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Students from around the country demand coal divestment at Brown University. (Kevin Proft/ecoRI News.)

This article was originally published by ecoRI News. Follow @ecoRInews to keep up on its invaluable reporting.

Students from New York to Boston rallied May 3 with Brown Divest Coal activists on Brown University’s main green, demanding that President Christina Paxson and The Corporation of Brown University vote on whether to divest the college’s $2.5 billion endowment from the 15 largest coal companies in the United States during an upcoming May 23 meeting. Rally organizers provided the 150 attendees with symbolic orange ballots to cast into the “smokestack” of the ballot box, a miniature coal-powered plant made from a cardboard box with a big X on its side.

Before casting their ballots, many students explained why halting climate change mattered to them. “If we do not take action, one billion people will be displaced by climate change by the end of the century,” Brown University freshman Tammy Jiang said. “We cannot let that happen.”

A student from Tufts University voiced frustration that colleges with huge endowments are investing in the fossil-fuel industry. “Those investments are undercutting our ability to create a livable society," he said.

Lucy Bates-Campbell, a Brown University senior, cast her ballot while cradling Roxy, her pet dog. Most animals will not be immune to climate change, Bates-Campbell said, so we need to help protect the animals that can’t protect themselves.

The theme of unity among divestment activists was present throughout the rally. “All divestment campaigns are interconnected,” said a student from New York’s Columbia University. “We are here for a rally at Brown, and we need you to be at Columbia’s rallies.”

Nick Katkevich, representing the University of Rhode Island’s new fossil fuel-divestment campaign, said his group will build capacity during the summer, then work with Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design to push for divestment on Rhode Island campuses next fall. URI’s campaign will be coordinated with students at Rhode Island College and Community College of Rhode Island, because all three schools share one endowment.

The rally regularly broke into chants about climate change and divestment. Hand-painted cardboard signs were abundant. After casting their symbolic ballots, the students marched across the green to the administration building, where Paxson’s office is located. Two Brown Divest Coal representatives were sent to request that Paxson address the crowd; Paxson declined.

Before the rally ended, Brown University junior Dara Illowsky held up a handmade sign with Paxson’s office telephone number painted on it. “I want you all to take out your phones and add this number to your contacts,” she said.

Rally organizers asked each attendee to call the president soon and tell her their views about divesting from coal.

RISD sit-in
On April 29, Divest RISD transformed from a relatively small college divestment movement to a high-profile campaign attracting attention from 350.org’s Bill McKibben and “This American Life’s” Ira Glass, who will feature the group on an upcoming program.

As previously reported, Emma Beede, leader of Divest RISD, took a top-down approach when establishing RISD’s divestment campaign. Before rallying student support, Beede and a handful of student volunteers met with RISD’s faculty, administration and financial decision makers to introduce the concept of fossil-fuel divestment.

After securing unanimous support from the faculty and experiencing opposition from the board of trustees, Beede began asking the student body to get involved. Despite what Beede described as “a lack of an activist culture at RISD,” Divest RISD has caught on among students.

During Divest RISD’s April 29 Day of Action some 150 students gathered on the “RISD Beach,” between Waterman, Benefit and Angell streets, then marched to RISD’s administration downtown building on Washington Street.

About and hour prior to the rally, Beede and 10 Divest RISD members marched into RISD President John Maeda’s office. According to Beede, Maeda wasn’t there, but the students informed his secretary that they wouldn’t leave the president’s office until the board of trustees agreed to hear Divest RISD’s case during its May 17 meeting.

Beede said she and her fellow protestors then contacted the hundreds of people who signed the Divest RISD petition to bring attention to the sit-in and encourage them to join.

The sit-in lasted 24 hours, during which the participants met with administrators and the president. After securing a chance to make the case for fossil-fuel divestment at the upcoming meeting, the protestors vacated the president’s office.

RISD’s sit-in was the first of its kind for the fossil fuel-divestment movement that has been spreading throughout the country since last summer.

Graduating leaders
At semester’s end, many leaders involved with campus divestment campaigns will graduate.

Nathan Bishop of Brown Divest Coal graduates this month. He will move home to Chicago and start applying to law school. Bishop wants to work on climate-change policy and legislation.

Bishop said he will stay involved with the fossil fuel-divestment movement. He plans to join Chicago’s divestment campaigns, and continue helping with Brown Divest Coal in some capacity.

Beede, leader of Divest RISD, is also graduating. Beede’s future plans depend on where she finds a job, but she said she will continue to call for divestment regardless of her geographic location. She said she will get involved in local campaigns and continue to help with Divest RISD.

Moving forward
According to student leaders from Brown, RISD and URI, each divestment campaign will concentrate on building capacity this summer. Jiang said she and others activists from Brown Divest Coal will attend a summer conference in New Jersey to learn and share strategies with other campus divestment campaigns.

Brown Divest Coal activists expect The Corporation of Brown University to vote in favor of divestment from coal later this month, after which the campaign will expand its demands to include divesting from the rest of the fossil-fuel industry.

Divest RISD activists will present at the May 17 board of trustees meeting. Divest RISD hopes to secure a vote from the board on divestment during its October meeting, according to Beede, who said Divest RISD has freshman, sophomores and juniors ready to continue the campaign after she graduates.

Meanwhile, URI, CCRI and RIC’s campaign is in its fledgling stages, and will aim to gain traction during the fall semester. Stay tuned.

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A year after Johnson Wiley joined the Marines Corps in 2001, straight out of high school, he found himself on a plane to a base camp on the Kuwaiti boarder of Iraq. Almost two years later, the stench of sulfur filled the sky, marking the beginning of the “shock and awe” campaign, and the US invasion of Iraq. Today, after two long deployments, Wiley is finishing his undergraduate degree at Rutgers University in English and Philosophy, with plans to get an MFA and PhD after graduation. The Nation spoke with Wiley about his time overseas, the difference between his experience and his father’s – a Marine in Vietnam, and undergraduate life after the Marine Corps and what it's like to be a student coming out of the military. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up actually adjacent to New Brunswick [where Rutgers University is located] in Piscataway [New Jersey]. It was fairly close to the American Dream. We had a house, both my mother and father worked. My father was a truck driver, and is still, my mother at the time was a math teacher at a town called Plainfield. As far as the outward appearance of life, there was nothing bad.…There was an imbalance due, possibly, to the dynamic that was in the house. My father was often times on the road, busy, and he would come home usually every night but he was gone during most of the day, so he would come home, eat, and go to sleep. My mother was working during the day as a teacher. She would go to work, teach, come back, do her lesson plan for the next day or help us with our homework, plus make dinner, plus do laundry, plus clean, get my father’s stuff ready. Someone or something gets lost in that. I was one thing that happened to get lost in it. I had a mind of my own, so it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I wasn’t a troublemaker as a kid…. I made my own decisions. I could have done better in high school but there was some tension in the house between me and my father that made it difficult to always concentrate on my schoolwork, in light of being frustrated when he was around. He had this way of throwing everything off – throwing off the tranquility or the focus of whatever the group, the group being me my mother and my sister, was on, he just disrupted everything. And I think I took that frustration out on my schoolwork, so I ended up taking it out on myself, though I didn’t know that [at the time].

Did you always want to join the Marine Corps after high school?

It’s interesting. When I was a little kid in the ‘80s, action figures and action cartoons were the thing. If it wasn’t GI Joe it was something similar, where you have the good guys and you have the bad guys – there’s an army on earth or in space, whether in the future, present or the past. So I bit into that part of American life, that “Grow up and be a hero. Be all that you can be” — that was me as a child. And I’d say up until my teenage years I did want to join the military wholeheartedly. I was going to maybe join the Special Forces or be a Navy SEAL, like my favorite G.I. Joe character, Snake Eyes, which I still remember, to do all that cool stuff. And then once I got a little bit older and got more frustrated with the fact that I was getting more negative attention from my father, I wanted to remove myself from certain things that he was attached to, because my father was in the Marine Corps in Vietnam.  I didn’t want to be like him. ...I found myself removing myself from the idea of growing up to be a part of a strict system of rules because I had that in my house. I had to deal with that with the way my father was. …What happened, what turned that around, was actually September 11. I was always patriotic…but when the World Trade Center went down it’s like the smoldering fire that was in me to want to protect the country in some way got reignited. You know, someone took the fan and blew those flames hotter. [I thought], I wouldn’t want my family to suffer in any way due to people overseas that don’t even know us but would like to kill us or destroy what we have. So I said, “I’ll join the military, we’ll see what happens from there.”

Did you talk to your father about it?

At the time that I decided, no. Once it became obvious that I was going then yes, he asked me if I wanted to join the military because I think he saw me talking to a recruiter one day at the house – I can’t even remember how I got in contact with them as a matter of fact, but I’m pretty sure that I reached out to them – and he told me that I was more or less going to have to join the Marine Corps because it has a reputation for being the toughest branch of service in the military out of the four basic branches: the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps. You have your Special Forces, you have your Navy SEALs, you have your Recon and things like that, but as far as your basic infantrymen, your basic troops, the Marine Corps has stricter guidelines, it’s harder to get in, boot camp is longer and tougher, combat training is more intense, you have to be in better shape, things like that. And because [my father] was a Marine, I knew there was no way I could live down being in the military but joining another branch of service. He’d always have some sort of a funny joke to one-up me somehow.

Did he talk about Vietnam a lot when you were growing up?

Only a little bit. He spoke about some things that he found funny. My father was a corporal when he was deployed to Vietnam, which in civilian terms could be equated with an immediate or working supervisor. One day he, a lower ranking Marine, and their lieutenant were in a tent when a poisonous snake crept in. When you’re deployed you often times live with the wildlife, and animals don’t respect boundaries. Well, when they noticed the snake, the other two guys ran out of the tent before my father had a chance to move. He was left with the snake going around and around inside of the tent trying to get out. I think someone tossed a shovel or something back into the tent and he killed it. He thought this was a funny story because of how scared everyone was, including the lieutenant, who had the highest rank.

So he mostly told you anecdotes and stories he didn’t talk as much about —?

Like the combat aspects or anything like that? No. I asked him some things because you can’t get around – being in the military – the question of whether or not you’ve at least shot at the enemy, or been shot at yourself….and he said he had been in combat but not, let’s say, not how they romanticize it on television. His specific job skill was as an anti-tank gunner… From what he said, I don’t think he had to deal with the type of combat where you have people charging at you and you see the whites of the person’s eyes and you may take his life. But he did say that his best friend, who was with him at the time, as they were getting fired upon, had a grenade thrown on his body and was blown up. So I said, “Well did you cry?” I was a kid at the time, I don’t even think I was ten years old. He said, “No.” I said, “Why not?” He said there was no time to cry. You just keep firing and that was that. And out of anything he could have told me that was the worst that he ever did tell me.

What was your daily experience in the Marines like?

It was a varied experience. I was a heavy equipment operator – that was my job skill. …So while I was on the base, there was a lot of waiting. We did combat training up until the point before and intermittently between our first deployment to Operation Iraqi Freedom 1 (OIF1) in 2003. And in between those times. We did runs [using] a forklift to move pallets of ammunition. “Down at the dump, x amount of miles away, they need pallets of ammo,” so I would do that, on the slow moving forklift, on the road bouncing all the way, cars behind me impatiently waiting for me to get where I need to go. I’d do whatever they needed me to do and then I’d go back to what we call our lot, which was just a large dusty white lot that had our equipment, container handlers, rough terrain forklifts, mobile cranes, things like that. The cranes were the most fun to use but also the most dangerous. So that was life on base…. If you were low on the totem pole like me, you usually always had somewhere to go to either move some material for someone else in a vehicle, or to assist a motor transport a truck driver and drive from point A to point B. Or delivering some type of good somewhere, or they put you on what’s called a work party, a working party, to do anything – from cleaning some office to picking up trash somewhere, you name it I’ve pretty much done it. With the exception of moving a dead body. I’ve touched things that I don’t ever want to touch again. Deployment was different. The Marine Corps was originally set up for short deployment. That changed with these recent conflicts in the Middle East, because it was a type of conflict the United States had never seen before.  

And, am I right in understanding that when the war started you weren't told where you were going?

No, no, we were strictly on a need-to-know basis. Once we left the country all we needed to know was we were getting on a plane and were supposed to have this gear, and that piece of gear, and so on, and when we landed we were going to be spoken to by our superiors about what to do next. …We were very much on a need-to-know basis and that’s everybody, from officers as high as colonels, down to the lowest private. No one is told anything they do not need to know – and for good reason. But it’s very frustrating.

So you got there and weren’t doing much, you said?

Pretty much. Things were moving behind the scenes, of course, but when we got there, there was no war. There were still no weapons of mass destruction found anyway, but when I was in the country first there was not even a task force or a group of inspectors to go into Iraq to look for weapons of mass destruction, there were only rumors that Saddam had these things. But the Marine Corps is under the direct control of the President so if he says deploy, you deploy. Congress doesn’t need to get involved, he can send us where he wants to. …I don’t know what the people behind the scenes were thinking about, I was another piece on the checkerboard being moved.

And before your deployment, you’d been at the base for how long?

I’d been in the Marine Corps for about a year, a year and a month. My official time of joining was January 2002, so by the time I left in early February, I was only in the Marine Corps – including boot camp, including combat training, including skill training – I was only in the Marine corps for a total of a year. I’d only been with my platoon in the Fleet Marine Corps for about 5 months or so, so I was very new to everything. When we got there we really didn’t know what to expect. …Another thing I didn’t expect is that there was a large satellite television in this massive tent where we would eat our meals and we got BBC news channel, CNN, stuff like that, and some evening we could see, I still remember seeing Condoleezza Rice or some other inspectors coming out of the palaces in Iraq and saying [there was no discovery of] weapons of mass destruction. And I looked over to a friend of mine and asked, “What do you think is going to happen here?” And he said he didn’t think they’d move us all over hear for no reason. “I don’t think so either but look at what we’re seeing on television versus us being here as a military force? What’s going on with that?” Not too long after that we woke up, I think this was in March, and the sky was dark because of all the sulfur — they’d started the “shock and awe” campaign overnight. And again, at that time I was in a camp in Kuwait. So we didn’t know when anything was going to start. I doubt too many people at our level – E5s [sergeants] and below – knew when this was going to happen. Just wake up the next morning the sky is black, smells like sulfur, something happened. And that’s pretty much when the invasion started. From there we were split up.

Some of our platoon moved farther north, some of us stayed in that camp, and this is where my memory splits apart. I distinctly remember telling my best friend that I wanted to stay at the camp we were at because I didn’t like the tension that was being brought to the platoon because of the nervousness I felt some of the platoon commanders exhibited. …My convictions, as far as being there, were not as strong as if I had been sent to Afghanistan where I [originally] thought I was going because that was where, for those of us that joined after September 11, we were under the impression that the real enemy was: the Taliban, in Afghanistan. You want to defend the country, you go there. That’s where I thought I was going and I was wrong. So I said, you know, I don’t know how I feel about all of this. Do they have weapons of mass destruction or do they not? What are we here for? People are in danger, so on and so forth. If you tell me to do something, as a Marine I’ll do it. But if you’re giving me the choice to volunteer for what could or could not be dangerous—I think I’ll just hang back here [at the camp] and I’ll work myself like a dog until everything is finished [is what I was thinking]. And I did stay at that camp if I recall correctly, or so I thought. Now on the other hand, something happened where I was at that camp or possibly somewhere else. …what happens is I have two sets of memories. I have those, and then I have another of being convoys and getting ambushed and getting shot at, also shooting at some others. The things that people like to put in movies and stuff, it’s only cool if you don’t have to live with it. …Not knowing whether or not you’re going to survive from one second to the next, forget one day. If in a split second it’s all going to be over, it can be nerve-wracking until you learn to get used to that. These are the things nobody really wants to talk about and in trying to get to the bottom of it, some of my friends who were there with me won’t talk to me about it. It’s hard for me to find out what happened when the people who were supposed to be there with me will cut off the conversation and say, “We end here, because this is not –I’m not going down that road.” I don’t know what happened. I just know I remember things and I have gaps where there’s literally nothing but blackness between this day and another day, and I can’t place what came between.

To jump ahead from deployment, because I stayed there longer than 6 months, I was there for about 11, when I got back to the states for a month, close to December or January, I was with another guy in my platoon. We were on our way from a medical building or some other office on Camp Lejeune [the Marine Corps Base in Jacksonville, North Carolina] and another Marine stopped me. He knew me and he called me by my last name, he said “Hey Wiley how are you, how are you doing,” basic stuff you would say to a friend [but one] that you know very, very closely…. But I had no clue, still have no clue, who this person is. To me he’s as recognizable as a member of the North Korean Royal family. He said, “You don’t remember me,” do you? And he got this really sad look on his face. And I said no. “You don’t remember all these things we used to do?” he started to name, and I just shook my head and cut him off and said, I don’t remember any of that. He looked rejected. He looked very sad. And I just walked away from him. …That made it obvious to me that some things took place that I’ll never be able to remember….[I also have] problems hearing loud noises, being jumpy, being hyper-vigilant, being very irritable at the sound of babies crying or dogs barking, things like that.

Where you deployed a second time?

Yes, I was deployed twice. The second time I was deployed for 7 months and during that time I felt that was a cakewalk compared to the first deployment. That was considered OIF3 [Operation Iraqi Freedom 3], we had a better handle on the situation, I was definitely in Iraq for sure that time.  This was in 2005, February until let’s say September or so. The local populace made sure to let us know more routinely that they didn’t like us by bombing the camp…. On the second deployment we had a bit more interaction with some of the locals. Also some Marines helped with the training of the [Iraqi security] forces – I was not one. My interactions were I would say more limited.

We discussed this a bit earlier [pre-interview] but what was your experience as a person of color in the Marines?

In the Marine Corps I’d say I didn’t run into any racism in boot camp, although the majority of my platoon mates in boot camp, let’s say 20 or so of 30, were from rural areas where they have a reputation for ignorant kind of racism. I didn’t experience any of it. I think the drill instructors had a good handle on it, plus they kept our brains so completely wrapped around the games we had to play in boot camp that it was almost like the mind had no time to go there. …If I were to break down the demographic I would say it was mostly white, followed by Latino, followed by black with few Asians and even less Middle Eastern, South Asian, etc.

Once I got to my platoon or what we call the Fleet Marine Corps, then I got to see some instances of racism. Once,  a buddy of mine in my training platoon, when we were training to be heavy equipment operators, he asked me if it was true that all black people smoked crack. And I couldn’t believe he said it, you know, it was surprising. It was also hurtful and insulting in a how-could-you-be-so-stupid? kind of way. He was from somewhere in Texas and because I was the only person of color [he had ever met]… I simply said that was a stupid thing to say. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings since he didn’t intend to hurt mine….He was upset at himself that he offended me, but didn’t really know what he had done wrong. These guys were from places where they had literally no experience talking to or seeing anyone other than white people in their daily lives. If they saw any other race it was just on television or in magazines or something. So they grew up with these preconceived notions about people of other racisms that were so deeply engrained in them that they thought they were totally natural. …I guess you can say it’s part of the American bubble and once we were in the Marines corps that bubble was forced to be popped. …At the same time it was a bit different for me as a guy that takes pride in being considered intelligent and articulate, that some of the black Marines that I met said things like I was the whitest black guy they knew. Some of the white marines also said that, so you have to ask the question: does being inarticulate and maybe responding negatively to what you aren’t familiar to, is this how all black people act to you? I guess there are also ideas of cultural norms: all black people can dance, all black guys listen to rap music, pick a stereotype I think I’ve faced it.

Did you feel it was assumed you'd be a teacher of sorts? Like it was expected you would be a representative of people of color or black people in general, for some of these fellow Marines?

Maybe if I had perceived that many [fellow Marines] were that ignorant about other peoples’ experiences I might have thought that. I’d say until I got to maybe close to around my second year or so in the Marine Corps I had no idea that people were that clueless even with the things I’d experienced. …Still after that I didn’t feel I had to teach people anything, unless somebody asked me a question. I was who I was. …I found that the black Marines that didn’t know me well, they didn’t know, I guess, how to interact with me because I wasn’t what they were used to. And at the same time, the white Marines were going through this process of figuring me out, asking questions about what I liked or didn’t like and so on, because I wasn’t what they had imagined other black men to be. So it put me in a place where I was a kind of enigma of sorts at first. And because of that I guess I just let that be … One of my last roommates was a black guy from Chicago and he had the hardest time trying to figure me out. Because I didn’t represent, aside from my skin color and some experiences that we shared growing up as black, I didn’t represent the idea socially of what other black guys are [thought to be] like. So instead of some of the white Marines, he actually had the hardest time I would say. But I guess I shouldn’t talk because there are so many different instances …There’s trying to navigate that stream between what ideas of racial and social norms are when you don’t fit those, when you are of – or mostly identify with – a certain race but certain characteristics are different, maybe physical or behavioral characteristics and mannerisms and things of that nature. You know the mind works best when it can take something and group it with something else.

After you got back to the States and started school at Rutgers University, what were some of your initial experiences and reactions?

When I first got to Rutgers I was very nervous. It was only the second time in my life that I was actually on a university campus, possibly the third time. …and it was just so nerve-racking being around so many people. I kind of got used to it at Middlesex County College [where I went before Rutgers] and when I got to Rutgers I had more of a handle on that, the difference between not just regular civilian life and being in the military but also being around the students and different activities, that Rutgers was a bigger step. …I’d figured that there [would be] more veterans [on campus], but there aren’t many, especially in the arts and sciences. It seems like [there aren’t many] former military in general. I’ve only met one other former Marine in the Arts and Sciences. He’s a Psychology major and Philosophy minor I believe. It surprised me, I expected to run into a few others but no. Just him and another student in my class that was in the Navy and she’s an English major. So yeah, few and far between.

How did you feel in relation to other students, being older, having very different pre-college experiences?

Feeling older was interesting because it didn’t feel that different. …seeing as how I look the same age if not younger than most students, I usually wouldn’t let the cat out of the bag as far as how old I am [30]. I still don’t. I think it’s a funny surprise when I let people know my age. I guess I felt that although I was part of the student body, I was still kind of apart from those younger students who were just getting away from their parents home, who are just starting to branch out and learn things about life by themselves. I was thrust into those positions earlier so it was different. I guess I’m still trying to put a finger on that.

Do you find yourself sharing your military experiences? Does it come up in friendships? In class?

It comes up in friendships eventually, depending on the type of conversation we have…. In terms of class, it comes up in all of my creative writing classes because I’ve written poems about my feelings while deployed, or things that have happened afterward. I’m actually doing a memoiristic honors thesis about my first deployment and it comes up in the creative nonfiction class I’m in. People are interested in the story and in I guess all that entails, whether you’re an older adult or younger student, it’s something a lot of people haven’t experienced so I try to be honest. I don’t try to romanticize anything, I’m not trying to sign a movie deal.

What are your plans for the rest of your studies? Do you have post-graduation plans?

I’d like to first obtain my MFA after I graduate, which I’ll be delaying until next year because I want to finish [what was originally] my minor in Philosophy as a major, which will require two more semesters. I’d like to graduate next year and obtain my MFA in Creative Writing. I had originally wanted to make that a PhD in Creative Writing which is extremely new. Right now I definitely want to get an MFA in Creative Writing, and then a PhD in English. [Johnson Wiley is also currently working on a memoir.]

Eleven students from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) are holding a sit-in today in college President John Maeda’s office. The activists are demanding that President Maeda and Board of Trustees Chair Michael Spalter endorse divestment from the coal, gas, and oil industries and commit to presenting the case for divestment to the Board of Trustees at the board’s May 17 meeting.

This sit-in is the first of its kind in the nationwide divestment movement, through which students at more than 300 colleges and universities are demanding that their schools stand against climate change and divest their endowments from fossil fuel companies.

“I want to have kids. I want to show them this planet,” said Phoebe Wahl, a RISD senior. “As artists and designers, we are innovators with the ability to shape our own future. The way that our generation deals with this issue will define the future of civilization.”

The students kicked off their campaign in January, when they began conversations with members of RISD’s board and administration and circulated a petition in support of divestment which was quickly signed by more than a quarter of the undergraduate student body. Despite initially positive conversations, the students met with resistance. In response, RISD students are engaging in peaceful direct action to demonstrate the necessity of fossil fuel divestment and push RISD to become a leader in sustainability. “Our demands could not be more reasonable or more feasible. We want the college immediately to stop making new investments in fossil fuel companies, and then to sell off their holdings over five years,” said Emma Beede, a RISD senior.

“We need to shift our perspective and act. This is the largest human rights issue of our generation,” said John Jennings, a RISD freshman involved in the sit-in. “We believe that the RISD community can be leaders in fighting climate change and building positive solutions. Divestment is a necessary place to start if anything is going to be done about global warming.”

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“To own stock in a company whose business model is to destroy the planet is a bad decision, both morally and financially,” said Erica Pernice, a RISD junior. “We may be art students, but we can do the math.”

The Go Fossil Free campaign was invigorated by 350.org founder Bill McKibben’s July 2012 article in Rolling Stone. The article highlighted world leaders’ consensus that two degrees Celsius is the safe upper limit of global warming and noted that the reserves of multinational fossil fuel companies contain more than five times the carbon needed to reach this limit.

“Bill McKibben is getting an honorary degree from RISD this year, but the college does not plan to invite him to speak and continues to invest in the fossil fuel industry that he is devoting his life to fighting against,” said Noelle Antignano, a RISD sophomore. “As members of the RISD community and as human beings on this planet, we refuse to be silenced.”

In true RISD fashion, the students are using their time in the President’s office to create sustainability themed artwork. They also hung banners and orange flags across campus this morning to raise awareness about climate change and the divestment campaign. A rally held at RISD Beach drew a crowd for music, art making and speeches in solidarity with the sit-in.

Stay tuned.

A student activist in Chile, frustrated with the lack of education reform, has decided to run for national office.

This week: Gender segmentation still prevails in the workplace, the greenery of West Virginia hides the scars of strip mining and Canada's border service holds off on capturing terror suspects until new terrorism legislation is up for debate. Speaking of terrorists, Americans are as likely to be killed by them as by their own furniture.

— Alleen Brown focuses on education.

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“Corporate Reform Puts Democratic Party Leaders in a Bind,” by Anthony Cody. Education Week, April 17, 2013.

Democratic and Republican Party support for "corporate education reform" is showing sings of decay. California's state Democratic Party passed a resolution last week decrying the "Corporate 'Reform' Agenda." Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee passed its own resolution against the federally supported curriculum initiative Common Core. Blogger Anthony Cody describes Democrats in a bind: union and Democratic leaders continue to support corporate reform.

— James Cersonsky focuses on labor and education.

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“Overworking Women: How Long Hours Lead to Gender-Segregated Jobs,” by Sarah Jaffe. In These Times, April 24, 2013.

Why all the blathering on workplace equality, conservatives ask, when the newish economy has meant more jobs for women than under high-Fordism, and an attendant breakdown in gender segmentation? "We'd like to think this ideal is changing," Sarah Jaffe writes, but really, it's not. Jaffe unpacks new research showing that workplace standards, coupled with gender norms, still tend to push women into certain, often crappier-paid, jobs. When women are primary caretakers, for example, especially single mothers, how can they afford to work jobs demanding longer hours (and, in many cases, higher pay)? That's one of many issues, Jaffe suggests, that should inform policy-making.

— Catherine Defontaine focuses on war, security and peace-related issues, African and French politics, peacekeeping and the link between conflicts and natural resources.

“Amid Much Tumult, France Approves ‘Marriage for All,’” by Scott Sayare. The New York Times, April 24, 2013.

After months of demonstrations and heated debates at the French National Assembly, France has adopted the “Marriage for All” bill, becoming the world’s 14th nation to approve same-sex marriage. If the Constitutional Council approves the legislation and French President François Hollande signs it into law, the first same-sex marriages will be celebrated this summer. However, this highly contentious issue continues to divide French society as opponents to the law are organizing huge rallies in the country to protest the new legislation, while several attacks against gay couples have been reported.

— Andrew Epstein focuses on social history, colonialism and indigenous rights.

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“Trinity Church Split on How to Manage $2 Billion Legacy of a Queen,” by Sharon Otterman. The New York Times, April 25, 2013.

Lurking behind this illuminating article on Trinity Church, Manhattan's largest private landowner with assets of more than $2 billion, is a dark history of settler colonialism, rapacious capitalism and white supremacy. In the 1690s, the church forbade the burying of African Americans in its churchyard, who were pushed to the outskirts of "Collect Pond," what's now the City Hall area. (A struggle in the 1990s led to a proper memorial.) In 1705, Queen Anne bequeathed the church a massive tract of what remained unceded Lenape territory ($24 myths not withstanding) in what came to be known as the Great Trinity Land Grab. By 1857, the church had more than $600,000 worth of mortgages on smaller churches. By the early 1990s, these rent rolls amounted to $40-50 million per year. Think of them as an ecclesiastical Donald Trump.

— Luis Feliz focuses on ideas and debates within the left, social movements and culture.

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“Americans Are as Likely to Be Killed by Their Own Furniture as by Terrorism,” by Micah Zenko. The Atlantic, June 6, 2012.

Let’s put things in perspective: “The number of US citizens who died in terrorist attacks increased by two between 2010 and 2011; overall, a comparable number of Americans are crushed to death by their televisions or furniture each year.” Now consider the terror of capitalism.

— Elana Leopold focuses on the Middle East, its relations with the US and Islam.

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“Women of the Wall, the Sharansky Plan, and the Continuing Struggle for Women’s Equality in Jerusalem,” by Abby Caplin. Tikkun Daily, April 17, 2013.

Centered around the struggle of the Women of the Wall, a group supporting equal access to worship at the Western Wall, and a recently unveiled plan to create a more inclusive space for Wall visitors, many of the complexities highlighted in Caplin's article—government financial support for the ultra-Orthodox, civil rights repression and the many parties who must be consulted in all decision making processes—are equally manifest in the host of issues Israel faces, including Palestine.

— Alec Luhn focuses on East European and Eurasian affairs, especially issues of good governance, human rights and activism.

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“What Dzokhar Tsarnaev and Bradley Manning Have in Common,” by Alyssa Rohricht. CounterPunch, April 24, 2013.

Dzokhar Tsarnaev is accused of setting off blasts that killed three and injured at least 141 others, whereas WikiLeaker Bradley Manning released documents that exposed torture and civilian casualties perpetrated by the military. Tsarnaev will likely receive a trial by jury, and rightly so (The Nation's Ari Melber recently broke down the dubious legality for naming him an "enemy combatant"). Manning, on the other hand, having spent over three years in confinement, awaits a July court date in front of a military judge that could send him to prison for life. Rohricht makes a strong case here that justice is being compromised to silence Manning, and I would only add that even some government and military officials have begrudgingly admitted that Manning's leaks did not harm American national security.

— Leticia Miranda focuses on race, gender, telecommunications and media reform.

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“Data Barns in a Farm Town, Gobbling Power and Flexing Muscle,” by James Glanz. The New York Times, September 24, 2012.

This is the second in a two-part series about the environmental impact of large data centers. I chose this article because it gives context to Facebook's recent effort to establish a new $1.5 billion data center in Altoona, Iowa. It seems to be another instance in which rural communities are stripped of their resources and left to deal with the consequences.

— Brendan O’Connor focuses on media criticism and pop culture.

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“Out in the Great Alone,” by Brian Phillips. Grantland, April 24, 2013.

The bells and whistles might not be for everyone, but there's no denying that this is a kind of storytelling that takes advantage of qualities unique to its medium. Not much point looking for a "print" button, though.

— Anna Simonton focuses on issues of systemic oppression perpetuated by the military and prison industrial complexes.

“Fog Count,” by Leslie Jamison. Oxford American, April 1, 2013.

One of my favorite passages in “Fog Count” describes the deceptively beautiful drive into West Virginia as Potemkin forests hiding a moonscape of strip-mined land. Rich imagery abounds in this essay about the hidden scars of prisons and mines, and the privilege of being an outsider asking questions in a world that isn't yours.

— Cos Tollerson focuses on Latin American politics and society, and United States imperialism.

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“Brazil's green flagbearer Marina Silva ready to get back in the race,” by Jonathan Watts. The Guardian, April 22, 2013.

An engaging but slightly disheartening profile of Brazil's most prominent environmentally-minded politician, Marina Silva. Her alienation from Lula and Dilma's Working Party is a testament to the government's refusal to address environmental degradation and climate change. However, her achievement of 20 million votes in Brazil's most recent presidential election combined with her ongoing influence in the national discourse show that there is a large constituency for conservationist policies in the country.

— Sarah Woolf focuses on what’s happening north of the US border.

“Government denies link between RCMP arrests and House terrorism debate,” by John Geddes. Maclean’s, April 22, 2013.

The timeline looks like this: On Friday, April 19, the Conservative government announces it is fast-tracking debate on Bill S-7, the controversial "Combatting Terrorism Act," for Monday. Come Monday, April 22, a joint operation of the RCMP, CSIS and the Canadian Border Services Agency (with assistance from the FBI) arrests two men in connection with an alleged terror plot, thought to be backed by al-Qaeda in Iran. Perhaps the strangest part about this timing? Police had originally planned to arrest the suspects three weeks ago.