News Report

Grace Palmer, Odin-Kanno-Fahy and Phola Shongwe dive into the gripping current news from Cambridge news regarding the reopening of schools amidst a pandemic and students’ thoughts, National news regarding the insight of a New York Times’ Journalist on his experience at the Capitol riots and International news on the EndSars Movement in Nigeria.

 

Beginning February 1st CRLS has given the option to academic tier 2 and 3 students to return to in person school. These students will be broken up into cohorts and can attend school every other week; however, they will not be moving around the building. They will be sitting in their homerooms and from there they will enter their classes through zoom. Students will sit six feet apart with their masks on at all times

The day after the election, a group was formed on facebook called ” Stop the Steal ” It  was built by trump supporters and they came together and were collecting what they perceived as evidence of voter fraud and dropping in obvious photoshopped pictures and videos and building a narrative that voting officials did everything from smuggle in ballots in suitcases to being able  vote in the name of dead loved ones and allow people to vote in the name of their pets. This group became immediately popular; they gained 100 new members every 10 seconds and got numerous people behind this idea to have Trump stay in office. Facebook shut the group down but these supporters of ” stop the steal ” already had enough people to go to other lesser known social media apps to continue their narrative like Parler and Gab, which have become known to be apps where people on the far right can say whatever they want to say with no fear of censorship. They started to rally and try to figure out what they could do next to have Trump stay in office. Language was used like ” On January 6th, the revolution will come to Washington. ” It was the day that Trump was going to serve another term and that his supporters were the ones who made it possible, in their minds they see themselves as a force of good and protectors of democracy and the country, due to what they are being told. On these apps, they started to organize rides to Washington and where to stay before they go to rallys, and saying things like ” If you want to bring a weapon with you, like a gun or a knife, i can give you a ride in my car, don’t worry and don’t risk getting on a flight ” There was many open discussions where they talked about storming and infiltrating the Capitol, and discussions asking if anyone knew if the glass was reinforced and if a bat would break it. Once January 6th arrived, they did exactly as they have been saying they would and as Trump’s tweets have said to get prepared for the sixth and they were, the United States Capitol was stormed by his supporters.

 

Since the beginning of October, thousands of Nigerians have been marching in peaceful protests against police brutality as part of the #EndSARS movement. The #EndSARS movement aims to draw attention to human rights violations committed by the Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS), a unit of the Nigerian police tasked with fighting violent crimes.