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Trenton Antiwar Teach-In:
“A Good First Step”
by John Leslie / March 2006 issue of Socialist Action
newspaper
TRENTON,
N.J.—On Feb. 4, about 30 activists, students, and community members
gathered here for the “Teach-In on the War and Counter Recruitment,”
organized by the Trenton Antiwar Organizing Committee. The TAOC is a
community-based project of the College of New Jersey Progressive Student
Alliance, members of Socialist Action, International Socialist Organization
members, and other activists.
The
antiwar conference was conceived as a follow-up to our first action, a
Veteran’s Day demo at the local recruiting station. One local organizer
said, “This is a good first step in building a movement in Trenton, where
none existed before.”
Trenton,
New Jersey’s capital, is a majority Black city with a large Latino
community—including Puerto Ricans and more recent immigrants from Central
America and Mexico.
The
day kicked off with a greeting from the Rev. Karen Hernandez-Granzen, of
the Westminster Presbyterian Church, where the event was held. She spoke of
the
importance
of counter-recruitment organizing, given the targeting of Latino and
African American youth by the military.
The
first panel consisted of Christine Gauvreau, of Connecticut United for
Peace; Ian Chinich, of Rutgers Against the War (RAW); and Mike DiMolla, of
the Campus Antiwar Network (CAN) chapter in New York.
Gauvreau
gave an overview of the state of the antiwar movement, the crisis of the
imperialist ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the tasks we face in
building opposition to the war. She called for a combination of grassroots
organizing around recruitment and the building of “democratic antiwar
conferences based on one person, one vote, where rank-and-file activists
can vote and shape the direction of the movement.”
Gauvreau
also stressed the potential of the April 29 New York City demonstration to
mobilize the largest numbers since the invasion, stating that this presents
a “challenge to all of us to hit the streets and neighborhoods” to build
the largest possible turnout.
Chinich and DiMolla both spoke at length about university activism
against recruitment and the repression activists have faced from university
administrations and campus cops.
One
example is the attempt to suspend the Iraq veteran and Kent State student,
Dave Airhart. Airhart faces disciplinary action for climbing up a military
recruiters’ rock wall in October to hang a banner that read, “Kent, Ohio,
for peace.”
DiMolla
also spoke about the struggle on his campus at CCNY to defend four
activists who were arrested for a peaceful protest against recruiters. One,
a staff member, was fired and is fighting to get her job back. The other three are students who were
suspended from the college without due process.
During
the lunch break, participants discussed energetically the possibilities of
building a
democratic
statewide coalition and a unified local action for the March 19 anniversary
of the Iraq War. The afternoon
session of the conference began with a clip of the new film, “Before You
Enlist,” which is still in production, and a dialogue with the
filmmakers—Richard Blofson, Dan Preston, and Scott Neilson.
The
filmmakers described their purpose not so much as making antiwar
propaganda, but to provide a tool for giving youth who are thinking of
joining the military an idea of what being in the armed forces really
means. The film includes interviews with returned Iraq vets, as well as
Vietnam vets, and exposes the half-truths and falsehoods told by
recruiters. The final session of
the day was a presentation by Connecticut counter-recruitment activist
Marela
Zaccarias,
of Latinos Contra La Guerra.
Zaccarias
gave an excellent talk focused mainly on high school counter-recruitment
activism, with suggestions on how to gain access to the schools, how to
talk to administrators and about outreach to students.
She
spoke about the race and class dimensions of the military’s targeting of
working-class youth, especially Latinos and Blacks.
Our
next steps as organizers on the local level are to build better organic
links with local organizations rooted in communities of color and to reach
out to students and parents. Trenton Antiwar Organizing Committee also
plans to mobilize locally around the anniversary of the war and to build
for the April 29 demo in New York.
Socialist
Action supporters from New Jersey and Connecticut sold 15 SA newspapers and
several pamphlets.
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