Provincial Farmers are now on the verge of being conquered by land grabbers as they are forced to sell their own lands due to the continuous rejection of crop price amidst the price spike of agricultural products. Commercial and residential establishments arises. Could this be the end for our farmers?
In 2011, I helped launch a movement to aid survivors on college campuses. That meant I also had to think hard about the rights of those under scrutiny.
First there was Harvey Weinstein. Then there was Kevin Spacey and the director Brett Ratner. Then Jeffrey Tambor and Louis C.K. Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Garrison Keillor. The accusations of sexual abuse that made the headlines were usually about famous men, and many of their victims were famous as well. Plenty of the allegations recounted abuses in the penthouse suites of luxury hotels. But ordinary people saw themselves in the stories, too. The boss who offered you extra shifts in exchange for a date. The meeting when you told the principal a classmate had raped you, and he suspended you instead. That time when you felt you could not say no. That time you said no, and it didn’t matter. So we said, “Me too.”
Others recognized themselves in a different aspect of the stories. They could be one of those men. They could be a name on a list.
Almost as soon as the first stories broke, critics and commentators raised concerns about the accused. What about due process?, they asked. I heard that question in two different tones. One was the even, perplexed voice of a real questioner, searching in good faith for answers: What is the best, fairest way to respond to troubling allegations? The other was indignant, loud, interrupting: How dare we threaten a man’s good name? How could that ever be fair? To these critics, any consequence at all was a violation of due process.
For those of us who had been involved in the movement to address campus sexual assaults, this backlash was familiar. In 2011, when I was an undergrad at Yale, I joined fifteen friends to file a complaint against the university with the U.S. Department of Education. By tolerating sexual harassment, including violence, against students like us, we said, the university had violated the law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools: Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments. The Department of Education investigated Yale and spurred it to change its policies. The school abandoned its opaque, labyrinthine reporting systems and débuted a clearer process for survivors to come forward. It also started publishing regular reports about what kinds of sexual-harassment complaints it had received and their outcomes, giving the community some insight into behind-the-scenes decisions. The process still wasn’t perfect, but it was much improved.
Around the same time, a friend of a friend named Dana Bolger was organizing against Amherst College’s handling of sexual abuses. We talked on the phone, and then over e-mail and on Facebook. Online, we connected with students and young alumni of other colleges who had faced similar issues. In those conversations, we swapped advocacy strategies, pooled our experiences, and came to see common threads. One was that few of us had known about our rights under Title IX when we needed them. During the summer of 2013, Dana and I decided to put together legal explainers for student survivors. We called the project Know Your IX. Working with other activists, we wrote up the basics of Title IX’s protections against sexual harassment and offered tips about organizing on campus. We published those resources on a Web site and distributed them on social media.
Know Your IX grew from a summer project to a national campaign. I wish I could say that it expanded because of our strategic insight. But the truth is that the scope of the problem and the need for an organized student voice was much greater than we had anticipated. Our first big action was a 2013 protest outside the Department of Education, at which we delivered a petition with more than a hundred and seventy-three thousand signatures, pushing the department to enforce Title IX and hold schools accountable for wrongdoings. Although we initially faced resistance from government officials, during the next few years many of our demands prompted changes in federal policy. The department started publicly announcing when its investigations turned up Title IX violations. It guaranteed that undocumented survivors could file Title IX complaints without risking deportation. And it clearly instructed schools to offer support services like mental-health care to survivors free of charge.
London is the capital city of England.
London is the capital city of England.
London is the capital city of England.
London is the capital city of England.
I can’t hardly remember the story that I’m about to tell, but I know for sure that something heartwarming happened during that specific day a few years ago.
While I was sitting on a long yellow horizontal chair outside Lazer Blaster’s lobby in Star City, accompanying all the bags of all my classmates that had gone inside the famous attraction, a tough-looking man approached me. He was walking towards me from the counter before the door where my classmates had gone to. He was wearing a deep-blue colored uniform of what seemed to be more formal compared to what his colleagues were wearing. When his towering height appeared before me as I sat on one of the long chairs, he asked me why I was alone there along with dozens of different bags surrounding me. I said, I’m waiting for my classmates to go back from playing laser guns inside the attraction. “Come with me.” he said, and turned backwards. He must have sensed that I’m not coming after him. In my brain were thoughts, fighting, as to what I should do. I couldn’t just leave my classmate’s belongings, while I’m curious as to what he meant by saying the words, “come with me,” while facing the counter before the door. Finally, he turned back facing me and grabbed some of the bags that he can carry and walked towards the counter which I followed afterwards as I’m aware he meant no harm. He instructed me to put all the bags near the counter where he put the other bags. A woman of a similar uniform was standing near the counter while doing some work. She’s probably his colleague and is the person in charge of the belongings in the counter. The man told me to come near him where I was slowly being surprised while walking as he pulled a vest from the cabinet along with a laser gun. He placed the vest on my torso and tightened it with a belt. I told him that the reason why I’m waiting for my classmates in the lobby was that I don’t have enough money to pay for the game. He told me that I don’t have to pay for it and that he’s the manager of the attraction. I was a bit teary back then. I thanked him with all I’ve got for he smiled back at me with emotional eyes and advised me to go play with my friends inside the attraction as if I’m his son. As the woman from the counter opened the door leading to the game, she smiled before me, the kind of smile when someone is glad that they’re able to help someone.
I was amazed by how the game looked on the inside. Black walls, black ceiling, and black floor surrounding the entire place that looked like a nightmare that has been given life by colors. Different variants of color sparked here and there, like that of a rainbow that suddenly appeared and I’m in awe of its vibrant color, staring at it for seconds. The lights were coming from the player’s guns, vests, and obstacles, giving the black space its current color. It was mesmerizing, I could never forget that moment. I laser shot one of my classmates while I was still outside the game, might be due to excitement. He hid in one of the obstacles with colorful lights in it as I rushed towards him. He asked me what was I doing inside and how did I came in. I told him everything and he told me how great it was that the manager let me in and have fun with them. It was the best day of my life, I told myself that day. And that I would cherish the opportunity to play this game along with my friends.
As soon as we came out of the door through the exit, I looked for the man to thank him once again, but he’s nowhere to be found.
This happened during our field trip as a third year in high school, and now that I’m 24, I kept wondering if the manager is still working at that attraction. How time flies so fast. I don’t think I can remember him if I had the chance to meet him again. Though I’m thinking of visiting that place again, maybe, once this pandemic ends. Soon, I hope.