Protests: It's ColUmbia not ColOmbia

Protests over U.S. funding of the Israeli war in Gaza, originally organized at Columbia University in New York City, have spread to more than 40 campuses. Police crackdowns, including the deployment of the National Guard against students in Texas, have inspired outrage, and likely helped fuel support for a movement that seems for the moment to be spreading across the country.

But media bias in protest coverage, as well as rhetorical attacks by politicians on the protesters themselves got us thinking about the parallels to social movements we’ve seen here in Colombia (with an “o” not a “u”). So we reached out to Richard McColl, who runs the country's most popular English language podcast, Colombia Calling, and our piratical companion and sometimes contributor here at PWS, Adriaan Alsema of Colombia Reports, together for a dream team explainer on the phenomenon.

States often follow a playbook when delegitimizing protests they find inconvenient, and this movement has been no exception. Structural problems inherent to the legacy media model also skew coverage towards official sources, often leaving out the voice of protesters entirely.

So what does Colombia have to do with Columbia? More than you might imagine, and we break it all down in the audio version of this week’s feature story.

We’ve edited down the original 35-minute analysis to just 13 minutes, which is what we’ve published here. Both Colombia Calling and Colombia Reports will publish the full “director’s cut” later this week.

We’ll be back to a written feature next Friday for those who prefer their news in print. In the meantime, we’re still working on a new season of feature podcasts for paid subscribers. Thanks again for listening/reading, mateys.

Y hasta pronto!

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