AN EVENING WITH HUGO BLANCO: SOLIDARITY AT A TIME OF CLIMATE EMERGENCY

Posted on March 12, 2019 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged climate change, climate justice, collective action, environment, Extinction Rebellion, featured, Hugo Blanco, indigenous rights, land rights, non-violent action, peasant movements, Perù, rebellion, revolution, social movements, solidarity, South America, struggle, Zapatistas.

by Cristina Flores

Hugo Blanco – famously described by Latin American literary giant Eduardo Galeano as a man who was born twice. His first birth was in 1934, and he spent his early years living as a white boy in Cusco, a city where indigenous people were not allowed to walk on the pavement. Unphased by his skin colour, Hugo would play in the streets with his friends, speaking the local language of Quechua. Hugo Blanco’s second birth was at the age of ten. Upon hearing of a local landowner branding the skin of one of the peasants with his initials, Hugo Blanco, the ardent revolutionary was born. Such early consciousness of social injustice still fuels the man today, as I found out on the 27th February when I was lucky enough to attend an evening with Hugo, as part of the promotion of Derek Wall’s latest book, “Hugo Blanco – a revolutionary for life.” As a social activist myself, I was intrigued by what lessons could be learnt from a 20th century revolutionary legend.

THOUGHTS FROM THE FRONTLINE OF MARKETISATION – BEYOND TUITION FEES #3

Posted on April 19, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged Beyond Tuition Fees, collective action, consumer law, consumer rights, consumerism, contact hours, corbyn, counselling, course closures, education, Free Education, funding, government, higher education, Labour, market regulators, marketing, marketisation, office for students, picket lines, policy, postgraduate, postgraduate education officer, postgraduate tutors, precarious contracts, profit, public, regulation, research, risk, specialist courses, state-funded education, student protection plans, students, students' unions, Success as a Knowledge Economy, taxation, tef, Tories, tuition fees, UCU, UEA SU, uk, UK Research and Innovation, universities, university collapses, USS strike, utopianism.

By Maddie Colledge, UEA SU Postgraduate Education Officer

It is a time of extraordinary potential for change in UK Higher Education. Labour’s promise to end tuition fees has defied the critics and united many behind Corbyn’s political project. But what will the implications for universities be if this comes to pass? And what can we do to leverage this progress? In this series, the Norwich Radical and Bright Green are bringing together perspectives from across the sector to explore these questions.

CW: Mentions suicide

It’s common for arguments in favour of free education to be dismissed as abstract or utopian, and for students who promote it to be belittled as naïve. I fear that in our attempts to try to portray the significance of free education, we have fallen into a trap where the concept has become so expansive and broad, and the term so overused, that it has lost all meaning. We need to move away from talking about ‘free’ education, and towards articulating a vision more explicitly centred on ‘state-funded’ education or ‘public’ education. For me, the description ‘free’ makes the concept feel distanced from the viable possibility of education funded through public taxation, and does us no favours in making it reality.

IT’S OUR ‘YOUTHQUAKE’ – WHAT WILL WE MAKE OF IT?

Posted on December 27, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged activism, capitalism, collective action, consumerism, corporate power, crisis, democracy, ecological crisis, ecology, economic crisis, economics, elites, featured, future, GE17, government, housing crisis, individualism, inequality, jeremy corbyn, Labour, mental health, momentum, neoliberalism, organise, Oxford Dictionaries, political apathy, political parties, politics, possibility, poverty, snap election, society, technology, tuition fees, uk, wage stagnation, westminster, word of the year, young people, youth culture, youth engagement, youth politics, youth turnout, youthquake.

by Bradley Allsop

Young people can’t catch a break. On the one hand, we’re scolded and ridiculed for our apparent lack of engagement with traditional political institutions, which is generally assumed to be a result of our ‘laziness’ or ‘apathy’, with our disillusionment and distrust with politicians that have continually failed us apparently precluding our ‘right to complain’. On the other hand, when we do engage politically, in those rare moments when we do seek to take an active role in our futures, we’re painted as thuggish, fragile or naïve. In short, the message we continually get is: “engage – but not like that!”

SELF EDUCATION, NEW SOLUTIONS

Posted on September 26, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged adulthood, books, Brexit, capitalism, ChildLine, collective action, connectivity, consumerism, conversation, coping, corporations, democracy, disaster, education, environment, environmentalism, events, facts, free thought, globalisation, government, hope, ideology, individualism, information, information overload, knowledge, knowledge is power, learning, local groups, mental health, Naomi Klein, news, No Is Not Enough: Resisting The New Shock Politics, politicians, politics, power, reading, resistance, schools, security, self education, social consciousness, society, sociopolitical situation, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate, Trump, truth, voters, voting, young people.

by Laura Potts

Schools stand as institutions of education, aiming to enhance and aid growth in various forms. Children growing through the school system will eventually leave as adults. However, in my generation, there is a trend away from exploring a key part of adulthood: continued self education.

REVIVING CAMPUS ACTIVISM – A ROADMAP

Posted on July 6, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged academia, academic culture, academics, access, accessible academia, accountability, alliances, Apartheid, austerity, awareness, awareness raising, British political history, Campaign for Lincoln Democracy, campaign strategy, campaigning, campus culture, co-operation, co-operative university, collective action, communication, Community, culture, curricula, curriculum reform, decision making, democracy, democratic higher education, depoliticised unions, direct action, diversity, economics, economics education, elections, employment rights, escalation, experts, GE17, government, grassroots, higher education, hubris, international organising, investigative journalism, Lincoln SU, Lincoln University, listicles, lobbying, local media, manchester, media, neoliberalism, occupation, organising, petitions, pluralism, politics, Post-Crash Economics Society, postgraduate tutors, Queen's University Belfast Students' Union, Queens' University Belfast, radical media, referendum, Rethinking Economics, senior management, Social Science Centre Lincoln, startup media, strategy, student activism, student democracy, student elections, student experience scores, student life, student media, student societies, students, students' unions, teaching, teaching staff, trade unions, uk, uk politics, universities, university staff, War of Words, Warwick Anti-Casualisation, Warwick University, workers, workers rights, working conditions, WOW 2016, young people, youth turnout.

by Bradley Allsop

We live in turbulent times. The political establishment has been rocked again and again this last year. The government is embattled in a way it hasn’t been for 7 years and that rarest of things in British politics, change, is peeking its head above the parapet. What’s more, for the first time in my lifetime, it seems my generation is willing to be an active participant in all this. June’s election saw the highest rise in youth turnout in British political history – it reached its highest absolute level since 1992. It falls to those of us already engaged to fan this flame and help it spread beyond the ballot box, building the political courage and competencies of our fellows. Nowhere offers a better opportunity for us to do this than on university campuses.

STUDENTS NEED A REVOLUTION – STUDENTS AND THE ELECTION #1

Posted on May 11, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged #GE2017, 1848 revolutions, 1968 protests, abstention, academic freedom, anti-apartheid, Apartheid, apathy, BDS, boycott, catch-22, collective action, desperation, direct action, divestment, erosion of the state, fossil free, Free Palestine, general election, government, healthcare, higher education, hope, insecure employment, israel, jeremy corbyn, Labour, marketisation, minimum wage, misrepresentation, national student survey, non-voters, politics, power structures, privatisation, property ladder, protest, public sector, rebellion, sit ins, snap election, student as consumer, student debt, student loans, student politics, student vote, students, Students and the Election, tef, tony blair, Tories, trade unions, tuition fees, universities, voters, voting.

by Bradley Allsop

In the midst of multiple crises faced by students, universities and schools, the outcome of the snap general election will be a major indicator of the future of the UK education sector. Each week until the vote we are featuring perspectives from our regular contributors and guests on what the election could mean for students.

Students have been at the forefront of progressive politics and change throughout the centuries. We were engaged in the 1848 revolutions that shook Europe, and front and centre of a wave of radical protest that shook the world in 1968. We played a part in challenging apartheid in South Africa and the continued Israeli abuse of the Palestinian people. Most recently we are leading the way on fossil fuel divestment.

collective action

THOUGHTS FROM THE FRONTLINE OF MARKETISATION – BEYOND TUITION FEES #3

IT’S OUR ‘YOUTHQUAKE’ – WHAT WILL WE MAKE OF IT?

STUDENTS NEED A REVOLUTION – STUDENTS AND THE ELECTION #1

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