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This week: Obama outlines an aggressive plan to address climate change, Egyptians brace for a second revolution and the Supreme Court continues to erode workers’ rights.

— Darren Ankrom focuses on climate change.

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“‘We Need to Act’: Transcript of Obama’s Climate Change Speech.” Bloomberg News, June 25, 2013.

This week’s climate article is, in fact, a speech. President Obama outlined an aggressive plan to address climate change during a landmark address Tuesday from Georgetown University. Credit to The Weather Channel for actually carrying the speech in full, one of a disappointingly few channels to do so. In his speech, Obama seemed to crack the door for a possible Keystone XL pipeline denial later this year and told climate change skeptics that there’s “no time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society.”

— Humna Bhojani focuses on the War on Terror and the Middle East.

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“I Know What You Think of Me,” by Tim Kreider. The New York Times, June 16, 2013.

As I went through an intensely emotional weekend, a dear friend sent me this blog post about unconditional love. Possessing more flaws than virtues, I am lucky to be surrounded by people who love me despite my failings, or perhaps even because of them. This is an article that I will find myself repeatedly returning to, as I fumble, fall and fail through life.

“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”  —Siddhartha Gautama

— Rick Carp focuses on media, psychology and environmentalism.

“Obama Climate Plan Touts Gas Fracking As “Transition Fuel,” Doubling Down on Methane Risk,” by Steve Horn. DeSmogBlog, June 25, 2013.

Obama’s climate speech blasted “Flat Earth” climate contrarians and described “a moral obligation to leave our children a planet that’s not polluted or damaged.” But he also spent a large portion cheerleading for the natural gas industry. He tried to make the case for using it as a “transition fuel”—but the Climate Action Plan notes the need to “encourage the development of a global market for gas.”

— Keenan Duffey focuses on Middle East national politics.

“Across Egypt’s Cairo, districts brace for 30 June and beyond,” by Dina Ezzat. Ahram Online, June 26, 2013.

Two and a half years after the fall of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt appears primed for a second revolution. Massive nationwide protests are scheduled for June 30 and shops across Cairo are barren from people stocking up in anticipation of an extended period of chaos. Egyptians are divided. Many are disillusioned with the Muslim Brotherhood and their disastrous economic and security policies while others wish simply for continuity in their government, no matter who is in charge. The mood in Cairo is tense as Egyptians wait in anticipation of what Sunday might bring.

— Prashanth Kamalakanthan focuses on racism, imperialism, and student/worker activism.

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“‘I Am Sorry That It Has Come to This’: A Soldier’s Last Words,” by Daniel Somers. Gawker, June 22, 2013.

Somers, an Iraq veteran diagnosed with PTSD, traumatic brain injury and other war-related conditions, wrote this moving letter to his wife and family before taking his own life on June 10 at the age of 30. Twenty-two veterans kill themselves each day as a result of US policymakers’ brutal military campaigns across the Middle East, but still their stories remain largely unheard. Somers’s last words help us understand the guilt, isolation and abandonment imposed on those people who actually fight these wars, too often left in the dark.

— Eunji Kim focuses on gender, race, media and East Asian politics.

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“It’s Australia v Japan over whaling in the Antarctic,” by Justin McCurry. The Guardian, June 24, 2013.

Japan’s whaling industry has long been criticized by Japanese and foreign environmentalists alike. Despite reports revealing much of its meat going to waste (because few Japanese consume whale meat), Japan’s whale hunt continued. This may change, however, with the recent case brought to the international court by Australia.

— Samantha Lachman focuses on reproductive justice, healthcare access and intersectionality.

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“How workplace harassers won big,” by Irin Carmon. Salon, June 24, 2013.

Vance v. Ball State and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar were definitely not the highest-profile SCOTUS decisions released lately, but both will have harmful effects upon attempts to eliminate workplace harassment and discrimination. Carmon explains how the Court’s conservative majority has further eroded protections for workers.

— Rebecca Nathanson focuses on social movements, student organizing and labor.

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“Brazilians Are Taking to the Streets to Protest Their Country’s Injustice and Inequality—Why Aren’t We?” by Marty Kaplan. AlterNet, June 25, 2013.

In the past weeks, many journalists have mused over the causes and effects of the protests spreading across Brazil (for an overview, I’d recommend this piece in NACLA), but few have asked the question posed by Kaplan: why aren’t the masses taking to the streets in the US to protest injustice and inequality when it exists here just as it does in Brazil? While I don’t agree with his response—that Occupy’s dissolution created an atmosphere in which “hope feels naïve”—the statistics he uses to compare inequality, education and other social problems in these two countries with such different histories are fascinating.

— Jake Scobey-Thal focuses on human rights and conflict in Asia and Africa

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“Riots in China’s Xinjiang region kill at least 27.” South China Morning Post, June 26, 2013.

Twenty-seven people were killed this week after rioters clashed with police in China’s ethnically divided Xinjiang region. The region is home to almost 9 million Uyghers, an ethnic Muslim minority that has long faced systemic persecution at the hands of the Han majority in China. Significant Han migration in recent years and uneven returns on government investments in natural resource extraction have buttressed ethnic tensions in the region.

— Aviva Stahl focuses on Islamophobia in the US and the UK and its links to racism, homophobia/transphobia and the prison industrial complex.

Follow @stahlidarity

“Police ‘smear’ campaign targeted Stephen Lawrence’s friends and family,” by Rob Evans and Paul Lewis. The Guardian, June 23, 2013.

As NYC prepares itself for a City Council vote on the Community Safety Act, new revelations have emerged about the extent of police spying in Britain. The Guardian has revealed that police officers were instructed to spy on the family of Stephen Lawrence, a black British teenager who was murdered in a racially motivated attack in 1993, in order to gather possible “dirt” that could be used to discredit them. The Metropolitan Police’s failure to investigate Lawrence’s killing was examined several years later in the Macpherson Report, which concluded that the force was institutionally racist. The recent revelations of spying, which were made by a former undercover officer turned whisteblower, are especially damning given the symbolic importance attached to Lawrence’s case and the cultural shifts around race and policing brought about by the fallout from the Macpherson Report.

— John Thomason focuses on pieces that situate contemporary American political debates in historical and/or intellectual contexts.

Justice Ginsburg’s Dissenting Opinion in Shelby County v. Holder. Supreme Court of the United States, June 25, 2013.

There’s been some good stuff written about the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to nullify Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. But nothing is as comprehensive and damning as Justice Ginsburg’s dissent, which argues eloquently not only for the constitutional permissibility—necessity, even—of the VRA as written, but also for the overwh0elming weight of historical (and contemporary) evidence that informed Congress’s landslide vote to reauthorize the law in 2006.

Philadelphia students, parents, teachers and clergy rally against draconian budget cuts. (Credit: Philadelphia Student Union)

E-mail questions, tips or proposals to studentmovement@thenation.com. For earlier dispatches, check out posts from January 18, February 1, February 15, March 1, March 15, April 2, April 15, April 26, May 10, May 24 and June 7.

1. Philadelphia Students Strike Back Against Doomsday Budget

The budget for the School District of Philadelphia, passed by the unelected School Reform Commission, cuts all arts, sports, music, counselors and support staff. Nearly 4,000 pink slips were handed out in the past two weeks. At the end of June, the state will vote on funding for education in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, $400 million is being allocated for building new prisons. On June 14, members of the Philadelphia Student Union joined with Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower & Rebuild to demand funding for education in Philadelphia and across the state of Pennsylvania. We mobilized at Governor Corbett’s office in Philadelphia after a march that included parents, students and faith leaders. On June 25, PSU will be joining hundreds of other students and allies from across the state to rally at the capitol in Harrisburg.

—Philadelphia Student Union

2. Chicago Students Unravel the District’s Dirty Toilet Paper

Less than a month after the unelected board’s decision to close fifty schools, Chicago Public Schools is implementing massive budget cuts, based a per-pupil funding system that prioritizes funding for charter schools over CPS schools. Though CPS CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett has stated that any budget cuts would not be felt in the classroom, parents, students and teachers are furious as principals now have to cut resources, lay off teachers and, in some cases, decide whether or not the school will have enough funding for necessities like toilet paper. On June 18, demonstrators gathered outside of Chase Bank headquarters to protest, holding a toilet paper drive to emphasize the absurdity on the cuts. Students are planning to protest the cuts during the board meeting next Wednesday, June 26, during their last week of school.

—Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools

3. New York’s Undocumented Youth Campaign for Equality

After the Senate filibustered the DREAM Act in 2010, the New York State Youth Leadership Council launched a campaign for the New York DREAM Act, demanding full access to healthcare, financial aid, driver’s licenses and work permits for undocumented youth in New York. Over the past two years, youth have organized mass lobby days, marched 150 miles on foot from New York City to the state capitol and engaged in civil disobedience to advocate for the bill. Because the original bill didn’t get enough support, our demands got restricted to financial aid. This version recently passed in the state assembly—but the real fight has always been to get the Republican State Senate and our Democratic Governor, Andrew Cuomo, to support it. In July, undocumented youth will take the campaign to Long Island to escalate pressure on state senators there.

—Razeen Zaman

4. In the Southwest, Students Build a Regional Bloc

From August 1 to 5, students from across the country will converge on Madison, Wisconsin, for the second annual National Student Power Convergence, to build a student and youth movement covering local, state and nationwide issues. With only a month to go, students from across New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada are mobilizing across movements and fundraising from local organizations through the Movement Summer program. In the Southwest, activists have been working on myriad issues affecting our generation—from college affordability and youth unemployment to advancing immigrant rights and ending the school-to-prison pipeline. In Albuquerque, students are currently begining a dialogue about the never-ending tuition hikes at the University of New Mexico, totaling 170 percent in increases over the past fifteen years. In the coming weeks, students will begin educating peers and community members about the most recent hikes. Organizers from this campaign plan to strategize with students from other states working on tuition and affordability issues at August’s convergence.

—Ramiro Rodriguez

5. In the Northeast, the Coalition Grows

Movement Summer has nine core organizers across the country tasked with building power for the National Student Power Convergence by mobilizing student groups from within established regional and statewide organizations, such as New Jersey United Students. In New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware, our outreach ranges from national organizations such as United Students Against Sweatshops and Students for Sensible Drug Policy to high school groups, including the Philadelphia Student Union and Newark Student Union. Organizers are also working with universities to connect with students in programs that prioritize financial aid for low-income, first-generation, rural or urban students. As part of Movement Summer, New Jersey’s EOF Organizing Project was launched in May to work with these programs by organizing summer tours and running student-led voter registration drive. By the convergence, the goal is to help build student coalitions in Pennsylvania and Delaware, which, by the fall, would organize budget campaigns to reallocate state funds into higher education aid and grant programs.

—Bryan Miranda

6. Michigan Students Converge on Ann Arbor

In the run-up to the National Student Power Convergence, the Student Union of Michigan held the Michigan Student Power Convergence on June 15 in Ann Arbor, with more than fifty students and faculty from the University of Michigan, Michigan State, Eastern Michigan, Wayne State and Mott’s Junior College in Flint. Through presentations and small group discussions, we spent the day outlining the structure of the modern university, clarifying the need for strong student and worker voices on campuses and running crash courses in one-on-one and campaign-based organizing. At the close of the convergence, attendees committed to bringing these new skills to bear on their campuses and to maintaining the connections we had formed. A key part of this was the decision to construct a statewide information clearinghouse called the Michigan Student Solidarity Network to help coordinate and share news and campaign materials between campuses.

—Student Union of Michigan

7. Illinois Youth Digitize the Vote

Chicago is in the middle of a voter registration crisis, especially among young people—more than 500,000 eligible residents are not registered to vote, and millennials in Illinois are rated forty-seventh in the country for voting in local elections. In early 2013, Chicago Votes, a youth-driven organization dedicated to expanding democratic participation in Chicago, took on the fight for online voter registration. Our volunteers circulated petitions, sent thousands of e-mails and hundreds of phone calls to lawmakers and forged partnerships with environmental advocates, LGBT rights organizations and others. At a crucial moment in the legislative session, the Chicago Tribune ran an op-ed by Chicago Votes’s leadership supporting the bill. Thanks in part to our aggressive campaign, the bill passed both houses. Governor Quinn is expected to sign it into law this summer.

—Rebecca Reynolds

8. A New Home for the People’s Arts Collective?

In New Haven, Connecticut, a city with a reputation for unemployment and crime, residents have expressed the tremendous need for opportunities for young people. In this context arose the People’s Arts Collective, which unites art, education and community organizing in programs like the New Haven Free Skool, which offers free classes on everything from web design to police brutality, and the LGBTQ* Youth Kickback, which provides a safe space and free programming for queer youth. PAC’s downtown location has enabled unprecedented interaction between New Haven residents and the Yale community—a huge step forward in a traditionally fraught town-gown relationship. But a new development at 196 College Street means that PAC is in danger of losing its space. A coalition of residents, artists, high school students, activists and Yale undergraduates are organizing to ensure that PAC has a new home, that there is more community input in the development process and that New Haven creates more spaces that are accessible to youth and low-income people.

—Kenneth Reveiz

9. A New Era of Rank-and-File Democracy?

In late March, thirteen young workers at Minneapolis’s Chicago-Lake Liquors signed a letter asking management for a $1 raise in starting pay, $1 across the board and $2.50 added to the pay cap. In retaliation, five workers were fired the following week. Since then, workers have held four pickets and other actions, and have been leafleting outside the store to inform customers of the company’s violations. On May 27, the National Labor Relations Board announced it has found merit in the wrongful termination case put forth by the Chicago Lake Liquors Five. Workers are now waiting to see if the company will attempt to settle or take the case to court and are mobilizing the community for a boycott of the store on July 4 if the fired workers have not returned by then. A belief in the power of direct action, shop floor organization and class solidarity also informs our work in AFSCME Council 5’s new and young worker affiliate, Next Wave Minnesota, which is currently engaged in democratizing AFSCME locals and organizing direct actions and community outreach for upcoming contract negotiations.

—Sarah Sosa

10. Students v. Banks

From June 14 to 16, graduating students from seven West Coast universities wore stickers and signed petitions in favor of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Bank on Student Loan Fairness Act, which would lower student loan interest rates to 0.75 percent—the same rate the big banks get. Students collaborated to build a micro-site to post the photos taken at graduation, which also gives people the opportunity to show support for Senator Warren’s bill. In addition to gathering video testimonies and photos, students held a conference call with Senator Warren, and then, at the ceremonies themselves, spoke to parents as they checked in. Across the country, students are continuing to advocate for a vote before the legislative session is over.

—Torii Uyehara

Contraceptives at a pharmacy in Toronto. (Flickr/Cory Doctorow)

This article was originally published by the Institute for Policy Studies’s OtherWords project and is reposted here with permission.

Good news for advocates of sensible birth control policy: The Obama administration announced that it’s dropping the fight to impose an age restriction on sales of Plan B One-Step, the emergency contraception pill.

Reproductive rights advocates are celebrating this move toward empowering all women to make their own decisions regarding their own bodies.

It’s about damn time. Considering the glaring need for safe and available contraception for all women, I’m glad the government finally has our backs on this one.

But don’t let your guard down just yet.

Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ) said recently that the percentage of pregnancies resulting from rape is “very low,” so victims of rape shouldn’t be exempt from his proposed ban on abortions after the twentieth week of pregnancy.

Thanks to the uproar his remarks made, the bill did wind up with exceptions for survivors of incest and women who are raped and report the crime within 48 hours. The House passed his legislation 228-196. Representative Michael Burgess, a Texas Republican, made yet more weird comments in the course of the debate: He implied that male fetuses masturbate at fifteen weeks.

There’s no chance the bill would clear the Senate and President Barack Obama is threatening to veto the measure if it somehow did. But, seriously? This is happening again?

Franks’ ban involves radically shifting the deadline for legal abortions, making it weeks earlier than the standard set by Roe v. Wade.

It’s safe to say that not all Republicans learned from the fiasco caused by Representative Todd Akin (R-MO) and his incredibly offensive theory of “legitimate rape.” Or the electoral disaster that befell Richard Mourdock, an Indiana Republican who lost his Senate bid last year after implying that post-rape pregnancy was some kind of gift from God.

Though Franks quickly attempted to walk back his outrageous, not to mention false, comment, his statement reveals his total ignorance and insensitivity. It’s a bad sign for women who value their reproductive health. Once again, it looks like medical evidence, especially the kind that involves lady parts, isn’t welcome in the GOP.

Individual states are also advancing anti-choice, anti-women legislation. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker says he’ll sign into law a bill requiring women seeking abortions to look at images of their fetus through an ultrasound—an invasive medical procedure that, in this case, is a cruel and unusual punishment for women already making a difficult decision.

Though there’s no evidence that ultrasounds deter women from having abortions, 21 states already have some form of pre-procedure ultrasound law. Walker told reporters “I don’t have any problem with ultrasound.” That’s nice, Governor. Why don’t you get one?

The state’s legislative drive to strip women in Wisconsin of their reproductive rights also includes a measure that would allow employers to refuse to cover contraception in their health insurance plans.

As a young woman about to enter the workforce, this is a particularly scary one. I don’t want to have to turn down my dream job because of gaping holes in my potential employer’s insurance plan. Forget dream job—in today’s hyper-competitive conditions, I can’t afford to turn down any job.

And I feel like my rights are under siege. My right to choose what happens to my own body should be inviolable, plain and simple. I shouldn’t be forced to undergo an unnecessary medical procedure before I can choose what’s right for me and for my family. It insults me that these lawmakers want to make such an important decision for me, a decision that should belong to me and to my doctor.

So the federal government’s decision to stop standing between women and effective emergency contraception is a great start, but it’s just that: a start. Women may have just gotten a new tool with which to fend off the anti-choice lobby, but the threat to our control over our own bodies is still looming large.

The California state capitol in Sacramento. (Flickr/Rafał Próchniak)

This article originally appeared at Waging Nonviolence and is reposted with permission.

After the Newtown shootings, the urgency to secure schools shot up. California Senator Barbara Boxer floated legislation to deploy the National Guard in districts nationwide; President Obama included grants for “school resource officers” in his since-mothballed gun control proposals; and districts, including Los Angeles, which already has the largest school police force in the country, called for more police or stronger partnerships with local law enforcement.

Across the country, students of color braced for the aftershock. School police are the bedrock of the school-to-prison pipeline, a system that levies harsh punishments for nonviolent behavior and, despite scant evidence of greater infraction, funnels disproportionate numbers of black and Latino students out of school and into court. This system of racialized discipline and punishment feeds off moments of fear like Newtown—from the Reagan-era war on drugs, when zero tolerance discipline was born, to the Columbine shootings, which led schools in Denver to increase student referrals to law enforcement by 71 percent over the next four years.

The most recent police surge is, however, only one part of the story. The commotion over school safety has also opened space for youth organizers to push the conversation in the opposite direction.

On May 29, the California state assembly passed AB 549 by a vote of 71-0. The bill is a sweeping attempt to clarify the role of school police, limit their involvement in student discipline and prioritize the use of restorative justice training, school counselors and related support in school violence prevention. In its current wording, it encourages schools to articulate the role of all school staff—from police officers to mental health workers—in state-mandated school safety plans. As it moves to the state Senate, activists are pushing to make that encouragement a requirement, while also requiring schools to emphasize practices like counseling and conflict resolution training. They also seek an explicit definition of school police as overseers of physical safety rather than student discipline.

AB 549 follows on the heels of related efforts in Texas and Connecticut—and a handful of laws passed in the state’s previous legislative session focused on rolling back zero tolerance discipline. The current bill, like the ones before it, builds on the coalition work of large advocacy organizations and organizing-based community groups across California. Some of these groups are affiliated with the national Dignity in Schools Campaign, which published a comprehensive set of policy recommendations authored by youth of color after the Newtown shootings.

For students, having a voice in school policy is a goal unto itself. “We were always told, when the cops pulled us over, and even with teachers sometimes, that this is who you are, and this is where you’re going to end up,” said Carlo Elmo Gomez, a 22-year-old organizer for Los Angeles’s Community Rights Campaign who was once shot at as a high schooler. “The reconstitution of schools, the constant attack on black and brown schools—how can you address this without addressing the conditions the youth are going through?”

The language of AB 549 has been watered down and tossed around by lobbies like the Association of California School Administrators, which has argued that the bill is “very prescriptive for a school safety plan” and would impose onerous legwork. No matter the linguistic turns of this bill, though, it’s only one plank of an escalating statewide strategy—and a lever for building power locally.

In Los Angeles, students and allies have a long history of resistance to the city’s deeply racialized disciplinary practices. In 2007, after years of pushing from CADRE, a South LA–based community group, the district ordered schools to adopt proactive mediation practices and decrease reliance on exclusionary punishment like out-of-school suspensions (though reports show schools have been slow to implement them). In 2011, the city agreed to back down on ticketing students hundreds of dollars for being late to school. In May, the school board passed a student bill of rights, which bans expulsions and out-of-school suspensions for “willful defiance,” a judgment-heavy category that includes fighting, walking out and talking back.

“When we were first writing the bill of rights, it was going over things, perfecting the wording, going over what discipline and punishment really look like—and what willful defiance really is, because it means so many things,” said Michael Davis, a sophomore at Manuel Arts High School in South LA. and an organizer with the Community Rights Campaign.

Students have yet to succeed at downgrading willful defiance on the state level, as Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a related bill, AB 420, last session. It remains on the legislative agenda for many of the groups backing AB 549.

Meanwhile, in Oakland, another hotbed of youth organizing, students won a process for filing complaints over school police misconduct. Now, in addition to advocating for AB 549, Oakland’s Black Organizing Project is in the process of setting up an area chapter of the Dignity in Schools Campaign, which groups in Los Angeles helped launch.

“I don’t think it’s been a huge shift in terms of our constituency,” said Black Organizing Project executive director Jackie Byers, describing the post-Newtown political climate. “The issues that have been affecting Oakland have been ongoing.” Still, regarding state-level advocacy, she noted, “It would be helpful to have policy to leverage districts to have these conversations.”

Similar bases of organizing are growing in California’s vast Central Valley. Along with students from Fresno, members of the Stockton-based Fathers and Families of San Joaquin have gone on two trips to Sacramento to meet with legislators and give testimony in favor of limiting police in schools.

“It was very powerful to see these kids saying that these people, who are supposed to protect them, are suspending them,” said Raerae Colden, an 18-year-old organizer and youth mentor. “How is that supposed to make us feel?”

Organizers from Stockton, a longtime bastion of farmworker organizing and more recently infamous for going bankrupt in the wake of the recent housing crash, won a four-year fight last month to prevent a new prison from opening in the city. Fathers and Families runs a youth empowerment summer academy, programming for formerly incarcerated people and conferences for boys and men of color.

“If we don’t have that strong foundation locally, we don’t have this larger strength,” said Alejandra Gutierrez, Fathers and Families’ executive director. “When we see young people coming in every day, that’s how we measure success.”

It’s this landscape of community organizing, youth training and action research that grounds sweeping legislation like AB 549. Building youth power in Sacramento requires slow, intergenerational, often unsexy organizing focused on leadership development and targeted at local actors. The attention span of this organizing is longer than the post-Newtown scramble. The current bill—which organizers say would have waited until next year without the political climate shift of the Newtown shootings—is only one node in a larger, increasingly networked terrain of struggle.

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California is at the forefront of a national movement that is slowly reaching higher stages. Just two days before the Newtown shootings, students and community activists descended on Washington, DC, for the first ever Senate hearing on ending the school-to-prison pipeline—the outgrowth of years of organizing leading up to and around the Dignity in Schools Campaign.

“In some ways, yes, Newtown, it presented a big challenge for us,” said Manuel Criollo, organizing director for the Community Rights Campaign. “At the same time, we’ve reached a majority where we have been much more engaged with each other. We were already in motion.”