Last week, four blocks away from my old neighborhood near downtown Berkeley, Berkeley High School students staged a mass demonstration over the appearance of a racist epithet posted on one of the high school’s library computers. Two thousand of Berkeley High’s 3,000 students walked off campus en masse to march through Berkeley’s streets in protest.
Yesterday, 1,000 students marched and demonstrated in a planned gathering of civil disobedience in Washington DC, demanding “racial, immigration, and climate justice reform for a ‘broken’ political system.”
Also yesterday, Tim Wolfe, system president of the University of Missouri, resigned his post after months of pressure from the university’s student body, who were pushing their administration to act on what was described as a climate of fear and racial intimidation on campus.
What finally pushed him to resign was the boycott by the university’s football team of the school’s upcoming football game this next weekend. Their boycott was in solidarity with the campus anti-racist movement, and had the absolute support of the team’s coach. The boycott and the game’s cancellation would have cost the school a financial loss of $1 million.
But there was plenty more than just a football game leading up to Wolfe’s resignation. In what the campus’ newspaper, “The Maneater,” described fatefully as “An Historic Fall”, the university had been a focal point for social unrest and is a microcosm of what is happening across the country.
It started with the cutting of health care for graduate students, many of whom work on campus; a grad student walk-out; student demonstrations over threatened discontinuation of abortion and other women’s health services; and demonstrations against an increasing climate of racism on campus. Graduate student Jonathan Butler spearheaded the graduate student movement earlier in the fall, and bumped up the stakes by waging a hunger strike until President Wolfe resigned.
The students’ demands — presented in a meeting earlier in the fall with campus administration — were handled sluggishly at best, if at all. President Wolfe was slow and dismissive of the students’ call for the administration to make the campus a “safe and inclusive place.” That meeting was then followed by a racism-based attack — the smearing of a swastika made from human feces in a campus residence hall.
It was Butler’s hunger strike that spurred the football team’s boycott, the final straw leading to Wolfe’s resignation. Apparently, concern for human rights and safety needed the help of college athletics to help the blind see the light.
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If it appears that President Wolfe refused to see the big picture, the students knew it all too well. Their demands: removal of Wolfe as UM president; that UM meets the demands of the Legion of Black Collegians first presented in 1969 for the betterment of the black community — a promise unkept for nearly fifty years; enforcement of a mandatory comprehensive racial awareness and inclusion curriculum throughout all campus departments overseen by students staff and faculty of color; and an increase of the percentage of black faculty and students campus-wide by 10%.
Their demands also included a 10-year plan to increase retention rate for marginalized students; sustain diversity curriculum and promote campus safety and inclusivity; increase resources to include mental health professionals — particularly those of color for outreach and programming campus-wide; and establish social justice centers on campus.
To complete our frame of reference, the University of Missouri is located in Columbia, a two-hour drive from St. Louis and Ferguson. Both cities have been at the epicenter of the Black Lives Matter movement in the Midwest, protesting police aggression against African Americans following the deaths of black people at the hands of police.
From my view — at four blocks, 2,500 and 3,000 miles away — my heart is a mixture of pride, apprehension and hope. Some of us have been focused more on survival and — if we were lucky — comfort. We were too bogged down by the distractions of day-to-day reality to peek over our newspapers and hand-held devices and understand what has been happening to us. But these kids in Berkeley, Washington DC, and Columbia — and our kids everywhere — have been watching it all too closely.
They are about to enter their adult lives. They’re trying to blossom into adulthood as young people should, even in what sometimes can mildly be called a dark and dangerous world. These demonstrations are a sign of hope that our youth are actively working towards a world better than the one we are leaving them. They are fighting for the world we promised them, long ago when we were young. Send them support, encouragement and a light to help them continue safely on their way.
Bravo Fe, bravo! Absolutely pitch perfect and timely coverage of exciting developments! As you have pointed out, this is not an overnight sensation. It is, however, as if the embers of The Movement for peace, justice and social change have caught a new draft of air, flaming up so as to be better seen and understood far and wide once again. Who would have thought that the big money industry of institutionalized sports would become a vehicle of social change? Yet, why not? It’s proof that people of conscience can make a difference regardless of who they are or what they are doing. Wouldn’t it be something if this spread to other sports and other venues? Imagine the players in the Super Bowl withholding their services unless and until the hungry are all fed, the homeless are all housed, the sick all cared for, institutionalized slavery abolished and perpetual war ended. It can be done. Leaders can be obliged to either step up and fulfill their responsibilities or get out of the way.
i sure wish you were running for President, Fe. You would be the best ever.
Len:
“It is, however, as if the embers of The Movement for peace, justice and social change have caught a new draft of air, flaming up so as to be better seen and understood far and wide once again.”
What do you think that is, Len? I was chatting with Amanda about this last night as I was pitching the story. One demonstration in Berkeley is one thing. Another in Washington DC is another, but a third — and all of them within a week of each other is a definite THING,
What is in the astrological water?
Fe: Ah, the astrology behind it all. As usual, the answer is probably a combination of things. What really catches my eye, however is the lunar nodes changing signs (as they do about every 18 months or so) just as the still-functional but no longer exact Uranus-Pluto squares are handing off to the Saturn-Neptune squares. It’s difficult to put it all into a phrase, but Eric appears to have done so by making the title of his upcoming annual edition “Vision Quest”. Both individually and in the collective, a vision seems to be taking hold, compelling each of us in our own way to rise above previous definitions and roles. To extend the boundaries in which we have for so long felt confined, creating as we go. The outcome of this highly intuitive and essentially conscientious quest is unclear, which is good – all the better to make any endeavor seem possible after so long.
Agreed – better yet to follow the path instead of setting up an anticipated goal. The destination could be greater than our current imaginations can fathom.
Fe, I believe it’s the Uranus-Pluto cycle, combined with the Jupiter-Neptune and Jupiter-Chiron cycle, as well as the 20 year Saturn-Jupiter cycle and the Venus-Mars cycle. At least they are the most obvious “reasons”.
Transiting Jupiter has been in the degrees where Uranus and Pluto met in the 60’s. Jupiter has been opposite trans. Neptune and then trans. Chiron, the half-way mark of those cycles which began in a conjunction to the U.S Moon in 2009. Jupiter symbolizes higher education, or Universities.
Neptune was sextile the 3 Uranus-Pluto conjunctions and in today’s New Moon, Neptune is in a novile (an aspect that is like a trine but much more subtle) with Uranus. Uranus in Aries is the apex of a Yod pattern with the sextile between the New Moon in Scorpio (where Neptune was at the time of the Uranus-Pluto conjunctions) and Jupiter in Virgo (where the Uranus-Pluto conjunctions were). This Yod becomes a Boomerang pattern because trans. Juno opposes trans. Uranus. Juno at 20+ Libra in today’s new moon is conjunct the U.S Sibly chart Juno also at 20+ Libra who opposes the U.S. Chiron at 20+ Aries, where transiting Uranus will return in April.
The 3 conjunctions between Venus and Mars, also a cycle of a more personal nature than those of Uranus-Pluto (collective cycle) or Saturn-Jupiter (societal cycle), is how the energy from the outer planets got down to us (We the People). The arrival of trans. Jupiter at the degrees where the Uranus-Pluto conjunctions took place, while simultaneously opposite trans. Chiron in their cycle’s half-way point (a cycle start which was conjunct trans. Neptune and the U.S. Moon or We the People) appears to be the obvious trigger for these events at U.S. universities.
If we went back to August when trans Jupiter and trans. Saturn were in the 1st of 3 final squares in their present cycle that began in 2000, we would see that Venus was conjunct Jupiter and Mars was trine Saturn, bringing the personal planets in contact with the active societal (cultural) cycle. No doubt that much of the unrest this week had its impetus in events that happened in August.
The short time span between the final Venus-Jupiter conjunction, and the final Venus-Mars conjunction, and the Neptune-Jupiter opposition (back in September), the Chiron-Jupiter opposition, and Jupiter now conjunct the degrees of the Uranus-Pluto conjunctions of the 60’s, has brought ancient problems to a head. For the U.S., today’s New Moon with Juno in a “Juno Return” for the U.S., focuses all the Boomerang energy on matters regarding being treated as less than equal (Juno’s lot in life). That U.S. Juno opposes U.S. Chiron reveals a 225+ year old wound whose time has come to be healed.
When transiting Uranus returns to conjunct the U.S. Chiron and transiting Jupiter, along with the transiting North Node (opportunity), conjoins the U.S. Neptune in the coming weeks and months there will be more opportunities to heal these ancient wounds.
I find it extraordinary how these cycles work together in order to bring directives from the Universe via the outer planets (unseen by human eyes) into the realm of social strata via Jupiter and Saturn (visible to human eyes) which then activates individuals via the personal planets of Venus and Mars and Mercury and Moon and Sun. It’s as if God was a chef adding ingredients to a stew; some things need to simmer for a long while to thicken and other things need to be added at the last minute to retain their color and form.
be
Be:
I keep hoping that these days are the ones that we’ll be thankful for this upcoming Thanksgiving, which you described in a comment a while back and haven’t forgotten! I hope we will have gratitude and appreciation that we are both alive AND awake. It’s time!
So beautifully written: ” It’s as if God was a chef adding ingredients to a stew; some things need to simmer for a long while to thicken and other things need to be added at the last minute to retain their color and form.” The personal planets are now activated to take head on the outer planets energy, all a form of collective memory and personal misfortunes, humility, mistrust and pain. But there are also acts of charity and love. The fact that the Univ of Missouri football team said eff-u to the Univ Pres who basically was ignoring a grad student’s hunger strike demands, learned how to wield their collective power against an established institution headed by what appears to be a bigot at most or misguided idiot, at least.
Thank you Fe for writing about this story and Len and Barbara (be) for contributing the astrology to it. One thing I so appreciate about the football team being the actor in this case is that it lends itself for a less biased media venue to cover this topic, that is the sports media. Thus, people who rarely observe current events are gaining exposure to this event and its message is spreading.
Our children are really tired of what we have given them, as you wrote Fe, the world they were promised: war they have inherited and this generation knows it so well. The connections are being made, our minorities have contributed disproportionately to the ethnic makeup of our military. Their families know too well the sacrifices made for our country. They have endured losses; life, limb, mental anguish. This pain returns making this collective mission now their personal experience and memory. On this veteran’s day of 11/11 let their individual experience of contributing to the collective good return to remind the collective good that these minority veterans deserve to grow and have the same opportunity offered to the one’s that they were protecting to have an enriched individual experience! In other words, liberty- the ability to pursue happiness in all of its forms and healthy manners (clean air, safe neighborhoods) is their right they’ve more than earned it!
Threats again UM’s black students continue in the wake of Wolfe’s resignation:
http://m.dailykos.com/stories/1448602
Unfortunately BLM is not really bulletproof. Tonight there have been a number of online threats made against black Mizzou students and the Mizzou activist group ‘Concerned Students 1950’ in the wake of the resignation of President Tim Wolfe over allegations that Wolfe has ignored repeated pleas by black students to do something regarding acts of racism that have occurred on the Columbia, Missouri campus. Wolfe’s resignation was a demand made by former Mizzou student Johnathan Butler who started a hunger strike to protest the racist atmosphere he felt was prevalent on campus and was subsequently supported by the black members of Mizzou’s football team. Later most of the team, both black and white as well as the coaching staff supported a boycott of all athletic activities, including playing Brigham Young University this coming weekend.
Now it would appear the (hardheads) hardliners is upping the ante:
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/10/1448549/-Mizzou-Students-Evacuating-Campus-Tonight-Due-To-Death-Threats