Anti-Trans Bills + Royal Caribbean Tour + Chilean Student Protests + More
Anti-Trans Bills + Royal Caribbean Tour + Chilean Student Protests + More
On this 6th edition of the Weekly Roundup of Protest Events - March 29, 2022
The discursus community is on a mission to break through our news echo chambers. We want to broaden our understanding of current events through wide ranging data harvesting and analytics-based analysis. And it all starts with one of the most foundational democratic phenomenon, protest movements.
Friends,
I’m really excited to finally settle on a home base for the discursus project. The discursus project is first and foremost an open source data platform that mines, shapes and exposes the digital artifacts of protests, their discourses and the actors that influence social reforms.
But it’s more than that. It’s also an opportunity for us as a community to leverage that data to broaden our perspectives.
I’ve talked elsewhere about why I’m building discursus. And I’ve been happy to hear that this mission resonates with others as well. I think it’s fair to assume that we are a large group of people who wants to break through their echo chambers. We don’t want to be fed uni-dimensional perspectives on current affairs. We demand diversity as we want to hear other points of view.
This new Substack home base is our very small contribution to helping you / us broaden our perspectives and go deeper in the news.
If you want to participate in that mission and contribute to our experiment, please subscribe to this newsletter and engage with us in our threads.
Olivier
Visit our interactive dashboard of weekly protests for more in-depth data.
Anti-Trans Bills
Norms surrounding gender identity has been transforming Western societies and rocking US politics. At the core of those debates are trans-gender rights.
Just this year, 238 anti LGBTQ bills have been submitted in the US. Of the 238 bills, half targets transgender people rights in regards to playing sports, using bathrooms, gender affirming medical care, etc.
👉 Go deeper with this podcast episode of Front Burner which traces the US legislative anti-trans bills.
This US legislative movement started out in 2015-2016 with North Carolina introducing a bill that would force trans-gender people to use bathrooms aligning with the gender on their birth certificate.
Of those bills, one has been in the media spotlight and has attracted protests to protect LGBTQ rights: the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ in Florida.
The bill aims to silence topics that confuses traditional binary gender identification. Proponents of this bill want to remove discussions in schools that might confuse, in their opinions, young student’s understanding and perception of sex and gender identity.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, however, says the bill's aim is to 'empower parents' in their children's education, and make teachers recognize the distinction between 'instruction' and 'discussion.’ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10644737/PICTURED-Disney-rides-cancelled-Dont-Say-Gay-protesters-way.html
On the other side are left-leaning communities who defend the freedom of choice when it comes to sexual orientation and gender identification. And for them, any breach to freely discuss those topics is an assault on their individual rights.
Many people are concerned that making alternative gender identities and nonheterosexual orientations taboo will lead to even more discrimination and violence. https://www.dw.com/en/florida-when-sexual-orientation-is-taboo-in-schools/a-61202695
That dynamic has been long-time brewing, as we’ve seen in our timeline. But the acceleration of bills being introduced and that aims to limit the rights of transgender people has increased oppositions.
Some of those oppositions led to protest events that have drawn the focus of traditional medias, as we can see by the number of daily articles that we’ve harvested with discursus.
Students and teachers started marching out in support of fellow students who were impacted by those bills. Even Disney employees came out in reaction to their CEO’s timid (or some would say inexistant) opposition to Florida’s bill.
👉 See how Disney employees protest company’s response to ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill.
👉 See how Florida governor DeSantis reponds to walk-out from Disney employees
What’s your take on this protest movement? Do you think that the opposition to anti-trans bills has enough public support to bring down those legislative initiatives and trigger an early end to DeSantis career, as happened in North Carolina in 2015? Share your thoughts in the thread below.
Elsewhere around the world
👑 The Caribbean tour from the royal couple has probably not gone as planned so far. Protests have punctuated William and Kate’s visits in their “realms”. In Jamaica, protesters clearly signified their intent to become a republic.
They represent a certain kind of history that is unpleasant to our people.
👩🎓 Chile were rocked by massive protests back in 2019.
Since then, a new government formed, with ex-student leader Gabriel Boric as president. But still there are seeds of discontent in regards to social inequality and cost of living.
The latest protests, led again by students, asks for the government to raise their food allocation while studying.
🌉 Climate protesters have made themselves seen in Australia this week by blocking major roads in creative ways.
In response, Australia passed a law that steeply fines protesters who block traffic.
✊ Ukrainian President Zelenskyy urged the global community to continue protests against Russia’s invasions.
And people responded...
In Prague, https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220326-thousands-of-russians-rally-against-putin-in-prague
And elsewhere, https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/world/2022/03/28/pro-ukraine-protests-continue-amid-ongoing-russian-invasion/7192895001/
🪖 Since the military coup in Sudan, protests have been an ongoing thing...
Angry demonstrators took to the streets of Khartoum and several other cities demanding a return to civilian rule after the military grabbed power last year.
The latest protest events unfortunately led to the death of a teenage protester.
https://news.yahoo.com/thousands-sudanese-protest-military-coup-135027366.html
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