We are here because we have a different view. We care about the planet and its inhabitants. We value it as a gift of our creator. We want to live in harmony with creation. We are here because we are motivated by love, not profit.
It was 70 years ago when four African Americans were sitting in the fifth row of a bus in Montgomery. As one white man had to stand towards the front, the driver asked the four to get up and move towards the back of the bus. Three did; one did not the rest is history. Or so many American kids might think when they first read the story of Rosa Parks in school.
It was one of the most dramatic protests in Los Angeles by activists who opposed Israel's war in Gaza: a shutdown of the southbound lanes of the 110 Freeway as it passes through downtown. In a chaotic scene captured by news helicopters, protesters sat down on the freeway in December 2023, halting traffic just south of the four-level interchange. On live television, enraged motorists responded by getting into physical altercations with demonstrators.
In what was initially seen as a radical fusion of Judaism and political activism, he engaged in civil disobedience - he was arrested more than two dozen times, including outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility during the first Trump administration - and wrote books that bridged the secular and spiritual, with titles including "Handbook for Heretics and Prophets: A New Torah for a New World" and "Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex, and the Rest of Life."
The first thing I saw when I arrived at a protest site near the Broadview ICE facility was a pile of stuffed animals and a sign encouraging us to throw them at ICE vehicles while heckling the agents inside. This was not an official function of the protest. The demonstrations that have been held outside and around the Broadview detention facility - the central processing center for ICE's ongoing assault on Chicago, which
In the middle of the night, the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) painted over the Pride crosswalk outside the Pulse nightclub memorial, where 49 people were killed in a mass shooting in 2016. In response, protesters used chalk to restore the memorial's rainbow colors-and then repainted it after rain washed the chalk away. FDOT quickly painted the crosswalk black again and posted signs reading "defacing roadway prohibited."
The SEARCH program has existed at Rhodes College, in one form or another, since 1946. This chronologically oriented, three-semester "Great Books" interdisciplinary humanities sequence introduces students to the Western (and some non-Western) canon and prepares them for the academic rigor of college courses. It aims to develop students' critical reading, writing, and thinking skills, and provide a common experience that builds intellectual community across campus (about forty percent of incoming freshmen usually enroll).
Lander's arrest emphasized the tension between rule of law and government authority, highlighting a critical moment in American democracy where activists must choose to fight for justice.
