activism
Obama Commencement Speech at Wesleyan University
Today Barack Obama gave a commencement speech at Wesleyan University and made some interesting remarks about public service I thought worth mentioning here. This quote caught my eye:
``No one is forcing you to care,'' Obama said. ``You can take your diploma, walk off this stage and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy. But I hope you don't.''
He then went on to talk about how he'll call upon students to "be unified in service to a greater good".
Yeah, kinda sounds like everything that's ever been written at Lose the Label, doesn't it? But it's nice hearing it from somebody who could very well be the next president.
Urgency
There's no good way to start this essay so I'm just gonna hit the ground running...
Last week I was diagnosed with cancer. It’s an intense feeling to be 23 and knowing you might not see 24 and that the outcome isn’t so much in your hands as it is you’re just gonna have to wing it. Everybody tells me to think positive and I’m trying, but there are going to be good days and bad days and I’m not good at lying to myself so there’s no sense in cre. I cried a few times the first day but it was a relief, too; at least I finally knew what I was dealing with. I’d been in the hospital for a couple weeks with tons of symptoms but no diagnosis, so having hard facts and a course of action was a welcome development, even if it was the C-word.
I got the news on Wednesday. I started chemo on Friday and finished the first round on Sunday. I was tired on Monday and Tuesday. Today I walked around outside for awhile and it was great. The weather is all grey and dreary but fresh air of any kind is a beautiful thing when you’re stuck inside virtually 24/7. Later my little brothers visited and I saw my mom and dad in the same room for the first time in years. It’s been quite an emotional rollercoaster. I’ve learned a lot in a short time, about myself, other people and life in general.
One Million Strong Against Hillary reaching One Million
Just a quick note, but the Facebook group "Stop Hillary Clinton: (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary)" is at nearly 975,000 and rapidly closing in on its final goal.
Assuming it makes it before Pennsylvania, it'll make a tiny media blurb. But from a cultural perspective, it'll be a significant one because it'll perfectly exemplify an election-related story that wouldn't have appeared had it not been for a bunch of yokels on Facebook. Therefore, I would argue that participation in the group represents an act of activism. It's electronic engagement replacing in-person engagement, but it's still engagement.
This is one of those subtle examples of participation going on underneath the radar that today's young people rarely get credit for when experts and pundits compare us to generations like the 1960s. It's not a street protest, but it still matters.
Textbook Boycott: Let's do this thing
Happy new year! Let's make the Man squirm!
Here's the plan:
- It was suggested that it would be easier to boycott all new editions instead of just one, and would be easier to get people to jump on the bandwagon. Therefore, instead of targeting one publisher, we're going to target them all.
- We'll start as soon as people's semesters start. Some schools are doing their interim/J-term right now, which we're unfortunately too late for, but second semester is still just over the horizon for many peoples. Therefore, we still have time to hunt down used textbooks.
- We need a basic form letter that we can send to professors expressing our intent. I'm willing to write one, but it'd be nice to have a few of them to work with. Anyone willing to write a few paragraphs?
I'm going to set up a project page here for us to coordinate information. Let's go make some old people with printing presses nervous!
Textbook Boycott: Who published my textbook?
Some of you might be willing to participate, but leery of spending hours researching how much your books cost. Here's an easy way to cut that time to seconds. Seconds!
- Think back to standing in the bookstore, when you picked up that certain textbook and exclaimed "Holy crap! They want a bajillion dollars for this thing???"
Textbook Boycott: The Saga Continues
Alright, the poll goes live tomorrow morning. If you don't have your original textbook reciepts, you can get a ballpark idea of what a book costs new by going to Amazon or Half.com and plugging in either the title or the ISBN number.
Textbook Boycott Roundup
Ok, so here's a roundup of the discussion so far:
People seem game to do this so long as it doesn't jeopardize their academic standing (i.e., they fail the course for not having the textbook). It has been suggested that professors need to be invited to be a part of this, and ways of distributing course materials amongst students need to be devised.
Here's my idea for figuring out which publisher to go after:
- Between now and Christmas, take a look at who published your first semester textbooks, especially the new editions.
- Figure out what each book cost you, and make a note somewhere
- Come back here starting next Monday, where I will have a poll up for you to mark which publishers cost you the most money. There'll also be a discussion thread so that we can figure out if a particular publisher partakes in price gouging or other unfriendly practices.
- Whoever has the most votes and/or gripes by Christmas is the target of our boycott.
Does this make sense to everyone? Is there anything painfully obvious that I'm missing?
Boycott Idea - Textbooks
Textbook prices are ridiculous. I remember paying well over $500 a semester for maybe five or six books, all in new editions which had maybe 10 pages of text changed from the old edition. There were several books that cost me well over $100 that I never even opened. And it pissed me off, but I bent over and took it because I didn't see any better option. Hell, I'm still paying off credit card debt accrued by purchasing textbooks.
Well, it seems to me that nobody's done anything effective about it, and I'm about to start buying textbooks again. Or not.
Here's my idea:
1. Pick one textbook publisher. The big ones seem to be Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin, and Cengage (formerly Thomson Learning). Ideally, this would be done by looking at syllabi for the upcoming semester and marking a tally on a poll hosted here.
2. Boycott that publisher all semester. If the textbook isn't a first edition (such as for a new course), don't buy it new. If you can, buy the textbook second hand or share with a friend.
3. (this step is optional, but would probably help to get our point across) Email/write/call that publisher and tell them that you're boycotting their product because the price makes it almost unaffordable.
It's a big problem, boycotting is easy (what's easier than not doing something?) and it's something that any student can do. Anybody willing to work on this with me?