Wonder Woman Wants Education Reform in Chile Now!

A "protest kiss" during a July education-reform rally in Santiago, Chile.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/horment/5939392774/">Erwin Horment</a>/Flickr

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While Chile’s recent string of student protests has had its fair share of water cannons sprayed and Molotov cocktails hurled, there have been a good deal of bloodless—and downright entertaining—demonstrations as well.

Young Chilean protesters, calling for increased funding for public education and lower university fees, choreographed and staged elaborate song-and-dance routines in the capital, Santiago, this week. The real kicker? The college kids and high schoolers were decked-out in colorful comic book costumes and superhero attire, BBC News reports.

Batman, Superman, Mario, Wonder Woman, Catwoman (who actually looked more like Lady Gaga on a bad morning), Poison Ivy, and a few jolly pirates all made appearances, while C+C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat” was blasted for good measure.

The protest—the latest in a series of demonstrations that began in June—was organized after news of a cabinet reshuffle by center-right President Sebastián Piñera, whose approval rating has sunk to the low-30s.

Chilean students appear to have a fondness for creative protesting. In early July, students in Concepción orchestrated a mass “kiss-in,” in which 2,000 demonstrators gathered in front of city courts to suck face in support of eliminating for-profit control of their education system. (It was kind of like a larger, less chaotic version of the osculating couple photographed during the Vancouver Stanley Cup riots.)

The only thing that would have made either of these rallies more stimulating was if the Chileans took a cue from Ukrainian protesters and went topless.

Watch footage of the superhero-dance-protest below:

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

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And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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