French President Emmanuel Macron has been pushing proposed changes to the country's retirement system for... well, since his reelection campaign. His proposals have proved deeply unpopular, though. The French parliament made clear it would not enact them, so Macron is using a constitutional loophole to change them through executive order. Protests ( Read more... )

This past weekend nationwide rallies were held by March For Our Lives, a student-led organization calling for action to reduce gun violence. The rallies reminded me of a question I've asked myself a number of times recently. If I were a grade school/high school student, or a parent of a student, what would I do? Besides attend a rally, I mean. ( Read more... )

Two weeks ago John C. Lewis passed away. He served in the US House of Representatives from 1987 until his death, representing a district in Georgia. But perhaps even moreso than that he is known as a civil rights icon. In the 1950s and 60s he was a student and then a colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He's one of the few from that era who ( Read more... )

The Philadelphia District Attorney on Friday announced criminal charges against a senior police commander, Staff Inspector Joseph Bologna Jr. Bologna had beaten a protestor, arrested him, and referred him for criminal charges. The DA reviewed the evidence, freed the protestor and charged the cop instead. Example news coverage: WHYY news article, 5 ( Read more... )

While I had fun standing with my protest sign on a street corner for 20 minutes Friday afternoon, that was not at all the main event. Near 5pm we decided we'd waited for our friends long enough (they hadn't arrived or returned any of our texts in the past 15 minutes) and walked to the starting point of the march. Along the way they texted to say ( Read more... )

Earlier this week we learned about a George Floyd rally and protest march in our city and made plans to participate. I took a half day off from work. The rally was scheduled to start at 5pm- late enough that I could have worked a full day, but I wanted time for a few preparations as well as to do some unrelated chores. I'm glad it wasn't earlier in ( Read more... )

As I explained in my previous blog entry, Hawk and I decided this past week to join a protest march on Friday. While we were preparing mentally for it during the week and reconsidering our commitment to go, I reflected on when was the last time I'd joined a protest. I believe it was 30 years ago!
Dragon Day
It was my first year in college. The ( Read more... )

This past week Hawk and I decided we would join a Black Lives Matter protest march on Friday. It was a demonstration to protest the killing of George Floyd by police a week and a half earlier. Though Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, his death at police hands has sparked outrage over the ongoing problem of police brutality towards people of color. ( Read more... )

Monday night a terrible thing happened to was perpetrated upon a group of protestors in Washington, DC. Dozens of people were peacefully assembled on a blocked off street and in front of St. John's church, near the White House. It was 6:36pm, almost half an hour before the start of a 7pm citywide curfew. Police Federal authorities, many not wearing ( Read more... )

In the days since the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers there have been protests. At first the protests were localized in Minneapolis but quickly they spread to other cities around the country. The death of an unarmed Black man, suspected of a trivial infraction, at the hands of police is sadly not a novel phenomenon ( Read more... )