Sam on Students for Justice in Palestine, Sally Dworak-Fisher on Delivery Workers

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240426.mp3   Columbia encampment (CC photo: Pamela Drew) This week on CounterSpin: Lots of college students, it would appear, think that learning about the world means not just gaining knowledge, but acting on it. Yale students went on a hunger strike, students at Washington University in St. Louis disrupted admitted students day, students and faculty are expressing outrage at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism (emphasis added) canceling their valedictorian’s commencement speech out of professed concerns for “safety.” A Vanderbilt student is on TikTok noting that their chancellor has run away from offers to engage them, despite his claim to the New York Times that it’s protestors who are “not interested in dialogue”—and Columbia University students have set up an encampment seen around the world, holding steady as we record April 25, despite the college siccing the NYPD on them. Campuses across the country—Rutgers, MIT, Ohio State, Boston University, Emerson, Tufts, and on and on—are erupting in protest over their institutions’ material support for Israel’s war on Palestinians, and for the companies making the weapons. And the colleges’ official responses are gutting the notion that elite higher education entails respect for the free expression of ideas. Students for Justice in Palestine is working with many of these students. We’ll hear from Sam from National SJP about unfolding events. Transcript: ‘This Weaponization Is Meant to Shift Focus Away From Gaza’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240426Sam.mp3   (CC photo: Edenpictures) Also on the show: App-based companies, including Uber and DoorDash, are adding new service fees, and telling customers they have to, because of new rules calling on them to improve wages and conditions for workers. The rather transparent hope is that, with a lift from lazy media, happy to typey-type about the worry of more expensive coffee, folks will get mad and blame those greedy…bicycle deliverers. We asked Sally Dworak-Fisher, senior staff attorney at National Employment Law Project, to break that story down. Transcript: ‘This Is a Choice Companies Are Making to Raise Fees’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240426Dworak-Fisher.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at the TikTok ban. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240426Banter.mp3