#desmondtutu — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #desmondtutu, aggregated by home.social.
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New Tutu Documentary Comes home to Encounters After Berlin Win
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New Tutu Documentary Comes home to Encounters After Berlin Win
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New Tutu Documentary Comes home to Encounters After Berlin Win
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David Nihill tells the story of Dublin's Grapefruit Ladies.
On 19 July 1984, Mary Manning, a 21-year-old shop worker in the Henry Street, #Dublin outlet of #DunnesStores, refused to handle the sale of grapefruit from #SouthAfrica. She was joined by other workers, and the strike lasted until April 1987 when the Irish government banned the importation of South African goods.
Manning and her colleagues gained global recognition, and personal thanks from #DesmondTutu and #NelsonMandela.
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🏆 Der Friedensfilmpreis geht an „TUTU“ – eine Doku über Desmond Tutu.Die Jury lobt das Porträt als starkes Plädoyer für Gerechtigkeit & Menschlichkeit – politisch klar, menschlich nah. #Friedensfilmpreis #Berlinale #TUTU #DesmondTutu #DokuTipp https://www.boell.de/de/2026/02/20/41-friedensfilmpreis-tutu
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🏆 Der Friedensfilmpreis geht an „TUTU“ – eine Doku über Desmond Tutu.Die Jury lobt das Porträt als starkes Plädoyer für Gerechtigkeit & Menschlichkeit – politisch klar, menschlich nah. #Friedensfilmpreis #Berlinale #TUTU #DesmondTutu #DokuTipp https://www.boell.de/de/2026/02/20/41-friedensfilmpreis-tutu
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🏆 Der Friedensfilmpreis geht an „TUTU“ – eine Doku über Desmond Tutu.Die Jury lobt das Porträt als starkes Plädoyer für Gerechtigkeit & Menschlichkeit – politisch klar, menschlich nah. #Friedensfilmpreis #Berlinale #TUTU #DesmondTutu #DokuTipp https://www.boell.de/de/2026/02/20/41-friedensfilmpreis-tutu
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🏆 Der Friedensfilmpreis geht an „TUTU“ – eine Doku über Desmond Tutu.Die Jury lobt das Porträt als starkes Plädoyer für Gerechtigkeit & Menschlichkeit – politisch klar, menschlich nah. #Friedensfilmpreis #Berlinale #TUTU #DesmondTutu #DokuTipp https://www.boell.de/de/2026/02/20/41-friedensfilmpreis-tutu
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🏆 Der Friedensfilmpreis geht an „TUTU“ – eine Doku über Desmond Tutu.Die Jury lobt das Porträt als starkes Plädoyer für Gerechtigkeit & Menschlichkeit – politisch klar, menschlich nah. #Friedensfilmpreis #Berlinale #TUTU #DesmondTutu #DokuTipp https://www.boell.de/de/2026/02/20/41-friedensfilmpreis-tutu
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‘Tutu’ Offers a Joyous Inside Look at a Nobel Prize Winner (Exclusive Video)
#MovieNews #Movies #Berlin2026 #Berlinale #DesmondTutu #Documentaries #International #SamPollard -
“If you are #neutral in situations of #injustice, you have chosen the side of the #oppressor.”
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No matter the storms, the light always breaks through. Keep believing, keep pushing forward.
Full albums & more: https://zurl.co/520IV
#Hope #Inspiration #DesmondTutu #MotivationMonday #PositiveVibes #LightInTheDarkness #Music #Love
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No matter the storms, the light always breaks through. Keep believing, keep pushing forward.
Full albums & more: https://zurl.co/520IV
#Hope #Inspiration #DesmondTutu #MotivationMonday #PositiveVibes #LightInTheDarkness #Music #Love
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Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
Desmond Tutu (1931-2021) South African cleric, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Nobel Laureate
(Attributed)More about this quote: wist.info/tutu-desmond/33394/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #desmondtutu #tutu #actions #contribution #deeds #good #incrementalism #individual #meme #hereandnow #virtue
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Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
Desmond Tutu (1931-2021) South African cleric, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Nobel Laureate
(Attributed)More about this quote: wist.info/tutu-desmond/33394/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #desmondtutu #tutu #actions #contribution #deeds #good #incrementalism #individual #meme #hereandnow #virtue
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Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
Desmond Tutu (1931-2021) South African cleric, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Nobel Laureate
(Attributed)More about this quote: wist.info/tutu-desmond/33394/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #desmondtutu #tutu #actions #contribution #deeds #good #incrementalism #individual #meme #hereandnow #virtue
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Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
Desmond Tutu (1931-2021) South African cleric, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Nobel Laureate
(Attributed)More about this quote: wist.info/tutu-desmond/33394/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #desmondtutu #tutu #actions #contribution #deeds #good #incrementalism #individual #meme #hereandnow #virtue
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Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
Desmond Tutu (1931-2021) South African cleric, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Nobel Laureate
(Attributed)More about this quote: wist.info/tutu-desmond/33394/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #desmondtutu #tutu #actions #contribution #deeds #good #incrementalism #individual #meme #hereandnow #virtue
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just had this sent to me #bitsofgood #desmondtutu #bekind
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“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor” – Desmond Tutu
“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” – Elie Wiesel
“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral ” – Paulo Freire
“The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict…[an individual] who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it” – Martin Luther King Jr.
https://organizingchange.org/here-is-how-moral-leaders-approach-neutrality/
#neutrality #neutral #desmondtutu #ElieWiesel #paulofreire #mlkjr -
In addition to ties w/ #DesmondTutu, the #EpiscopalChurch has a long history of advocating against #apartheid in #SouthAfrica. It first began altering its financial holdings in the region in 1966, & by the mid-1980s, the church voted to divest from companies doing business in South Africa.
Rowe noted his announcement comes as the #Trump admin has otherwise all but frozen the #refugee program, w/ #Afrikaners among the few—& possibly only—people granted entry as #refugees since Jan.
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The request, Rowe said, crossed a #moral line for the #EpiscopalChurch, which is part of the global Anglican Communion that boasts among its leaders the late Archbishop #DesmondTutu, a celebrated & vocal opponent of #apartheid in #SouthAfrica.
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First Hacktivist Protest? Oberlin College Anti-Apartheid Computer Shutdown in 1984
A Xerox Corp Sigma 9, similar to the one at Oberlin College, source: WikipediaPeople say there’s nothing new on Earth and certainly when it comes to hacking and hacktivism someone did whatever it is you are thinking of before you think anyone did.
To understand the background of this story we need to understand apartheid in South Africa, the system of racial segregation put in place and maintained by successive white governments from 1948 through to 1994.
People in South Africa were given racial classifications and their legal rights, ability to move freely, employment opportunities and education were all dependent on this classification.
Millions of Black Africans in South Africa were stripped of their South African citizenship and forced from their homes into what the South African governments called “tribal homelands”, with over 80% of the nation’s land set aside for the white minority to hold.
As time went on more and more people around the world began to protest against the inhumanity and cruelty of apartheid, and pursued boycotts and demands for economic divestment to pressure the South African government to abandon the apartheid system.
Anti-apartheid poster used during the November 1984 demonstration against South African investment, Oberlin CollegeI came across the story of the 1984 Oberlin anti-apartheid campus protests that took on a hacktivist element when I read through some back issues of Computerworld magazine, while doing some research on another topic.
First though I want to stress that the part of the wider protest that involved school computer resources was not the main protest, which revolved around traditional peaceful protest tactics.
In November of 1984 Oberlin College held a board of trustees meeting, around 300 students protesting against the college holding millions of dollars in stock in companies that were based in South Africa lined the entry ways to the Mudd Library where the meeting was being held.
A much smaller group of students decided that they would take their protest to the school’s computer systems.
“Demonstration against South African investment, Oberlin College”, Thursday November 22, 1984, Oberlin College ArchivesThe December 17th Computerworld magazine article “System used in protest” by Donna Raimondi states that Student Coalition Against Apartheid “activists here tried but failed to overload the campus computer system to bring attention to their demands that Oberlin College divest itself of stock in South African companies” and describes this as a “futile attempt”.
“Students try to overload computers”, Associated Press, 2nd of December, 1984John Harvith, Oberlin College’s public relations office representative is quoted as saying that “student organization got together to determine how to protest, and the organization as a whole decided not to use computers to do it” and that a smaller splinter group of activists numbering between 4 (his estimate) and 12 (as listed in the Rotunda article below) students tried to overload the college’s Sigma 9 computer system.
The group of students simultaneously sat at terminals and ran tasks that they believed would eat system resources, in this regard they were an early example of what I call a “voluntary human botnet”, people coordinating performing a manual denial of service attack. Some of the students also ran print job loops that caused college printers to keep “spewing out garbage printouts”, this is similar to so called “black fax” tactics used in the 90s to run through fax machine ink while also tying up the attached phone line.
The Associated Press covered the protest as well, and noted that “students also began checking out and returning armloads of books in an attempt to shut down a library computer.” Associated Press noted though that “although about 1,500 books were checked out, compared with a normal 200 to 300, the computer system was not affected”, once again according to John Harvith, from Oberlin College’s public relations office.
Longwood College’s The Rotunda newspaper, from January 22nd 1985, includes details of anti-apartheid student protests across the U.S. that ramped up in the winter of 1984 and it includes a mention of the Oberlin College computer tactics.
And in a somewhat more radical tactic, 12 members of Oberlin College’s Student Coalition Against Apartheid tried unsuccessfully to shut down the campus computer system and hold it hostage until the school sold off its $30 million in South African-tied companies.
Student Anti-Apartheid Groups Organize, David Gaede, The Rotunda, January 22nd, 1985
Regardless of how well planned or organized the hacktivist element of the wider protest might have been, people certainly paid attention.
While the attempt to shut down the Sigma 9 computer at Oberlin as part of the anti-apartheid protest in 1984 may have failed, Oberlin did eventually divest from South African investments in line with student activist demands after a sit in protest by hundreds of students that lasted 3 days in 1987.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu after his visit to Oberlin College, Toledo Blade, 26th of May, 1987One thing I noticed in all of the mainstream media coverage of the protest was that Oberlin College representatives were at great pains to point out that the protest had been entirely ineffective, that they were able to catch the activity happening and that they took swift action to prevent it impacting computing resources. The articles themselves use words like “futile”.
I wonder if this was as much to discourage other, potentially more technical students, replicating the tactics of the protest in a more successful fashion than it was to simply report that the goals of this particular protest had not been achieved.
If you know of similar protests that involved computers in the 80s I’d love to hear about them, I’m sure it will turn out that there were events that pre-date this one.
#1980s #1984 #antiApartheid #apartheid #AssociatedPress #Basic #blackFax #College #computer #Computerworld #DesmondTutu #divestment #DonnaRaimondi #hacktivism #history #humanBotnet #LongwoodCollege #magazine #newspaper #Oberlin #OberlinCollege #Ohio #politics #protest #Rotundda #sitIn #SouthAfrica #StudentCoalitionAgainstApartheid
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First Hacktivist Protest? Oberlin College Anti-Apartheid Computer Shutdown in 1984
A Xerox Corp Sigma 9, similar to the one at Oberlin College, source: WikipediaPeople say there’s nothing new on Earth and certainly when it comes to hacking and hacktivism someone did whatever it is you are thinking of before you think anyone did.
To understand the background of this story we need to understand apartheid in South Africa, the system of racial segregation put in place and maintained by successive white governments from 1948 through to 1994.
People in South Africa were given racial classifications and their legal rights, ability to move freely, employment opportunities and education were all dependent on this classification.
Millions of Black Africans in South Africa were stripped of their South African citizenship and forced from their homes into what the South African governments called “tribal homelands”, with over 80% of the nation’s land set aside for the white minority to hold.
As time went on more and more people around the world began to protest against the inhumanity and cruelty of apartheid, and pursued boycotts and demands for economic divestment to pressure the South African government to abandon the apartheid system.
Anti-apartheid poster used during the November 1984 demonstration against South African investment, Oberlin CollegeI came across the story of the 1984 Oberlin anti-apartheid campus protests that took on a hacktivist element when I read through some back issues of Computerworld magazine, while doing some research on another topic.
First though I want to stress that the part of the wider protest that involved school computer resources was not the main protest, which revolved around traditional peaceful protest tactics.
In November of 1984 Oberlin College held a board of trustees meeting, around 300 students protesting against the college holding millions of dollars in stock in companies that were based in South Africa lined the entry ways to the Mudd Library where the meeting was being held.
A much smaller group of students decided that they would take their protest to the school’s computer systems.
“Demonstration against South African investment, Oberlin College”, Thursday November 22, 1984, Oberlin College ArchivesThe December 17th Computerworld magazine article “System used in protest” by Donna Raimondi states that Student Coalition Against Apartheid “activists here tried but failed to overload the campus computer system to bring attention to their demands that Oberlin College divest itself of stock in South African companies” and describes this as a “futile attempt”.
“Students try to overload computers”, Associated Press, 2nd of December, 1984John Harvith, Oberlin College’s public relations office representative is quoted as saying that “student organization got together to determine how to protest, and the organization as a whole decided not to use computers to do it” and that a smaller splinter group of activists numbering between 4 (his estimate) and 12 (as listed in the Rotunda article below) students tried to overload the college’s Sigma 9 computer system.
The group of students simultaneously sat at terminals and ran tasks that they believed would eat system resources, in this regard they were an early example of what I call a “voluntary human botnet”, people coordinating performing a manual denial of service attack. Some of the students also ran print job loops that caused college printers to keep “spewing out garbage printouts”, this is similar to so called “black fax” tactics used in the 90s to run through fax machine ink while also tying up the attached phone line.
The Associated Press covered the protest as well, and noted that “students also began checking out and returning armloads of books in an attempt to shut down a library computer.” Associated Press noted though that “although about 1,500 books were checked out, compared with a normal 200 to 300, the computer system was not affected”, once again according to John Harvith, from Oberlin College’s public relations office.
Longwood College’s The Rotunda newspaper, from January 22nd 1985, includes details of anti-apartheid student protests across the U.S. that ramped up in the winter of 1984 and it includes a mention of the Oberlin College computer tactics.
And in a somewhat more radical tactic, 12 members of Oberlin College’s Student Coalition Against Apartheid tried unsuccessfully to shut down the campus computer system and hold it hostage until the school sold off its $30 million in South African-tied companies.
Student Anti-Apartheid Groups Organize, David Gaede, The Rotunda, January 22nd, 1985
Regardless of how well planned or organized the hacktivist element of the wider protest might have been, people certainly paid attention.
While the attempt to shut down the Sigma 9 computer at Oberlin as part of the anti-apartheid protest in 1984 may have failed, Oberlin did eventually divest from South African investments in line with student activist demands after a sit in protest by hundreds of students that lasted 3 days in 1987.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu after his visit to Oberlin College, Toledo Blade, 26th of May, 1987One thing I noticed in all of the mainstream media coverage of the protest was that Oberlin College representatives were at great pains to point out that the protest had been entirely ineffective, that they were able to catch the activity happening and that they took swift action to prevent it impacting computing resources. The articles themselves use words like “futile”.
I wonder if this was as much to discourage other, potentially more technical students, replicating the tactics of the protest in a more successful fashion than it was to simply report that the goals of this particular protest had not been achieved.
If you know of similar protests that involved computers in the 80s I’d love to hear about them, I’m sure it will turn out that there were events that pre-date this one.
#1980s #1984 #antiApartheid #apartheid #AssociatedPress #Basic #blackFax #College #computer #Computerworld #DesmondTutu #divestment #DonnaRaimondi #hacktivism #history #humanBotnet #LongwoodCollege #magazine #newspaper #Oberlin #OberlinCollege #Ohio #politics #protest #Rotundda #sitIn #SouthAfrica #StudentCoalitionAgainstApartheid
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First Hacktivist Protest? Oberlin College Anti-Apartheid Computer Shutdown in 1984
A Xerox Corp Sigma 9, similar to the one at Oberlin College, source: WikipediaPeople say there’s nothing new on Earth and certainly when it comes to hacking and hacktivism someone did whatever it is you are thinking of before you think anyone did.
To understand the background of this story we need to understand apartheid in South Africa, the system of racial segregation put in place and maintained by successive white governments from 1948 through to 1994.
People in South Africa were given racial classifications and their legal rights, ability to move freely, employment opportunities and education were all dependent on this classification.
Millions of Black Africans in South Africa were stripped of their South African citizenship and forced from their homes into what the South African governments called “tribal homelands”, with over 80% of the nation’s land set aside for the white minority to hold.
As time went on more and more people around the world began to protest against the inhumanity and cruelty of apartheid, and pursued boycotts and demands for economic divestment to pressure the South African government to abandon the apartheid system.
Anti-apartheid poster used during the November 1984 demonstration against South African investment, Oberlin CollegeI came across the story of the 1984 Oberlin anti-apartheid campus protests that took on a hacktivist element when I read through some back issues of Computerworld magazine, while doing some research on another topic.
First though I want to stress that the part of the wider protest that involved school computer resources was not the main protest, which revolved around traditional peaceful protest tactics.
In November of 1984 Oberlin College held a board of trustees meeting, around 300 students protesting against the college holding millions of dollars in stock in companies that were based in South Africa lined the entry ways to the Mudd Library where the meeting was being held.
A much smaller group of students decided that they would take their protest to the school’s computer systems.
“Demonstration against South African investment, Oberlin College”, Thursday November 22, 1984, Oberlin College ArchivesThe December 17th Computerworld magazine article “System used in protest” by Donna Raimondi states that Student Coalition Against Apartheid “activists here tried but failed to overload the campus computer system to bring attention to their demands that Oberlin College divest itself of stock in South African companies” and describes this as a “futile attempt”.
“Students try to overload computers”, Associated Press, 2nd of December, 1984John Harvith, Oberlin College’s public relations office representative is quoted as saying that “student organization got together to determine how to protest, and the organization as a whole decided not to use computers to do it” and that a smaller splinter group of activists numbering between 4 (his estimate) and 12 (as listed in the Rotunda article below) students tried to overload the college’s Sigma 9 computer system.
The group of students simultaneously sat at terminals and ran tasks that they believed would eat system resources, in this regard they were an early example of what I call a “voluntary human botnet”, people coordinating performing a manual denial of service attack. Some of the students also ran print job loops that caused college printers to keep “spewing out garbage printouts”, this is similar to so called “black fax” tactics used in the 90s to run through fax machine ink while also tying up the attached phone line.
The Associated Press covered the protest as well, and noted that “students also began checking out and returning armloads of books in an attempt to shut down a library computer.” Associated Press noted though that “although about 1,500 books were checked out, compared with a normal 200 to 300, the computer system was not affected”, once again according to John Harvith, from Oberlin College’s public relations office.
Longwood College’s The Rotunda newspaper, from January 22nd 1985, includes details of anti-apartheid student protests across the U.S. that ramped up in the winter of 1984 and it includes a mention of the Oberlin College computer tactics.
And in a somewhat more radical tactic, 12 members of Oberlin College’s Student Coalition Against Apartheid tried unsuccessfully to shut down the campus computer system and hold it hostage until the school sold off its $30 million in South African-tied companies.
Student Anti-Apartheid Groups Organize, David Gaede, The Rotunda, January 22nd, 1985
Regardless of how well planned or organized the hacktivist element of the wider protest might have been, people certainly paid attention.
While the attempt to shut down the Sigma 9 computer at Oberlin as part of the anti-apartheid protest in 1984 may have failed, Oberlin did eventually divest from South African investments in line with student activist demands after a sit in protest by hundreds of students that lasted 3 days in 1987.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu after his visit to Oberlin College, Toledo Blade, 26th of May, 1987One thing I noticed in all of the mainstream media coverage of the protest was that Oberlin College representatives were at great pains to point out that the protest had been entirely ineffective, that they were able to catch the activity happening and that they took swift action to prevent it impacting computing resources. The articles themselves use words like “futile”.
I wonder if this was as much to discourage other, potentially more technical students, replicating the tactics of the protest in a more successful fashion than it was to simply report that the goals of this particular protest had not been achieved.
If you know of similar protests that involved computers in the 80s I’d love to hear about them, I’m sure it will turn out that there were events that pre-date this one.
#1980s #1984 #antiApartheid #apartheid #AssociatedPress #Basic #blackFax #College #computer #Computerworld #DesmondTutu #divestment #DonnaRaimondi #hacktivism #history #humanBotnet #LongwoodCollege #magazine #newspaper #Oberlin #OberlinCollege #Ohio #politics #protest #Rotundda #sitIn #SouthAfrica #StudentCoalitionAgainstApartheid
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First Hacktivist Protest? Oberlin College Anti-Apartheid Computer Shutdown in 1984
A Xerox Corp Sigma 9, similar to the one at Oberlin College, source: WikipediaPeople say there’s nothing new on Earth and certainly when it comes to hacking and hacktivism someone did whatever it is you are thinking of before you think anyone did.
To understand the background of this story we need to understand apartheid in South Africa, the system of racial segregation put in place and maintained by successive white governments from 1948 through to 1994.
People in South Africa were given racial classifications and their legal rights, ability to move freely, employment opportunities and education were all dependent on this classification.
Millions of Black Africans in South Africa were stripped of their South African citizenship and forced from their homes into what the South African governments called “tribal homelands”, with over 80% of the nation’s land set aside for the white minority to hold.
As time went on more and more people around the world began to protest against the inhumanity and cruelty of apartheid, and pursued boycotts and demands for economic divestment to pressure the South African government to abandon the apartheid system.
Anti-apartheid poster used during the November 1984 demonstration against South African investment, Oberlin CollegeI came across the story of the 1984 Oberlin anti-apartheid campus protests that took on a hacktivist element when I read through some back issues of Computerworld magazine, while doing some research on another topic.
First though I want to stress that the part of the wider protest that involved school computer resources was not the main protest, which revolved around traditional peaceful protest tactics.
In November of 1984 Oberlin College held a board of trustees meeting, around 300 students protesting against the college holding millions of dollars in stock in companies that were based in South Africa lined the entry ways to the Mudd Library where the meeting was being held.
A much smaller group of students decided that they would take their protest to the school’s computer systems.
“Demonstration against South African investment, Oberlin College”, Thursday November 22, 1984, Oberlin College ArchivesThe December 17th Computerworld magazine article “System used in protest” by Donna Raimondi states that Student Coalition Against Apartheid “activists here tried but failed to overload the campus computer system to bring attention to their demands that Oberlin College divest itself of stock in South African companies” and describes this as a “futile attempt”.
“Students try to overload computers”, Associated Press, 2nd of December, 1984John Harvith, Oberlin College’s public relations office representative is quoted as saying that “student organization got together to determine how to protest, and the organization as a whole decided not to use computers to do it” and that a smaller splinter group of activists numbering between 4 (his estimate) and 12 (as listed in the Rotunda article below) students tried to overload the college’s Sigma 9 computer system.
The group of students simultaneously sat at terminals and ran tasks that they believed would eat system resources, in this regard they were an early example of what I call a “voluntary human botnet”, people coordinating performing a manual denial of service attack. Some of the students also ran print job loops that caused college printers to keep “spewing out garbage printouts”, this is similar to so called “black fax” tactics used in the 90s to run through fax machine ink while also tying up the attached phone line.
The Associated Press covered the protest as well, and noted that “students also began checking out and returning armloads of books in an attempt to shut down a library computer.” Associated Press noted though that “although about 1,500 books were checked out, compared with a normal 200 to 300, the computer system was not affected”, once again according to John Harvith, from Oberlin College’s public relations office.
Longwood College’s The Rotunda newspaper, from January 22nd 1985, includes details of anti-apartheid student protests across the U.S. that ramped up in the winter of 1984 and it includes a mention of the Oberlin College computer tactics.
And in a somewhat more radical tactic, 12 members of Oberlin College’s Student Coalition Against Apartheid tried unsuccessfully to shut down the campus computer system and hold it hostage until the school sold off its $30 million in South African-tied companies.
Student Anti-Apartheid Groups Organize, David Gaede, The Rotunda, January 22nd, 1985
Regardless of how well planned or organized the hacktivist element of the wider protest might have been, people certainly paid attention.
While the attempt to shut down the Sigma 9 computer at Oberlin as part of the anti-apartheid protest in 1984 may have failed, Oberlin did eventually divest from South African investments in line with student activist demands after a sit in protest by hundreds of students that lasted 3 days in 1987.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu after his visit to Oberlin College, Toledo Blade, 26th of May, 1987One thing I noticed in all of the mainstream media coverage of the protest was that Oberlin College representatives were at great pains to point out that the protest had been entirely ineffective, that they were able to catch the activity happening and that they took swift action to prevent it impacting computing resources. The articles themselves use words like “futile”.
I wonder if this was as much to discourage other, potentially more technical students, replicating the tactics of the protest in a more successful fashion than it was to simply report that the goals of this particular protest had not been achieved.
If you know of similar protests that involved computers in the 80s I’d love to hear about them, I’m sure it will turn out that there were events that pre-date this one.
#1980s #1984 #antiApartheid #apartheid #AssociatedPress #Basic #blackFax #College #computer #Computerworld #DesmondTutu #divestment #DonnaRaimondi #hacktivism #history #humanBotnet #LongwoodCollege #magazine #newspaper #Oberlin #OberlinCollege #Ohio #politics #protest #Rotundda #sitIn #SouthAfrica #StudentCoalitionAgainstApartheid
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First Hacktivist Protest? Oberlin College Anti-Apartheid Computer Shutdown in 1984
A Xerox Corp Sigma 9, similar to the one at Oberlin College, source: WikipediaPeople say there’s nothing new on Earth and certainly when it comes to hacking and hacktivism someone did whatever it is you are thinking of before you think anyone did.
To understand the background of this story we need to understand apartheid in South Africa, the system of racial segregation put in place and maintained by successive white governments from 1948 through to 1994.
People in South Africa were given racial classifications and their legal rights, ability to move freely, employment opportunities and education were all dependent on this classification.
Millions of Black Africans in South Africa were stripped of their South African citizenship and forced from their homes into what the South African governments called “tribal homelands”, with over 80% of the nation’s land set aside for the white minority to hold.
As time went on more and more people around the world began to protest against the inhumanity and cruelty of apartheid, and pursued boycotts and demands for economic divestment to pressure the South African government to abandon the apartheid system.
Anti-apartheid poster used during the November 1984 demonstration against South African investment, Oberlin CollegeI came across the story of the 1984 Oberlin anti-apartheid campus protests that took on a hacktivist element when I read through some back issues of Computerworld magazine, while doing some research on another topic.
First though I want to stress that the part of the wider protest that involved school computer resources was not the main protest, which revolved around traditional peaceful protest tactics.
In November of 1984 Oberlin College held a board of trustees meeting, around 300 students protesting against the college holding millions of dollars in stock in companies that were based in South Africa lined the entry ways to the Mudd Library where the meeting was being held.
A much smaller group of students decided that they would take their protest to the school’s computer systems.
“Demonstration against South African investment, Oberlin College”, Thursday November 22, 1984, Oberlin College ArchivesThe December 17th Computerworld magazine article “System used in protest” by Donna Raimondi states that Student Coalition Against Apartheid “activists here tried but failed to overload the campus computer system to bring attention to their demands that Oberlin College divest itself of stock in South African companies” and describes this as a “futile attempt”.
“Students try to overload computers”, Associated Press, 2nd of December, 1984John Harvith, Oberlin College’s public relations office representative is quoted as saying that “student organization got together to determine how to protest, and the organization as a whole decided not to use computers to do it” and that a smaller splinter group of activists numbering between 4 (his estimate) and 12 (as listed in the Rotunda article below) students tried to overload the college’s Sigma 9 computer system.
The group of students simultaneously sat at terminals and ran tasks that they believed would eat system resources, in this regard they were an early example of what I call a “voluntary human botnet”, people coordinating performing a manual denial of service attack. Some of the students also ran print job loops that caused college printers to keep “spewing out garbage printouts”, this is similar to so called “black fax” tactics used in the 90s to run through fax machine ink while also tying up the attached phone line.
The Associated Press covered the protest as well, and noted that “students also began checking out and returning armloads of books in an attempt to shut down a library computer.” Associated Press noted though that “although about 1,500 books were checked out, compared with a normal 200 to 300, the computer system was not affected”, once again according to John Harvith, from Oberlin College’s public relations office.
Longwood College’s The Rotunda newspaper, from January 22nd 1985, includes details of anti-apartheid student protests across the U.S. that ramped up in the winter of 1984 and it includes a mention of the Oberlin College computer tactics.
And in a somewhat more radical tactic, 12 members of Oberlin College’s Student Coalition Against Apartheid tried unsuccessfully to shut down the campus computer system and hold it hostage until the school sold off its $30 million in South African-tied companies.
Student Anti-Apartheid Groups Organize, David Gaede, The Rotunda, January 22nd, 1985
Regardless of how well planned or organized the hacktivist element of the wider protest might have been, people certainly paid attention.
While the attempt to shut down the Sigma 9 computer at Oberlin as part of the anti-apartheid protest in 1984 may have failed, Oberlin did eventually divest from South African investments in line with student activist demands after a sit in protest by hundreds of students that lasted 3 days in 1987.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu after his visit to Oberlin College, Toledo Blade, 26th of May, 1987One thing I noticed in all of the mainstream media coverage of the protest was that Oberlin College representatives were at great pains to point out that the protest had been entirely ineffective, that they were able to catch the activity happening and that they took swift action to prevent it impacting computing resources. The articles themselves use words like “futile”.
I wonder if this was as much to discourage other, potentially more technical students, replicating the tactics of the protest in a more successful fashion than it was to simply report that the goals of this particular protest had not been achieved.
If you know of similar protests that involved computers in the 80s I’d love to hear about them, I’m sure it will turn out that there were events that pre-date this one.
#1980s #1984 #antiApartheid #apartheid #AssociatedPress #Basic #blackFax #College #computer #Computerworld #DesmondTutu #divestment #DonnaRaimondi #hacktivism #history #humanBotnet #LongwoodCollege #magazine #newspaper #Oberlin #OberlinCollege #Ohio #politics #protest #Rotundda #sitIn #SouthAfrica #StudentCoalitionAgainstApartheid
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"Forgiveness is one of the key ideas in this world. Forgiveness is not just some nebulous, vague idea that one can easily dismiss. It has to do with uniting people through practical politics. Without #forgiveness there is no future."
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today's lesson in not engaging involved sending a reply and then immediately deleting it when I realised I'm not in a place to want to have this discussion with someone. I want to talk about it on my own instead.
The Most Reverend #DesmondTutu said, "if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. if an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."
neutrality is the coward's position, trying to not become the next target for the boot to step on so hard that they lose sight of who is already being stepped on. it is the glib remark of someone with no personal stake and no skin in the game.
and I think we should all be very careful about when we claim to espouse that neutrality.
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When it comes to suicide prevention, we need to go upstream. People shouldn't have to reach a crisis point to get help.
Desmond Tutu said it well, "we need to stop pulling people out of a river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in."
#suicideprevention #mentalhealthsupport #preventioniskey #mentalwellnessjourney #desmondtutu #awareness
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“I am not interested in picking up crumbs thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.”
— #DesmondTutu -
Heute vor 25 Jahren legte die nach dem Ende der #Apartheid in #Südafrika von #NelsonMandela eingesetzte, von Erzbischof #DesmondTutu geleitete Wahrheits- und #Versöhnungskommission ihren Abschlussbericht vor. Dazu unser Lesetipp:
▶ Gesine Krüger, Wahrheit – Erzählen. Zur Arbeit der #Truth and #Reconciliation Commission in Südafrika, #WerkstattGeschichte 26/2000 "#Wahrheit", https://werkstattgeschichte.de/alle_ausgaben/wahrheit@histodons @historikerinnen
#histodons #TRC #SouthAfrica #AfricanHistory #Wahrheitskommission #OTD -
CW: Frequently overlooked context in #Gaza 10/12
In 2005, a broad range of Palestinian civil society groups put out a call for individuals and civil society around the world to engage in a sustained campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions, targeting all corporate entities profiting from illegal Israeli settlements in the #WestBank. This was based on the historical success of a similar movement that eventually helped to end the #apartheid regime in #SouthAfrica, and occurred with the support and blessing of the leaders of the South African campaign (including #NelsonMandela and #DesmondTutu). Yet in the years since, participation in the #BDS movement has been increasingly criminalised in US states and parts of Europe (criminalised by many of the same governments that designated Nelson Mandela a #terrorist during the South African BDS campaign; the US government only removed that designation in 2008), with a broader corporate counterprotest campaign of blacklisting, firing and smearing vocal supporters of BDS with (very frequently false) accusations of #antisemitism.
10/12
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#Uganda’s #antigay #laws are a new #apartheid. The #Reverend #MphoTutuVanFurth #urges #President #Museveni to think again.
My #father, #DesmondTutu, #abhorred #homophobia and he would support my #call for #justice for a hounded #LGBTQ+ #community.
#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Africa #SouthAfrica #Uganda #Apartheid #Hate #Bigotry #Violence #Genocide #Homophobia #Transphobia
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Text meme:
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
— #DesmondTutu -
True joy comes from acting with a good purpose. This action gives us a true sense of meaning and satisfaction. Remaining indiffrent means accepting the #evil around us "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." #DesmondTutu Have a nice day.
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@SameGirlie That’s a great parallel to #DesmondTutu’s quote: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
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Today marks one year since our founding Chair and dear friend Archbishop Desmond Tutu passed away. A global icon of freedom, he showed the world how love, compassion and forgiveness could alter the course of history. His grace, humour and wisdom is greatly missed.
#DesmondTutu -
This mural in memory of Desmond Tutu (3 photos)
Photo by Günther Michels RIP Desmond Tutu ☮✊ By muralist Brian Rolfe in 2017. We post this mural in memory of the human rights theologian and anti-apartheid activist bishop Desmond Tutu in Cape town, South Africa. Desmond Tutu: “My humanity is bound up in yours for we can only be human together. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.” “None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave […]https://streetartutopia.com/2021/12/26/this-mural-in-memory-of-desmond-tutu-3-photos/
