Seattle, WA – On May 12, the Progressive Student Union held a counterprotest outside of a “free speech” conference at the University of Washington hosted by Huskies for Liberty, a libertarian student group. At this conference, Pedro Domingos, a professor emeritus of the Computer Science department at UW, spoke discussing how he is being silenced by the “woke” mob.

Pedro Domingos has tweeted, “Half of the female STEM faculty in the U.S. were hired over more qualified men,” and “Women are more neurotic than men, and as they gain more power society becomes more neurotic as well.” Beyond these sexist statements, he said has that Black people and white people should not be sentenced at the same rate, told another professor to commit suicide after they made an effort to remove racist biases from machine learning training data, and more. Following this, the Computer Science department at UW released a statement indicating they do not support Domingos’ behavior.

After Domingos claimed he was being censored, Huskies For Liberty reached out to him to provide him a platform.

In front of Kane Hall where the speech was being held, students demonstrated that this bigotry is not welcome on campus. They chanted “Sexists off campus!” and “Free speech, not hate speech!”

Valerie Marriott, a member of Progressive Student Union, said, “Pedro Domingos feels threatened by the concept of equality, because he can’t see past the status and power he is losing.” Conservative students attempted to shout down the counterprotest while saying “Hate speech is free speech” before being forced to close the door to the building by campus police.

Numerous students and workers passing by talked with Progressive Student Union members, agreeing with the need to fight back against misogyny on campus. Further information, a statement of the incident, and a compilation of Domingos’ tweets are available at @uw_psu on Instagram and @psuuw on Twitter.

#SeattleWA #sexism

Minneapolis, MN – More than 70 students, staff, faculty and community members protested a speech titled “CALM DOWN!! Restoring Common Sense to Feminism” delivered by journalist Milo Yiannopoulos at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, Feb. 17.

The protest, organized by Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Minnesota with help from groups such as Asian and Pacific Islanders for Equity and Diversity and Whose Diversity? opposed the presence of Yiannopoulos’s misogynistic hate speech on campus paid for by university funds. The U of M allocated funds to the hosts of the event, the Minnesota Republic. The Republic is the paper affiliated with the student group Students for a Conservative Voice, which also were granted roughly $80,000 in student service fees by the university for the 2015-2016 school year.

Milo Yiannopoulos grew in fame chiefly for his response to Gamergate, a controversy in which a group of men referring to themselves as Gamergate began harassing women who demanded a change in the overwhelmingly sexist video game industry. The instances of harassment included doxing (a form of online harassment), threats of rape and death threats. Yiannopoulos became a major figure of the controversy with his 2014 online essay defending men’s rights to harass and threaten the lives of women and claimed the video game industry to be under attack by an “army of sociopathic feminist programmers and campaigners” who are “lying, bullying and manipulating their way around the Internet for profit and attention.” Students for a Democratic Society argued that his violent speech against women and in defense of sexist violence is hate speech.

Activists at Rutgers University confronted Yiannopoulos in protest on Feb. 9 after the Rutgers chapter of Young Americans for Liberty invited him to speak. Despite Yiannopoulos’s claims against the existence of rape culture, the Rutgers activists, primarily women of color, have received death and rape threats.

In an interview filmed by activist Kaila Boulware, Rutgers University student Nyuma Waggeh addressed the ‘free speech’ issue explaining “Well, we also have the right to speak our opinions on certain issues, and we’re exercising our right to freedom of speech.” Waggeh goes on to cite Yiannopoulos’s denial of the rape epidemic on campus as well as his transphobia as examples of his hate speech.

Coordinated with the SDS protest outside of the Humphrey School, within the talk itself, where 250 people were seated, members from the local branch of the International Workers of the World led a disruption with air horns and shouts. Meanwhile, protesters gathered outside around 5:30 p.m., chanting “Yiannopoulos out of Minneapolis,” “Trans lives matter,” and “They say calm down, we say sit down,” referencing the title of the event.

Later on, after protesters were locked out of the Humphrey School, SDS led a march around West Bank campus into the tunnels as an alternative route, leading to a short confrontation with chants outside the tunnel-level doors into the building. Campus police then locked down that half of campus, demonstrating the tremendous impact of the action.

#MinneapolisMN #SDS #WomensMovement #PeoplesStruggles #Minnesota #sexism #feminism #MiloYiannopoulos #Gamergate

Grand Rapids, MI – Protesters here are demanding that Clear Channel radio “Dump Rush.” The Dump Rush Campaign is a nationwide response to conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh calling a young woman a “slut” and a “prostitute” on the air. Limbaugh’s attack came when law student Sandra Fluke publicly advocated for birth control and contraceptive medicine as part of government funded health care. People across the country are outraged by Limbaugh’s anti-woman attacks.

Twenty people gathered and held signs outside the Clear Channel radio station in Grand Rapids on March 16. Their signs read, “Dump Rush!” “Sluts for women’s health care,” and “Clear the hate!” Protesters want Limbaugh’s show dropped from the airwaves. Already, over 140 corporate advertisers have pulled their funding from his shows. There is one exception: the pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future is increasing its advertising.

The week before, the National Organization for Women and the Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy gathered 20 people to picket. Both times a friendly crowd asked for WOOD TV Station Manager Tim Feagan to come down to the building lobby and answer questions. Feagan hid and told his secretary to tell people he was out of the building. This past week inside the building lobby, the owners had taken down the contact information for the Clear Channel station on the top floor. Protesters are asking people to send an email message to “Dump Rush” to TimFeagan@clearchannel.com.

Protesters plan to continue the campaign until Clear Channel takes Rush Limbaugh, with his message of hate towards women, immigrants, African-Americans and other oppressed people, off the air. The local Grand Rapids station is going to see a growing crowd of protesters on March 23, at 1:00 p.m. as word is spreading of the impact of protests. Over 100 people took handouts on how to contact advertisers and spread the word. The radio station’s public record also showed roughly 150 people wrote letters demanding “Dump Rush. Unbelievably, 19 self-identified Tea Party supporters thanked the radio station for hosting the woman-hating bigot.

#GrandRapidsMI #RushLimbaugh #sexism #ClearChannel #DumpRushCampaign