In early 2011, as the Arab Spring was moving across North Africa and the Middle East, small groups of nonviolent activists in Syria, which has been under martial law since 1963, started protesting against the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad and demanding democratic reforms, the release of political prisoners, an increase in freedoms, abolition of the emergency law and an end to corruption.

By mid-March these protests, particularly in cities such as Damascus, Aleppo and Daraa, had escalated and the 'Day of Rage' protest on 15 March 2011 is considered by many to mark the start of the nationwide uprising against the Assad dictatorship. The dictatorship's reaction to the protests became violent on 16 March and on 18 March, after Friday prayers, activists gathered at the al-Omari Mosque in Daraa were attacked by security forces with water cannons and tear gas, followed by live fire; four nonviolent activists were killed.

Protests and vigils in Columbus last week focused largely on fear of President-elect Donald Trump, outrage at his supporters, and grief over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton losing the election. But while over 200 demonstrators had a lot to say against Trump at the OSU Oval on Friday, they also pointed a clear path forward: mass organizing and rejection of establishment politics.

“This is our wake-up call. We’ve been asleep, and we woke up to a nightmare,” said Bilal El-Yousseph, a Palestinian Muslim. “My mother wears a head covering, and she shouldn’t be scared to go to her job.”

El-Yousseph supported Bernie Sanders as the Democratic nominee, who polled better against Trump than Hillary Clinton did. He was angry when the DNC used underhanded tactics to give Clinton the nomination anyway. “The Democratic Party is not here for us,” he said.

 “We have a rapist who’s going to be in the White House, who talks about women like they’re less than human,” El-Yousseph said. “That hurts me. I’m the man I am today because my mother who survived the Palestinian refugee camps in South Lebanon. I’m a strong man today because of a strong woman who influenced me.”

If I told you Moonlight is about an African-American boy growing up in a world of drugs and poverty, you’d probably begin to form an image of the film in your mind. And that image probably would be wrong.

Director/screenwriter Barry Jenkins has put together a movie so sensitive, so lyrical and so different from anything we’ve seen that there’s no way to avoid being taken by surprise.

Moonlight tells the sad tale of Chiron, a boy growing up in a scruffy neighborhood of Miami. Divided into three chapters, the film follows him into high school and finally into adulthood. At all three stages of his life, he struggles with loneliness brought on by his own—and other people’s—inability to accept him for who he is.

As a boy, Chiron (Alex R. Hibbert) is nicknamed Little due to his small size and is constantly bullied for being somehow different from the other boys. A sympathetic classmate named Kevin (Jaden Piner) advises him to stick up for himself, but Chiron’s mother, Paula (Naomie Harris), is too consumed by her drug habit to pay attention to his needs.

A former diplomat who writes about the two issues pushing the world to the edge- foreign policy & religion.

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lesson of history.” Aldous Huxley