My dear, faithful readers, I would like to draw your attention to two excellent pieces recently posted on the Commondreams website.
First, a short piece by Aimee Allison and David Solnit discounts electoral-based activity and argues that a strategic approach that identifies and targets the "pillars" of the war is the best possible course of action. Allison, an army vet. and conscientous objector, and Solnit, an experienced organizer who was heavily involved in both the 1999 WTO Seattle direct actions and the shut-down of San Francisco the day after the Iraq War began, point to the "people-power" mobilizations of late in Bolivia as an example of thoughtful and effective resistance.
Tom Hayden, a former student leader in the '60s and California state senator, advocates in a Nation piece for an essentially electoral strategy, thus diverging quite significantly from Solnit and Allison. Hayden suggests that peace activists should attempt to participate in the "527 committees" voter education drive on the condition that antiwar voices get a significant role in the overall campaign, using meeting and new contacts for long-term organizing. Like Allison and Solnit, however, Hayden uses the "pillars" analogy in articulating his strategic direction - their difference lies in their tactical commitments.
Posted: December 5, 2007 1:30 am by Joshua Jackson | 0 comments
Tags: antiwar, antiwar activism, Iraq, militarism, strategy, student activism
As I discussed in my first blog entry, counter-recruitment should be a logical and actually quite crucial tactical commitment by the antiwar movement. An effective ongoing counter-recruitment campaign would have several interdependent but distinct goals:
(1) Deny bodies to the killing machine. Even in an era of Predator drones and cruise missiles, the state is absolutely dependent upon real, live human beings to do its dirty work. It's our job to plug the works.
If we succeed, we force the state to make one of two uncomfortable choices: (a) reduce or withdraw its forces and thus weaken its ability to sustain its imperial presence; or (b) install a conscription regime, with the inevitable effect of creating resistance at home.
Of course, the military heavily invests in technology, and under the Rumsfeld doctrine, has commited itself to a long-term reduction in overall personnel. The Pentagon is most likely reconsidering this strategic direction, however, in the face of obvious strain and retention problems.
(2) Counter the culture of militarism. Through the necessary person-to-person contact, direct education/propaganda work, and visibility that comes with anti-recruitment organizing, the antiwar movement can bring alternative ideas and critiques to thousands of young people in schools and on campuses around the country. We should remind ourselves that the population is constantly bombarded with militarist propaganda and values, and that our interactions with students and young people may be the only time that they've ever been approached directly by peace activists.
This being said, here are links to some of the best counter-recruitment resources on the Web:
(1) The Iraq Veterans Against the War's "truth in recruiting" campaign. The site contains a few good leaflets and an incredibly clever tactical idea for counter-recruiting activists: "befriend a recruiter." The more time we spend disingenuously communicating with recruiters and jamming the works with false interest, the less time they have to chase actual leads. Ingenious!
(2) Perhaps the best CR site belongs to the National Network Opposing Militarization of Youth. Features subject and geographic contact listings of CR groups across the country, as well as pdfs of numerous leaflets, documents, and various resources.
(3) The American Friends Service Committee CR site also contains a great deal of useful pamphlets, leaflets, reports, etc.
Posted: November 27, 2007 10:33 pm by Joshua Jackson | 0 comments
Tags: antiwar activism, counter-recruitment, militarism, strategy, student activism
The author had the privilege of joining a silent and solemn procession of area students on Friday, November 16. Over a hundred students braved the chilly, windy weather and marched all the way from the Park St. station to the BU area, with a brief stop at the Armed Forces Recruitment Center on Buswell St. (near the St. Mary's T stop on the Green C line). Overall, the mood was good and I was quite heartened by the showing and spirit of the black-clad train of angry young students.
The action was undertaken in the spirit of the Iraq Moratorium called earlier this year. Video and photo documentation of the event was made by one of the more excellent and insightful "movement artists" of the area, Mr. John McIntosh. Thank you, John!
Posted: November 18, 2007 11:30 pm by Joshua Jackson | 0 comments
Tags: antiwar activism, student activism, student radicalism, Students for a Democratic Society
Originally published in a 1969 Enyclopedia Brittanica yearbook in the wake of the wave of student rebellions across the world, and republished in his crucial early collection of writings, For Reasons of State, this essay raises a number of timely and important issues for anti-complicity activists.
In his typically perceptive and incisive fashion, Chomsky contrasts the concept of the ideal intellectual community articulated by the philosopher von Humboldt with the reality of the university in state capitalist society. Like other radicals, Chomsky naturally argues that the university is inextricably tied to the society in which it functions, and is thus subject to external economic, political, and ideological pressures and demands. Given this inevitable relationship, Chomsky praises the seemingly inherent quality of freedom consitutive of the academy and argues that the non-coercive atmosphere it affords can potentially be used by radical students and intellectuals who require an effective base of operations for launching their campaigns of critique.
Although he indeed notes that "the sharp challenges that have been raised by the student movement are among the few hopeful developments of these troubled years," he is careful to qualify his remarks by referring to the "exaggerations and even flights of fancy" to which radical students appear to be susceptible. In particular, he argues that the funding sources and location of military research projects are ultimately irrelevant, and furthermore, that anti-complicity protests could have the undesired effect of simply pushing the research into private, less visible, and less accountable settings. Most importantly, perhaps, he contends that anti-complicity campaigns that target researchers and scientists could actually have the unintended consequence of introducing the principle of coercion into the academic arena.
To quote at length:
"In certain respects, the specific issue of Defense Deparment funding of research is a misleading one. Research on chemical and biological warfare or counterinsurgency would be no more benign if funded by the National Institutes of Health or the Social Science Research Council, just as work on high energy physics is not corrupted if funding comes through the Department of Defense. The important question is the nature of the work and the uses to which it is likely to be put, not the bureaucratic issue of the source of funding. The latter is of some significance, insofar as one might argue that the Pentagon gains respectability and power by its support of serious research. For American society as a whole, this development is a very minor symptom of a real tragedy, the ongoing and perhaps irreversible militarization of American society. But in the particular case of the universities, these considerations seem to me marginal. Another side issue, in my opinion, is the question of a campus base for military research. In fact, the Vietnamese care very little whether the counterinsurgency technology that is used to destroy and repress them is developed in the halls of the university or in private spin-offs on its periphery. And the victims of the endless arms race - the present victims of the waste of resources, material and intellectual, that are desperately needed elsewhere, or the possible future victims of a devastating catastrophe - to these unfortunates it is of little interest whether their fate is determined in a Department of Death on the university campus or in Los Alamos or Fort Detrick, hundreds of miles away. To move such work off campus is socially irrelevant. It might, in fact, even be a regressive step. It might be argued that as long as such work continues, it would be preferable for it to be done on campus, where it can become a focus for student activism and protest that may not only impede such work but also contribute to growing public awareness."
I rarely disagree with Mr. Chomsky - in fact, this may be the first time - but I find his reasoning to be somewhat questionable in this case.
First, although he's certainly correct to assert that those at the receiving end of US state violence most likely couldn't care less as to the specific origin of the weapons technologies used against them, I think he perhaps forgets that those trapped inside "the belly of the beast" may care, and indeed, should care about our institutional ties to the killing machine. We should ask ourselves: Is it morally acceptable for my university or college to serve as a site for military research, especially during an ongoing imperial occupation of Iraq? Why should an educational institution - purportedly devoted to the expansion of knowledge, the enrichment of culture, and the betterment of the human condition - be allowed to materially and functionally assist in the creation of ever-more effective techologies built to secure and extend the domination of man by man, and country by country? In fact, as Chomsky may ask, do we wish to live in a society that pursues military research in any capacity, no matter where or in what particular settings it takes place?
Second, I entirely agree with Chomsky that the "important question is the nature of the work and the uses to which it is likely to be put." Of course! One might justifiably wonder, however, just exactly what other possible motivations the DofD. may in fact have in funding military research. It's difficult to believe that DARPA would direct funding towards any project that could not have some military utility in the future.
Third, Chomsky begs the question by asserting that it may be more advantageous for the student antiwar movement to actually maintain the presence of military research on campus, so that "it can become a focus for student activism and protest that may not only impede such work but also contribute to growing public awareness." Again, one might justifiably wonder about his logic in this case. Wouldn't an effective anti-complicity campaign that successfully "impedes" military research most likely result in the research moving off-campus? Perhaps Chomsky is here distinguishing between protest on the one hand and resistance on the other, with the former taking on a more symbolic meaning and the undeclared latter posing a more obstructive threat.
Posted: November 16, 2007 3:46 am by Joshua Jackson | 0 comments
Tags: complicity, militarism, military research, Noam Chomsky, student activism
Students and young people of America, look west! Look to the people of Olympia for inspiration, look to Olympia for hope!
Members of the Olympia Port Militarization Resistance group of Olympia, Washington, took direct action Friday and actually successfully obstructed war shipments. Two articles by Grossman and Bohmer on the ZMag site describe the action,and a video posted to YouTube provides an exciting recording of these young Americans, who could teach a valuable lesson to the entire antiwar movement, if it were only willing to learn.
Ultimately, the movement will need to strategically undertake direct action if it ever wishes to concretely and effectively obstruct the war machine. Way to go, brave Olympians! You have set a shining example for us all!
Posted: November 12, 2007 11:03 pm by Joshua Jackson | 0 comments
Tags: antiwar, antiwar activism, direct action, militarism, protest, strategy, student activism, tactics
The last few years have witnessed the gradual resurrection of an old and storied student organization from the 1960s, Students for a Democratic Society. SDS organizers and activists were - and continue to be - at the heart of many social movements in the United States, and students across the country are attempting to revive the moribund student left with a firm vision of totalist politics and participatory democracy.
The Nation had an interesting article on this Lazurus-like development in April, and a website for the new SDS is up and running.
The most recent document to come out of the past summer's National Convention in Detroit is fascinating, and I daresay, inspiring and quite exciting. The Final Convention Bulletin also looks rather professionally-designed. Take the time to read it and stay tuned . . .
Posted: November 7, 2007 12:49 am by Joshua Jackson | 0 comments
Tags: antiwar activism, SDS, student activism, student radicalism, Students for a Democratic Society
