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Easing back into blogging after a bit of a break, and I have to catch a train in an hour, but I didn’t want to let this go unmentioned:

Yesterday in Montreal more than a hundred thousand students — some estimates say it was twice that many — took to the streets to oppose planned tuition hikes. This in the context of an ongoing, growing province-wide student strike.

Big stuff, and getting bigger.

In his first interview since his arrest and conviction on charges of violating Tyler Clementi’s privacy via webcam, Dharun Ravi says that although he “was stupid about a lot of stuff,” he doesn’t believe he contributed to his Rutgers roommate’s suicide in any way.

“I really don’t think he cared at all,” Ravi told ABC News. “It would be kind of obnoxious of me to think that I could have this profound effect on him.”

Ravi says he rejected a plea deal that would have spared him jail time because he would have had to admit — falsely — that “I did this because I had this hate for gay people.” Gay rights advocates have, he says, “a just cause,” but their criticism of his anti-gay language and his public taunting of Clementi “detracts” from it. “This is something people can point to and say, ‘You guys are going overboard,'” he told ABC.

“I think it’s bad for them.”

Over at The New Inquiry, Malcolm Harris is taking a look at the dismal circumstances today’s young people find themselves in. Youth unemployment is at record levels. Youth arrest rates are skyrocketing even as youth crime plummets. College tuition is going through the roof, as is youth debt, and household incomes of youth-headed families are lagging far behind those of other age cohorts.

It’s ugly.

And that ugliness is the cause, Harris says, of Occupy Wall Street:

It isn’t a stretch to call the recent wave of American occupations a youth movement. Originating from student struggles against high tuition — in California, New York, and most militantly, Puerto Rico —  the occupations channeled young Americans’ fear and insecurity into often inchoate action. … President Obama sold himself so successfully to young Americans by mirroring our hopes for post-Bush reform that the resulting disappointment is directed more toward the hope itself than the man who never stood much of a chance of fulfilling it. It’s in this situation, when reform in the government and in the workplace feels exhausted, that the framework of liberal aspirations and demands collapses. And Occupy Wall Street is the most palatable instantiation of this post-hope politics by process of elimination that we’re likely to see.

There’s a lot more to Harris’ piece, and it’s all worth reading, so go read it.

Today is a major day of action in the state capitals of California and New York, with students and allies from across each state descending on Sacramento and Albany.

In New York, #M5 events kick off with a two o’clock press conference at the Million Dollar Staircase in the capitol, followed by teach-ins, a march, and an evening rally.

In California, plans are proceeding along two parallel tracks, with university officials and Democratic officials planning a traditional lobby day while activists — including a group completing a 99-mile weekend march from Oakland — preparing for direct action.

Check out the map…