Global Mobilization of Youth for Climate Change

Pretty fascinating how kids/youth (i.e. high schoolers and younger) are organizing on issues which they believe directly impact their security and well-being,  both at present and in the future.  This happened on Friday March 15, 2019 with the Fridays for Future global protests for climate change action, started by a Swedish teen. For more context on the protests, see this WaPo article.

Source: Fridays For Future webpage

There's been similar youth movements such as March For Our Lives advocating tighter gun control. With the horrific mosque shooting in New Zealand last week (or white supremacist terrorism - whichever way you want to label or frame  the story), I wouldn't be surprised if global youth activism on this issue becomes bigger.

It's great that the next generation are mobilizing on matters of global concern.  Social science research on life experiences during one's formative years suggests that these teens will be more civic-minded and politically engaged as they grow older.  Their longer term impact is less clear. Will they influence their peers (i.e. their generation)  which can help shift cultural/political norms. Will their activism help reframe existing debates and generate new ideas to existing problems which resonate with the "adults" right now? As the current youth get older, will their positions shift (or will they become jaded) as they recognize the power of corporate interests, prevailing socio-economic structures, and other national priorities which challenge their position?

Controversy over School for Children with Disabilities in South Korea

My wife had mentioned this story to me last week as she watched a video with concern about local opposition against building a school for children with disabilities. This week, Sejong Society's news digest included a story on this. I'm pasting it below verbatim since it's a good summary. In essence,  parents pleading with other local residents to permit officials to build a school for their children with disabilities were shouted and jeered at. Allegedly, residents fear that building such a school would lower their property value. 

While such not-in-my-backyard protests are common occurrences, this one really struck a nerve (or the heart) as it involved children with disabilities. I watched the impassioned speech/presentation of one of the parents. It was heart-wrenching to hear her plead with the audience to permit her child to go to school. She asked if they too don't understand as a parent how important education is. After they started cursing at her, she responded by saying she would take their verbal abuse and beating, but she could never give up on the school. The video ends with parents on their knees (a common gesture of humility in Korea when begging/pleading) receiving more verbal abuse. 

This episode is probably not representative of Korea, which I think has made great strides in raising disability awareness and making their society more handicap accessible. But the episode does lead to some interesting questions about the disability rights movement in Korea?

- What is the history of disability rights in Korea?
- Has it been relatively easy or difficult to frame disability rights issues in the Korean context. 
- How advanced is Korea when it comes to disability access/awareness
- And in the specific episode in Gangseo district, why was there so much opposition against the school and how (a)typical is such a response? Would this have occurred in Kangnam (a much wealthier) district, and if so, what would it imply about the relationship between wealth/status and attitude towards 

 The Sejong Society news digest post is below:


Special Needs Education in South Korea

Andrew Jung

On Sept 13, 2017, South Korea’s Education Minister, Sang-kon Kim announced that 18 new special needs schools will be built over the next five years to accommodate children with disabilities. This is seen as a breakthrough for South Korean students with disabilities and their families as more special needs schools were urged to be built as many regular schools were inadequate in meeting their needs. 

The announcement came amid calls for more special needs schools becoming vocal after a viral video earlier in September showed parents kneeling before the residents in Gangseo District located in western Seoul, begging for a special needs school to be built while some of the residents jeered at them (See the full video here in Korean). The video came from a hearing by education officials on Sept 5, 2017, discussing a potential construction project. The parents of the special needs children wanted a special needs school built while other residents opposed it, pushing for a traditional medicine school. The residents were worried about their real estate value further declining and some accused the parents kneeling for “theatrics.”

According to disability advocates, the incident shows the difficulties of having special needs schools built in various areas in South Korea due to local residents fiercely opposing them and increasing pressure on their elected representatives to intervene. However, the recent incident increased public sympathy and support with over 80,000 people signing a petition for the special needs school to be built. Education Minister Sang-kon Kim in announcing the plan to build the new schools commented “there still seems to be a lot of prejudices and misunderstandings regarding not only disabled people in our society but other social minority groups such as multicultural families and North Korea defectors,” South Korean lawmaker, Seong-yep Yu who chairs the education committee said that providing the appropriate education services should be guaranteed as a human right. 

According to South Korea’s Ministry of Education, there are 174 special needs schools nationwide that serve less than 30 percent of over 89,000 children with physical and mental disabilities. Only 29 of those schools are located in Seoul. Over 2,300 of those students often have to commute more than a hour to those schools. Gangseo District from the video is considered to be has some of the highest numbers of students who need special education, aging from early childhood to their 20’s and has disabilities ranging from physical to intellectual disability.

Disability advocates said that many regular schools lack the resources to assist disabled students, such as physical therapy and counseling. The students can also be susceptible to bullying. According to Eun-ja Lee of Korean Parents’ Network for the People with Disabilities, special needs schools can help those students improve their livelihood and increase their independence by providing individualized vocational training.

Social Movements in the U.S.: Recent Headlines in the Washington Post

For a blog with the title "social movements" there's admittedly a paucity of postings. However, a couple articles in the Washington Post Sun. (May 8) edition about recent protest movements jive with academic theory on social movements.

The first is about Black Lives Matter, which has reportedly "entered a new phase — one more focused on policy than protest." With Trump now in office, activists are taking a different strategy moving from the streets to the halls of government. Quoting Stephen Zunes, the Post article elaborates on the importance of transitioning from formal to informal politics:

Black Lives Matter’s transition from street protests to policy is not unusual, said Stephen Zunes, a University of San Francisco professor who studies social movements. It’s through such work that a movement’s priorities — like mandatory use of officer body cameras — can become national standards, he said.

“That’s actually the way effective social movements often work or behave,” Zunes said, pointing to the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in the wake of the financial crisis as a counterexample. “What the Occupy people did not learn, or by and large do, is go do the lobbying, the organizing to make change happen. They wound up fetishizing the ‘occupy’ part, and then, by and large, it fizzled.”   

The second article focuses on Dana Fisher's (from U.Maryland) work on protests movements. Some of her findings on recent protests movement in DC: the women's march, march for science (see Michael Heaney's observations here), climate change include the following:

• They are overwhelmingly people who voted for Clinton in the last election
• Marchers are well educated with over 75% holding a bachelor's degree
• Many first time demonstrators were present, and many cited Facebook as a source for finding out about the protest
• The motive for coming out to protest are variegated (i.e. it's usually not a single issue area like labor, environment, peace etc...)
• Trump's victory is a motivator for showing up, even though protest organizers state protests are not anti-Trump events

North Korea and Revolutions

Here's a piece by Andrei Lankov evaluating the possibility of revolution in North Korea based on five indicators in James DeFronzo's book “Revolutions and Revolutionary Movements” whether a society is ripe for a revolt. It's overly simplistic, and you can't just check boxes - the causal conditions and antecedents (both structural and agent-driven) are probably more complicated. But it's still worth going through this thought experiment.

Japan-Korea Relations and Comfort Women

(Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images)

I have an unfinished blog post discussing Brad Glosserman and Scott Snyder's recent book, The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash. Unfortunately, I can't resurrect it at the moment because its on my old laptop.

Anyway, in light of last month's comfort women "resolution" I'm putting links to two good articles assessing where things stand at the moment. The first appears in CFR's Asia Unbound blog where Scott Snyder commends President Park and Prime Minister Abe's "act of political leadership and statesmanship" but then lays out challenges for both governments in maintaining forward momentum. The biggest and most immediate challenge related to satisfying the comfort women themselves, who were shut-out of the process (for not entirely bad reasons contrary to what activists might claim) and the removal of the comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. The second is from Celeste Arrington who highlights the perspective of the comfort women and their advocacy movement since the 1990s, shedding additional insight on the challenge in satisfying victims' grievances.

The Movement for Gun Control

I was travelling a few weeks ago and emailed this article to myself about gun-control legislation getting shot down (sorry, bad pun) in the Senate. The defeat did come as a surprise given the growing momentum for tighter gun restriction among the American public, the bipartisan nature of a somewhat watered down and thus non-controversial idea to expand background checks (which 9 in 10 American support), and the moving appeal of parents of Newtown victims in Washington.

The blog post I drafted  in my head is now lost, but re-reading this piece, it was interesting to note how gun-control advocates are relying on a healthy mix of both formal and informal politics to challenge the pro-gun lobby and their supporters: 1) Shaming opposing Senators in their own state to force them to switch positions; 2) Helping put gun-control candidates in office to replace pro-gun politicians; 3) raise awareness and public consciousness through rallies, demonstrations, vigil, advertising, public forums etc...

Following the defeat, rormer Rep. Gabrielle Giffords wrote a scathing op-ed against the Senate. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) who voted against the expansion of the national gun ­background-check program has become one of the first targets of the movement. And potentially two Republicans may reconsider their vote following some changes to the current bill.  Some form of gun control will likely pass. Whether the measures are merely token offerings or substantively meaningful remains to be seen. 

Chick-fil-A and Campus Pride

An inspiring piece from Shane Windmeyer, founder of LGBT organization Campus Pride, in the Huffington Post.  This acts as a type of truce between Chick-fil-A and LGBT groups which boycotted Chick-fil-A last summer and demonstrates the courage and wisdom of Mr. Windmeyer and Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy. Initiated by Mr. Cathy, the two men began to engage in sincere, respectful dialouge to try and understand the perspectie of the other. Particular telling was Mr. Cathy's desire to first understand rather than be understood. At the same time, Mr. Cathy (nor Mr. Windmeyer) did not compromise his beliefs (i.e. his Biblical-based views about marriage defined as union between man and woman).

This dialouge resonates with the themes of some of my own research about discovering mutual respect and finding common ground among people despite polarization stemming from different worldviews. These lessons definitely apply to politics (i.e. read Congress). Windmeyer writes

"It is not often that people with deeply held and completely opposing viewpoints actually risk sitting down and listening to one another. We see this failure to listen and learn in our government, in our communities and in our own families. Dan Cathy and I would, together, try to do better than each of us had experienced before...It is about sitting down at a table together and sharing our views as human beings, engaged in real, respectful, civil dialogue.

Our mutual hope was to find common ground if possible, and to build respect no matter what. We learned about each other as people with opposing views, not as opposing people. During our meetings I came to see that the Chick-fil-A brand was being used by both sides of the political debate around gay marriage. The repercussion of this was a deep division and polarization that was fueling feelings of hate on all sides."

 

Out of this dialouge, Campus Pride has ended its campaign against Chick-fil-A.  Chick-fil-A has also diverted some of its philanthropy away from more controversial, political groups. This is not selling out or compromising beliefs - but an action fostered out of learning and growth through respectful dialouge.