I was attending San Francisco State University in 1985 when shantytowns were created on the campus, a form of continuing anti-apartheid protests that rocked college campuses across the country opposing the U.S's support of the racist policies of the South African government. I'm not even sure why it took until that year for the resistance to break out in America, but it did in a big way, and it was an electrifying moment for our generation, many of whom were looking for a cause greater than themselves.
Full divestment was the term used back then, and slowly but surely, university systems began divesting their investment portfolios that included stock in companies that did business with the P. W. Botha-led government.
It would be five more years before Nelson Mandela was finally freed at the age of 71. Although I did not attend, I certainly remembered when he spoke at the Oakland Coliseum in the summer of 1990. The Stadium, home to A's and Raiders games and classic concerts, was packed to the gills with 58,000 people in attendance simply to hear this international icon talk about his new life as a free man. It was the last stop in an eight-city tour of some of America's biggest cities, and it was memorable.
Although he lost 27 years of his life stuck in a small prison cell, he lived 23 years more as a free man and for five years became the president of South Africa. His mark on this world will never be forgotten.
Now on to more frankly pedestrian matters.
Well, they may not even be sure how it happened, but the Tampa City Council ended up facing a hostile crowd in their chambers yesterday paranoid that all of the drinking establishments in this town were all of a sudden going to start getting massively conservative, with a proposed ordinance that could have seen a certain number of them banned from serving booze after midnight. But that prospect did not happen, and likely won't in the future.
Today all of the candidates competing to replace the late Bill Young in Congress will meet up together for the first time at a candidates forum in St. Pete. Yesterday one of those candidates, Republican David Jolly, put on his first commercial ad of the nascent campaign - with former mayor Rick Baker in a featured role.
And speaking of St. Pete - there are a committed groups of activists tired of talking about the poverty rates in Midtown, and are willing to do something about it. Read about the Agenda 2020 plan in this week's CL.