Build a Student Movement for November 2nd:
Revolution #014, September 18, 2005, posted at revcom.us
The following is the text of the speech given by student organizer RJ Schinner at The World Can’t Wait national conference in New York City over the Labor Day weekend.
November 2—we’re calling on people to bust out of the normal way of doing things. To defy the constant refrains to “be realistic”—and to resist like the future depends on it.
Given all this, youth and students have a crucial role to play in shaking all this loose. In this movement to drive out the Bush regime, we won’t be telling the youth “that’s too far” or “did you get a permit?” Instead we will be struggling with youth to push things further and take more bold and determined action.
We are calling for walk-outs, student strikes, and campus shut-downs on November 2.
We’re putting a big challenge before a generation—to change their whole relationship to the world.
Before getting to our vision for November 2, let’s talk about the Bush regime’s vision and future for the youth.
They continue seeking to recruit youth into the military, and act like it’s a great honor to travel to Iraq, murder thousands of people, and torture people in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
They are imposing a Christian fundamentalist culture, with complete obedience demanded from women (without even control of their own bodies), shoving gay people back into the closet (or worse), and using schools as a place for religious indoctrination rather than places to learn about and explore the world, and good ol’ traditional racism.
And they are working to silence dissent and critical thinking at colleges and universities. This means purges of progressive professors, brown shirt movements of Young Republicans, and fascist thugs like David Horowitz.
All this is part of a package they want to ram down our throats, and we must spit it out.
For the youth, the question of what kind of a future we will have is sharply put to us and needs to be answered with determination that we will not live in Bush’s nightmare.
There needs to be defiant resistance all across the country on November 2.
This needs to take shape in walkouts in high schools everywhere. This will need determination and courage to go up against the authorities, both at school and outside of school. And this determination needs to be infused with a more and more conscious opposition to the whole Bush program—like demanding to be taught evolution, refusing to be enchained by traditional morality, etc., and understanding that all these attacks are part of a whole package that needs to be taken on, not piece-by-piece but as a whole.
Moving on—
Colleges and universities have always played a key role in any resistance movement that has shaken things up. This is because students are in a position to act out—they’re exposed to new ideas (and ideas critical of the status quo), and have more freedom and ability to act on these ideas. And campuses in turn can have a big impact on the rest of society—in the battle over ideas, and the battle over the political direction of society. And when students stand up, this gives room to others to follow suit.
The Bush regime, from its standpoint, recognizes this and has been working to stop the emergence of a student movement. This is why they have fascist thugs like David Horowitz out there to purge the campuses of radical and progressive thought. This is why they’ve attacked Ward Churchill. This is why they’re trying to pass this so-called Academic Bill of Freedom and unleashed a brown shirt movement on campuses (with Young Republicans, Zionists, and Students for Academic Freedom). And already, they have created a fascist chill on campuses, with many professors “watching what they say” for fear of being turned in for criticizing the war on Iraq.
November 2 needs to put all this on the defensive. We need to put initiative and right on the side of those resisting all these injustices.
Right now, students need to take up the responsibility to be a catalyst in the movement to drive out the Bush regime, sparking resistance all throughout society. Campuses everywhere need to be turned into organizing centers for resistance. November 2 must polarize campuses—this day should be so big that no one can stay on the sidelines. This will provide more of a basis to win over people who have been so badly fooled by the Bush regime.
In envisioning what campuses should look like on November 2, we should be inspired by Paris ’68 or the wave of resistance on campuses in the U.S. when the U.S. bombed Cambodia, and seek to take things further than this. Simply put—there need to be student strikes, campus shut-downs, walkouts, and more. Everyday college life should grind to a halt and be replaced by massive resistance. To do this, we need to immediately make breakthroughs at key campuses, particularly Ivy League and elite universities, and campuses that set trends in activism and social change. This includes places like Colum-bia, Harvard, Berkeley, Oberlin, etc.
And we can’t accept the level of resistance as it is now. By negative example, let’s look at what happened at Antioch last year when the administration canceled Ward Churchill as its commencement speaker. While there was some criticism and anger from students, there was not a refusal to graduate without Ward Churchill. By no means was the resistance to this commensurate to what is needed right now. This is another illustration of what’s in the Call: “That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn—or be forced—to accept.” We cannot accept a situation where students at Antioch, a college known as a hotbed of radical ideas and actions, capitulate to this. We need to radically transform this situation, and urgently.
In bringing this vision into being, I want to emphasize one thing: The world can’t wait! In our organizing, we cannot wait for everything to fall into place, for X number of people, etc. We need to make bold plans and call for bold actions, and then go out and win people to take these up. We need a dynamic going where one campus declares to others: “Nov. 2—we’re shutting down our campus that day: what about you?” Where a group of high school students calls for a city-wide walkout and challenges everyone to step up. This would not be a bad thing to have some competition over!
And this resistance needs to reach out to the “red states”—so youth who feel alienated and isolated can get heart and backbone from a massive resistance movement, and take action themselves.
All this must be our vision for November 2 among youth and students, and we must urgently work to bring this into being immediately.
Contact the youth organizers of The World Can’t Wait at youth_students@worldcantwait.org or 347-693-3319. Keep up with the latest news at worldcantwait.org/together/youth.php