Ryan Fukumori & Raia Small

PHOTO: KRISTIN WALL

n February 15, 2007, the campus demonstration against the U.S. occupation of Iraq bubbled with the unmistakably urgent cries of outrage of student activists and their allies. The date—chosen by antiwar activists at the University of California, Santa Barbara—marked the fourth-year anniversary of the largest worldwide antiwar demonstration in human history, to protest a U.S. military strike on Iraq that was then on the horizon. Four years later, with the military still deeply embedded in the Middle East and showing no clear intention of leaving anytime soon, the Columbia Coalition Against the War (C-CAW) heeded the call to action. The C-CAW, comprised of a handful of preexisting student organizations and like-minded individuals, had grown out of a collaborative effort to bring one hundred fifty students to the national antiwar demonstration in Washington D.C. on January 27. Seeing that the war issues extended beyond just the withdrawal debate, it decided to bring its message to campus.

Kristin Wall, an active organizer of the coalition, said, “After the march on January 27^th, Students for Justice in the Middle East had a report back to assess and discuss where the movement was going. Someone brought up the fact that other schools were doing strikes on February 15^th, and someone else suggested doing a coinciding strike at Columbia.” Unlike many other political causes, the student antiwar movement follows very clear surges and periods of relative dormancy that correspond both to the situation on the ground in Iraq and the sentiment of the national movement. While the D.C. march in January was called before President Bush announced the troop surge, this development motivated people to march, as was evidenced by many signs and speakers in D.C. condemning the increase. In terms of the strike at Columbia, Wall mentioned “the troop surge and coming up on the fourth year of the war” as galvanizing events, noting that “many students independent from campus groups got involved.” The chosen date marked the anniversary of massive antiwar protests before the 2003 invasion. Wall said, “We tried to convey a more positive mentality in terms of what February 15^th was; it the biggest day of antiwar protests in human history.” She complained that many students feel nostalgic about the activism at Columbia in 1968, but feel like the movement is dead now. But she believes,“this is our time to do something.”

As planning for the strike continued, students discussed whether they should use the slogan “Troops out now” or the more ambiguous “End the war now,” which could mean either immediate withdrawal or a timetable for withdrawal in the future. Mike Nadler, the president of the Columbia Democrats, said that the Democrats wanted to participate in the strike “given a few conditions.” He said, “We wanted to focus just on Iraq, and not bring in peripheral issues. We are not anti-military or pro-divestment, and we didn’t want the [Columbia] administration to be demonized or antagonized.” In the planning for the strike, divestment became the main issue that incited the Democrats to leave the coalition. One particular case where the Dems disagreed with others was that of divestment from Lockheed Martin, a weapons manufacturer that Columbia is heavily invested in. Nadler commented, “Lockheed Martin has been invested in rebuilding New Orleans after Katrina.” He emphasized that the Columbia Democrats did not support ending the war by de-funding its weapons supply.

After the Democrats pulled out, Wall said, “We were really scared of how it was going to go over. But we voted almost unanimously for troops out now, to have a strike instead of a rally outside of class time, and to talk about Palestine, not with an official political statement but just as people felt comfortable.” Instead of finding this alienating, she said, “We could reach out to a lot of people on that basis.” Without the Columbia Democrats involved, the strike and teach-in had little emphasis on electoral politics. Both the recent Democratic takeover of Congress and the presidential candidates of 2008 were absent from the discussion, revealing the frustration of the antiwar movement with the past four years of appealing to Democratic leaders who have failed to prevent the war and to end it. While the strike was oriented around the goal of immediate withdrawal, other issues came up for open debate– such as the prospect of war with Iran, the occupation of Palestine, and the military-industrial complex. In terms of turnout, Wall said, “the people that showed up were very radical, and very much felt a sense of responsibility to be there. They weren’t just spectators, they were committed.” While Wall mentioned that she would have liked to see a broader base of Columbia students participating, she was surprised by the extent of faculty and union support.

David Judd, CC ’08 and president of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), characterized the campus rally “as the largest of any kind since the war started four years ago.”I find these claims weird, since Judd wasn’t even here at Columbia yet when the war started. Three hundred jacket-clad people amassed midday at Low Plaza, where they battled the weather to wield signs, join in the many chants, and show their support in general. The microphone was graced by speakers from the front, representing C-CAW’s constituent organizations but also non-student institutions such as United Auto Workers Local 210, Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), and Barnard political science professor Dennis Dalton. Despite the cold, the atmosphere remained lively as the air rang with protestors’ cries of “Stop the war…NOW!” and Dalton’s assertion that U.S. troops “must get out of the war in Iraq…not tomorrow…[they] must get out yesterday.”

PHOTO: KRISTIN WALL

Following the rally and a sidewalk march along the north border of campus, the protesters packed into Lerner Hall to engage in another project harkening back to the Vietnam War era, the teach-in. The panel represented a broad selection of educators and organizers—from university professors Richard Bulliet, Rebecca Young, Noha Radwan, and Rashid Khalidi, to citywide activists Jose Vasquez (IVAW), Michael Letwin (NYC Labor Against the War), Fahd Ahmad (Desis Rising Up and Moving), and Carlito Rovira (formerly of the Young Lords Party). The foci of their speeches was as broad in scope. Radwan, comparing the war to a student, characterized the occupation as one rife with mishaps and lies—an outright “failure.” Khalidi linked the U.S.’s actions in Iraq to the war in Afghanistan and the Israeli occupation of Palestine, asserting that the U.S.’s project engulfed the entire Middle East. Likewise, Bulliet advocated the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, but warned that “withdrawal does not mean redeployment,” such as for a future military strike on Iran. The activists on the panel focused more on their efforts at home: Ahmad described working with New Yorkers of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent whose family members had been forcefully and clandestinely detained and deported, and Vasquez elaborated on the growing efforts to organize antiwar veterans, who, like him, “didn’t want to kill people anymore.” Despite their different topics and approaches, the speakers all resonated with a common outlook: the war must end now, and the way forward is collective social action, whether, as Rovira stated, “with the ballot or the baseball bat.”

The students who marched and spoke out on February 15 shared these sentiments. Judd cited why the war is relevant to Columbia students: “It’s killed over 600,000 people. And it affects us, by killing our friends and relatives and by wasting massive amounts of money that could go, say, to financial aid, but instead is used to make bombs and tanks to kill Iraqis.” He cited Columbia’s investment in military industrial corporations like Raytheon and General Dynamics, information that he said was open and available to anybody on campus. Other students, like Karina Garcia, chair of Latino-based political organization Lucha, refuted claims of the futility of protest. Garcia said, “There are those who seek change by petition. But no war has ever been stopped by politicians…the Vietnam war was ended by the masses of people in the United States and the soldiers who refused to fight.” Judd agreed wholeheartedly, “We can do a lot to help stop the war… student protest at Columbia in 1968 was a key part of pushing the antiwar movement to the point where it had the power to pose a real threat to the established order.”

While the war still carries on, students are no less adamant about fighting to end it in their own ways. Judd was optimistic that the movement would persist. He said, “Organizing the biggest rally at Columbia in four years wasn't a flash in the pan – exciting projects are proliferating, like a debate on whether the troops should leave Iraq and the showing of Sir No Sir! [a documentary on the anti-Vietnam War organizing within the military], and the start of a long-term project to get Columbia to divest from corporations which have a financial stake in the continuing war in Iraq.” Garcia says that Lucha’s work, outside of the C-CAW, involves “taking [the organizing] to the communities most affected by the war” by reaching out to local high schools students, predominantly black and Latino, to try and form allied organizations and educate individuals about the pernicious tactics of military recruiters. Says Garcia, recruiters largely target working-class youth “who just want decent jobs and college educations…the military uses these promises, which are often false, to get people to go and die in Iraq.”

On a larger scale, the C-CAW has its eyes set on March 17, the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq, for which a march on the Pentagon has been called in Washington, D.C. and mass mobilization nationwide has already begun. Garcia sees it as the next logical step in the antiwar movement, right alongside the educational and counter-recruiting work that Columbia students and others have been involved in for the past four years. Moreover, she believes that the demonstration tackles the source of the problem. She said, “the Pentagon is at the center of it all… sixty percent of the federal budget goes into defense spending. Imagine if the money that the military spends was used for schools and housing, in New York City and all around the country. Enough is enough.”

Mike Nadler said that the CU Dems voted to officially endorse Russ Feingold’s plan for withdrawal, which cuts off funding for the war in six months, and demands a state department withdrawal plan in two months. Some U.S. troops would remain longer to train Iraqi forces in counter-terrorism. The Dems are planning on calling their representatives and asking them to support the Feingold plan. Concurrently, the Coalition is planning a debate on immediate withdrawal. Kristin stated, “If the Iraq war is going to end, its going to end because of congressional votes and the funding that determines it.” However, she emphasized that “there is no way that Congress will be moved to do that unless there is massive unrest. We know that Congress eventually cut funding for Vietnam, and we have to remember why.”