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�It is extremely challenging and some students WILL quit. Expect to suffer.� The marketing materials appealed to me. At the time of signing up for the one-week survival course in January, I was in the early days of recovering from a crushing romantic breakup. I wanted to be lost, obliterated, remade. I wanted physical suffering, perhaps as some kind of penance, perhaps to take my mind off the spiritual pain. The survival course sounded perfect. I pulled out my credit card. By the time the course actually rolled around in July, I was a different person. I had a new home and a new routine. My emotions had stabilized. But nevertheless, the Alaskan Field Course approached, a foreboding presence on my Google calendar. It was a wall or moat, dividing the calendar into distinct before times and after times. July Jacob had to find new motivations for following through on the commitment of January Jacob. I found four reasons for doing it: (1) I wanted to test my will. Life is hard and I am ...

Marlon Kimpson has served the bulk of North Charleston in the State Senate since 2013. He is the face of progressivism among Lowcountry lawmakers. He has led the gun reform charge by sponsoring a bill to close the Charleston Loophole , he filibustered for eight hours during the last few days of the legislative session to prevent an abortion ban from being passed by the senate, and he played a key role in taking down the Confederate flag from the State House grounds back in 2015.             Kimpson has also been a big help to the organization that I am a part of, Lowcountry Students for Political Action. Besides supporting us at our events, he has advised us during the legislative session as we tried to get gun reform passed. I sat down with him to discuss a few topics including his eight hour filibuster of a proposed abortion ban this past May as well as the possibility of a new state constitution.      ...

There is no shortage of topics that I could discuss on this week�s blog. There was a special election last night for a state senate seat in Columbia. There was another batch of primaries that also happened last night. There is a lot to break down with the whole Omarosa-Trump feud that is currently going on. There is an injustice happening to a group of student protesters in Bangladesh right now. There was a trading of tariffs between the United States and Turkey earlier this week. I could go on.             But this is my last article (except for something coming on Friday) and I don�t want the last thing I write on here to be about something unimportant in the long run. In two weeks, the Omarosa story will be forgotten, partly because the collective attention span of the American people is tiny and partly because something equally absurd will arise from the Trump administration that will clog up our media outlets for a few days bef...

Thomas Dixon is a lot of things. He is currently running for mayor in North Charleston. He serves on the national board for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. He founded a group called The Coalition: People United to Take Back Our Community. He is a pastor. But most of all, he is a community activist who is constantly at work in the Charleston  area.             Dixon has been a friend and mentor to me over the past year as I have gotten more involved in the local political scene and has always been there to give advice or lend a podium. He has been at every event organized by my organization and has always shown us support. I wanted to interview him for this series because of our friendship and to talk about conducting protests and the issues facing our community.             Without further ado, here is the interview:        ...

Meghan Trezies is one of the founders of Arm-in-Arm South Carolina which formed following the Mother Emanuel AME church shooting in June of 2015. The organization exists to prevent gun violence by advocating for laws that would require background checks before every gun purchase and addresses gun violence as a public health crisis instead of a political issue. They are a sophisticated group with over 1,200 members, making them one of the largest political organizations in South Carolina. I wanted to interview Meghan because of her influence in the gun reform community to get an idea of the state of the campaign for gun reform in South Carolina.             Without further ado, here is the interview: By the time this interview is published the town hall being held tomorrow (the town hall was held on July 26th) at MUSC concerning gun violence will have already happened. What is the purpose of this meeting and what role can MUSC play ...

Democrat Danny O'Connor (left) and Republican Troy Balderson (right) Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia  declared a state of emergency today ahead of the anniversary of the Charlottesville riots because of demonstrations planned throughout the weekend that have the potential to turn violent. The fact that we are treating a political rally like a hurricane shows the degradation of political discourse in this country throughout the past few years . These rallies are held by people who are at the fringes of our respective ideologies yet we are so invested and dare I say fascinated by what may happen this weekend. It�s like a middle school fight. Everybody wants to see the fight but only the most extreme and ridiculous people actually do the fighting. We are interested yet slightly repulsed by what we are seeing in front of us. We forget that the fighters are our classmates too and that we all go to the same school.             If...

I�ve spent the past month organizing and working with the survivors of the Parkland school shooting to organize a series of events in Charleston as a part of their �Road to Change� tour. Yesterday, those events happened and a lot of questions that I have gotten since then are, �What are the students from Parkland like?�             So, I am going to take this blog to talk about my experience with them and some of the things I observed about them throughout the day.             The Parkland students are normal people. That sounds clich� but it�s true. When they got off the bus they just walked up and introduced themselves to us and we hung out for about half an hour before the lunch we had scheduled took place. I spent a lot of that time around Lauren Hogg and Emma Gonzalez and asked them a bunch of questions. I asked Emma what her initial reaction was when Kanye West tweeted o...