual assaults in the world of actors, directors, writers etc. All dressed in black they stood up on the stage and held a speech about the things they deal with on a daily basis as actresses and how we need to change.
https://www.svt.se/kultur/film/guldbaggen-metoo

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http://mentalfloss.com/article/56157/11-incredible-acts-courage

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Black Lives Matter, the action that aimed at bringing social justice into classrooms 

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Black Lives Matter, the action that aimed at bringing social justice into classrooms 

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http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=21046

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Jesse Hagopian teaches history and is the Black Student Union adviser at Garfield High School, the site of the historic boycott of the MAP test in 2013. Jesse is an associate editor of the acclaimed Rethinking Schools magazine and founding member of Social Equality Educators, and blogs at I'mAnEducator.com. He recently co-authored More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing.

Cristina Duncan Evans has been an educator in City Schools for 12 years and is currently an Elementary and Middle School Librarian. She is one of the founders of BMORE, which believes in organizing teachers to advocate for social justice and the schools their students deserve.

transcript

JAISAL NOOR: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jaisal Noor in Baltimore. We're coming to you live on Facebook. Black students in the United States often have lower graduation rates and test scores than their peers. They're more likely to live in poverty. Classrooms in black and brown neighborhoods are as or more segregated as they were after integration. Many schools are being closed around the country, and there's been a decrease in black teachers nationwide. These are some of the reasons that students, educators and advocates have called for a "Black Lives Matter Week of Action" starting on Monday, February 5th. To learn more about this, we're joined by two guests. Here in our studio is Cristina Duncan Evans. She's been an educator in Baltimore city schools for a dozen years, is currently an elementary middle school librarian, is one of the founders of the BMORE caucus of Baltimore school teachers, which believes in organizing teachers to advocate for social justice and the schools their students deserve. Joining us from Seattle is Jesse Hagopian. Jesse teaches history, is the Black Student Union advisor at Garfield High, the site of the historic boycott of the MAP test in 2013. He's also an associate editor of the acclaimed Rethinking Schools magazine. Thank you both for joining us.CRISTINA DUNCAN EVANS: Thank you.JESSE HAGOPIAN: Thanks very much for having me. JAISAL NOOR: Jesse, I wanted to start with you. This concept, this idea of a week of action in schools started in Seattle. I wanted to start off with a really basic question. Why not All Lives Matter? Why do you need to have a Black Lives Matter Week of Action? Describe how this started. JESSE HAGOPIAN: Sure. Well, actually, I think that one of the lesson plans that teachers will be using across the country gets at that question. Why are we saying Black Lives Matter? Why aren't we raising the slogan All Lives Matter? I think an analogy is appropriate. When Hurricane Harvey struck Houston, we didn't raise the slogan, "All Cities Matter" because we knew that there was a specific crisis going on in a specific city that needed attention. Imagine if you went to the doctor and said you broke a bone in your arm and the doctor said, "Well, all bones matter." and so he or she went about addressing all the bones in your body and not the one that was broken. What we're seeing in public schools across the country is that the education system is breaking black youth. That's why we have to actually rise up as educators to defend our black youth. We see that with the school, the prison pipeline, when you look at suspension rates that are vastly disproportionate against students of color and black students, we know we have to defend them. Nationally, black students are suspended at some three or four times the rates of white students and actually black girls are the most disproportionately suspended at rates of seven times more than white girls. We've seen it with black educators being pushed out of the classroom. Some 26,000 black educators have been pushed out of teaching since 2002. We see it with a whitewash curriculum, a corporate curriculum that denies the contributions and the struggles of black people in text books all across this country and that's why we actually have to demand that Black Lives Matter. And it's just so inspiring to see how it started in Seattle with a One Day of Action last year and then spread to Philadelphia where they took it up as a whole Week of Action and now this year, seeing a National Week of Action with dozens of cities participating is truly inspiring. JAISAL NOOR: Cristina, in Baltimore the school system is majority black, majority African American, talk about why have a Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Baltimore.CRISTINA DUNCAN EVANS: Well, I think it's really important for us to bring this message into Baltimore's classrooms because everything that's happening on a National level is happening here in Baltimore. And I think that the Uprising that happened in 2015, really gave Baltimoreans the opportunity to look at what's happening here in terms of police brutality. I think that when we are having these conversations with our students it's important because these are their communities. Our students know where they were in April of 2015. They need to understand the context in which they live and I think that we, as educators have a duty and an obligation to protect our students. I think that means preparing them for the world in which they live, and the city in which they live. We need to have honest conversations about identity. We need to have honest conversations about racism and a classroom is a really important place for these conversations to happen.JAISAL NOOR: And Jesse talks about the curriculum, which I've spoken to a lot of teachers and students and there was just a presentation to the school board by students in Baltimore that we have on our website right now at The Real News, but that is a big issue. Students find it as a Eurocentric curriculum. It's not relevant to their history and their needs and it doesn't describe their experiences as well. Can you talk about why that's a challenge in the school system as well?CRISTINA DUNCAN EVANS: Sure. When I think about curriculum, I think a lot about my classroom because for a long time I was a high school social studies teacher and when I looked at the state standards, I saw a lot of goals that didn't really talk to my students about where they were, and it didn't tell them about their place in the world. We ignore a lot of American history. We ignore a lot of world history and so I think that students deserve to come out of school grounded in who they are and with a strong sense of where they fit into the world. As a social studies teacher, I really believe strongly that even more than that, you have to prepare students to engage in the world, to change the world, to be civically connected to their community. Real authentic learning is largely absent from our curriculum because our state standards are based on a world that our students just don't live in.JAISAL NOOR: Jesse, we interviewed you during the historic boycott that was organized at your school, and it spread across Seattle and similar test boycotts have happened across the country but talk about how this testing regime you have all over the country where there's such a huge emphasis on test scores. We know that socioeconomic background is the greatest predictor of test scores. We're sort of setting up students to fail.JESSE HAGOPIAN: Yeah. I completely agree. I think this hyperfocus on standardized test scores has really been at the detriment of authentic learning in classrooms across the country. I think it's turned schools in the test prep factories rather than incubators of curiosity and civic courage and creativity. And that's a shame, and it's especially happened in schools that serve predominantly kids of color and black youth, where threats are made that the school will be closed or now increasingly graduation tied to these test scores. All of the teaching in the classroom is forced by public policy to be geared towards helping the student do well on a standardized test rather than helping them understand the problems that exist in their community and how they can be part of solving those problems. We see that when you're teaching to the textbook and teaching to the test, you're missing so much. Let's take a look at the scandal that happened in Texas a couple years ago where a student revealed that the textbook said that the Atlantic slave trade brought "workers" from Africa to the United States, and got rid of the word "slave" and put the chapter on slavery in the unit on immigration, as if black people were coming to the United States looking for a better life. We see this whitewash curriculum just isn't working to support our youth. I think in this era of increased hate crimes and in this era where we have a president who is comfortable using filthy, horrible language to call Africa and Haiti, educators have to be there to defend the humanity of our students and say, "No, you don't come from a dirty, terrible place. You come from a beautiful land with beautiful people and a rich history of innovation and of struggle and resistance." And that's what we're trying to do is bring that history back into the classroom.JAISAL NOOR: Cristina, talk about the work you do as a librarian and what kind of resources teachers have access to in schools and in classrooms in Baltimore? I also wanted to ask you. There's a whole Week of Action happening next week. What are some of the things that people can participate in or learn about?CRISTINA DUNCAN EVANS: Sure. Well, I really love being a librarian because we have the ability to spend our time really asking questions and answering questions. So, in the library it's all about teaching kids to evaluate information and real information literacy. One of the things that my students have been talking about a lot is the impact of social media on movements and media in general. We looked at news coverage from the Civil Rights Movement. We looked at news coverage and social media posts that came out of Ferguson and the social media posts that were going around Baltimore during the Uprising. And the lessons that educators have access to this week are really focused on the 13 principles of Black Lives Matter. So, for instance, one of the aspects that I really feel grounded in, in terms of the principles of Black Lives Matter, is this idea of empathy and loving engagement. We are asking teachers to reimagine their classrooms as empathetic spaces that are built around restoring students in the face of conflicts, rather than taking a disciplinary approach that we know just doesn't further our students interest and ends up pushing them out of school instead of welcoming them into school and keeping them as part of our school community.JAISAL NOOR: You always often hear about why attendance is so low. People have trouble, it's challenging to get students to come to school but you understand the conditions and what they're learning, and you start to understand a little bit of why that's happening.CRISTINA DUNCAN EVANS: Right. I think that when students come into schools and there aren't doors on the bathroom stalls and there is not consistent heat throughout the building, and the books in the library are old, and they don't have access to all of the other courses that kids in other areas are supposed to have, I think it says to kids what society thinks about investing in them. And I think that it's very easy to become alienated from a space that physically rejects you and so when I think about the physical condition of our facilities in Baltimore, I don't think the alienation some of our students feel is unwarranted or unjustified. I think that we're lucky in Baltimore to have an amazing group of educators who work so hard and so tirelessly to rebuild community in their classrooms and to make sure that their classrooms are spaces where students can feel welcome, can feel valuable. Adding to this idea of a welcoming space, one of the things we're asking teachers to do is post the 13 principles of Black Lives Matter in their space so that when students walk into a classroom, they see an affirmation of their value, and they know that even though the building's shabby, the people in this room care about you. The people in this room are about building you up, not tearing you down.JAISAL NOOR: Jesse, offline, we were talking about how this week's actions might even be unprecedented when you think about the fact that these unionized workers from around the country are coordinating these events together. I wanted you to talk about that. Also, what the range of responses have been around the country from PG County in Maryland to Seattle? Some school boards have endorsed this Week of Action and you have some unions, the Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates, voted to support this but you have others like the UFT, which is the Union in New York City, which refuse to take a position. They refuse to endorse it according to media reports.JESSE HAGOPIAN: Yeah, absolutely. I am inspired by this action because I'm not sure that anything like this has ever happened in US history. As far as I know during the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement, I'm not aware of a time when thousands of teachers across the country coordinated an actual effort where they collectively issued demands of the school system that were about opposing institutional racism and then went into the classrooms and taught lessons all that week about structural racism, intersectional black identities and black history. And that kind of Nationwide coordinated uprising is really exciting. I think we're just at the beginning of a new movement. This movement has issued three National demands. The first is to hire more black teachers. The second demand is to end zero tolerance discipline and replace it with restorative justice practices and lastly, to implement and mandate black history and ethnic studies K12. I think those demands are just so critical right now to meeting the needs of our black youth in this country. And I'm really glad that so many unions, local unions, have stepped up and endorsed this. The Seattle Education Association, the LA Teachers Union, the Chicago Teachers Union and many more have stepped up in support. It's sad to me that one of the largest unions, the New York Teachers Union did not pass a resolution in support of this action. I think it shows there's a lot more work to be done in the struggle and I think what I'm excited about is how many teachers though are committed to keeping this going. I think that educators and families will also come to see that when Black Lives Matter at school then and really only then can all lives truly matter in the schools. I think one of our demands locally here in Seattle is to fully fund education because we don't believe that black lives will truly matter to our school system unless our school system is fully funded and kids have the counseling services, the tutoring services, the health care services and the wraparound services they need to be successful in school. Building a struggle to fully fund the school will definitely help our black students but I think it'll also help every single public school student in this city and across the country. That's a vision for a public school system that I think we're all committed to fighting for in this movement.JAISAL NOOR: Cristina, what Jesse was talking about will resonate in Baltimore because Baltimore schools, most people agree, have never been adequately funded, especially after white flight and, in the seventies and the eighties when Baltimore lost half its population. Courts have repeatedly ruled that schools here are inadequately funded and yet, still that money is still lagging behind. Along with this Week of Action, it's Black History Month but obviously, the challenges that the city and the school's face go far beyond a week or a day or a month. Talk about what teachers here are doing to help address those fundamental problems, the fundamental issue with the school system and starting with the lack of funding. CRISTINA DUNCAN EVANS: Right. The lack of funding is a key example of how systemic and structural, the disinvestment in our students has been. The term "adequate" gets used a lot, but I don't think there's really a clear understanding of it. So, adequacy means that it's about basic fairness. If we're gonna say that a high school student has to do X, Y and Z in order to graduate, then it is only reasonable to give that student the education that can prepare them to cross that hurdle when it comes. There's an amount of money that it cost to provide a student with that education that's going to allow them to go on to the next level. When we look at what it cost to actually prepare a child for 12, 13 years, what we find is that over the last decade, Baltimore City has been short-changed by about three billion dollars. So, we've been going entire generations without students in Baltimore City having the resources that they need in order to make it to the next level successfully. The ways that teachers are fighting back against this include we're doing so by crafting legislation. We recently with the help of our members created a piece of legislation that is going to create additional funding for students statewide, not just in Baltimore City because when Maryland voters approved slot machine gambling several years ago, they thought that that additional revenue would be added to the budgets of school systems. That that would be money that would be going to education. That never actually happened because instead of that money going to education, it was used to replace money that was taken out of the education budget. We're trying to right that wrong at the state level. Then I think that we are also working really hard to make sure that teachers know about what we can do that students know about what we can do and that we're present at the table when these conversations happen. JAISAL NOOR: All right. And Jesse, let's end with you. We've talked about underfunding. We've talked about how unfair assessments and test scores are when you're talking about high populations of students that are living in poverty and schools that are underfunded. At the same time, there is a big movement around the country to privatize public education. We see it in Baltimore, reported on it extensively. Talk about your response to that, as well, because if schools are being set up to fail, privatization through vouchers or privately-run charter schools, they do provide an alternative. That is appealing for a lot of parents and students and communities.JESSE HAGOPIAN: I can understand individual parents who have challenges with the public school system believing that they want to send their kids to a charter school as an alternative. I can understand a black parent whose kid was pushed out of school with these high suspension rates or saw a curriculum that wasn't valuing their black student and looked to a charter school as a way out of that problem because there is a crisis that needs to be addressed in supporting black students in the public schools. The problem is charter schools have been shown over and over again not to be that solution and that's why the movement for black lives policy platform has opposed charters. That's why the NAACP nationally came out against charter schools because they're not a solution. They actually in recent studies have been shown to push kids, black and brown kids, out of school at higher rates than the public schools. They have been shown academically to perform no better or even worse than public schools and what's most damning about the charter school movement is that they siphon off funds that are so desperately needed from the public school system into a privatized network. Here in Seattle, Green Dot is getting ready to open a charter school right next to Rainier Beach High School. Rainier Beach High School is in the south end and serves predominantly kids of color and black students in Seattle. It's the only school in Seattle that has not had renovations yet in decades and so if we were able to actually put public funds into renovating Rainier Beach High School and providing those kids with the wraparound services they would need to be successful, then we could start to see real achievement rise with our students of color but instead we'll have more public money siphoned off into a nearby charter school that hasn't been shown to be any better and I think that's a losing strategy, but a winning strategy is what the teachers across the country are doing in raising this Black Lives Matter at school movement. Teaching to the 13 principles of the Black Lives Matter movement next week is going to be one of the truly joyous experiences, I think, in my whole teaching career. On Monday, we're teaching lessons about restorative justice and loving engagement. On Tuesday, we're teaching lessons about globalism and the African diaspora. On Wednesday, we're teaching lessons about trans affirming and queer affirming, and uncovering the history of black LGBTQ leaders and activists such as Bayard Rustin, such as the queer women that started Black Lives Matter. That's going to be exciting. On Thursday, we're going to be teaching about black villages, black families in intergenerational and looking at the way the school-to-prison pipeline and mass incarceration has negatively impacted that. Then on Friday, we're going to be teaching lessons about black women and the long legacy of leadership they've had and struggles for social justice and unapologetically black. We're going to have thousands of teachers wearing these shirts to school all across the Nation while we teach these lessons in an unequivocal message of support for our black students and black colleagues and I couldn't be more excited. So, I appreciate the time today.JAISAL NOOR: Okay. If people want to learn more about what's happening in their school system or in their state, where can they go to find that information?JESSE HAGOPIAN: They should go on Facebook and look up the "National Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action" and get involved. They can wear shirts to school or work all next week in solidarity with this movement. If you're an educator, you should be teaching lessons around the themes of Black Lives Matter. I think we'll send a clear message that this movement is growing.JAISAL NOOR: All right. I want to thank you both for joining us. From Seattle, Jesse Hagopian. He is an educator, an author, a member of Social Equality Educators. He blogs at IAmAnEducator.com and here in Baltimore, Cristina Duncan Evans, a long time teacher, activist and part of the BMORE caucus of educators in Baltimore school system. Thank you both for joining us. CRISTINA DUNCAN EVANS: Thanks so much. JESSE HAGOPIAN: Thank you so much. Great to be with you.JAISAL NOOR: Thank you for joining us at The Real News.

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Black Lives Matter Holds National Week of Action At Schools

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Jesse Hagopian teaches history and is the Black Student Union adviser at Garfield High School, the site of the historic boycott of the MAP test in 2013. Jesse is an associate editor of the acclaimed Rethinking Schools magazine and founding member of Social Equality Educators, and blogs at I'mAnEducator.com.

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Neo-nazis in Sweden and people who resist them

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Neo-nazis in Sweden and people who resist them

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Most famously we have Tess Asplund who was captured in a rather epic picture staring down a "horde" of male neo-nazis marching through her hometown in Sweden.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36211652

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/04/woman-defied-neo-nazis-sweden-tess-asplund-viral-photograph

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The origin of the #MeToo movement and how, through civic courage, more women and men are coming forward and breaking their silence.
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/17/us/me-too-tarana-burke-origin-trnd/index.html

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Movie stars are supposedly nothing like you and me. They're svelte, glamorous, self-possessed. They wear dresses we can't afford and live in houses we can only dream of. Yet it turns out that-in the most painful and personal ways-movie stars are more like you and me than we ever knew.

In 1997, just before Ashley Judd's career took off, she was invited to a meeting with Harvey Weinstein, head of the starmaking studio Miramax, at a Beverly Hills hotel. Astounded and offended by Weinstein's attempt to coerce her into bed, Judd managed to escape. But instead of keeping quiet about the kind of encounter that could easily shame a woman into silence, she began spreading the word.

"I started talking about Harvey the minute that it happened," Judd says in an interview with TIME. "Literally, I exited that hotel room at the Peninsula Hotel in 1997 and came straight downstairs to the lobby, where my dad was waiting for me, because he happened to be in Los Angeles from Kentucky, visiting me on the set. And he could tell by my face-to use his words-that something devastating had happened to me. I told him. I told everyone."

She recalls one screenwriter friend telling her that Weinstein's behavior was an open secret passed around on the whisper network that had been furrowing through Hollywood for years. It allowed for people to warn others to some degree, but there was no route to stop the abuse. "Were we supposed to call some fantasy attorney general of moviedom?" Judd asks. "There wasn't a place for us to report these experiences."

Finally, in October-when Judd went on the record about Weinstein's behavior in the New York Times, the first star to do so-the world listened. (Weinstein said he "never laid a glove" on Judd and denies having had nonconsensual sex with other accusers.)

When movie stars don't know where to go, what hope is there for the rest of us? What hope is there for the janitor who's being harassed by a co-worker but remains silent out of fear she'll lose the job she needs to support her children? For the administrative assistant who repeatedly fends off a superior who won't take no for an answer? For the hotel housekeeper who never knows, as she goes about replacing towels and cleaning toilets, if a guest is going to corner her in a room she can't escape?

Like the "problem that has no name," the disquieting malaise of frustration and repression among postwar wives and homemakers identified by Betty Friedan more than 50 years ago, this moment is born of a very real and potent sense of unrest. Yet it doesn't have a leader, or a single, unifying tenet. The hashtag #MeToo (swiftly adapted into #BalanceTonPorc, #YoTambien, #Ana_kaman and many others), which to date has provided an umbrella of solidarity for millions of people to come forward with their stories, is part of the picture, but not all of it.

This reckoning appears to have sprung up overnight. But it has actually been simmering for years, decades, centuries. Women have had it with bosses and co-workers who not only cross boundaries but don't even seem to know that boundaries exist. They've had it with the fear of retaliation, of being blackballed, of being fired from a job they can't afford to lose. They've had it with the code of going along to get along. They've had it with men who use their power to take what they want from women. These silence breakers have started a revolution of refusal, gathering strength by the day, and in the past two months alone, their collective anger has spurred immediate and shocking results: nearly every day, CEOs have been fired, moguls toppled, icons disgraced. In some cases, criminal charges have been brought.

Emboldened by Judd, Rose McGowan and a host of other prominent accusers, women everywhere have begun to speak out about the inappropriate, abusive and in some cases illegal behavior they've faced. When multiple harassment claims bring down a charmer like former Today show host Matt Lauer, women who thought they had no recourse see a new, wide-open door. When a movie star says #MeToo, it becomes easier to believe the cook who's been quietly enduring for years.

The women and men who have broken their silence span all races, all income classes, all occupations and virtually all corners of the globe. They might labor in California fields, or behind the front desk at New York City's regal Plaza Hotel, or in the European Parliament. They're part of a movement that has no formal name. But now they have a voice.

II

In a windowless room at a two-story soundstage in San Francisco's Mission District, a group of women from different worlds met for the first time. Judd, every bit the movie star in towering heels, leaned in to shake hands with Isabel Pascual, a woman from Mexico who works picking strawberries and asked to use a pseudonym to protect her family. Beside her, Susan Fowler, a former Uber engineer, eight months pregnant, spoke softly with Adama Iwu, a corporate lobbyist in Sacramento. A young hospital worker who had flown in from Texas completed the circle. She too is a victim of sexual harassment but was there anonymously, she said, as an act of solidarity to represent all those who could not speak out.

From a distance, these women could not have looked more different. Their ages, their families, their religions and their ethnicities were all a world apart. Their incomes differed not by degree but by universe: Iwu pays more in rent each month than Pascual makes in two months.

But on that November morning, what separated them was less important than what brought them together: a shared experience. Over the course of six weeks, TIME interviewed dozens of people representing at least as many industries, all of whom had summoned extraordinary personal courage to speak out about sexual harassment at their jobs. They often had eerily similar stories to share.

In almost every case, they described not only the vulgarity of the harassment itself-years of lewd comments, forced kisses, opportunistic gropes-but also the emotional and psychological fallout from those advances. Almost everybody described wrestling with a palpable sense of shame. Had she somehow asked for it? Could she have deflected it? Was she making a big deal out of nothing?

"I thought, What just happened? Why didn't I react?" says the anonymous hospital worker who fears for her family's livelihood should her story come out in her small community. "I kept thinking, Did I do something, did I say something, did I look a certain way to make him think that was O.K.?" It's a poisonous, useless thought, she adds, but how do you avoid it? She remembers the shirt she was wearing that day. She can still feel the heat of her harasser's hands on her body.

Nearly all of the people TIME interviewed about their experiences expressed a crushing fear of what would happen to them personally, to their families or to their jobs if they spoke up.

For some, the fear was born of a threat of physical violence. Pascual felt trapped and terrified when her harasser began to stalk her at home, but felt she was powerless to stop him. If she told anyone, the abuser warned her, he would come after her or her children.

Those who are often most vulnerable in society-immigrants, people of color, people with disabilities, low-income workers and LGBTQ people-described many types of dread. If they raised their voices, would they be fired? Would their communities turn against them? Would they be killed? According to a 2015 survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality, 47% of transgender people report being sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, both in and out of the workplace.

Juana Melara, who has worked as a hotel housekeeper for decades, says she and her fellow housekeepers didn't complain about guests who exposed themselves or masturbated in front of them for fear of losing the paycheck they needed to support their families. Melara recalls "feeling the pressure of someone's eyes" on her as she cleaned a guest's room. When she turned around, she remembers, a man was standing in the doorway, blocked by the cleaning cart, with his erect penis exposed. She yelled at the top of her lungs and scared him into leaving, then locked the door behind him. "Nothing happened to me that time, thank God," she recalls.

While guests come and go, some employees must continue to work side by side with their harassers. Crystal Washington was thrilled when she was hired as a hospitality coordinator at the Plaza, a storied hotel whose allure is as strong for people who want to work there as it is for those who can afford a suite. "Walking in, it's breathtaking," she says.

But then, she says, a co-worker began making crude remarks to her like "I can tell you had sex last night" and groping her. One of those encounters was even caught on camera, but the management did not properly respond, her lawyers say.

Washington has joined with six other female employees to file a sexual-harassment suit against the hotel. But she cannot afford to leave the job and says she must force herself out of bed every day to face the man she's accused. "It's a dream to be an employee there," Washington says. "And then you find out what it really is, and it's a nightmare." (Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, which owns the Plaza, said in a statement to TIME that it takes remedial action against harassment when warranted.)

Other women, like the actor Selma Blair, weathered excruciating threats. Blair says she arrived at a hotel restaurant for a meeting with the independent film director James Toback in 1999 only to be told that he would like to see her in his room. There, she says, Toback told her that she had to learn to be more vulnerable in her craft and asked her to strip down. She took her top off. She says he then propositioned her for sex, and when she refused, he blocked the door and forced her to watch him masturbate against her leg. Afterward, she recalls him telling her that if she said anything, he would stab her eyes out with a Bic pen and throw her in the Hudson River.

Blair says Toback lorded the encounter over her for decades. "I had heard from others that he was slandering me, saying these sexual things about me, and it just made me even more afraid of him," Blair says in an interview with TIME. "I genuinely thought for almost 20 years, He's going to kill me." ( Toback has denied the allegations, saying he never met his accusers or doesn't remember them.)

Many of the people who have come forward also mentioned a different fear, one less visceral but no less real, as a reason for not speaking out: if you do, your complaint becomes your identity. "'Susan Fowler, the famous victim of sexual harassment,'" says the woman whose blog post ultimately led Uber CEO Travis Kalanick to resign and the multibillion-dollar startup to oust at least 20 other employees. "Nobody wants to be the buzzkill," adds Lindsey Reynolds, one of the women who blew the whistle on a culture of harassment at the restaurant group run by the celebrity chef John Besh. (The Besh Group says it is implementing new policies to create a culture of respect. Besh apologized for "unacceptable behavior" and "moral failings," and resigned from the company. )

Iwu, the lobbyist, says she considered the same risks after she was groped in front of several colleagues at an event. She was shocked when none of her male co-workers stepped in to stop the assault. The next week, she organized 147 women to sign an open letter exposing harassment in California government. When she told people about the campaign, she says they were wary. "Are you sure you want to do this?" they warned her. "Remember Anita Hill."

Taylor Swift says she was made to feel bad about the consequences that her harasser faced. After she complained about a Denver radio DJ named David Mueller, who reached under her skirt and grabbed her rear end, Mueller was fired. He sued Swift for millions in damages. She countersued for a symbolic $1 and then testified about the incident in August. Mueller's lawyer asked her, on the witness stand, whether she felt bad that she'd gotten him fired.

"I'm not going to let you or your client make me feel in any way that this is my fault," she told the lawyer. "I'm being blamed for the unfortunate events of his life that are a product of his decisions. Not mine." (Mueller said he would appeal.)

In an interview with TIME, Swift says that moment on the stand fueled her indignation. "I figured that if he would be brazen enough to assault me under these risky circumstances," she says, "imagine what he might do to a vulnerable, young artist if given the chance." Like the five women gathered at that echoing soundstage in San Francisco, and like all of the dozens, then hundreds, then millions of women who came forward with their own stories of harassment, she was done feeling intimidated. Actors and writers and journalists and dishwashers and fruit pickers alike: they'd had enough. What had manifested as shame exploded into outrage. Fear became fury.

This was the great unleashing that turned the #MeToo hashtag into a rallying cry. The phrase was first used more than a decade ago by social activist Tarana Burke as part of her work building solidarity among young survivors of harassment and assault. A friend of the actor Alyssa Milano sent her a screenshot of the phrase, and Milano, almost on a whim, tweeted it out on Oct. 15. "If you've been sexually harassed or assaulted write 'me too' as a reply to this tweet," she wrote, and then went to sleep. She woke up the next day to find that more than 30,000 people had used #MeToo. Milano burst into tears.

At first, those speaking out were mostly from the worlds of media and entertainment, but the hashtag quickly spread. "We have to keep our focus on people of different class and race and gender," says Burke, who has developed a friendship with Milano via text messages. By November, California farmworkers, Pascual among them, were marching on the streets of Hollywood to express their solidarity with the stars.

Women were no longer alone. "There's something really empowering about standing up for what's right," says Fowler, who has grown comfortable with her new reputation as a whistle-blower. "It's a badge of honor."

III

Discussions of sexual harassment in polite company tend to rely on euphemisms: harassment becomes "inappropriate behavior," assault becomes "misconduct," rape becomes "abuse." We're accustomed to hearing those softened words, which downplay the pain of the experience. That's one of the reasons why the Access Hollywood tape that surfaced in October 2016 was such a jolt. The language used by the man who would become America's 45th President, captured on a 2005 recording, was, by any standard, vulgar. He didn't just say that he'd made a pass; he "moved on her like a bitch." He didn't just talk about fondling women; he bragged that he could "grab 'em by the pussy."

That Donald Trump could express himself that way and still be elected President is part of what stoked the rage that fueled the Women's March the day after his Inauguration. It's why women seized on that crude word as the emblem of the protest that dwarfed Trump's Inauguration crowd size. "All social movements have highly visible precipitating factors," says Aldon Morris, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University. "In this case, you had Harvey Weinstein, and before that you had Trump."

Megyn Kelly, the NBC anchor who revealed in October that she had complained to Fox News executives about Bill O'Reilly's treatment of women, and who was a target of Trump's ire during the campaign, says the tape as well as the tenor of the election turned the political into the personal. "I have real doubts about whether we'd be going through this if Hillary Clinton had won, because I think that President Trump's election in many ways was a setback for women," says Kelly, who noted that not all women at the march were Clinton supporters. "But the overall message to us was that we don't really matter."

So it was not entirely surprising that 2017 began with women donning "pussy hats" and marching on the nation's capital in a show of unity and fury. What was startling was the size of the protest. It was one of the largest in U.S. history and spawned satellite marches in all 50 states and more than 50 other countries.

Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice, was one of roughly 20 women to accuse the President of sexual harassment. She filed a defamation suit against Trump days before his Inauguration after he disputed her claims by calling her a liar. A New York judge is expected to decide soon if the President is immune to civil suits while in office. No matter the outcome, the allegations added fuel to a growing fire.

By February, the movement had made its way to the billionaire dream factories of Silicon Valley, when Fowler spoke out about her "weird year" as an engineer at Uber. "I remember feeling powerless and like there was no one looking out for us because we had an admitted harasser in the White House," Fowler says. "I felt like I had to take action."

Barely two months later, Fox News cut ties with O'Reilly after the New York Times reported that he and the company had spent $13 million to settle claims against him from five women. In October, the Times revealed a sixth settlement, bringing that total to more than $45 million. Wendy Walsh, a psychologist and former guest on the network, was one of the first women to share her story about the star anchor-but she was initially reluctant to go on the record. "I was afraid for my kids, I was afraid of the retaliation," she says. "I know what men can do when they're angry."

Eventually she allowed her name to be used. "I felt it was my duty," Walsh says, "as a mother of daughters, as an act of love for women everywhere and the women who are silenced, to be brave."

The downfall of O'Reilly, who has denied all allegations of harassment, would prove to be just the beginning of the reckoning in media and entertainment. In June, Bill Cosby was brought to trial on charges that he had drugged and sexually assaulted a woman named Andrea Constand, one of nearly 50 women who have accused Cosby of sexual assault over several decades. Although the case ended in a mistrial-it is scheduled to be retried in April-the fact that it happened at all signaled a shift in the culture, a willingness to hold even beloved and powerful men accountable for past misdeeds.

Complaints at the University of Rochester helped expose harassment in academia. The chief executive of SoFi, the $4 billion lending firm, resigned following a lawsuit over claims of sexual harassment. Then, in early October, the dam finally broke.

On Oct. 5, the New York Times published the first story to expose Weinstein, one of the most powerful men in Hollywood and a leading Democratic political fundraiser, as a serial sexual predator. The revelation was quickly followed by New Yorker investigations that widened Weinstein's list of accusers and showed the incredible lengths he went to cover his tracks. Weinstein denied the allegations, but the levers that he had long pulled to exert his influence suddenly were jammed. Fellow chieftains refused to defend him. Politicians who once courted him gave away his donations. His company's board fired him.

Within days, the head of Amazon Studios, an influential art publisher and employees at the financial-services firm Fidelity had all left their jobs over harassment claims. By the end of the month, the list of the accused had grown to include political analyst Mark Halperin, a former TIME employee; opinion-shaping literary critic Leon Wieseltier; and numerous politicians and journalists. The Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey was scrubbed from a completed movie.

The response to the Weinstein allegations has shaped the way people view women who come forward. In a TIME/SurveyMonkey online poll of American adults conducted Nov. 28-30, 82% of respondents said women are more likely to speak out about harassment since the Weinstein allegations. Meanwhile, 85% say they believe the women making allegations of sexual harassment.

The movement-and fallout-quickly spread around the world. Michael Fallon, Britain's Defense Secretary, quit the Cabinet after journalist Jane Merrick revealed that he had "lunged" at her in 2003, when she was a 29-year-old reporter. In France, women took to the streets chanting not only "Me too" but also " Balance ton porc," which translates roughly to "Expose your pig," a hashtag conceived by French journalist Sandra Muller. In the week after #MeToo first surfaced, versions of it swept through 85 countries, from India, where the struggle against harassment and assault had already become a national debate in recent years, to the Middle East, Asia and parts in between.

"Suddenly," says Terry Reintke, a German member of the European Parliament, who discussed her own harassment in a speech on Oct. 25, "friends from primary school or women that I know from completely different surroundings that would never call themselves feminists were starting to share their stories."

By November, the spotlight was back on American politicians. A woman named Leigh Corfman told the Washington Post that Roy Moore, the Alabama Republican nominee for the Senate, abused her when she was 14 and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. Nine women have come forward to describe inappropriate encounters with Roy Moore, including several who say he pursued them when they were teenagers. Moore has called the allegations "false" and "malicious." "Specifically, I do not know any of these women nor have I ever engaged in sexual misconduct with any woman," he said in late November.

The following week, radio host Leeann Tweeden wrote that Minnesota Democratic Senator Al Franken groped her on a USO tour in 2006, before he was in office. Several other women have since come forward with similar harassment allegations against Franken, who has called on the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate his own behavior. On Dec. 5, Michigan Democratic Representative John Conyers resigned amid allegations that he had made sexual advances toward the women on his staff. He has said that the allegations "are not accurate; they are not true."

Texas Republican Representative Blake Farenthold has also found himself in the crosshairs after media reports that he used $84,000 in taxpayer dollars to settle a sexual-harassment lawsuit with a former aide in 2014. Farenthold denies that he engaged in any wrongdoing and has vowed to repay the settlement.

The accused were both Democrats and Republicans, but the consequences thus far have been limited-and often filtered through a partisan lens. In politics, at least, what constitutes disqualifying behavior seemed to depend not on your actions but on the allegiance of your tribe. In the 1990s, feminists stood up for accused abuser Bill Clinton instead of his accusers-a move many are belatedly regretting as the national conversation prompts a re-evaluation of the claims against the former President. And despite the allegations against Moore, both President Trump and the Republican National Committee support him.

That political divide was revealed in the TIME/SurveyMonkey poll, which found that Republicans were significantly more likely to excuse sexual misdeeds in their own party. The survey found that while a majority of Republicans and Democrats agree that a Democratic Congressman accused of sexual harassment should resign (71% and 74% respectively), when the accused offender was in the GOP, only 54% of Republicans would demand a resignation (compared to 82% of Democrats).

As another election cycle approaches, Americans find themselves trying to weigh one ugly act against another in a painful calculus of transgression. Is a grope caught on camera more disqualifying than a years-ago assault that was credibly reported? What are we willing to forgive or ignore or deny if the violator shares our politics?

IV

It wasn't so long ago that the boss chasing his secretary around the desk was a comic trope, a staple from vaudeville to prime-time sitcoms. There wasn't even a name for sexual harassment until just over 40 years ago; the term was coined in 1975 by a group of women at Cornell University after an employee there, Carmita Wood, filed for unemployment benefits after she had resigned because a supervisor touched her. The university denied her claim, arguing that she left the job for "personal reasons."

Wood, joined by activists from the university's human-affairs program, formed a group called Working Women United that hosted an event for workers from various fields, from mail-room clerks and servers to factory workers and administrative assistants, to talk about their own harassment experiences.

It was a proto-version of the social-media explosion we're seeing today, encouraging unity and reminding women that they were not alone. But even as public awareness about the problem of sexual harassment began to grow, legal and policy protections were almost nonexistent. In the 1970s, most businesses and institutions had no policies on sexual harassment whatsoever, and even egregious complaints were regularly dismissed.

In 1980 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency tasked with enforcing civil rights laws in the workplace, issued guidelines declaring sexual harassment a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. It was a victory, but with caveats: even after sexual harassment became explicitly illegal, it remained difficult to lodge a complaint that stuck-in part because acts of harassment are often difficult to define. What separates an illegal act of sexual harassment from a merely annoying interaction between a boss and his subordinate? When does a boss stop just being a jerk and become a criminal? Because the Civil Rights Act offered no solid legal definition, interpretation has evolved slowly, shaped by judges and the EEOC over the past 37 years.

In 1991, Anita Hill testified before the Senate committee confirming Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, accusing him of sexual harassment and bringing national attention to the issue. But, she says, "The conversation was not about the problems in the workplace. It was about the fallout in politics."

Even now, the contours of what constitutes sexual harassment remain murky. Some of the recent stories clearly cross the line, like a boss exposing himself to a subordinate or requiring that his researcher sit on his lap. But others feel more ambiguous. Under what circumstances can you ask a colleague about their marriage? When is an invite to drinks alone a bridge too far?

Jonathan Segal, a partner at the Philadelphia law firm Duane Morris, who specializes in workplace training, says he hears that confusion in the conversations men are now having among themselves. "It's more like, 'I wonder if I should tell someone they look nice, I wonder when it's O.K. to give a hug, I wonder when I should be alone with someone in a room,'" he says.

This uncertainty can be corrosive. While everyone wants to smoke out the serial predators and rapists, there is a risk that the net may be cast too far. What happens when someone who makes a sexist joke winds up lumped into the same bucket as a boss who gropes an employee? Neither should be encouraged, but nor should they be equated.

Companies, meanwhile, are scrambling to keep up. Most large U.S.-based corporations now have fairly complete policies on sexual harassment, and many have anti-sexual harassment training programs and claim to be "zero-tolerance workplaces." A 2016 EEOC report found that a company's willingness to protect so-called rainmakers-high-performing men like Kalanick, Weinstein and O'Reilly-to be one of the most pernicious reasons C-suites and corporate boards overlooked harassment. It doesn't matter how good a company's policy is if its systems are ignored or don't work. "So much harassment training is like an episode of The Office," says Victoria Lipnic, the acting chair of the EEOC.

In some instances, sexual-harassment training has even been shown to backfire. In a 2001 study, Lisa Scherer, an associate professor of industrial-organizational psychology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, found that while training increased knowledge about what constituted sexual harassment, it also sometimes had a corrosive effect on workplace culture. "What was disturbing was that the males who had gone through training showed a backlash effect," she says. "They said they were less willing to report sexual harassment than the males who had not gone through the training."

Employers are also girding for future allegations and lawsuits. The insurance company Nationwide reported a 15% increase in sales of employment practices liability insurances between 2016 and 2017. And Advisen, which tracks insurance trends, says that EPLI insurance price has increased 30% since 2011, which indicates that more companies are reporting losses.

Corporate boards, wary of alienating female employees and customers and of drawing bad press, have been among the quickest to make changes. Uber, for example, which built its reputation on a willingness to flout norms, used to be a guiding light for small startups. Now nobody is pitching their company as the next Uber, says Fowler. "There's a shift to, 'We're not disrupting anymore. We're trying to build something that's good for consumers and treats employees fairly.'" It's a start.

State and local governments have also taken some concrete steps. In October, the Chicago city council passed an ordinance requiring hotels to provide panic buttons to employees who work alone in hotel rooms. In Springfield, Ill., lawmakers passed a measure that will allow an investigation into a backlog of sexual-harassment complaints in the statehouse. In Arizona, pending legislation would void nondisclosure agreements signed by victims of harassment to keep them silent.

At the federal level, the House and Senate have passed new rules requiring members of Congress and their staff to complete mandatory sexual-harassment training. A handful of Senators have also introduced legislation to rein in what are known as mandatory arbitration agreements-legal clauses that can appear in employee contracts that prevent workers from suing their employers in court for any reason, including sexual harassment. Some 60 million American workers are currently bound by them.

V

We're still at the bomb-throwing point of this revolution, a reactive stage at which nuance can go into hiding. But while anger can start a revolution, in its most raw and feral form it can't negotiate the more delicate dance steps needed for true social change. Private conversations, which can't be legislated or enforced, are essential.

Norms evolve, and it's long past time for any culture to view harassment as acceptable. But there's a great deal at stake in how we assess these new boundaries-for women and men together. We can and should police criminal acts and discourage inappropriate, destructive behavior.

At least we've started asking the right questions. Ones that seem alarmingly basic in hindsight: "What if we did complain?" proposes Megyn Kelly. "What if we didn't whine, but we spoke our truth in our strongest voices and insisted that those around us did better? What if that worked to change reality right now?" Kelly acknowledges that this still feels more like a promise than a certainty. But for the moment, the world is listening.
-With reporting by Charlotte Alter and Susanna Schrobsdorff/New York, Sam Lansky/Los Angeles, Kate Samuelson/London, Maya Rhodan/Washington and Katy Steinmetz/San Francisco
Correction: The original version of this story misstated when the claims settled by Bill O'Reilly and Fox News were first disclosed. The New York Times reported in April that Fox and O'Reilly had settled five claims against him. O'Reilly left the network later that month.

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TIME Person of the Year 2017: The Silence Breakers

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Movie stars are supposedly nothing like you and me. They're svelte, glamorous, self-­possessed. They wear dresses we can't afford and live in houses we can only dream of. Yet it turns out that-in the most painful and personal ways-movie stars are more like you and me than we ever knew.

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This book gave descriptive  discussion how mass media play a crucial role along with the help of some personalities to influence people. Though it is a old book of 1966 but worthy to read it..."Personal Influence, The part played by people in the flow of mass communications"

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This book gave descriptive  discussion how mass media play a crucial role along with the help of some personalities to influence people. Though it is a old book of 1966 but worthy to read it..."Personal Influence, The part played by people in the flow of mass communications"

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Another article seems interesting as well..
"Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy "
https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM10/paper/viewFile/1538/1826,2011

Civic courage in Democracy related following article also intaresting
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/1341/summary

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“If you’re a journalist, what we do is tell the truth."

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“If you’re a journalist, what we do is tell the truth."

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It is (unfortunately) quite common for journalists to be jailed when reporting on authoritarian regimes, but Kenya is historically democratic.  As this seems poised to change, the work of journalists is increasingly important, and increasingly dangerous.

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For months, Kenyans had been on edge, waiting for Raila Odinga, an opposition politician, to make good on promises to inaugurate himself as "the people's president." Mr. Odinga lost the 2017 election to Mr. Kenyatta, insisting the original vote was fraudulent and sitting out a court-ordered do-over.

Although Mr. Kenyatta was sworn in for a second term in November, Mr. Odinga has refused to recognize him as legitimate - and planned his own inauguration ceremony.

To some, Mr. Odinga's plan was petulant political theater, and Western diplomats encouraged Mr. Kenyatta's government to ignore it. But the police threatened to crack down hard on anyone who attended the "swearing in" held on Tuesday.

As security officers have repeatedly demonstrated over the last three months, it was hardly an empty threat.

The government's response represents the latest chapter in a crackdown on political expression in Kenya, a stable democracy that had seemed to overcome decades of censorship and abuse.

Mr. Kenyatta got involved personally last week, raising the pressure not on his political rivals, but on the news media. He summoned the owners of Kenya's major broadcasters to his residence and warned them not to cover Mr. Odinga's ceremony.

Hanningtone Gaya, the chairman of the Media Owners Association of Kenya, described the encounter as a "dressing down" and told Mr. Kaikai that the group had been "read the riot act."

Mr. Kaikai, who is chairman of Kenya's editors guild, denounced the president's warning as a "brazen threat" and wrote a scathing public letter against media intimidation.

And for a few hours on Tuesday, his NTV journalists broadcast from the event at Uhuru Park. So did two other major stations. But at 9 a.m., government officials and police officers arrived at the stations' transmission center, about 20 miles from Nairobi, and disabled broadcasting equipment.

The stations went off the air.

Tensions only worsened as the day went on. The government declared part of the opposition coalition an "organized criminal gang."

Fred Matiang'i, the interior minister, said at a news conference on Wednesday that he would investigate the TV stations and keep them off the air indefinitely. He said the blackout had protected Kenyans from incitement - and then he went further.

"A massacre of catastrophic proportions was going to happen," he said, without offering evidence. "The intention was that it happens, and it's blamed on the police."

By coupling the blackout with the withdrawal of police forces from the site, Mr. Matiang'i said, he had kept Kenyans safe.

Mr. Matiang'i also promised a reckoning with the planners of what he described, again without evidence, as a sinister plot that had been foiled.

"The individuals and organizations involved in this, wherever they are within the borders of this country, will feel it," he said. "And they will be so sorry."

Roughly an hour later, Mr. Kaikai - who had set off a firestorm with his defiant renunciation of the president's warning - was told that police officers had surrounded the NTV newsroom. The information came around the same time news broke that an opposition lawmaker, T. J. Kajwang, had been arrested. He was expected to be charged with having administered Mr. Odinga's "oath."

As the evening wore on, Mr. Kaikai's colleagues took care of whatever details they could. One brought him a toothbrush, another a blanket. The place was full of food - "they asked me what I want for my 'Last Supper,'" he joked - and he signed papers, in triplicate, meant to expedite his bail.

"Tomorrow you're going to look dapper, I hope," a lawyer told him with a smile. "You need your best suit, and a flower for that buttonhole thing." The joke didn't quite land. "O.K., you can skip the flower," he offered.

Mr. Kaikai tried to keep up his spirits, but worried aloud about the aftermath of a police raid.

"What happens here is not that they just take you to the police station. They cause you psychological trauma," he said.

Stories abound here about police officers driving suspects around for hours before booking them at the station, which starts a kind of civil-rights clock: Officers have 24 hours from booking to charge a suspect, who can then appeal for bail.

In November, David Ndii, an opposition leader, was arrested at his hotel and went missing for five hours before a local police station reported having him in custody.

These things weighed on Mr. Kaikai as he awaited the arrest he was certain was coming.

"Look, they're not about law and processes," he said. "These are not law enforcers. They're political henchmen."

That night, Mr. Madowo took refuge in his studio, laying a Maasai cloth beneath the desk that holds his soundboard. "Who knew a production studio could have so many uses?" he said.

George Kinoti, a spokesman for the National Police, did not return repeated calls or messages seeking to confirm whether officers had been sent to arrest the journalists. Mwenda Njoka, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, denied any knowledge of the events.

But in the end, the police did not storm the offices. Late Thursday afternoon, the High Court suspended the blackout, saying the stations could resume broadcasting until the court hears arguments on the issue. And Mr. Kaikai, Mr. Madowo and Mr. Mijungu headed to court to seek "anticipatory bail," which would essentially keep them free even if the police filed charges in court.

They remained defiant.

"If you're a journalist, what we do is tell the truth. You don't hide things. You don't sugarcoat," Mr. Mijungu said. "We saw what happened on Tuesday as an event. They saw it as an opportunity to crack down on us."

Correction: February 1, 2018

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As Kenya Takes Orwellian Turn, Government Goes After Journalists

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For months, Kenyans had been on edge, waiting for Raila Odinga, an opposition politician, to make good on promises to inaugurate himself as "the people's president." Mr. Odinga lost the 2017 election to Mr. Kenyatta, insisting the original vote was fraudulent and sitting out a court-ordered do-over.

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It's not official, but I agree with it.

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Courage comes in many forms, be it peacefully resistance against an oppressor, bearing pain for a greater cause, or fighting for something good. The following 10 people showed remarkable courage, all for causes they fervently believed in.

These are 10 of the most courageous people in history who may have acted in long gone eras, but their acts of courage stand through to today.

10. Emmeline Pankhurst imprisoned for the Suffragette movement

Pankhurst was a militant campaigner for women's right to vote, who along with many other suffragettes was imprisoned because of her protesting. Her philosophy was that the need to extend voting rights to women was so urgent that breaking the law in order to draw attention to the cause was completely justified. She was imprisoned several times, but saw her goals realized when women were allowed to vote for the first time in 1918.

9. Rosa Parks Sits Down for Civil Rights

When does sitting on a bus become an act of revolution and great bravery? In pre civil rights era USA it could be exactly that, as buses along with all other public amenities were segregated by race.

Rosa Parks, a black political activist and secretary of her local chapter of the NAACP, effectively triggered the wave of protests that eventually led to desegregation by calmly and politely refusing to give up her seat at the front of a segregated bus. Risking arrest and violence for what was right earns her a place on the list.

8. The Unknown Rebel at the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests

The white-shirted protester facing down a column of Chinese tanks alone has become one of the most iconic images of rebellion and courage. In 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square had attracted thousands of people and the People's Liberation Army had been sent in to quell the protests.

As the column of tanks rolled in to the square, a lone figure blocked their path. The protester was eventually pulled back into the crowd and his or her identity is still unknown, but the photograph of a single person standing up to power has taken on a life of its own.

7. Dietrich Bonhoeffer standing up to Nazism

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor in Germany who loudly and, despite threats to his personal safety, publicly criticized the Nazi regime. The regime saw him as a threat and he fled the country to seek asylum in the USA. However, after 2 years he returned to his native Germany to continue to promote opposition to the persecution of Jews and other minority groups. He became an important symbol of opposition, and was arrested and executed by the Nazis a month before the end of the Second World War.

6. Nelson Mandela's fight against apartheid

Nelson Mandela was a senior figure in the South African resistance to racial segregation when he was arrested for treason in 1963. He had been an active member of both the political and armed opposition movements, and was initially sentenced to death for plotting to overthrow the government. His trial attracted significant international coverage and condemnation of the South African government.

Mandela's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and despite spending nearly 20 years in jail he went on to be the first black president in South Africa's history.

5. Galileo Galilei puts science before faith

Italian scientist Galileo was a devout Catholic, but when his scientific discoveries put him at odds with the church he accepted imprisonment rather than deny his views. Galileo's work provided evidence for the idea that the earth moves around the sun, which was considered heretical at the time. He spend time in jail, and lived the last years of his life under house arrest. He also risked excommunication from the church and eternal damnation (according to the Catholic church at the time).

4. Socrates accepts death rather than recant his views

Socrates was a prominent philosopher in ancient Athens, whose criticisms of the rich and powerful gained him some powerful enemies. Arrested and sentenced to death for offending the Gods and corrupting the youth, Socrates was offered the chance to apologize for his crimes and escape death. He refused to do so, and according to myth willingly drank hemlock showing that he accepted the judgment of his government.

3. Joan of Arc leads an army for her beliefs

Saint Joan was born into a poor family in the 15th Century in a region of France ravaged by war with England. A religious child, he faith was strengthened by visions of God commanding her to lead the French nation to victory. She gained an audience with the French leader and impressed him with her fervor, and he gave her control of an army. She inspired devotion in her troops and won several important battles before being captured and sold to the English. Later tried and convicted of witchcraft, she refused to confess and was burnt at the stake.

2. Odette Sansom survives imprisonment in World War 2

Odette Samson was a British spy working in occupied France during the second world war. She was a radio operator - one of the riskiest intelligence roles, as the Germans were constantly surveying the airwaves for enemy transmissions. Betrayed by a double agent a year later, Sansom was captured and tortured in a Paris jail.

Despite the inhuman treatment she was put through, she did not divulge the identity of any colleagues. She was eventually sentenced to death and sent to a concentration camp, but her execution was never carried out and she survived the war. Rather than seeking vengeance for what she had suffered, she spent the years following her release working for charities which aimed to lessen the pain of war, and was awarded the George Cross for her service.

1. Thich Quang Duc's Self-Immolation

The Vietnam war was one of the first international conflicts in the era of television news, and the images beamed back to the United States helped galvanize the national protests seen against the war. One of the key moments in shifting public opinion was the suicide protest of Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk.

In a square in Saigon he denounced the south Vietnamese government for their persecution of Buddhists, and then sat calmly as his fellow monks doused him with petrol and set him alight. The horror prompted within Vietnam and internationally by this act helped to speed regime change and the end of the war.

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10 of the Most Courageous People in History

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Courage comes in many forms, be it peacefully resistance against an oppressor, bearing pain for a greater cause, or fighting for something good. The following 10 people showed remarkable courage, all for causes they fervently believed in.

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LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani human rights campaigner Asma Jahangir, who faced death threats by fighting for unpopular causes and was jailed in the 1980s for her pro-democracy work during military rule, died on Sunday in Lahore. She was 66.

Accolades for the fiery activist, whose name was virtually synonymous with human rights in Pakistan, poured in from political and legal figures.

Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi lauded her "immense contributions towards upholding rule of law, democracy and safeguarding human rights".

Jahangir was a U.N. special rapporteur for freedom of religion from 2004 to 2010, and later was a rapporteur for human rights in Iran.

In Pakistan, she campaigned tirelessly for democracy and free speech, frequently receiving death threats for taking up causes such as criticizing the strict blasphemy laws of the conservative Muslim-majority country.

A lawyer by background, she was a founding member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association.

Fearless in the face of authority, she was imprisoned in 1983 for her work with the Movement to Restore Democracy during of General Zia ul-Haq's military rule.

She was also placed under house arrest in 2007 for her part in a lawyers' protest movement that helped lead to military leader Pervez Musharraf stepping down from power.

In recent years, she was outspoken over the misuse of blasphemy laws that carry a mandatory death sentence for insulting Islam's prophet.

She also represented several civil society organizations that were threatened with shutdown as well as families of several "disappeared" activists over the past few years.

Jahangir's daughter Munizae said her mother died after suffering a heart attack on Sunday.

Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by Richard Balmforth

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judicial process / court cases / court decisions

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Pakistani human rights champion Asma Jahangir dies

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LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani human rights campaigner Asma Jahangir, who faced death threats by fighting for unpopular causes and was jailed in the 1980s for her pro-democracy work during military rule, died on Sunday in Lahore. She was 66.

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Australians finally wanting to change the date of Australia Day and trying to create awareness of the oppression of Aboriginal people still happening today that is sadly celebrated on this day...
https://www.facebook.com/GetUpAustralia/videos/10154055334016455/

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A lot has already been written about Ahed Tamini, the 16 year old Palestinian girl that has been imprisoned for physically attacking an Israeli soldier that marched in her family backyard. Some have labelled her as the modern day Joan of arc. others portray her as a star of modern Palestinian propaganda... 

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A lot has already been written about Ahed Tamini, the 16 year old Palestinian girl that has been imprisoned for physically attacking an Israeli soldier that marched in her family backyard. Some have labelled her as the modern day Joan of arc. others portray her as a star of modern Palestinian propaganda... 

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The following article questions the different responses on the actions of Tamini and Malala Yousafzai. The author argues that both actions are comparable and showing civic courage, yet the international response is very different and in case of Tamini lacking. The author argues that this partly due to the "selective
humanitarianism, whereby only particular bodies and causes are deemed worthy of intervention."

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Ahed Tamimi, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl, was recently arrested in a night-time raid on her home. The Israeli authorities accuse her of "assaulting" an Israeli soldier and an officer. A day earlier she had confronted Israeli soldiers who had entered her family's backyard. The incident happened shortly after a soldier shot her 14-year-old cousin in the head with a rubber bullet, and fired tear-gas canisters directly at their home, breaking windows.

Her mother and cousin were arrested later as well. All three remain in detention.

There has been a curious lack of support for Ahed from Western feminist groups, human rights advocates and state officials who otherwise present themselves as the purveyors of human rights and champions of girls' empowerment.

Ahed, like Malala, has a substantial history of standing up against injustices.

Their campaigns on empowering girls in the global South are innumerable: Girl Up, Girl Rising, G(irls)20 Summit, Because I am a Girl, Let Girls Learn, Girl Declaration.

When 15-year-old Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by a member of Tehrik-e-Taliban, the reaction was starkly different. Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, issued a petition entitled "I am Malala." The UNESCO launched "Stand Up For Malala."

Malala was invited to meet then President Barack Obama, as well as the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and addressed the UN General Assembly. She received numerous accolades from being named one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time magazine and Woman of the Year by Glamour magazine to being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013, and again in 2014 when she won.

State representatives such as Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard as well as prominent journalists such as Nicholas Kristof spoke up in support of her. There is even a Malala Day!

But we see no #IamAhed or #StandUpForAhed campaigns making headlines. None of the usual feminist and rights groups or political figures has issued statements supporting her or reprimanding the Israeli state. No one has declared an Ahed Day. In fact, the US in the past has even her a visa for a speaking tour.

Ahed, like Malala, has a substantial history of standing up against injustices. She has been protesting the theft of land and water by Israeli settlers. She has endured personal sacrifice, having lost an uncle and a cousin to the occupation. Her parents and brother have been arrested time and again. Her mother has been shot in the leg. Two years ago, another featuring her went viral - this time she was trying to protect her little brother from being taken by a soldier.

Why isn't Ahed a beneficiary of the same international outcry as Malala? Why has the reaction to Ahed been so different?

There are multiple reasons for this deafening silence. First among them is the widespread acceptance of state-sanctioned violence as legitimate. Whereas hostile actions of non-state actors such as the Taliban or Boko Haram fighters are viewed as unlawful, similar aggression by the state is often deemed appropriate.

This not only includes overt forms of violence such as drone attacks, unlawful arrests, and police brutality, but also less obvious assaults such as the allocation of resources, including land and water. The state justifies these actions by presenting the victims of its injustices as a threat to the functioning of the state.

Once declared a threat, the individual is easily reduced to bare life - a life without political value. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has this as a time/place sanctioned by sovereign power where laws can be suspended; this individual can therefore now be made a target of sovereign violence. Terrorists often fall within this category. Thus, the execution of suspected terrorists through drone attacks without due judicial process ensues without much public uproar.

The Israeli police have deployed a similar strategy here. They have argued for extending Ahed's detention because she "poses a danger" to soldiers (state representatives) and could obstruct the functioning of the state (the investigation).

Casting unarmed Palestinians like Ahed - who was simply exercising her right to protect her family's wellbeing with all the might of her 16-year-old hand - in the same light as a terrorist is unfathomable. Such framings open the way for authorising excessive torture - Israel's education minister Naftali Bennett, for instance, Ahed and her family to "finish their lives in prison."

Ahed's suffering also exposes the West's selective humanitarianism, whereby only particular bodies and causes are deemed worthy of intervention.

Anthropologist Miriam Ticktin that while the language of morality to alleviate bodily suffering has become dominant in humanitarian agencies today, only particular kinds of suffering bodies are read as worthy of this care. This includes the exceptionally violated female body and the pathologically diseased body.

Such a notion of suffering normalises labouring and exploited bodies: "these are not the exception, but the rule, and hence are disqualified."

I ssues of unemployment, hunger, threat of violence, police brutality, and denigration of cultures are thus often not considered deserving of humanitarian intervention. Such forms of suffering are seen as necessary and even inevitable. Ahed, therefore, does not fit the ideal victim-subject for transnational advocacy.

Relatedly, g irls like Ahed who critique settler colonialism and articulate visions of communal care are not the empowered femininity that the West wants to valourise. She seeks justice against oppression, rather than empowerment that benefits only herself.

Her feminism is political, rather than one centred on commodities and sex. Her girl power threatens to reveal the ugly face of settler-colonialism, and hence is marked as "dangerous". Her courage and fearlessness vividly render all that is wrong with this occupation.

Ahed's plight should prompt us to interrogate our selective humanitarianism. Individuals who are victims of state violence, whose activism unveils the viciousness of power, or whose rights advocacy centres communal care, deserve to be included in our vision of justice.

Even if we don't launch campaigns for Ahed, it is impossible for us to escape her call to witness the mass debilitation, displacement and dispossession of her people. As Nelson Mandela said, "We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shenila Khoja-Moolji

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Why is the West praising Malala, but ignoring Ahed?

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Ahed Tamimi, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl, was recently arrested in a night-time raid on her home. The Israeli authorities accuse her of "assaulting" an Israeli soldier and an officer. A day earlier she had confronted Israeli soldiers who had entered her family's backyard.

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Teachers Should Revolt Against "Pedagogy of Oppression"

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Teachers Should Revolt Against "Pedagogy of Oppression"

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https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/we-need-make-connection-between-teaching-education-and-democracy
Interesting article that focuses on how our societal paradigm on education needs to change, and that teachers mobilizing together could help accomplish this.

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A short paper about exestential risks discussing different strategies to start to think about those in a broader context. Also discuss Black Swans, unknown risks as one of the biggest threats for humanity and how to build strategies to avoid those when we don't really know the actors invovled. How to think about something unknown.

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A short paper about exestential risks discussing different strategies to start to think about those in a broader context. Also discuss Black Swans, unknown risks as one of the biggest threats for humanity and how to build strategies to avoid those when we don't really know the actors invovled. How to think about something unknown.

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https://www.docsoffreedom.org/student/readings/civic-virtue-and-our-constitutional-republic

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When courage is both a spark to violence and unity all under one event in Paris, 2015...

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The year 2015 has not begun quietly, as evidenced by the killings at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher market in France. This world we live in, as I am reminded by the headlines, is unstable. Living each day requires small and sometimes large acts of courage.

This past Sunday, according to the NY Times, more than 40 world leaders marched in Paris "in solidarity... against the threat of Islamic extremism since the Sept. 11 attacks." Among those 40 world leaders were an unlikely pair - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. The two of them marching together, to me, is an act of courage. While world leaders headed that march, more than a million people joined in. More than a million people left whatever they were doing that Sunday to make a statement to the world, a statement, given the constant threat of terrorism, which stands, to me, as an act of courage.

Courage, either large or small, is difficult because of the weight of doubt and fear and discouragement that continually press against it. The great director, Francis Ford Coppola, is quoted as saying, "You have to be really courageous about your instincts and your ideas. Otherwise, you'll just knuckle under, and things that might have been memorable will be lost." The editors at Charlie Hebdo refused to knuckle under and a week after the attack produced a memorable edition, including a controversial cover, with millions of copies selling out in a mere hours.

Courage is a quality most often noticed in larger events but, as I thought about courage this week, as I thought about how people approach danger and risk, I began to think about the courage that is often found closer to home. As a therapist, I realized I see courage displayed on a regular basis. The courage I see does not show up on the front pages of newspapers but is still part of the fabric of courage that strengthens and supports the human spirit, so prominently displayed over the weekend in Paris. The courage I most often see is the abused person who is willing to risk forgiveness, the demeaned person who is willing to risk self-esteem, the addicted person who is willing to risk recovery. All of these are small acts of courage that produce a groundswell of memorable results.

Today, I saw a story that might be considered small in the larger issues of the day but nonetheless, caught my attention. Recently, in an interview on the Graham Norton show, Meryl Streep spoke about an incident that happened to her in the 1970s when she was just starting out her acting career. According to Streep, Dino DeLaurentiis Jr. saw her in a play and brought her to his father, the film director, Dino DeLaurentiis, Sr. to audition for the female lead in his remake of "King Kong." Upon seeing Streep, the elder said to the younger in Italian, "Why do you bring me this ugly thing?" Streep, who understood Italian, immediately apologized, in Italian, for not being pretty enough and left.

The host, Graham Norton, said this example was comforting and encouraged young actors to take solace in Streep's example. I agree young actors should take solace but so should everyone else. It took courage for Streep not to become crushed at such a young age. In defiance, Streep has remained courageous about her instincts and ideas. She did not knuckle under to such a devastating comment and so many memorable things from her amazing career have not been lost, to her or to us.

These are days that require both large and small acts of courage, or the memorable things that make up the fabric of our lives and human spirit might be lost. The events of this year have reminded me that life is uncertain so I don't want to squander a single one.

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The year 2015 has not begun quietly, as evidenced by the killings at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher market in France. This world we live in, as I am reminded by the headlines, is unstable. Living each day requires small and sometimes large acts of courage.

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'One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.' - Malala Yousafzai

As Brian pointed out in his TED Talk , Malala is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate. She is known for human rights advocacy, especially the education of women and children in her native Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northwest Pakistan. Make sure to listen to her inspring speech as an actor of change:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOqIotJrFVM

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..is an organisation which shows civic courage in blocking coal mines in Germany. With their actions they try to raise awareness of climate change and "unmask the hypocrisy of the German climate policy".

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Together we unmasked the hypocrisy of the German climate policy and showed our solidarity with those most affected by climate change - we review our successful blockade on November the 5th 2017.

Together we unmasked the hypocrisy of the German climate policy

Early in the afternoon of November the 5th, a group of activists from the green finger reached one of the colossal bucket-wheel excavators. At that time, the Ende Gelände activists had already brought the Hambach lignite mine to a halt. Thousands of brave men and women were in the pit facing the giant machines. The Ende Gelände alliance had reached its goal once again.

In this year the CO ₂ levels rose higher and faster than ever before. The official response of governments and corporations was to haggle over a way-too-slow coal phase out in German exploratory talks, and to suggest text contributions at the climate conference in Bonn. Although these are supposed to implement the Paris climate agreement, they are failing to produce the real solutions that are desperately needed.

Too slow and not enough for us!

All that politic wheeling-and-dealing and the delay tactics are a tradition of the last decades. We have known for thirty years that we must act straightaway. Yet the destruction has only increased, year after year. That's why Ende Gelände blocked the open pit in the rhenish lignite mining region in another massive civil disobedience action. One day before the UN climate conference in Bonn began, thousands of brave people descended into the Hambach pit - the deepest man-made depression in Nordrhein-Westfalen. In that way, we showed the whole world what the climate policy of the pretended "land of the energy revolution" actually looks like.

Singing, dancing and bold down the pit

Despite heavy rain 4500 people gathered for the demonstration in Buir, about six kilometers away from the pit edge. Singing and dancing we began our protest march. We did not care much for the police, neither at the time they stopped us to take away our "dangerous" straw mattresses, nor later, as we ran through the police chains. The activists also walked near the rests of the Hambach woods, one of the oldest natural forests of Europe, now damned to succumb to the coal excavators. Clear and cool in mind, we all knew our goal: to block the excavators looming in the distance.

The fossil energy corporation RWE tried this year everything to prevent the occupation. One day before the action RWE was still excavating meter-deep troughs and heaping up walls. All access roads to the pit were destroyed, obviously to get rid of us. But we won't leave in peace those making profit with coal. Avoiding the police chains, 3000 activists reached the pit. In the middle of that moon-like landscape we joined in a circle and held hands. The coal excavators and the conveyor belt had to stop. For one day, the destruction ceased.

We can't be stopped. We will block the excavators over and over again.

This year, not only did we have more participants in Ende Gelände than ever before, but it was as well the most international coal resistance action of the last years - with large groups of participants from France, the Netherlands, Italy, England, Czech Republic, Sweden, Denmark and other countries. They all stood together in the dust of the pit and endured pepper spray and a disproportionate use of police horses. At Ende Gelände, CODE ROOD, the occupation of the coal harbor Amsterdam, at No Grande Navi, the blockade of the cruiser harbor in Venice, or at the first czech climate camp this summer, an international movement for climate justice is building up, coming together and gathering strength.

We also gain confidence from the fact that Ende Gelände could be so successful without the support of a host climate camp. Many people from Bonn and Köln gave activists a place to spend the night in the cold November. We came in their living rooms and were glad to take our hosts with us down the pit. The newspaper taz wrote "Ende Gelände stands again at the top of the German climate movement - but their first line broadens".

We are not drowning, we are fighting!

All talk about climate protection is hypocrisy as long as we keep extracting fossil fuels: they must stay in the ground, and indeed starting right now. Phasing out coal and all fossil energies cannot be negotiated. This measure is necessary to give those affected by climate change - now and in the future - a chance to live a good life.

We thank the Pacific Climate Warriors, who manifested their solidarity in a ceremony in Mannheim, for their unbroken fighting spirit and their willingness to share their story with us. Countries such as Germany must face their historical responsibility in global warming. It is a farce to discuss the implementation of the Paris Agreement in Bonn, 50 km away from the spot where monstrous quantities of the most dirty of coals are being excavated. We don't let that pass away without a remark. We unmask the hypocritical climate policy of Germany and take coal phase out into our own hands.

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Ende Gelände in the Hambach opencast mine

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Together we unmasked the hypocrisy of the German climate policy and showed our solidarity with those most affected by climate change - we review our successful blockade on November the 5th 2017. Early in the afternoon of November the 5th, a group of activists from the green finger reached one of the colossal bucket-wheel excavators.

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Winter Olympics: South Koreans protest against 'propaganda'

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Winter Olympics: South Koreans protest against 'propaganda'

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South Koreans have protested against what they call "propaganda" from the North during the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

It came after the sister of North Korea's leader, Kim Yo-jong, presented the South Korean President Moon Jae-in with a proposal to hold a summit between the North and South.

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-43026813/winter-olympics-south-koreans-protest-against-propaganda

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‘I have learned that courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it,” said Nelson Mandela.

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‘I have learned that courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it,” said Nelson Mandela.

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It is interesting to try to understand what civic courage meant to Nelson Mandela and South Africa as a whole during the struggle.
"A courageous leader, then, is prepared to take risks for what is right: where the gain for society is greater than any personal loss."
Will courage right the wrongs?
https://mg.co.za/article/2015-06-25-courage-will-right-the-wrongs

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4 days ago, mute bystanders in India fail to help victims AND call for Bulgaria to combat anti-Semitism and stop neo-nazi marches occurring every February 

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4 days ago, mute bystanders in India fail to help victims AND call for Bulgaria to combat anti-Semitism and stop neo-nazi marches occurring every February 

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India:
http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/kochi/2018/feb/05/stone-hearted-public-remain-mute-as-victims-fend-for-themselves-in-kochi-1768390.html

Bulgaria:
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article197952229.html

A further definition of civic courage and democracy

https://www.everyday-democracy.org/news/practicing-civic-courage-age-civic-anxiety

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"Who knows what will happen with people who are hungry for change"

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"Who knows what will happen with people who are hungry for change"

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(BBC Why people have taken to the streets)

The biggest anti-government protests in Iran for nearly a decade have been fuelled by rising discontent, in particular over the cost of living.

Iran protests: Students 'among more than 1,000 arrested'

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Ninety university students are among more than 1,000 people arrested since anti-government demonstrations began last month, say reformist MPs in Iran.

Mahmoud Sadeghi told the Iranian Students' News Agency that many of them were not involved in protests.

Another MP, Farid Mousavi, said it was a preventative measure and they would be released soon.

At least 21 people have been killed in the protests, which erupted across the country over the state of the economy.

The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday declared the defeat of what he described as "sedition" in the country.

Six charts that explain Iran protests

How sanctions have hit ordinary Iranians

The 'Rosa Parks' of Iran?

Despite this, a number of towns and cities saw fresh protests overnight. However, Reuters, quoting local residents, said they were showing signs of abating after the Revolutionary Guards were sent to several provinces.

The unrest - the most widescale of its kind since a disputed presidential election in 2009 - initially began over price rises and corruption but protests have since turned into wider anti-government sentiment.

Some reports put the number of people arrested since 28 December as high as 1,700.

The vice-president of Tehran University, which has seen clashes in recent days, said a committee had been formed to track the fate of students who had been arrested.

"Our efforts at the university are aimed at co-operating with the relevant authorities to create the conditions for the return of the detained students to the university and their families in the shortest possible time," Majid Sarsangi told the Iranian Students' News Agency.

MP Mahmoud Sadeghi said little was known about at least 10 of the 90 students detained.

He told semi-official Ilna news agency that 58 were from universities in Tehran, and the rest from across the country.

Many of them, he said, had been arrested at their homes.

Fear of the youth
By Rana Rahimpour, BBC Persian
"Preventative" arrests of university students are rather uncommon in Iran. Although some of the students were not involved in the protests, the authorities are fearful of their influence.

Historically, universities have been hotbeds of political opposition to the Iranian government. The anti-government protests of 1999 were started by university students in response to the closure of a reformist newspaper.

According to the authorities, more than 90% of those arrested in the last 10 days are under the age of 25. With a young, tech-savvy population that wants more freedom and a better economy, the Iranian politicians' fear of youth organisations is not surprising.

Video seen by the BBC shows people gathered in front of Evin Prison in central Tehran, in an attempt to find out about their loved ones.

Meanwhile, state TV has broadcast images of thousands of pro-government supporters attending fresh rallies on Saturday, with some chanting "death to America", "death to Israel" and "death to Britain".

It comes a day after Iran accused the US of abusing its power as a permanent member of the UN Security Council after it convened an emergency session over the protests.

US officials, including President Donald Trump, have voiced their support for the protests since they began. The US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, told the council on Friday that Washington stood "unapologetically with those in Iran who seek freedom for themselves, prosperity for their families and dignity for their nation".

The move to hold the emergency meeting angered other council members, including Russia, whose envoy described the protests as an "internal affair".

Iranian officials have blamed the demonstrations on foreign meddling and at the UN on Friday Iranian envoy Gholamali Khoshroo said Tehran had "hard evidence" that they were "very clearly directed from abroad".

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Ninety university students are among more than 1,000 people arrested since anti-government demonstrations began last month, say reformist MPs in Iran. Mahmoud Sadeghi told the Iranian Students' News Agency that many of them were not involved in protests. Another MP, Farid Mousavi, said it was a preventative measure and they would be released soon.

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An interesting study about Milgram's study on obedience (1963). Found that people being exposed to someone else's irresponsible behaviour (and evaluating such behaviour negatively) increased motivation to behave courageously and responsibly.

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The true story of the man who volunteered for Auschwitz in order to tell the world the truth about Hitlers final solution and who was murdered by the Soviet Union for his service to mankind.

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Perhaps on the contrary to civic courage but something I find interesting nonetheless:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=760lwYmpXbc

The Stanford Prison experiment reveals how strong situational influence can be towards the psychology of ordinary individuals. The results of the experiment would indicate that environments dictate our actions, rather than personality traits. For anyone who decides to watch: take particular note of prisoner 416 and the ‘John Wayne’ guard.

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Ludwig Wittgenstein & his medal for exceptional bravery

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Ludwig Wittgenstein & his medal for exceptional bravery

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Ludwig Wittgenstein was a student in mechanical engineering when he started to become interested in philosophical questions. He turned out to have a particular aptitude for philosophy and went on to study with one of the leading philosophers of his time: Bertrand Russel whom he soon surpassed in capability, according to Russel himself. Yet his own work did not satisfy the young Wittgenstein and he became convinced he would never publicize anything during his lifetime, and found his character lacked in strength. He prayed, that god would make a decent man out of him and thus joined the army in WWI in the hope that confronting life and death head on would help him solve the riddles of life that occupied him. He managed to finish his first book the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in the midst of the war, as well as being rewarded a medal for exceptional bravery, as he battled on the front lines of the most dangerous battlefields to which he himself requested to be replaced. For a time after the war was fought Wittgenstein lived in the conviction he had solved the philosophical problems until a young friend and promising academic Frank P. Ramsey, confronted him and woke him from his philosophical slumber. During the remainder of his life he incessantly worked at philosophical problems but never published anything again in his life. Luckily his work has become publicized posthumously.

Here we have a man that scorned the intellectualism of the Cambridge academic scene, sought to confront death at the front lines of a world war for the purpose of building character and thus maintain the hope to solve the philosophical riddles that wouldn't let him go.

What are we to make of him? somebody who was possessed, bordering on craziness? An unflinching hero, striving to become truly human? And what do we make of his intellectualism if he was so critical of the academic elite he met in Cambridge? Did he perhaps set an example of intellectual honesty and courage?!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

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Nancy Pelosi's filibuster speech - political theatre or civic courage?

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Nancy Pelosi's filibuster speech - political theatre or civic courage?

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Politicians are to me courageous, especially going against inhumane policies and undemocratic leaders. But what is truly courageous in the political game? It's not taking a bullet but I know I couldn't deliver an 8 hour speech....

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US politician Nancy Pelosi is thought to have set a new record for the longest speech ever made in the House of Representatives, after telling the stories of immigrants for eight hours.

Ms Pelosi was advocating on behalf of undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children, known as "Dreamers".

She wants them protected as part of a budget deal being agreed this week.

The House minority leader began her speech at 10:04 local time (15:04 GMT) - and did not finish until the evening.

Dreamers were previously protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals scheme - something which was ended by President Donald Trump last year.

"Every day, courageous patriotic Dreamers lose their status, every day the American Dream slips further out of reach," Ms Pelosi told assembled lawmakers.

"As members of Congress, we have a moral responsibility to act now to protect Dreamers who are the pride of our nation and are American in every way but on paper."

She then shared dozens of personal stories from the immigrants facing deportation, effectively halting business in the House of Representatives in protest.

On social media, many users pointed out that Ms Pelosi had not only spoken for many hours, but had done so while consuming only a little water - and wearing four-inch high heels.

Democrat supporters and Ms Pelosi's own party members contributed to a wave of congratulatory tweets using the hashtag #GoNancyGo. Republicans, however, used the same tag to criticise the stunt as a waste of time.

Her dedication to speaking about Daca also led to her speech being called a "Dacabuster" - a play on the filibuster technique sometimes used in the Senate to block or delay legislation by refusing to yield the floor.

The move was not technically a filibuster. The House has different rules from the Senate that limit speaking time to prevent use of the technique.

But as minority leader, Ms Pelosi had the right to speak for as long as she wished.

What is this Dreamer debate all about?

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The historian's office of the House told reporters that the speech was the longest they were aware of without further research - easily beating the five hour, 15 minute known record of Champ Clark set in 1909.

When she concluded her remarks, fellow Democrats present in the chamber applauded and cheered as she took her seat.

The controversy comes as Republican and Senate leaders managed to agree a two-year budget deal which they hope will avoid another government shutdown.

The US government was left devoid of funding for a weekend as both sides argued over funding for specific measures - including immigration.

The latest deal does not contain specific protections for Dreamers - something which many Democrats like Ms Pelosi are expected to oppose.

Many fiscal conservatives on the Republican side are equally unhappy with the increased spending the new funding deal proposes.

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Pelosi sets record with eight-hour speech

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US politician Nancy Pelosi is thought to have set a new record for the longest speech ever made in the House of Representatives, after telling the stories of immigrants for eight hours. Ms Pelosi was advocating on behalf of undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children, known as "Dreamers".

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Here is a link to an interesting article, a scientist being awarded a prize for civic courage.
http://www.capjournal.com/news/sd-scientist-honored-for-civic-courage-in-washington-d-c/article_99b46104-97e1-11e5-aa66-5fb79284b9e4.html

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"In his famous essay on “the moral equivalent of war,” William James, psychologist and pacifist, said that the qualities associated with courage are “the rock upon which states are built—unless, indeed, we wish for dangerous reactions against commonwealths fit only for contempt.” If Americans hope for their politics to recover from its abysmal condition, they need to find it in their own past, and they need to begin with courage—the virtue, Churchill is reported to have said, “that makes all others possible.” Over coming years, it is in civic education about and for political courage that a way out of this crisis lies."

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/americas-crisis-of-courage/545063/

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Octavia Spencer: "Jessica Chastain helped me get 5 times the salary I asked for"

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Octavia Spencer: "Jessica Chastain helped me get 5 times the salary I asked for"

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This might not be in at the same level as voluntarily going to Auschwitz but I still feel like this shows civic courage.

Jessica Chastain used her privilege as a white women to adress and attack the issue with the pay gap between white people and people of color. In order to secure Octavia Spencer’s salary for an upcoming movie starring the two, Chastain tied her salary-deal to Spencer’s and that way she could earn more. This way civic courage was used to fight inequalities.

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Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

The Oscar-winning actress said she told Chastain, "But here's the thing, women of color on that spectrum, we make far less than white women. So, if we're gonna have that conversation about pay equity, we gotta bring the women of color to the table."

Spencer says Chastain admitted that she had no idea that women of color faced an even greater pay disparity and agreed they would work together to ensure she receives equal pay for their upcoming film.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, women in the United States are paid 83 cents for every dollar a man earns. When it comes to women of color, that number is even lower - black women and Hispanic women are paid 65 cents and 59 cents, respectively, for every dollar a white man earns.

"I love that woman, because she's walking the walk and she's actually talking the talk," Spencer said of Chastain. "She said, 'Octavia we're gonna get you paid on this film. You and I are gonna be tied together. We're gonna be favored nations, and we're gonna make the same thing.' Fast forward to last week, we're making five times what we asked for."

Jill Gonzalez, an analyst at financial website WalletHub, says the key to creating real change is for more women to be in leadership positions and involved in decisions about compensation.

"The pay gap still persists because women continue to have disproportionate representation in both corporate leadership positions, as well as political ones," she tells CNBC Make It.
Like this story? Like CNBC Make It on Facebook! Don't miss: The gender pay gap in the US is still 20 percent-but millennial women are closing in on men

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Octavia Spencer: Jessica Chastain helped me get 5 times the salary I asked for

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Frazer Harrison/Getty Images The Oscar-winning actress said she told Chastain, "But here's the thing, women of color on that spectrum, we make far less than white women. So, if we're gonna have that conversation about pay equity, we gotta bring the women of color to the table."

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Olivia uses her social media platform (@zerowastehabesha) to educate people on environmental racism and black feminism. She shows courage in speaking up about uncomfortable truths. In her biography on instagram she identifies herself as a zero-waste enthusiast, but she also discusses the inequality within this movement. Oliva shares eye opening facts, and it will be impossible for me to summarise everything in this Padlet, but the image attached (from The Nation) shows some examples.

Some videos on the topic:
https://youtu.be/KtWy3bRMwTc
“Black people are more likely to live in environments that are toxic and hazardous to their health.”

Mini Wiconi: the stand at standing Rock
https://youtu.be/4FDuqYld8C8

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https://news.am/eng/news/433107.html

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This article popped up when I was looking for news on civil courage and I remembered our session with Alan AtKisson who identified whistle blowing as one of the best ways at the moment to tackle corruption. If you look up "Zivilcourage" (German for civil courage), whistle blowing is also mentioned as one form of civil courage.

http://www.metronews.ca/news/vancouver/2018/01/10/courage-award-for-b-c-financial-whistleblower.html

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Hong Kong protesters nominated for the 2018 Nobel peace prize

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Hong Kong protesters nominated for the 2018 Nobel peace prize

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“Wong and his fellow pro-democracy advocates have been unflinching in their peaceful and principled commitment to a free and prosperous Hong Kong. They are an inspiration and their cause has reverberations far beyond their city.”

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Bipartisan group including Marco Rubio proposes umbrella movement led by Joshua Wong

US lawmakers including the Republican senator Marco Rubio have nominated Joshua Wong and Hong Kong's umbrella protest movement for the 2018 Nobel peace prize in recognition of their non-violent quest for democracy.

Rubio, who heads the congressional-executive commission on China, said in a statement: "Wong and his fellow pro-democracy advocates have been unflinching in their peaceful and principled commitment to a free and prosperous Hong Kong. They are an inspiration and their cause has reverberations far beyond their city."

Wong was one of the leaders of the 79-day street occupation that paralyzed swaths of the former British colony in late 2014 in a bid to wrestle democratic concessions from China's authoritarian rulers. The movement took its name from the umbrellas protesters used to shield themselves from police teargas.

Wong has been handed jail sentences twice since last summer. He spent a spell behind bars in Hong Kong but is currently on bail pending appeal.

In their nomination letter to the Nobel peace prize committee, the bipartisan group said the protesters embodied "the peaceful aspirations of the people of Hong Kong who yearn to see their autonomies and way of life protected and their democratic aspirations fulfilled".

The letter, signed by four Democrats and eight Republicans, including Rubio, said activists such as Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow had shown "civic courage, extraordinary leadership and an unwavering commitment to a free and prosperous Hong Kong".

They had "made significant contributions to peace by actively seeking to safeguard the future of Hong Kong at precisely the time that Beijing has taken steps to undermine Hong Kong's long-cherished autonomy".

Beijing, which has sought to portray umbrella movement leaders as criminals and separatists, would react furiously to such an award. In 2010 China punished Norway with a six-year diplomatic freeze after what it called the "blasphemous" decision to honour Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident and intellectual.

Liu died last year, making him the first Nobel peace laureate to die in custody since its 1935 recipient, the German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, who died under surveillance after years in Nazi concentration camps.

Noting China's reaction to Liu's award, the lawmakers praised the Nobel committee's "past willingness to brave the displeasure and outright retribution of the Chinese Communist party".

Topics

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Nobel peace prize: US lawmakers nominate Hong Kong protesters

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Bipartisan group including Marco Rubio proposes umbrella movement led by Joshua Wong US lawmakers including the Republican senator Marco Rubio have nominated Joshua Wong and Hong Kong's umbrella protest movement for the 2018 Nobel peace prize in recognition of their non-violent quest for democracy.

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Ali Salem was an Egyptian playwright, author and political commentator who attracted much opprobrium when he spoke in favour of co-operating with Israel. The Los Angeles Times described him as "a big, loud man known for his satiric wit".

Beginning in 1965, he wrote 25 plays and 15 books, specialising in allegorical and satirical critiques of Egyptian politics. One of his most celebrated plays was the 1971 comedy The School of Troublemakers, which depicted a rowdy school class transformed by the efforts of a kindly teacher. Several other of his plays, including The Phantom of Heliopolis, The Comedy of Oedipus, The Man Who Fooled the Angels and The Buffet are widely regarded as classics of Egyptian theatre.

In 1994 he wrote the book My Drive to Israel about a trip he took to the country to satisfy his curiosity after the Oslo Accords had been signed. He said the trip was not "a love trip, but a serious attempt to get rid of hate. Hatred prevents us from knowing reality as it is".

He concluded that "real co-operation" between the two nations was possible. The book sold more than 60,000 copies in Egypt but provoked an outcry, and Salem was ostracised by the country's intellectual community and expelled from the Writer's Syndicate.

Salem did not have another play or film script produced in Egypt, though he continued to write for foreign-based newspapers. A memoir by Salem was later adapted by Ari Roth into the 2005 play Ali Salem Drives to Israel. In 2008, Salem was awarded the Train Foundation's Civil Courage Prize in recognition of his opposition to radical Islam and his support of co-operation with Israel.
Ali Salem, writer: born 24 February 1936; died 22 September 2015
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Ali Salem: Writer who was blacklisted in his native Egypt

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Ali Salem was an Egyptian playwright, author and political commentator who attracted much opprobrium when he spoke in favour of co-operating with Israel. The Los Angeles Times described him as "a big, loud man known for his satiric wit". Beginning in 1965, he wrote 25 plays and 15 books, specialising in allegorical and satirical critiques of Egyptian politics.