Students Are Skipping Class to Protest. How Are Schools Responding?

In 2018, one million students walked out for gun violence prevention. In 2019, four million walked out for climate action. Student activism is on the rise, and young people are showing up for the causes we care about. But how do schools navigate their students’ rights to protest?

In the case of the global youth climate strikes, some school districts responded with resounding support. New York City and Portland public schools, for example, let their students attend the strikes without penalties. But not all schools are so accommodating -- Seattle’s public schools recorded unexcused absences for protesting students, and considered walking out to be “civil disobedience.”

Other districts are building their attendance policies around civic engagement, like a proposed policy from Montgomery County, Maryland that would give students up to three excused absences to participate in protests. Similar policies are already in place in neighboring counties and the District of Columbia.

The consequences vary for students whose schools don’t excuse protest-related absences, and while some students can take a single unexcused absence without much more than a warning, it gets more difficult for those who already miss a lot of school and face increasing punishment. Students may miss school more often due to things beyond their control -- like chronic and mental illness, bullying, and lack of health care and transportation. Even the requirement for parents’ permission to protest can place undue burdens on some students.

If we want our protests and walkouts to reflect the diversity of their causes, we need to make sure everyone is invited -- and schools play a big part.

Take Action: Know and share your rights. Learn about protections for student protests and political speech in school.

You Need to Calm Down: The AMAs and a Netflix Doc Reignite Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun Legal Battle

You can catch up on how this feud started back in June, but the basic issue was this: Taylor Swift was allegedly denied the option to purchase the rights to her old albums from Big Machine Label Group founder Scott Borchetta, who instead sold them (along with the record label) to music executive Scooter Braun (who Swift has called her “bully”).

More recently, Swift called out Borchetta, Braun, and Big Machine in a tweet. Swift claimed that the pair are legally blocking her from performing her classics at the American Music Awards and including them in her upcoming Netflix documentary unless she agrees not to re-record her albums and stops speaking publicly about them.

Swift asked her fans to “please let [Borchetta and Braun] know how you feel about this,” and it went about as well as you could expect. Swifites came out in full force, tweeting, calling, and doxxing the pair and their employees. Celebrities weighed in, and even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Elizabeth Warren had something to say about “predatory practices” from company execs.

Swift and the Big Machine group have since come to an agreement, which is great because artists do deserve to maintain ownership of the things they create (and protection from people trying to exploit them and their work). What’s questionable is the way Swift’s fans are going about it -- after all, it’s possible to advocate for someone without threats or harassment.

Legal Victory for the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes: Corporation Must Pay for Hazardous Waste Stored on Reservation

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the food and chemical conglomerate FMC Corporation must pay the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes an annual fee for storing hazardous waste on the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho.

FMC originally agreed to pay the annual fee in 1998, but after their plant closed in 2002, they refused to continue payments. The tribes brought a lawsuit against FMC to collect what was owed.

The tribes found (and the courts confirmed) that FMC’s waste creation and storage caused “an ongoing and extensive threat to human health” and the “welfare and cultural practices of the Tribes and their members.”

As long as the waste continues to be stored on the reservation, FMC will have to pay annual fees to the tribes, which will be used for environmental monitoring, compliance, and cleanup.

This ruling is a major victory among the number of Native American tribes that are fighting to protect sacred lands from logging, oil pipelines, giant telescopes, and other environmental threats.

Take Action: Protect Native lands from environmental exploitation. Amplify the voices of the Fort Belknap Indian Community fighting against the Keystone Pipeline.

• Why aren’t more people talking about… how new evidence could prove the innocence of Rodney Reed, a man who was scheduled to be executed for a crime he says he didn’t commit?

• Meanwhile, in Mexico… an artist collected and transformed 1,500 guns into shovels for planting trees.

• Meanwhile, in Australia... teens are using TikTok to show the world how bad the country’s wildfires are.

• My hero today is… 8-year-old Adhara Perez, who has an IQ higher than Einstein’s and wants to become an astronaut.

• Today in viral things that make me cry a lil'… A WWII veteran plays a beautiful harmonica rendition of the National Anthem at an NBA game.

• I’m obsessed with… Pokémon Sword. Somehow, I’ve already put about 21 hours into this game since starting it Friday, and I have no regrets.

Finding this newsletter useful? Forward today's edition to a friend and encourage them to subscribe.

Copyright © 2019, All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is: 19 West 21st Street, 8th floor, New York, NY 10010