A Message from Istanbul

I am sharing this with the permission of the author, a colleague in and from Istanbul, who sent this to me this morning…. 6 days ago, a few thousand people started a peaceful protest against an urban development project in Gezi Parki, Taksim, Istanbul. An illegal process to uproot 20-year old trees in the park gave rise to these people camping out in the park all night, reading books, singing together, and protesting the project, which proposed to build a new shopping mall/bazaar/pedestr…