Category Archives: Viva!

Biohemia – Para Siempre Paz – YouTube

Biohemia – Para Siempre Paz – YouTube.

Chile students’ debts go up in smoke | World news | The Guardian

For a whole year, a Chilean artist using the name Fried Potatoes (Papas Fritas) planned his revenge. Saying he was collecting material for an art project, the 31-year-old visual artist sneaked into a vault at a notorious private, run-for-profit university and quietly removed tuition contracts.

Fried Potatoes – whose real name is Francisco Tapia – then burned the documents, rendering it nearly impossible for the Universidad del Mar to call in its debt – which he claimed was worth as much as $500m (£297m). “It’s over. You are all free of debt,” he said in a five-minute video released earlier this month. Speaking to former students, he added: “You don’t have to pay a penny.”

Tapia’s move is just the most radical of a three-year campaign by students and children to demand free, improved public education. With monthly marches– and four former student leaders elected to parliament – the students have built a potent citizen’s movement rarely seen in post-Pinochet Chile.

This week, they claimed their biggest victory so far when the president, Michelle Bachelet, outlined a multibillion-dollar package of educational reforms and invesment. “Chile needs and the people have clamoured for this reform, which must transform quality education into a right,” Bachelet said at a bill-signing ceremony. Her proposals include an end to state subsidies to for-profit universities and schools, and – potentially – the introduction of free university education for all. While Bachelet spoke, students outside the congressional hall scattered ashes from the burned Universidad del Mar documents in symbolic protest against for-profit educational scams.

via Chile students’ debts go up in smoke | World news | The Guardian.

Finding Common Ground in Our Stand for the Earth

When I am asked who I am and where I come from I am able to answer with one word, Penahwabskek. Penahwabskek is the name of a place, ‘the place where the white rocks come out of the water’, and; it is the name of a people, the tribal nation who makes its home along the waters of the Penobscot River. For me, being Penahwabskek means that my roots are embedded in the land and nourished by the waters of the Penobscot River.

via Finding Common Ground in Our Stand for the Earth.