Piper Johnson was all packed and ready to drive across country with her mom to start college when the 18-year-old noticed a pain in her chest. She took an Advil and hoped the pain would go away.
It didn’t. During the drive from her hometown of New Lenox, Ill., near Chicago, to the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colo., she realized something was very wrong. “I kept feeling worse and worse,” Johnson says. She developed a high fever, felt extremely lethargic, and noticed a rapid heart beat.
In Greeley, she went to the emergency room. Doctors gave her steroids and antibiotics. They did an X-ray and detected fluid in her lungs, she recalls. They told her that she had a type of pneumonia.
When her oxygen levels dropped, she was moved to the ICU. “I was terrified,” Johnson recalls. “I was laying in my bed sobbing because it hurt so bad to breathe,” she says. She stayed in the hospital seven days.
Johnson has now joined a group of young activists who are working to raise awareness of the risks of vaping, and to pressure the industry and the government to do more to keep kids safe.
Johnson and dozens of other young people demonstrated outside Juul’s office in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, as part of a day of action organized by the non-profit group, Truth Initiative. Similar rallies took place around the country.
hey guys! here’s some fun things i learned from this article about Dion Diamond:
he did these sit-ins by himself. like idk about you, but i always thought of sit-ins as organized by groups, what kind of bravery does it take, man
he didn’t tell anyone about it, like he was no glory-seeker about this. his parents didn’t even know until reporters started calling them up like “hey, did you know your son is in jail?
when someone called the cops he’d skedaddle out the back door although he was sent to prison multiple times
the last time he got arrested was in Baton Rouge, and the cops were so sick of him that they told inmates they’d put in a good word for anyone who gave Diamond a hard time. (the inmates didn’t take the bait.)
On this day, 10 October 1971 at 11 AM, the men of Bravo Company, 1/12, First Cavalry Division of the US Army by the Cambodian border declared a private unofficial ceasefire with the North Vietnamese. The move was following a mutiny shortly before where six men refused to go on a dangerous mission, and were now facing court martial. A petition was circulated in support of the mutineers and was signed by two thirds of the company. The petition was leaked to the French press via a journalist and the army dropped the court martials and shipped out Bravo Company to safety, replacing them with Delta Company. A few days later 20 men in Delta Company refused to head out, and the army pulled them out and the artillery company they were supporting, abandoning the position. This is a great account of this and another rebellion of troops during the Vietnam war: https://libcom.org/history/gi-revolts-breakdown-us-army-vietnam And episodes 10 and 11 of our podcast are about the GI resistance, find it here or your favourite podcast app by searching “working class history”: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/08/06/e10-the-gi-resistance-in-vietnam-part-1/
Pictured: Bravo Company members signing the petition https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1231712067013941/?type=3
