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Axios
14-06-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Eight chaotic days shake Trump's grip on the presidency
President Trump began the week of his 79th birthday reeling from his explosive public breakup with Elon Musk. He ended it with tanks in the capital, Marines in Los Angeles, a Democrati c senator dragged away in handcuffs, thousands of protests planned nationwide, and a new war in the Middle East. Why it matters: In a year already brimming with "holy sh*t" moments, the past eight days have brought unprecedented new intensity, stakes and challenges to Trump's presidency. Zoom in: America is on edge. Trump became the first president since the Civil Rights Era to federalize the National Guard without a governor's consent — sending troops to L.A. to quash protests sparked by his administration's immigration raids. Democrats, led by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have accused Trump of blatantly defying the Constitution and pouring gasoline on the fire by deploying 700 Marines on domestic soil. When Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) tried to confront Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a press conference Thursday, he was forcibly removed and handcuffed. Between the lines: Trump officials want this fight, eager to flex executive power and frame Democrats as defenders of undocumented immigrants and violent agitators. But the backlash is threatening to spiral beyond the White House's control. Millions of people are expected to join "No Kings" protests in nearly 1,800 cities on Saturday — the largest single-day demonstrations against Trump since his return to power. Expect an extraordinary split-screen as Trump celebrates not only his birthday, but a massive military parade in Washington that he's dreamed of since his first term. "For those people that want to protest, they're going to be met with very big force," Trump warned this week, dismissing the demonstrators as "people that hate our country." Zoom out: With unrest boiling over at home, Israel's unprecedented attack on Iran suddenly threatened to unravel Trump's crowning foreign policy achievement from his first term: "No new wars." Trump had publicly urged Israel not to strike Iran while he actively pursued a nuclear deal with the Iranians, and even assured allies that the U.S. would not participate in the operation. Israel did it anyway — bombing nuclear sites, assassinating top generals and scientists, and sabotaging missile facilities in one of the most sophisticated covert strikes in the history of the Middle East. The intrigue: Trump now claims that the wildly successful operation — which he told Axios used "great American equipment" — could make it easier to reach a nuclear deal with Iran. But his MAGA base is deeply uneasy. Iran has launched retaliatory missile attacks against Israel, which U.S. forces helped the intercept. Oil prices have surged, and the threat of Iran targeting U.S. assets in the region remains very real. Opposition to the "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan helped fuel Trump's political rise — and many of his most loyal supporters view any new Middle East entanglement as a betrayal of that legacy. "[D]rop Israel. Let them fight their own wars," MAGA isolationist Tucker Carlson wrote in a post accusing the U.S. of complicity in the attack. "What happens next will define Donald Trump's presidency." The bottom line: The pace of news in the Trump era, both at home and abroad, makes it exceedingly difficult to distinguish the chaotic from the consequential.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Which Party Should Be Worried About the Politics of the LA Protests?
Two hotly competing narratives have emerged over the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles and President Donald Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard and Marines to California. On one side, the protests symbolize crucial resistance to abuse and overreach by the Trump administration. On the other, radicals are torching cars and the troops are needed to restore law and order. The ultimate political fallout is still unknown. But one scholar who has drilled deep into the subject is Omar Wasow, a professor at UC Berkeley who published a paper in 2020 showing that non-violent protest — especially when met with violence from the state — shifted public opinion toward the Civil Rights Movement, while protester-initiated violence fueled a right-wing backlash. The paper happened to come out less than a week before the murder of George Floyd and it caused a stir, with commentators across the political spectrum citing Wasow's work, andone pollster even losing his job over suggesting that violent protest could hurt Democrats' election chances. So, will the LA protests harm Democrats' political prospects this time around? In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Wasow said it was too early to make predictions about the political consequences and noted that so far property damage had been relatively contained, with no loss of life. Trump, meanwhile, could face his own political risk if the state engages in 'some spectacle of excess violence,' he said. Wasow also previewed some of his other work that has yet to be published, which includes some depressing, if not entirely surprising, conclusions about where things might go from here. 'Violence works a bit like a bat signal, both for Trump and for the anti-ICE movement,' he said. 'People who are pro-Trump get mobilized to be more pro-Trump. And people who are anti-Trump get mobilized on behalf of the anti-mass deportation movement.' This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Tell me what you've found in your research about the political effects of when protests turn violent. Looking at the Civil Rights Era from about 1960 to 1972, what I find is that in the earlier period of the Civil Rights Movement, most of the violence was state violence against protesters and the protest movements were overwhelmingly peaceful. Protesters were mostly using nonviolent tactics. That generates media coverage that emphasizes civil rights, and then ultimately voting behavior shifts in favor of the Democratic coalition, which is the pro-Civil Rights coalition in the '60s. But in the later period of the 1960s, we see more protester-initiated violence. These are events that have historically been called urban riots. That generates media coverage that emphasizes crime, disorder, riots, and the public opinion in counties near those events shift toward more concern about crime, concern about law and order, and vote more conservatively and toward the Republican coalition, which is the law and order coalition at the time. In contemporary rhetoric, there's one school of thought that says, 'Tactics don't matter. You're going to get painted as violent no matter what.' And I find that, at least in the 1960s, tactics really did matter, and nonviolent tactics, particularly nonviolent tactics met by state repression, moved public opinion in favor of civil rights. Fast forwarding to the present, there's a variety of evidence from other countries that suggests it's not just violence, but more broadly what is perceived as extreme tactics that tend to cause people to disidentify with protesters and with their cause, and that leads to a lowering of support. So there's this process by which people are watching the story unfold, and they're writing themselves into or out of that story. What do you make of the protests in Los Angeles, and the potential for public reaction? One thing I'm still puzzling over a little is that in the 1960s, the violence was at a totally different scale. Watts in 1965 or [the Rodney King protests in] Los Angeles in 1992 even, there's thousands of recorded incidents of arson, and there were 37 people killed in Watts in 1965 — that's also often by groups like the National Guard coming in and firing lots of ammunition. So, in some ways, five Waymos and some graffiti, it's very easy to imagine that we're just a couple of news cycles away from moving on to the next thing. That's one scenario. But I think a more likely scenario relates to some unpublished work that I've been working on. This is about how violence works a bit like a bat signal, both for Trump and for the anti-ICE movement. People who are pro-Trump get mobilized to be more pro-Trump. And people who are anti-Trump get mobilized on behalf of the anti-mass deportation movement. One thing we're seeing is these parallel protests in San Francisco and other cities where people are now being called to action by what they're seeing in Los Angeles. And I would also expect that the counter mobilization, the pro-mass deportation movement, gets activated too. So what's happening in Los Angeles is polarizing and also mobilizing. I think we're going to see more of these anti-mass deportation protests around the country. How does the continued backlash to the George Floyd protests and the 2020 moment in America impact this week? What historical analogues are you drawing on as you watch protests in Los Angeles? Not to sound too technical, but what's going on in Los Angeles is what's called in social science a 'contentious event.' It's not just contentious in the sense the National Guard and LAPD are in conflict with local protesters. It's contentious in the sense that it gets read very differently by different constituencies. When I went to Fox News over the weekend, its language was, 'Riots are gripping Los Angeles.' Conversely, other headlines emphasize a military-style crackdown. So there's evidence for either side to make a story that's consistent with their prior beliefs. And so if your frustration with the liberal media in the era of George Floyd was, 'They're telling me these events are peaceful, but I just watched the Minneapolis Police Station go up in flames,' this is more evidence of how the radical left is engaging in violence and is hypocritical when they say 'We are peaceful, but January 6 was violent.' As people are pushed to their corners, the event can be read in a way that affirms a conservative story. And of course, from the liberal side, there's lots of evidence of excess force by the state like, 'Why are they shooting flash bangs and tear gas?' There's this clip of an officer shooting a reporter, which is one more step in any kind of authoritarian transition. In that sense, if you believe that, then militant resistance to this repressive set of policies is justified. That's all to say, there was and still is a lot of contention in whether the Floyd protests were violent or nonviolent. So, the way I think about this is it's not just tension on the ground, but there's narrative contention in how these different constituencies read these events and use them to affirm stories that go back to 2020, and even before. The civil rights movement of the 1960s had real official leaders, who could make strategic choices. That doesn't exist in LA, or in many contemporary protests. Is that a fundamental hurdle facing protests today? That's exactly right, and that's one of the core differences between the more traditional Civil Rights movement and a lot of the activism that we see today. A core challenge of any movement is how do you get a bunch of people to meet at a certain place and a certain time — that coordination problem is now vastly simplified because of the internet. The advantage of that is it radically lowers the cost of organizing. But the disadvantage is, it means you have no organizing body that can help to impose message discipline on a movement or to rein in somebody who might be behaving in a way that undermines the larger message. We're in this transition where movements are really struggling to figure out how to adapt to that radical decentralization. Democratic voters want politicians who will stand up to Trump. But swing voters or less engaged voters are generally put off by images like cars burning in the street. What's the tightrope walk that someone like Gov. Gavin Newsom is doing right now politically? The classic pattern historically is that an elected official, Democrat or Republican, will condemn rioting, looting or violence, but will say 'We believe deeply in freedom of association and the First Amendment and the right to assemble.' That's such a standard refrain at this point. But where I think there is a tightrope walk and where politicians often fail, is in their inability to articulate why it is people are so angry. And so whether it's around the Rodney King decision or to fast forward to the present, the sense that these mass deportations are harmful, if politicians can't give a pretty full-throated articulation of what's mobilizing people in the streets, then the sort of routine condemnation of violence will typically feel very hollow. The tightrope walk for Newsom or Bass or national figures is that they're trying to hold this diverse coalition together, from an 'Abolish ICE' end of the continuum, to a more moderate, pro-law-and-order end of the continuum. And they need to speak to both of those sets of concerns in a way that feels credible and also doesn't alienate the other. When I was walking in the neighborhood near where I work in Oakland, somebody had both a Black Lives Matter sign on their front lawn and a sign that said this house is patrolled by a private security company. That, to me, captures some of who these voters are. There's a non-trivial chunk of the Democratic base that is pro-Black equality — and wants order. Should Democrats be worried they'll get hurt politically because of the LA protests and images of burning cars? I think it's too early to expect there to be political consequences for this. That's not just because we're a year and a half from 2026, but also because so far, the amount of property damage is relatively contained. Nobody's been killed to my knowledge. And those are the sorts of things that tend to really raise the salience of an event like this. So while it certainly has become national news and is almost certainly polarizing the electorate, the only way this will matter in the election is if it keeps happening. The other scenario is there's some risk for Trump. If there's an incident where the state is engaging in some spectacle of excess violence, that also could move the median voter into being more critical of Trump's policies. Since the 1960s, it seems like liberals have believed mass mobilization leads naturally to political change, whereas conservatives have been less interested in developing mass movements — conservative protests, when they do occur, are usually smaller in scale. What do you make of that continued distinction? Fundamentally, I agree with you. It is worth noting that the Tea Party is an important right-of- center mobilization. It's also probably worth thinking of Trumpism and Make America Great Again as not just conservative, but as reactionary. MAGA is a nostalgic motto, 'We have to return to some glorious past.' And much of what Trump has done in terms of policy is also about turning the clock back on various policies. Usually, the right tends to be almost by definition for preserving the status quo. And so you do have movements like the pro-life movement that had both national protests and mobilizations against abortion facilities. But on the whole, if you're looking to preserve the status quo, then that doesn't lend itself to taking to the streets as much. But in some sense, Trumpism is actually not status quo preserving, and it's more about trying to return to policies of years or decades past. His rallies also serve a little bit as a place where that kind of mobilizing energy manifests. In general, though, there's much more of that on the left than the right. Going back to the Civil Rights movement and then the long echo of feminist and disability rights and gay rights movements that follow, there's just a tradition on the left of these movements that seek change. If you had advice for people on the left or right engaged in protest, what would it be? What my and other research suggests is that a lot of how protests are effective is in terms of making an issue salient in the news. By making it salient in the news, they make it top of mind for the public. To give two examples, the Tea Party helped bring debt to the forefront of national debate. And then Occupy Wall Street helped bring inequality to the forefront of national conversation. By having message discipline and trying to focus the media on their concerns, a protest movement can influence what's top of mind for the public. The other dimension of that, though, is whether that coverage is positive or negative. Part of where violence can potentially harm a movement is you make your issue salient, but the coverage is quite negative toward the movement. Mass deportations are more salient in the news right now, but if the coverage is quite negative toward a movement, that can make it salient and move people away from your side of the issue. So there's this balancing act of trying to draw media attention, which often requires drama and conflict — but to do it in a way that ideally produces sympathetic coverage so that you're growing your coalition.
Politico
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Politico
Which Party Should Be Worried About the Politics of the LA Protests?
Two hotly competing narratives have emerged over the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles and President Donald Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard and Marines to California. On one side, the protests symbolize crucial resistance to abuse and overreach by the Trump administration. On the other, radicals are torching cars and the troops are needed to restore law and order. The ultimate political fallout is still unknown. But one scholar who has drilled deep into the subject is Omar Wasow, a professor at UC Berkeley who published a paper in 2020 showing that non-violent protest — especially when met with violence from the state — shifted public opinion toward the Civil Rights Movement, while protester-initiated violence fueled a right-wing backlash. The paper happened to come out less than a week before the murder of George Floyd and it caused a stir, with commentators across the political spectrum citing Wasow's work, and one pollster even losing his job over suggesting that violent protest could hurt Democrats' election chances. So, will the LA protests harm Democrats' political prospects this time around? In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Wasow said it was too early to make predictions about the political consequences and noted that so far property damage had been relatively contained, with no loss of life. Trump, meanwhile, could face his own political risk if the state engages in 'some spectacle of excess violence,' he said. Wasow also previewed some of his other work that has yet to be published, which includes some depressing, if not entirely surprising, conclusions about where things might go from here. 'Violence works a bit like a bat signal, both for Trump and for the anti-ICE movement,' he said. 'People who are pro-Trump get mobilized to be more pro-Trump. And people who are anti-Trump get mobilized on behalf of the anti-mass deportation movement.' This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Tell me what you've found in your research about the political effects of when protests turn violent. Looking at the Civil Rights Era from about 1960 to 1972, what I find is that in the earlier period of the Civil Rights Movement, most of the violence was state violence against protesters and the protest movements were overwhelmingly peaceful. Protesters were mostly using nonviolent tactics. That generates media coverage that emphasizes civil rights, and then ultimately voting behavior shifts in favor of the Democratic coalition, which is the pro-Civil Rights coalition in the '60s. But in the later period of the 1960s, we see more protester-initiated violence. These are events that have historically been called urban riots. That generates media coverage that emphasizes crime, disorder, riots, and the public opinion in counties near those events shift toward more concern about crime, concern about law and order, and vote more conservatively and toward the Republican coalition, which is the law and order coalition at the time. In contemporary rhetoric, there's one school of thought that says, 'Tactics don't matter. You're going to get painted as violent no matter what.' And I find that, at least in the 1960s, tactics really did matter, and nonviolent tactics, particularly nonviolent tactics met by state repression, moved public opinion in favor of civil rights. Fast forwarding to the present, there's a variety of evidence from other countries that suggests it's not just violence, but more broadly what is perceived as extreme tactics that tend to cause people to disidentify with protesters and with their cause, and that leads to a lowering of support. So there's this process by which people are watching the story unfold, and they're writing themselves into or out of that story. What do you make of the protests in Los Angeles, and the potential for public reaction? One thing I'm still puzzling over a little is that in the 1960s, the violence was at a totally different scale. Watts in 1965 or [the Rodney King protests in] Los Angeles in 1992 even, there's thousands of recorded incidents of arson, and there were 37 people killed in Watts in 1965 — that's also often by groups like the National Guard coming in and firing lots of ammunition. So, in some ways, five Waymos and some graffiti, it's very easy to imagine that we're just a couple of news cycles away from moving on to the next thing. That's one scenario. But I think a more likely scenario relates to some unpublished work that I've been working on. This is about how violence works a bit like a bat signal, both for Trump and for the anti-ICE movement. People who are pro-Trump get mobilized to be more pro-Trump. And people who are anti-Trump get mobilized on behalf of the anti-mass deportation movement. One thing we're seeing is these parallel protests in San Francisco and other cities where people are now being called to action by what they're seeing in Los Angeles. And I would also expect that the counter mobilization, the pro-mass deportation movement, gets activated too. So what's happening in Los Angeles is polarizing and also mobilizing. I think we're going to see more of these anti-mass deportation protests around the country. How does the continued backlash to the George Floyd protests and the 2020 moment in America impact this week? What historical analogues are you drawing on as you watch protests in Los Angeles? Not to sound too technical, but what's going on in Los Angeles is what's called in social science a 'contentious event.' It's not just contentious in the sense the National Guard and LAPD are in conflict with local protesters. It's contentious in the sense that it gets read very differently by different constituencies. When I went to Fox News over the weekend, its language was, 'Riots are gripping Los Angeles.' Conversely, other headlines emphasize a military-style crackdown. So there's evidence for either side to make a story that's consistent with their prior beliefs. And so if your frustration with the liberal media in the era of George Floyd was, 'They're telling me these events are peaceful, but I just watched the Minneapolis Police Station go up in flames,' this is more evidence of how the radical left is engaging in violence and is hypocritical when they say 'We are peaceful, but January 6 was violent.' As people are pushed to their corners, the event can be read in a way that affirms a conservative story. And of course, from the liberal side, there's lots of evidence of excess force by the state like, 'Why are they shooting flash bangs and tear gas?' There's this clip of an officer shooting a reporter, which is one more step in any kind of authoritarian transition. In that sense, if you believe that, then militant resistance to this repressive set of policies is justified. That's all to say, there was and still is a lot of contention in whether the Floyd protests were violent or nonviolent. So, the way I think about this is it's not just tension on the ground, but there's narrative contention in how these different constituencies read these events and use them to affirm stories that go back to 2020, and even before. The civil rights movement of the 1960s had real official leaders, who could make strategic choices. That doesn't exist in LA, or in many contemporary protests. Is that a fundamental hurdle facing protests today? That's exactly right, and that's one of the core differences between the more traditional Civil Rights movement and a lot of the activism that we see today. A core challenge of any movement is how do you get a bunch of people to meet at a certain place and a certain time — that coordination problem is now vastly simplified because of the internet. The advantage of that is it radically lowers the cost of organizing. But the disadvantage is, it means you have no organizing body that can help to impose message discipline on a movement or to rein in somebody who might be behaving in a way that undermines the larger message. We're in this transition where movements are really struggling to figure out how to adapt to that radical decentralization. Democratic voters want politicians who will stand up to Trump. But swing voters or less engaged voters are generally put off by images like cars burning in the street. What's the tightrope walk that someone like Gov. Gavin Newsom is doing right now politically? The classic pattern historically is that an elected official, Democrat or Republican, will condemn rioting, looting or violence, but will say 'We believe deeply in freedom of association and the First Amendment and the right to assemble.' That's such a standard refrain at this point. But where I think there is a tightrope walk and where politicians often fail, is in their inability to articulate why it is people are so angry. And so whether it's around the Rodney King decision or to fast forward to the present, the sense that these mass deportations are harmful, if politicians can't give a pretty full-throated articulation of what's mobilizing people in the streets, then the sort of routine condemnation of violence will typically feel very hollow. The tightrope walk for Newsom or Bass or national figures is that they're trying to hold this diverse coalition together, from an 'Abolish ICE' end of the continuum, to a more moderate, pro-law-and-order end of the continuum. And they need to speak to both of those sets of concerns in a way that feels credible and also doesn't alienate the other. When I was walking in the neighborhood near where I work in Oakland, somebody had both a Black Lives Matter sign on their front lawn and a sign that said this house is patrolled by a private security company. That, to me, captures some of who these voters are. There's a non-trivial chunk of the Democratic base that is pro-Black equality — and wants order. Should Democrats be worried they'll get hurt politically because of the LA protests and images of burning cars? I think it's too early to expect there to be political consequences for this. That's not just because we're a year and a half from 2026, but also because so far, the amount of property damage is relatively contained. Nobody's been killed to my knowledge. And those are the sorts of things that tend to really raise the salience of an event like this. So while it certainly has become national news and is almost certainly polarizing the electorate, the only way this will matter in the election is if it keeps happening. The other scenario is there's some risk for Trump. If there's an incident where the state is engaging in some spectacle of excess violence, that also could move the median voter into being more critical of Trump's policies. Since the 1960s, it seems like liberals have believed mass mobilization leads naturally to political change, whereas conservatives have been less interested in developing mass movements — conservative protests, when they do occur, are usually smaller in scale. What do you make of that continued distinction? Fundamentally, I agree with you. It is worth noting that the Tea Party is an important right-of- center mobilization. It's also probably worth thinking of Trumpism and Make America Great Again as not just conservative, but as reactionary. MAGA is a nostalgic motto, 'We have to return to some glorious past.' And much of what Trump has done in terms of policy is also about turning the clock back on various policies. Usually, the right tends to be almost by definition for preserving the status quo. And so you do have movements like the pro-life movement that had both national protests and mobilizations against abortion facilities. But on the whole, if you're looking to preserve the status quo, then that doesn't lend itself to taking to the streets as much. But in some sense, Trumpism is actually not status quo preserving, and it's more about trying to return to policies of years or decades past. His rallies also serve a little bit as a place where that kind of mobilizing energy manifests. In general, though, there's much more of that on the left than the right. Going back to the Civil Rights movement and then the long echo of feminist and disability rights and gay rights movements that follow, there's just a tradition on the left of these movements that seek change. If you had advice for people on the left or right engaged in protest, what would it be? What my and other research suggests is that a lot of how protests are effective is in terms of making an issue salient in the news. By making it salient in the news, they make it top of mind for the public. To give two examples, the Tea Party helped bring debt to the forefront of national debate. And then Occupy Wall Street helped bring inequality to the forefront of national conversation. By having message discipline and trying to focus the media on their concerns, a protest movement can influence what's top of mind for the public. The other dimension of that, though, is whether that coverage is positive or negative. Part of where violence can potentially harm a movement is you make your issue salient, but the coverage is quite negative toward the movement. Mass deportations are more salient in the news right now, but if the coverage is quite negative toward a movement, that can make it salient and move people away from your side of the issue. So there's this balancing act of trying to draw media attention, which often requires drama and conflict — but to do it in a way that ideally produces sympathetic coverage so that you're growing your coalition.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Yahoo
‘Resilience Amid Resistance': New marker reveals Virginia's fraught journey to school integration
Two graduates of Rockingham County Public Schools joined plaintiffs in two key lawsuits that led to the desegregation of schools in Virginia, unveiling a new state marker to tell their stories. Pictured from left are Pria Dua, Charles Alexander, Bett Kilby and Elizabeth Kidd. (Nathaniel Cline/Virginia Mercury) A state historical marker titled 'Resilience Amid Resistance' now stands on the Western District U.S. Courthouse grounds in Harrisonburg, where a Virginia judge twice upheld the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to desegregate schools in America, allowing local Black students to attend white schools and access an equal education. Betty Kilby was the lead plaintiff in one of the Virginia cases stemming from localities' failure to comply with the high court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling, part of the state's Massive Resistance policy to buck desegregation, history referenced in the marker unveiled on Saturday. At the unveiling ceremony, Kilby said that when her father James Wilson lost his land and lived an enslaved lifestyle, he vowed his children would have a better life and fought in court to get them an education equal in quality to that of the white children in Warren County, where the family lived. A judge ruled in the family's favor, ordering Kilby's local high school to be integrated, according to a personal narrative Kilby shared with the American Psychological Association. Although the state then closed the school for six months to delay Black and white pupils learning together, the Virginia Supreme Court dismantled Massive Resistance in January 1959 and the school reopened, with Kilby and 22 other Black students attending at first by themselves and then alongside white students. Attending the desegregated school from 8th grade to her senior year was traumatic and intimidating, Kilby recalled at the event, saying she had been called names and was attacked by white students. 'It was pretty consistent all five years, and it got worse in my senior year because my whole attitude changed,' said Kilby. 'I didn't care whether I lived or died.' The marker's unveiling in the city of Harrisonburg fell on the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The emblem of Virginia's fraught educational history was the brainchild of two then-high school students, as part of the Farmville Tour Guides Project. The project's goal is to connect modern-day students with the stories of students who lived through the turbulent Civil Rights Era and paved the way for generations of integrated education. 'We wanted to keep going solely for the reason of continuing to be able to share their story,' said Pria Dua, a Rockingham County Public Schools graduate, adding that she and her collaborators wanted to make the monumental court desegregation decisions a permanent symbol. Elizabeth Kidd, a Rockingham County graduate who worked with Dua, said the two met many 'incredible people' during the research process. She said it was only fitting to support telling their stories. 'A lot of them, still today, are still trying to get their story out there, or make known this history that happened and I think the marker was kind of just like sitting there for us as a way for us to keep working,' Kidd said. Although it was a lengthy process, Kidd and Dua said one of the keys to installing the marker was the support they received — from the community, lawmakers including U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and U.S. Rep. Ben Cline, R-Botetourt, and the Virginia Board of Historic Resources, which approved the manufacture and installation of the historical marker last September. Virginia has more than 2,600 state markers, which are primarily maintained by the Virginia Department of Transportation, according to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, except in those localities outside of VDOT's authority. Rocktown History, a museum, archive and genealogy library, covered the unspecified costs of the marker. According to the Department of Historic Resources, the cost to create a marker is approximately $3,000. For localities outside of VDOT's jurisdiction, there is a $415 charge for the post. The students worked with Harrisonburg City Council, judges at the federal court, Virginia Board of Education member and former Virginia Secretary of Education Anne Holton and Kaine to obtain approval for the marker to be placed on federal property. The Farmville Tour Guides Project, the student-led independent study that has operated for over a year and one of the driving forces behind the new marker, allows students to explore Virginia's Civil Rights history through accounts of figures like Barbara Johns. In 1951, Johns led a student strike at R.R. Moton High School in Prince Edward County in protest of the unequal conditions of her segregated school. The protest, along with lawsuits by the NAACP, were crucial to the success of the Brown v. Board of Education case. Joan Johns Cobbs, a Moton student striker, plaintiff in the Brown v. Board case and the sister of the late Barbara Johns, was one of several guests at Saturday's ceremony. Other guests included Charles Alexander, the youngest plaintiff in the Allen v. Charlottesville case, in which federal judge John Paul Jr. issued the first school desegregation order in the commonwealth to favor the NAACP against Charlottesville City Public Schools. Alexander is a member of the 'Charlottesville 12,' named for the first 12 Black students who attended the city's all-white public schools in 1959. Ann Rhodes Baltimore, the first Black graduate of a desegregated school in Virginia, was also present. With cases of Black history being omitted or minimized in school curricula, Alexander told the Mercury before Saturday's marker unveiling, it's important to continue passing on such historical stories of segregation and discrimination. He hopes the public would remember the story of his fellow plaintiffs, similar to that of Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to desegregate an all-white school in the South. 'We just didn't all of a sudden appear; there were folks that sacrificed, gave up their jobs and made a commitment for this to come about, and so we need to share that,' Alexander said. The Farmville Tour Guides Project also stemmed from a desire for students to learn about Black Virginians' historic struggle for equal educational opportunity. The project was founded in 2015 by Beau Dickenson, supervisor of history studies at Rockingham County Public Schools, and history teacher Owen Longacre at Spotswood High School in Rockingham County. Dickenson said both educators were surprised to see that the Moton story was not covered in Virginia's public education curriculum, which spurred them into action. 'We just thought that that was such a tragic shame given the significance of that event,' Dickenson said. 'It felt like it had been omitted from history. So we wanted to amplify that story, but we also because of the nature of that story thought this has to be something different than just a field trip. This needs to be something that's active and engaged.' Dua and Kidd also worked with three other students on the Knocking Down Walls documentary about school desegregation featured nationally on Good Morning America. Holton, the event's keynote speaker, said amid the concerns and questions about how students are doing in Virginia's public schools, students like Dua and Kidd are examples of incredible work pupils in the state are undertaking. Holton is the daughter of former Gov. Linwood Holton, who ended Massive Resistance in Virginia. 'I'm going to be at a Board of Education meeting next week (and) I'm going to tell them that the kids are all right,' Holton said. ' The future is in great hands, and these incredible teachers — this is public education at its best.' Holton also talked about the courage of the plaintiffs, the attorneys, and judges in desegregation cases. She said judges were threatened and one even had a cross burned in front of their home, a once-common practice of the white supremacist terror group, the Ku Klux Klan. Holton said she hopes judges in Harrisonburg, and nationwide, 'will be inspired by this marker every day as they walk past it going into the courthouse and courthouses like it all across the country to that resilience amid resistance that we all need to have that's so crucial to what makes our country work.' Saturday's unveiling, hosted by Rockingham County Public Schools, Rocktown History, and the City of Harrisonburg, was capped off with students from the Farmville Tour Guides Project presenting a companion exhibition on the fight for school equality across Virginia at the Moton Museum in Farmville, formerly the high school where Johns led the historic student protest. Dickenson said the exhibit showcases how students are engaging in civic life and using history to inform action. Cainan Townsend, executive director for the Moton Museum, said the efforts by area students to apply for the marker, develop a museum exhibit and seek out historical information have been impressive. 'I think it's really young people deciding that our history is more than battle sites,' Townsend said. 'Our history is more than just these 10, 15 (and) 20 people you think are important. There are important stories from all parts of Virginia, and by increasing the volume and the diversity of these historical markers, I think that's a great way to show that.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
The Hindu
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Doubt comes to Bengaluru, courtesy Poochu's Productions
Have you ever been beset by uncertainty over what you have always known to be true? Doubt written by John Patrick Shanley in 2004, puts human relationships and emotions under an unforgiving microscope, and this weekend, Chennai-based Poochu's Productions brings this play to Bengaluru. Set in Chicago in 1964, Doubt is centred around accusations of an inappropriate relationship between a Catholic priest and a child. Denver Anthony Nicholas, who has directed this adaptation, says the reason this play was chosen was, 'the way it allowed the audience to make their own decision.' He adds that Doubt does not tell you who is right or wrong, 'it just leaves you in the grey area of assumptions and accusations.' 'What makes Doubt different is that it not only brings about the awareness of an issue, but also an awareness of the people involved.' Denver elaborates how the mother of the child in the play ponders if the priest is at fault or 'if it was in her son's nature'. It is an interesting, insightful take on human behaviour and perception, says the director. Though there are layers to the script crafted around the Civil Rights Era, Denver says it is the mother's observation that cemented the choice of play for him and lead actor Karthik TM. The duo, who pored over scores of scripts, decided against an Indian adaptation or contextualisation of Doubt when they finally settled on it. With Doubt set in a certain time period, other iterations of this play have seen adaptations of Indian characters to fit the narrative. 'This was something I didn't want to do because I believe 99 out of 100 theatre-goers are sensible people who will understand the setting in which the script was penned,' says Denver. And even though Doubt is positioned in the context of a Catholic setup, the questions it throws up are applicable to any human circumstance and situation. 'It makes you doubt everything about human relationships,' he adds. 'Doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite,' reads the preface to Doubt by playwright John Patrick Shanley and sets the tone for the play which runs for 90 minutes. The play is tightly knit with performances by Deepa Nambiar as Sister Aloysius, Father Flynn played by TM Karthik, Abinaya Ravindranathan as Sister James and Dakshana Rajaram as Mrs Muller. Doubt by Poochu's Productions will be staged at Ranga Shankara on May 18 at 3.30pm and 7.30pm. Open to those aged 16 and above. Tickets on BookMyShow.
