Bob Feldman : Civil Rights, SDS, and Student Activism in Austin, Texas, 1954-1973

Massive march against the War in Vietnam, Austin, Texas, May 8, 1970. Image from The Rag Blog.

The hidden history of Texas

Part 13: 1954-1973/2 -- Student Activism and the Anti-War Movement at the University of Texas

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / April 17, 2013

[This is the second section of Part 13 of Bob Feldman's Rag Blog series on the hidden history of Texas.]

Inspired by the early 1960s Civil Rights Movement protests of groups like the Congress of Racial Equality [CORE], the Southern Christian Leadership Council [SCLC], and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC], and in response to the 1965 escalation of the Pentagon’s War in Viet Nam, an increasing number of students and non-students in Austin, Texas, became involved in New Left and countercultural groups like SDS and in underground press journalism during the 1960s.

There was substantial New Left activity in other Texas cities, including Houston where underground newspaper Space City! helped pull together an active movement community, but Austin -- which had always been a center for cultural and political iconoclasm -- would become one of the nation's New Left hot spots.

As Beverly Burr observed in her thesis, "History of Student Activism at the University of Texas at Austin (1960-88)":

The Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] formed a chapter in the early spring of 1964. From 1964-7, the UT chapter of SDS began to build the local white, radical student movement. Alice Embree, one of the early participants in SDS at UT, said that when she went through registration at the beginning of the Spring 1964 semester, there was an SDS information table. She conjectured that 4 or 5 people started the group.

The early focus of the group was participating with black student activists in the sit-ins at downtown Austin restaurants... In mid-October 1965, SDS held a death march protesting U.S. policy toward Vietnam. This protest was apparently the first antiwar demonstration on the campus during the 1960s. About 70 students participated in the march and rally... SDS had attempted to get a parade permit to march on the streets during the rally but the permit had been refused by the City Council...

SDS held its first fall 1966 meeting in late October [1966]... At the same time, students organized an underground newspaper called The Rag... Most of the staffers were SDSers who created the paper not only to publicize issues of importance to the movement but also in reaction to the corporate controlled mainstream media... During the fall [of 1966] 10 SDS and Rag women... held a sit-in protesting the draft at the Selective Service in Austin. In January of 1967 several demonstrations were held against Secretary of State Dean Rusk while he was in town... Over 200 came to the second protest which succeeded in canceling Rusk’s dinner at the UT Alumni Center...

The first conflict between SDS and the University occurred later in the spring of 1967 during Flipped-Out Week... SDS had planned a week of activities including a speech by... Stokely Carmichael..., an anti-war march to the Capitol, and Gentle Thursday... The activities attracted several thousands... The week after Flipped-Out Week, SDS distributed flyers... to plan a Monday protest against Vice President Hubert Humphrey who would be speaking at the Capitol... On Monday, about 150 students protested at the Capitol against the war in Vietnam. Later that day, UT withdrew recognition of SDS as a campus organization...

UT initiated disciplinary proceedings against 6 students involved in the anti-war protest... against Hubert Humphrey... Simultaneously the UT administration... called for the arrest of George Vizard, a non-student. Vizard was arrested by Austin police... The police brutally arrested him in the Chuckwagon, a café and radical hangout in the Student Union... Over 250 outraged students and faculty members... founded the University Freedom Movement [UFM].

University Freedom Movement rally,
UT campus, 1967. Photo from The Rag.

But despite subsequently well-attended free speech rallies and extralegal campus protests by UFM supporters during the rest of April 1967, the six anti-war students who were being disciplined by the UT administration were all placed on probation for their political activity on May 1, 1967. Yet the anti-war countercultural movement in Austin continued to gain more local popular support, and in October 1969, around 10,000 people protested in Austin against the Republican Nixon Administration's failure to end the Pentagon’s War in Vietnam .

African-American student and non-student Movement activists also continued to organize anti-racist protests during the late 1960s in Austin. As the “History of Student Activism at the University of Texas at Austin ” thesis also noted:

In 1966, the Negro Association for Progress [NAP] was formed... During the spring of 1967, NAP... members converged on the office of... athletic director and... football coach Darrell Royal to find out why UT was not accepting or recruiting black athletes... In October [1967]... NAP held an illegal demonstration for black student rights... In the spring of 1968 NAP was replaced by the Afro-Americans for Black Liberation [AABL]...

In May [1968]... the owner of a Conoco station... attacked a black musician... Larry Jackson of Austin SNCC and Grace Cleaver, chair of AABL, called on all persons opposed to racism to picket [and to boycott the station]... Jackson requested that SDS participate in the action and the group agreed. The students held several sit-ins at the gas station. City police arrested about 50 in the demonstrations... That fall AABL won 2 academic programs in Afro-American Studies...

And in a Feb. 1, 2003, speech before the W.H. Passion Historical Society at the Southgate-Lewis House in Austin, former Austin SNCC activist Larry Jackson also recalled how a SNCC chapter came to be formed in Austin during the late 1960s:

I was born in central East Texas, a little town called Hearn... And that’s the place I first began my activities in civil rights... I first got involved in a lot of civil rights activities when I was in high school in Hearne, Texas. And I was trying to integrate the pool... I left Hearne, Texas because I was involved with so much strife there...

And in Houston I became very active in school activities at Texas Southern... And what really got me here in Austin was I had previously worked on the Martin Luther King speech day in Houston... And at the music hall, outside of the TSU people and a few whites to hear Martin Luther King speak, there was not 200 people there. And this happened in 1967... And I ended up coming here on a speaking deal with Stokely Carmichael and Rap Brown. That’s how I got to Austin , Texas... And so he was speaking out there at the University of Texas. So I stayed on here because I was gonna form a SNCC chapter here in Austin...”

Austin was also a center for the fast-growing women's liberation movement and, according to Jo Freeman in Women: A Feminist Perspective, the landmark Supreme Court decision on abortion, Roe v. Wade, "was the project of a small feminist group in Austin, Texas and the lawyer [Sarah Weddington] who argued Roe before the Supreme Court was one of its participants."

[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]

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Jay D. Jurie : The Return of ROTC

Navy ROTC cadets from Florida's Jacksonville University. U.S.Navy photo by Spc. 2nd Class Gary Granger Jr. / 4GWar.
ROTC resurgent
Part II: ROTC's history and return to campus

When the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy was dropped in 2010, some institutions began to consider reestablishing their relationship with ROTC.

By Jay D. Jurie / The Rag Blog / August 18, 2011

[This is the second of a two-part series on ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) -- dealing with the militant opposition to ROTC during the Vietnam War era, and with the program's recent resurgence on college campuses. In Part I , Jurie described an escalating series of demonstrations against ROTC in 1969-1970 at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he was a student. Part II covers the history of the ROTC program, the issue of discrimination against gays, and the recent return of ROTC to a number of U.S. campuses.]

While the concerted and militant campaign against ROTC in Boulder may have been unique, it was far from the only protest against ROTC during the anti-Vietnam war era, and, in fact, there had been substantial opposition to the program prior to the War in Vietnam. Since its inception, ROTC has proven controversial.

Part of the original purpose of ROTC was found in the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, which gave states federal land that included a stipulation for military coursework. In 1898 the War Department attempted to clarify this by proposing military instruction be provided by officers assigned as faculty, that students in those courses be required to wear uniforms, and that this instruction be made mandatory. Enactment of the National Defense Act of 1916 formally established ROTC and extended it to private as well as public colleges.

Some have argued ROTC played an essential role in keeping the military grounded in civil society. According to Michael S. Neiberg, unlike officers trained in elite military academies,

civilian educated officers would bring to military service a wider and more rounded background. They would also bring to the military a value system more consistent with American society by virtue of having lived in a civilian environment.

On the other hand,others have argued that ROTC desensitizes the civilian population to the militarization of society and the inimical purposes that may be served by the military. According to Neiberg, the University of Washington SDS in 1969 contended that,

If the university's role in cooperating with ROTC is the production of officers, our universities have become, in part, mere extension schools of our government's military establishment... The university continues to produce the tools to make possible policies such as those which led the U.S. into war in Asia.

ROTC had become so well-established by the 1920s that John Dewey and others became sufficiently alarmed to create a Committee on Militarism and Education. Concerns over its growing presence by the 1930s caused a few educational institutions to either drop the program or change its status from mandatory to voluntary.

However, most schools that had the program retained it, usually with the requirement that two years of participation in the program were obligatory for all male students.

ROTC received a boost during World War II, but after the war the controversy returned. Motivated by the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation in the late 1950s and early 1960s, ROTC sparked protest. In May 1960, protestors at Boston University picketed, leafleted, petitioned, and placed a table with a protest sign in a ROTC parade route.

As the Vietnam war heated up in the mid- and late-1960s, so did protests against ROTC. In addition to demonstrations, ROTC facilities were set on fire at Stanford, Michigan, Kent State, and the University of Colorado. There was a perception held by a number in the anti-war movement that this violence paled in comparison with, and was justified by, the widespread use of napalm and the tonnage of bombs dropped in Vietnam.

Some schools, in response to these protests, removed the mandatory requirement. Others, like the Colorado School of Mines, kept it in place into the 1970s.

Even where ROTC was no longer compulsory, such as the University of Colorado, the program became a focal point of the anti-war movement. During the late 1960s and into the early 1970s over 80 ROTC programs were dropped, mostly from the elite universities where ROTC had drawn the most opposition. While ROTC was dropped from some schools, it was established in less "controversial," mostly public university locations.

Women's ROTC in the Sixties. Photo from Fortune City / Broad Recognition (Yale).
It should be pointed out that ROTC programs were never formally banned by host institutions. In most cases, either academic credit was withdrawn, or regular faculty status was not accorded ROTC instructors. In these cases, ROTC decided to withdraw its own program. Responding to the changes that occurred during that decade, women's programs were created in ROTC beginning in 1969.

Nonetheless, a rough status quo was maintained for decades after the Vietnam war ended. During that time frame many colleges and universities enacted policies banning discrimination against gays. Because the military engaged in such discrimination, this effectively kept ROTC off campus at those schools.

Nearly two and half decades later, renewed support for ROTC grew with the passage of the Solomon Amendment. Named after Gerald Solomon (R-NY) who initially introduced the legislation in 1994, this legislation prohibited colleges and universities that received federal funding from prohibiting military recruitment on campus or dropping ROTC programs.

Several law schools combined to file a lawsuit against this prohibition. In the 2006 Rumsfeld v. FAIR decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed an appeals court ruling and upheld the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment

When the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy was dropped in 2010, some institutions began to consider reestablishing their relationship with ROTC.

For at least two institutions of higher education, reinstatement was not seamless. At Stanford, a women's group objected that while discrimination in the military against gays had been lifted, it continued against transgender individuals. Nonetheless, on April 28, 2011, the Stanford Faculty Senate voted overwhelmingly to invite ROTC back to campus.

At Yale, a representative of a women's group wrote that discrimination and harassment against women in the military was a problem of such significance that it ought to be addressed before welcoming a return of ROTC to that campus.

Another concern has cropped up even more recently. An August 9, 2011 CNN report revealed that Air Force ROTC training has included a slide show that violates the separation of church and state. According to reporter Jennifer Rizzo, "many of the slides in the 43 page production use a Christian justification for war."

Both the ROTC and military launch officer training were developed by the Air Force's Air Education and Training Command (AETC). After 31 Air Force missile launch officers objected to this training, Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Foundation is quoted as saying, "they're trying to teach that, under fundamentalist Christian doctrine, war is a good thing."

Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, are among those that have brought ROTC back, and Brown has been considering the matter. ROTC has regained a certain popularity among students. Not only have the draft and the memory of Vietnam faded, but military service is seen as patriotic in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and an employment option in a tough economy.

University of Florida ROTC cadets participate in leadership exercise April 25, 2010 at Camp Blanding, Fla. Photo by Cadet Scott Stallings / USAF / Fox News.
While the military may no longer be engaged in overt discrimination against gays, there are unresolved issues involving ROTC. Among these, the objections raised during the Vietnam eara largely remain in place. So long as the U.S. maintains an interventionist foreign policy based on resource exploitation and the containment of those at odds with elite interests, it is evident that ROTC will provide officers to serve that policy.

Sources: Allan Brick, "The Campus Protest Against ROTC," Southern Student Organizing Committee, no date; Chuck Colbert, Stanford Faculty OK ROTC Proposal, Bay Area Report, June 5, 2011; Editorial: "Reconsidering ROTC," The Brown Daily Herald; "Larry Gordon, Once a Campus Outcast, ROTC is Booming at Universities," Los Angeles Times, June 1, 2011; Tim Lange & Carol Lease, "ROTC: An Analysis," Boulder, CO: Student Peace Union, 1969; Diane H. Mazur, "The Myth of the ROTC Ban," The New York Times, October 24, 2010; Tara W. Merrigan & Zoe A.Y. Weinberg, "Harvard to Officially Recognize Naval ROTC," Harvard Crimson, March 3, 2011; Michael S. Neiberg, Making Citizen-Soldiers: ROTC and the Ideology of American Military Service, Cambridge: Harvard, 2000; Fahmida Y. Rashid, "The Return of ROTC to Columbia," The Village Voice, April 6, 2011; Emily Rappoport, "Should Yale Allow ROTC to Return to Campus?" Yale: Broad Recognition, May 3, 1011; Otis Reid, "Women's Coalition Rejects ROTC's Return to Campus," Stanford Review, March 14, 2011; Jennifer Rizzo, "Air Force's Use of Christian Messages Extends to ROTC," CNN.com, August 9, 2011.

[Jay D. Jurie was a student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, a member of SDS, and one of the "Boulder 18" arrested as a result of the ROTC demonstrations. Jay now teaches public administration and urban planning and lives near Orlando, Florida. Read more articles by Jay D. Jurie on The Rag Blog.]

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Jay D. Jurie : Vietnam and the Historic Struggle Against ROTC

Marchers in 1970 want ROTC removed from the campus of Ohio University. Image from Cape Girardeau History and Photos.
ROTC resurgent
Part I: ROTC and the anti-war movement

They held regular drills on an open field approximately two blocks from the heart of campus. It was viewed as an affront that ROTC paraded so openly while the carnage mounted in Vietnam.

By Jay D. Jurie / The Rag Blog / August 18, 2011

[This is the first of a two-part series on ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) -- dealing with the militant opposition to ROTC during the Vietnam War era, and with the program's recent resurgence on college campuses. The author was at Boulder and participated in the demonstrations he describes. Similar actions occurred at campuses throughout the country.]

Carrying an upside-down U.S. flag tacked onto a short wooden stake, a student at the head of a column of anti-Vietnam war students marching onto a University of Colorado practice field was tackled by several pro-war student athletes.

As the protest column continued to press onto the field the "jocks" and police struggled to bring it to a halt. They were unsuccessful and the protestors made their way through the ranks of parading cadets, turning the drill into a melee. This April 30, 1970 event was not the first time such a drill had been disrupted on the Boulder campus.

Early in the fall of 1969, members of the Student Peace Union (SPU) approached their counterparts in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) with a proposal.

SPU had decided the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC, pronounced "rotsee" by friend and foe alike) was the most visible manifestation of the Vietnam War on campus. While SDS elsewhere had devoted some attention to ROTC, this had not particularly filtered down to the Boulder chapter as an "action item." SPU's proposal was that SDS partner in demonstrating against ROTC.

At that time, ROTC held regular drills on an open field approximately two blocks from the heart of campus. SDS readily agreed with the SPU proposal, not only because of the high profile, but because it was viewed as an affront that ROTC paraded so openly while the carnage mounted in Vietnam.

It was agreed that the target of the protest would not be the individual cadets enrolled in ROTC, but the program itself and its relation to the University, the military, and the war. SDS put out a very simple flyer that read only:

1) end ROTC. 2) reimburse students on ROTC scholarships.

When the day of protest came, the two organizations, along with their supporters, met at the student union fountain area and marched to the field where the ROTC drill was already under way. Proceeding onto the field protestors marched to and fro through the ranks of parading cadets and confusion reigned. There was no violence, but the drill was disrupted. ROTC instructors sized up the situation and called off the exercise.

At the next ROTC parade, the protest was repeated. Though they again marched from the fountain area together, relations between SPU and SDS were cool. From the outset it was clear there was a tactical dispute. SPU wanted to be a visible presence and make a statement in opposition to the war and ROTC on campus, while SDS wanted to do everything in its power to "stop the war machine" and end the killing.

Nearing arrival at the field, the column of protestors split into two, with SPU heading to the side of the field, and SDS marching toward the drill. This time, campus police were better prepared. They formed a cordon along the edge of the parade ground to prevent the SDS contingent from reaching the drill. However, SDS moved quickly and did an end run around the police line. As before, protestors managed to run through the ranks of drilling cadets and chaos ensued. There was no violence, but the drill was again disrupted.

Apparently the police realized that if they chased the protestors across the field they would only contribute to the disruption. Again, ROTC instructors called off the drill. SDS was elated, believing the system had been beaten twice and one small corner of the war machine had been shut down, at least temporarily.

Army ROTC patch. Image from Eastern Washington University / Flickr.
There was one more "ROTC smash" that fall, but by this time, in disagreement with SDS tactics, SPU had dropped out of the partnership. SDS figured the police would be too well prepared for a third successful march onto the field. Instead, when the marchers neared the field, they abruptly veered off and headed toward the stadium, where ROTC had its offices. Campus police rapidly redeployed and kept pace with the SDS march.

Outside the ROTC offices, a couple of SDS leaders were making the usual anti-war speeches when the campus police chief noticed smoke billowing from the area where the ROTC parade was underway. He quickly realized they'd been duped. Several police officers stayed with the rally to keep an eye on the demonstrators and ensure the ROTC offices were protected, while the main force ran back to the field.

At that point, the protestors had a good laugh and dispersed. In the planning for the event some SDS members had volunteered to throw smoke bombs onto the field. This was not done in such a way as to cause any harm, but to make a symbolic point about the bombing of Vietnam, and to sow confusion and hopefully yet again cause disruption. In this respect the action was a success, as were all the ROTC "smashes" that fall. No one was injured, and remarkably, no one was kicked out of school and there were no arrests.

By the spring of 1970 both the SPU and SDS chapters were defunct. Filling the void of campus anti-war activism at the University of Colorado was the Student Mobilization Committee (SMC), a front group for the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA), the youth affiliate of the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Meanwhile, the depredations of the Nixon-Kissinger regime in Southeast Asia had intensified. Campus awareness and activism across the country, and at the University of Colorado, reached its zenith that spring.

Students who were more militant, including many previously affiliated with SDS, became the very uneasy left-wing "junior partner" under the SMC umbrella. The dominant YSA faction, strategically if not ideologically, fulfilled the role played by SPU the previous fall. While a variety of anti-war actions took place early in the year, including an occupation of the first floor of the administration building, ROTC was not forgotten.

Hofstra students protest mandatory ROTC on campus. Image from The Hofstra Chronicle, 1967.
It was decided by late April that ROTC would once again be a "smash" target. This time, it was understood well in advance by all in SMC that there would be a divergence over tactics. As before, marchers gathered at the fountain area and set off for the ROTC drill field. This time the protest was larger, with 300-500 participating. When the field was reached, the larger YSA-affliated contingent peeled off and, in keeping with their strategy of mass rallies, like SPU the preceding fall, assumed positions along the sidelines.

Campus police turned out in full force, accompanying the march all the way to the field, where they formed a much larger cordon than before and were more fully equipped for a riot. Determined they were not going to be stopped, the more militant faction of SMC marched directly toward the line of police. Aligned with the police was a contingent of about 30 "jocks."

As the two sides converged, the previously described scuffle broke out. Police chased demonstrators on and off the field. Police parked in cruisers adjacent to the field pursued some who fled across campus. Some students were handcuffed to a nearby chain link fence as the arresting officers returned to the fray. A student who thoughtfully came equipped with a handcuff key surreptitiously set them free.

On this occasion, a number of people were tackled, knocked down, shoved, punched, or grabbed. While there was violence, there were no serious injuries. Most of the violence was initiated by the jocks, a fact which the police ignored, and no jocks were arrested. It was widely believed by protestors that an understanding had been reached between the police and jocks beforehand.

Since some of those arrested had stayed on the sidelines, it was abundantly clear the University strategy was to target and get rid of those they identified as leaders of the campus anti-war movement. Nine of the anti-war students were arrested at the scene and nine more were subsequently charged with violating Colorado's newly-enacted "Campus Disorder Act."

As it turned out, no one was ever tried for the Boulder "ROTC smashes" of 1969-70, though after the 1970 protest several were suspended from school for varying lengths of time. Eventually, the case of the "Boulder 18" wound up in front of the Colorado Supreme Court, which ruled the statute unconstitutionally vague, threw it out, and quashed the charges.

Not knowing this would be the final "smash," the University moved all ROTC drills inside the football stadium, where they could control access. For their part, Boulder's anti-war protestors won at least a minor victory by visibly exposing University complicity with the military and the war. While ROTC was not forced off campus, the protests resulted in some change of "business as usual."

Part II will cover the history of the ROTC program, the issue of discrimination against gays, and the recent return of ROTC to a number of U.S. campuses.

[Jay D. Jurie was a student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, a member of SDS, and one of the "Boulder 18" arrested as a result of the ROTC demonstrations. Jay now teaches public administration and urban planning and lives near Orlando, Florida. Read more articles by Jay D. Jurie on The Rag Blog.]

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David Bacon : Students 'Sin Papeles' Work for DREAM Act

Latino students at the University of Virginia hold a silent march to support the DREAM Act. Photo courtesy Latino Student Alliance / University of Virginia.
Students 'sin papeles' defy deportation,
urge Congress to support DREAM Act

By David Bacon / The Rag Blog / November 30, 2010

See "DREAM Act supporters arrested at Texas Senator Hutchison's office," Below.

OAKLAND, California -- This week, if Senator Harry Reid keeps his word, Congress may get a chance to vote on the DREAM Act. First introduced in 2003, the bill would allow undocumented students graduating from a U.S. high school to apply for permanent residence if they complete two years of college or serve two years in the U.S. military. Estimates are that it would enable over 800,000 young people to gain legal status, and eventual citizenship.

A vote in Congress would be a tribute to thousands of these young "sin papeles," or people without papers . For seven years they've marched, sat-in, written letters and mastered every civil rights tactic in the book to get their bill onto the Washington, DC agenda.

Many of them have given new meaning to "coming out" -- declaring openly their lack of legal immigration status in media interviews, defying authorities to detain them. Three were arrested last May, when they sat-in at the office of Arizona Senator John McCain, demanding that he support the bill, while defying immigration authorities to come get them. T

hey were, in fact, arrested and held in detention overnight. Then a judge recognized the obvious. These were not "aliens" who might flee if they were released from detention, but political activists who were doing their best not only to stay in the country, but to do so as visibly as possible.

Reid owes his tiny margin of victory in Nevada's election to an outpouring of Latino votes. Since he announced he'd bring the bill to the floor of Congress, more students have begun a hunger strike at the University of Texas in Austin. They insist they won't eat until Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson renounces her opposition to the DREAM Act. First their fast spread to campuses across Texas. Then students in other parts of the country announced they too would act when Reid calls the bill up for a vote.

But the DREAM Act campaigners have done more than get a vote in Washington, no matter how that may turn out. They've learned to use their activism to stop deportations. Further, they did this in an era when more people have been deported -- 400,000 last year alone -- than ever before in this country's history. To highlight the connection between the bill and their challenge to the rising wave of deportations, four undocumented students walked for weeks from Miami to Washington in protest.

In the process, they learned the lesson the civil rights movement of the 60s' taught activists of an earlier generation: Congress and Washington's political class can be forced to respond to social movements outside the capitol. When those movements grow and make themselves felt, they can win legislation, and even more. People in the streets can change the conditions in their own communities. DREAM Act activists, by stopping deportations even in the absence of Congressional action, have made possible what political insiders held to be impossible.

Fredd Reyes. Photo from Facebook.
Fredd Reyes is living proof. This week he came back to North Carolina for Thanksgiving. He was picked up last September as he was studying for exams at Guilford Technical Community College, and taken first to the North Georgia Detention Center, and then to the Stewart Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. Fredd's parents fled the massacres of Guatemala counter-insurgency war of the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan gave guns to that country's military, which they then turned on indigenous communities seeking social justice. Fredd was a toddler then.

DREAM Act students mobilized, and got Fredd sprung loose.

Jennifer Abreu had her Thanksgiving in Kentucky. She came to the U.S. with her parents when she was 13. She graduated from Lafayette High School in Lexington, where she became an activist, performed Brazilian and Colombian dances at fiestas and dreamt of life as a journalist. ICE picked her up, but a campaign by DREAM Act students and their supporters set her free too.

And in San Francisco, activists won freedom for Shing Ma "Steve" Li, a nursing student at San Francisco Community College. Immigration authorities detained him on September 15, igniting a lightening effort to stop his deportation. As the DREAM Act moved closer to a vote in Congress, he also became a living symbol for the national campaign to pass the bill.

Shing Ma "Steve" Li. Photo from America's Voice.
Li's predicament was dramatic and unusual. His parents emigrated from China to Peru, where Li was born. They later came to the U.S., where their petition for political asylum was denied. That made Li an undocumented immigrant, although as he went through San Francisco public schools, he had no knowledge of his status.

Last year, however, as the net of immigration enforcement was cast more widely than ever, Li and his mother were arrested. She was bailed out of detention, and now awaits deportation to China. But Steve Li was shipped to a detention center in Florence, Arizona, from which he would have been flown to Peru, where he was born. He has no relatives or family connections there at all.

John Morton, director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security, told the media that picking up students for deportation was at the bottom of the government's priority list. "So why are they nabbing highly-motivated students? Why has Steve been in jail for the past 60 days?" asked Sang Chi, Li's Asian American studies instructor last year, at a rally on Li's behalf.

The union for teachers at the community college, AFT Local 2121, became part of a broad effort to win Li's release before he was put on the plane to South America. The case became a cause célèbre for the Asian Law Caucus, the Chinese Progressive Association, and other organizations in the city's Asian community. The city Board of Supervisors and the college's Board of Trustees both passed resolutions opposing the deportation. "We've made over 1,000 calls," Daniel Tay, a fellow nursing student who emigrated from Peru two years ago, told reporter Rupa Dev.

Finally, Senator Diane Feinstein introduced a private bill that would grant Li permanent residence status. Li was then freed by ICE, and returned to San Francisco. His freedom is not permanent, however, but lasts for just 75 days following the end of the current Congressional session.

Private bills granting an individual legal status are rarely passed. Of the 29 introduced by Feinstein since 1997, only four have passed, and in the anti-immigrant climate of the incoming Congress, passage of Li's bill is unlikely.

For Li and his supporters, however, although they're grateful that he's not in Lima, the private bill is not the answer. "As long as I'm here and able to use my voice and help myself and all those people in the same situation, I don't feel like it's a countdown," he told reporter Jessica Kwong. "It's just one step closer toward the Dream Act." Recalling the other young people he met in the Arizona detention center, he said, "their stories and faces will be with me for the rest of my life."

Without passage of the DREAM Act, "thousands of students are threatened with deportation, which is a tremendous waste of resources," says Kent Wong, vice-president of the California Federation of Teachers, director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, and one of the national organizers of the DREAM Act campaign.

Many undocumented students, however, can't get into colleges although they've graduated from U.S. high schools with excellent grades, because they're either barred directly by lack of legal status, or can't qualify for the financial aid that other students can receive. Undocumented students come overwhelmingly from working-class families.

When it was originally written, the bill would have allowed young people to qualify for legalization with 900 hours of community service, as an alternative to attending college, which many can't afford. However, when the bill was introduced, the Pentagon pressured to substitute military for community service. Many young activists are torn by this provision.

Conscientious objector Camilo Mejia. Photo from American Documentary.
Camilo Mejia, the first GI who served in Iraq to have publicly resisted the war, was imprisoned for almost a year for refusing to go back. Mejia says the country already uses a "poverty draft" to fill the military with young people who have no jobs and no money for higher education.

In a debate on Democracy Now!, he said, "[The military is] in a position to offer to the vast majority of these 65,000 [immigrant] students who graduate every year, to say, 'Come over here. We will teach you English. We will give you housing. We'll give you a steady paycheck. We'll give you all these things, if you serve in the military.'"

Rishi Singh, of Desis Rising Up and Moving, added "many of our families can't afford to send us to college. And, you know, for many of our young people, there would be no other choice but to join the military."

Debating him, undocumented former student Gabriela Pacheco said, "with the conditional residency, you are going to be able to work. Students might be able to find ways to cost and pay for their college and university."

Mexicanos Sin Fronteras in Chicago argues that

"undocumented youth are in an increasingly desperate situation... With legal status as a goal, many who otherwise might have dropped out of school could be motivated to graduate and enroll in college... Instead let's educate the youth about the injustice of these imperial wars and the historical government practice of putting the poorest and most disenfranchised youth on the front lines. Let's encourage and support them in choosing the college option.

Like many DREAM Act supporters, the California Federation of Teachers has called for reinstatement of the community service provision. But it supports the Act regardless. "The Federal Dream Act will establish the important principle that undocumented students can no longer be assigned to a second-class, inferior status and must be treated with respect and dignity," says a resolution adopted by the union in 2009.

"We have to remember that for every case like Steve Li's, there are hundreds of other young people who are deported," emphasizes Local 2121 President Alisa Messer. "These are our students. They're doing everything we want young people to do. So we have to fight for their ability to get an education, to support their families, and to participate in society. They're American kids."

Many immigrant rights activists also view the DREAM Act as an important step towards a more basic reform of the country's immigration laws. It would not only help students to stay in school, but by giving them legal status, give them the ability to work and use their education after graduation.

Luis Perez, for instance, the son of working-class parents in Los Angeles, will graduate from UCLA's law school this year and take the bar exam in January. But after that, without legalization, he won't be able to work. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act says employers may only hire workers who are citizens or who have visas that give them "work authorization."

The DREAM Act could resolve this problem for undocumented young people graduating from college. But it also highlights the same problem for millions of other undocumented workers who would not be affected by the bill. Twelve million undocumented people live in the U.S., and almost all of them work for a living.

The same wave of enforcement that led to the deportation of 400,000 people last year is also targeting undocumented people in the workplace. Thousands of workers have been fired for lack of legal status, and many have even gone to prison because they invented Social Security numbers in order to get a job. Unscrupulous employers have used their lack of status to threaten and terminate workers who protest illegal conditions or try to organize unions.

Arizona's law requiring police to stop and hold for deportation any person without legal immigration status is another example of the impact of the immigration enforcement wave -- growing cooperation between law enforcement and immigration authorities. That cooperation produced many of the hundreds of thousands of people detained and deported last year alone.

Ending that enforcement program would also require a more extensive immigration reform. So would a real effort to get at the roots of forced migration -- the military interventions, trade agreements and pro-corporate policies that uproot communities in other countries, and make migration a matter of survival.

Yet the DREAM Act students have shown that fighting detention and deportation is possible. As they've marched and demonstrated, they've pointed out over and over that stopping the enforcement wave and changing immigration law are so connected that one can't be fought without fighting for the other. In the end, the basic requirement for both is the same -- a social movement of millions of people, willing to take to the streets and the halls of Congress.

[David Bacon is a writer and photojournalist based in Oakland and Berkeley, California. He is an associate editor at Pacific News Service, and writes for Truthout, The Nation, The American Prospect, The Progressive, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. His documentary photography has been exhibited widely. His latest book is Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants. This article was also published at Truthout.]

• Listen to Thorne Dreyer's interview with David Bacon on RAG RADIO (originally broadcast on KOOP 91.7 FM in Austin). To listen to other shows on RAG RADIO, go here.
• See other articles by David Bacon on The Rag Blog.
• For more articles and images, go to David Bacon, Photographs and Stories.

Student on hunger strike at UT Pan American in Edinburg, Texas, speaks out in support of the DREAM act. Image from KVEO NBC 23.

Dream Act supporters arrested
at Texas Senator Hutchison's office

SAN ANTONIO -- More than a dozen UTSA [University of Texas at San Antonio] students are under arrest for trespassing at Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's district office during a protest in support of the Dream Act.

The magistrate's office had custody of the 16 protesters Tuesday morning. They were booked for criminal trespassing.

They stuck like glue to her office, and they would have stayed there until police took them away. The group included an ex-city council member, a professor and students. They want the senator to support the Dream Act, which paves the way to citizenship for undocumented students.
[....]
Cops first arrested the group of ten that formed a human chain in the hallway, and then made their way to the senator's office, where six protesters were engaged in a sit-in.

"These students made a major sacrifice," protester Joel Settles said. "They started the hunger strike 21 days ago." ...

-- Noelle Gardner / KENS 5

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David Holmes Morris : Violent Repression in the Dominican Republic

Policemen stand guard in Capotillo, the Dominican Republic. Photo from Reuters.
Dominican National Police:
A tradition of violent repression

By David Holmes Morris / The Rag Blog / October 21, 2010

Despite national and international outcry, the Dominican National Police is continuing its tradition of violent repression of dissidents at a time when protests are becoming more common across the country. Some recent incidents in El Cibao, the agricultural and mining region in the north, have resulted in the arrests of many demonstrators, a number of injuries by tear gas and gunshot, and one death.

A delegation from Amnesty International had met with the Distrito Nacional prosecuting attorney as recently as early October seeking information on the large number of deaths of citizens at the hands of the National Police throughout the country and in the capital in particular. At least 226 unlawful killings by the police occurred in the country between January and August of 2009. Thirty percent of the homicides in the Distrito Nacional during the same period were reportedly committed by the police.

In the most dramatic recent incident in El Cibao, a university student taking part in protests on October 12 against government neglect of poor neighborhoods in the area of Santiago de los Caballeros, the country’s second largest city, was shot to death when police fired into the crowd of demonstrators, and at least four others were injured. The demonstrators were demanding that roads be paved and reliable water and electrical power be provided.

Residents of the communities point out that major roads are impassable and that for many years promises of repairs made during election campaigns are quickly forgotten after the elections. Electrical power is available only sporadically in many areas.

A similar incident occurred on July 16 when police shot and killed 13-year-old Miguel Ángel Encarnación during a demonstration by residents of the Capotillo neighborhood of Santo Domingo over the same problems of unpaved roads, intermittent power and water supplies and poor infrastructure in general.

The government has in the meantime promoted the construction of hotels and other businesses catering to tourists and has invested in infrastructure in areas favored by them.

Demonstraters and policeman in Capotillo, Dominican Republic. Image from Panorama Diario.

Barrick Gold

In nearby Cotui, the national police on October 13 used tear gas and birdshot against miners demonstrating for union recognition at the Pueblo Viejo gold mine, of which Barrick Gold of Canada is the majority owner. At least six miners were injured..

Barrick has consistently resisted the miners’ efforts to organize. Labor Minister Max Puig warned the company in August that the government would enforce provisions of the labor code protecting the miners’ rights, although labor federation president Rafael Abreu had presented evidence in June to the International Labor Organization in Geneva documenting Puig’s interference in workers’ rights to form unions at Barrick Gold and other companies.

A renegotiation of the contract between Barrick and the government resulting from rising gold prices had drastically reduced the government’s share of profits from the mine, possibly providing motivation for government support of the workers.

In 2006, Barrick had acquired a 60 percent interest in the mine, one of the oldest European gold mining operation in the Americas, sparking continuing protests by the some 2,000 Dominican and Peruvian miners employed there and by environmentalists and farmers of the area, which is in the heart of the country’s most fertile agricultural region.

Dominican student protesters block streets in Puerto Plata on September 10, 2010. Image from Dominican Central.

Santiago de los Caballeros

The death of the student in Santiago had occurred during demonstrations in a number of communities in the area, all of which, organizers say, were peaceful before the police intervened. “We weren’t even burning tires,” according to Víctor Bretón of the Frente Amplio de Lucha Popular, FALPO, the Broad Front for Popular Struggle, “because the protest was peaceful, when a police contingent arrived and one of them, without saying a word, fired indiscriminately against us, killing our comrade and injuring four others.” The student who was killed, Alfredo Gómez Núñez, was also a member of FALPO.

The National Police were back the next day at the funeral for the slain demonstrator. The mourners reacted angrily to the police presence by blocking roads, burning tires, and shouting slogans against the police and the police responded by again firing into the crowd. Four protesters, including two minors, and one police officer, were injured.

Police authorities claimed the officer was shot by the demonstrators, a claim Bretón denied, saying “unarmed and grieving” people would not open fire on a heavily armed police force.

Police then occupied the streets in communities throughout the area and protests continued, with the burning of tires and the blocking of a major highway, Carretera Duarte. Residents of Los Tejados, who had been without power for a week, blocked another highway then evaded arrest by fleeing before police arrived.

On the same day, high school students in San Francisco de Macorís, another city in El Cibao, protested the killing, with university students following suit with their own vigorous protest, forcing the cancellation of classes at the Centro Universitario Regional del Nordeste in San Francisco for the rest of the day. The campus of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Santo Domingo, in the capital, was also closed down for the day because of demonstrations there. University rector Franklin García Fermín attributed the protests to violent, hooded vandals.

Police authorities in Santiago meanwhile announced the formation of a commission to investigate police behavior during the events. “We object to that commission,” said FALPO activist Raúl Monegro, “due to the fact that you cannot be an aggressor and at the same time investigate yourself.”


Amnesty International

Amnesty International has also investigated the case of Juan Almonte Herrera, of the NGO Dominican Committee on Human Rights, who was abducted on his way to work in Santo Domingo on September 28, 2009, by men witnesses have identified as officers of the National Police. One of two charred bodies found in a burned car the next month was identified by his sister as Almonte, although police denied the identification. Family members and lawyers pursuing the case report being under surveillance and receiving death threats.


History

The National Police traces its origins to the Dominican Constabulary Guard, which was created by the U.S. marines during the military occupation of 1916 to 1924. It was renamed the National Police the year the marines left. One of its early members was Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, who joined the force in 1919 as a second lieutenant and rose through the ranks to become commander of the force by 1930. He became president that year and ruled the country, either directly or through puppets like Joaquín Balaguer, until he was assassinated in 1961. He was one of the most brutal dictators in the history of Latin America.

Sources: Amnesty International, El Caribe, Diario Libre, Dominican Today, Hoy Digital, Listin Diario, Nuevo Diario.

[San Antonio native David Holmes Morris is an army veteran, a language major, a retired printer, a sometime journalist, and a gay liberationist. This article was also posted to Upside Down World.]

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Bob Feldman : A People's History of Afghanistan / 7

Demonstration at Kabul University, late 1970. Photo by Louis Dupree / BBC.
Part 7: 1968-1976
A People’s History of Afghanistan

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / May 14, 2010

[If you're a Rag Blog reader who wonders how the Pentagon ended up getting stuck "waist deep in the Big Muddy" in Afghanistan (to paraphrase a 1960s Pete Seeger song) -- and still can't understand, "what are we fighting for?" (to paraphrase a 1960s Country Joe McDonald song) -- this 15-part "People's History of Afghanistan" might help you debate more effectively those folks who still don't oppose the planned June 2010 U.S. military escalation in Afghanistan? The series so far can be found here.]

Since Barack Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, between 500 and 800 people have been killed by Pentagon drone attacks in Pakistan, as a by-product of the U.S. War Machine’s endless military intervention in Afghanistan. Yet much of the history of people in Afghanistan since 1968 may not still be widely known, even by many readers of Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States.

In 1968, for example, when student revolts broke out in the United States at Columbia University, in France, in Mexico, and in other countries of the world, student revolts also broke out in Afghanistan and “student strikes that began in Kabul spread to provincial centers, where students who had returned to teach and work had become carriers of a new politically radicalized militancy,” according to Afghanistan: A Modern History by Angelo Rasanayagam.

The following year, Afghan workers also struck for better pay and better working conditions in the few places in Afghanistan where some factories existed. Between 1965 and 1973, 2,000 meetings and demonstrations -- mostly led by activists of the secular leftist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan [PDPA] factions/parties -- were held in Afghanistan which demanded more democratic reforms and modernization efforts in Afghanistan.

But right-wing Islamic opponents of democratic reforms and modernization efforts in Afghanistan also mobilized between 1965 and 1973 in Afghanistan . In 1971, for example, the University of Kabul “was closed for six months as a result of the bitter confrontation between Islamic and leftist radicals,” according to Afghanistan: A Modern History. The same book also recalled that in the early 1970s in Afghanistan:

The Islamic backlash also took the form of attacks instigated by the mullahs on women wearing Western dress. They were incensed by the campaigns for female literacy and women’s rights led by the All-Afghanistan’s Women’s Council. According to a senior leader of the Council interviewed by George Arney, the mullahs declared in 1971 that women should stay in the house. Reactionaries sprayed acid on women’s faces when they came out in public without a veil. And when women wore stockings they shot at their legs with guns with silencers...

By the early 1970s, dozens of Afghan political groups existed on campus at the University of Kabul. In addition, around 2,500 people in Afghanistan were also members of the PDPA faction/party [Khalq] led by Noor Mohammad Taraki and 1,500 to 2,000 Afghans were members of the PDPA faction/party [Parcham] led by Babrak Karmal.

The number of people in Afghanistan who were members of the secular Maoist party was also between 1,500 and 2,000 in the early 1970s. But the Islamic party in Afghanistan still only had between 1,500 and 2,000 members. Yet, as James Lucas noted in an article titled “America’s Nation-Destroying Mission in Afghanistan," that was posted on March 5, 2010, on the www.antiwar.org site, “according to Roger Morris, National Security Council staff member, the CIA started to offer covert backing to Islamic radicals as early as 1973-1974.”

Nearly all the members of the PDPA faction/parties, the Maoist party and the Islamic party in Afghanistan in the early 1970s, however, were still just members of the educated urban middle class; and all of these political groups still did not have much of an organizational presence or mass base outside of Kabul, in the rural areas of Afghanistan.

Yet many people in the countryside were suffering from the effects of a drought in Afghanistan between 1964 and 1972, which developed into a famine in 1971 and 1972. One result of this famine in Afghanistan in 1971 and 1972 was that between 50,000 to 500,000 people starved to death. And 75 percent of Afghanistan ’s land was still owned by only three percent of Afghan’s rural population in 1973.

Backed by Afghan military officers, Mohammad Daoud (the brother-in-law of Afghan King Zahir Shah who had previously been the Afghan monarchical regime’s autocratic prime minister between 1953 and 1963) then seized control of the Afghan government from the Afghan king (who had been sitting on the throne since 1933) in a July 17, 1973 coup -- while Zahir Shah was on a holiday in Europe.

After his 1973 palace coup abolished the monarchy, Daoud next “set up an authoritarian regime which made the government isolated” and “moved rapidly to undermine all the representative institutions” in Afghanistan “and, in particular, Parliament,” according to Revolution Unending: Afghanistan: 1979 to the Present by Gilles Dorronsoro. The same book also recalled that “to avoid any challenge Daud systematically suppressed the opposition, both legal and illegal” in Afghanistan and “following the coup the former Prime Minister and leader of the social democratic Hezb-I Demokrat-I Mottarki party, Dr. Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal, who had been in power in 1965-67, was arrested in September 1973 and executed.”

Yet long before the U.S. government began to covertly arm the anti-feminist Mujahideen guerrillas during the Democratic Carter Administration -- following the 1978 Afghan Saur ("April") Revolution and prior to the December 1979 Soviet government’s military intervention in Afghanistan -- even the non-communist, autocratic Daoud monarchical regime and the post-1973 non-communist Daoud authoritarian regime felt that it was in Afghanistan’s national economic interest to align itself with the Soviet Union during the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. As Afghanistan : A Modern History recalled:

Economic hardships caused the Afghans to turn to the Soviets for help… A four-year barter agreement was signed in July 1950, with the Soviets providing petroleum products, cement, cotton cloth and other essentials in return for wool, raw cotton and other Afghan products. The Soviets also agreed to the free transit of Afghan exports through their territory, and offered to invest in oil exploration...

After lending the Afghan government money to construct a grain silo, a flour mill, and a bakery in Kabul in 1954, for example, the Soviet government followed up with loans for constructing an oil pipeline and three oil storage facilities, for road-building equipment, and for an asphalt factory and equipment to pave Kabul’s streets. Nearly $1.3 billion in Soviet economic assistance, mostly in the form of loans, was given to the non-communist Afghan government between 1956 and 1978; and an additional $110 million was received by the Afghan government from other Eastern bloc governments during the same period.

The U.S. government, in contrast, only began to provide some economic assistance to the non-communist, autocratic Afghan monarchical regime in 1956; and, after 1956, also began awarding some Afghan students grants to study at certain U.S. universities. But, according to James Lucas’s recent article, “America ’s Nation-Destroying Mission In Afghanistan”:

The CIA... recruited Afghan students in the U.S. to act as agents for them when they returned home. During this period at least one president of the Afghanistan Students Association (ASA), Zia H. Noorzay, was working with the CIA in the U.S. and later became president of the Afghanistan state treasury. One of the Afghan students whom Noorzay and the CIA tried in vain to recruit, Abdul Latif Hotaki, declared in 1967 that a good number of the key officials in the Afghanistan government who studied in the U.S. "are either CIA-trained or indoctrinated."

Coincidentally, the Afghanistan Student Association [ASA] also apparently received part of its funding from the CIA’s Asia Foundation conduit [on whose board sat then-Columbia University President Grayson Kirk] during the Cold War Era.

In addition, between the mid-1950s and 1978, the Teachers College of Columbia University -- under a U.S. Agency for International Development [AID] government contract -- was involved in training teachers, developing educational curriculum, and producing textbooks for the Daoud regime’s Ministry of Education in both Afghanistan, at the Ibn Sinn Teacher Training Institute in Kabul, and at Columbia University Teachers College in New York City.

Military assistance was also given by the Soviet Union to the Afghan regime during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Between 1956 and 1978, for example, the Afghan government “received the equivalent of $1.24 million in military aid from the USSR, mostly in the form of credits” and “by 1978 some 3,725 Afghan military personnel had been trained in the Soviet Union,” according to Afghanistan: A Modern History.

But after the Shah of Iran’s regime agreed to provide the Afghan government with $2 billion in economic aid in 1975 and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger visited Kabul, Afghanistan, in August 1976, the Daoud regime apparently began to reverse Afghanistan ’s post-1950 policy of aligning with the Soviet Union.

Next: “A People’s History of Afghanistan—Part 8: 1977-1978"

[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s.]

• Previous installments of "A People's History of Afghanistan" by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog can be found here.

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Sound and Fury Dept. : Karl Rove at UT-Austin

Heidi Turpin (left) and Fran Hanlon, members of CodePink's "Pink Police," express their intentions, April 19, 2010, on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, prior to an appearance by Republican strategist Karl Rove. Photo by Jim Turpin / The Rag Blog.

Karl Rove ignites audience at UT

Both applause and jeering remarks frequently interrupted leading Republican political strategist Karl Rove during his speech at an event hosted by College Republicans at the Texas Union Ballroom on Monday night. ...

Protestors from women’s peace organization Code Pink; grassroots justice group We Are Change; and UT Chicano civil rights group MEChA lined the back of the room with signs accusing Rove of war crimes, and many individuals in the audience yelled comments and insults at Rove throughout the course of the evening. ...

A total of nine protestors were removed from the ballroom. Two were arrested, and seven were cited for criminal trespassing, UTPD spokeswoman Rhonda Weldon said. ...

Rove did not ignore the protestors, referring to them as “malcontents” and telling several to “shut up and sit down.”

-- The Daily Texan / April 20, 2010

[According to The Raw Story, one of those arrested for shouting at Rove was Aaron Dykes, an associate of libertarian radio talker and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. (Also see Infowars.)]

Protesters spoil Republican pep rally:
Bush man Rove stirs up UT crowd

By Susan Cook / The Rag Blog / April 24, 2010

Returning to the University of Texas two years ago to finish up my old government degree -- so I could then study sustainable design in UT's School of Architecture -- has been a a real gift. I now get an admittedly outsider's glimpse into the world as seen by a privileged segment of our younger citizens. I am exposed to the latest technologies, the newest and hippest musical styles, the widespread angst and apathy I see as a national epidemic -- and last week, I got to see Karl Rove.


The previous week a brightly-colored flyer with Karl's face had caught my eye. Copies of it were posted on the bulletin boards that line the halls of the University. There he was amid the offers to study in Mexico, find a Spanish tutor, and join the Islamic students for a talk about the misconceptions swirling around what it means to be a Muslim. There was his big, fat, round visage with that iconic smirk.

The "architect of the Bush administration" was to speak on campus the next Monday, April 19. "Hosted by the Texas College Republicans,” the flyer said, although I was to find out the hard way that they were only the titular hosts of this Republican Big Deal -- after I fired off a Letter to the Editor in the Daily Texan's Firing Line the next day. My letter questioned whether -- in this climate of educational budget cuts and employee layoffs at the University -- forking over the bucks to pay for enough security to keep CodePink's Pink Police's handcuffs off of this man might not be the best possible way to put my hefty tuition to use.

The response to my letter was swift and vociferous. Not only was I an ill-informed dimwit who hadn't the intellectual skills to research and find out that the on-campus Young Republicans were (in theory) footing the bill for everything, but I was a disgrace to government majors everywhere due to my obvious connection to unpatriotic terrorists -- and I was a "freak/fringe" lefty to boot.

I was a pretty sorry excuse for a student and might not even be worthy of calling myself an American anymore. One writer suggested I be burned in effigy, another, using the name "Ann Coulter," advised that I should move to Canada where I would be happier. Thank you, Ann.

The College Republicans and their supporters had a field day with me, taking obvious glee in hurling insults in my general direction and painting me with every available slur reserved for their favorite target: liberals.

Came the day of the actual appearance of Karl Rove and -- in addition to figuring out what to wear, whether to have a beer first at the Cactus Cafe, and where to find the mobility-impaired entrance to the event -- I had to decide if I wanted to get arrested. Or not. I decided that my impending graduation from UT, 40 long years in the making, was not going to be spoiled by Karl Rove, so it was a "not."

Image from page one of the UT-Austin student newspaper, The Daily Texan, April 20, 2010.
The room was filled with Old Republicans whose generous donations, as I was to find out, were the real source of funding for Rove's appearance. The first several rows of the Union Ballroom were occupied before the hoi polloi were even allowed in the room; these were the same folks who would later gather for a Meet and Greet with the Great Liar himself at a catered reception down the hall. The silver-hairs were a dead giveaway that this was only nominally a speech for students. This was a Republican pep rally.

As Karl Rove lied his way through an incredibly detailed account of why Obama's health care bill was the world's biggest failure and an affront to physicians and patients (and taxpayers) everywhere, I realized that this was a very boring man. He was a symbol of what the Bush Administration had brought to us and what smart, motivated people can accomplish when they put their minds to it. We can have wars-without-end, tax breaks for the wealthy, corporatized everything, and act snooty -- all at the same time.

Some lackey from the UT administration got up at the first outburst from a protester in the audience and announced that each ne'er-do-well would be given "three warnings" to pipe down and then would be escorted from the room, perhaps to be arrested. I thought at the time, "how generous, how civilized of them,” but this policy was abandoned after the first unsanctioned speaker was led from the hall and after that one merely had to say something out loud and the UTPD came and got you.

Nice pose, Karl. Rove speaks in Austin to pep rally peppered with malcontents. Photo by Corey Leamon / The Rag Blog.

One by one, as Rove droned on, NINE people were taken from the room for merely speaking out loud. However, if you said something that Rove liked, you got to stay. I did notice that.

Rove had a lie to answer every accusation that came up during the Q&A period following his mind-numbingly dull speech. My favorite: We invaded Iraq to prevent an arms race between Iran and Iraq. News to me.

When questioned about WMD or his involvement with outing CIA operative Valerie Plame, he immediately countered with how many other people were also wrong -- or did the same thing he did. Hide among the guilty and it is hard to pick out just one person to blame the crime on. He was not blameless, he was just not the only one. Bush didn't lie about WMD in Iraq -- because Kennedy, Pelosi, and Kerry did, too. He didn't out Plame -- because Armitage and Novak did, too.

When I left the hall after the event was finally over, I had the option, as it turned out, to sneak into the Meet and Greet since the mobility-impaired exit/entrance was the same door where they were collecting tickets to the catered event in the Santa Rita Room down the hall. When asked for my ticket by the cop, I simply informed him that this was my proper exit route and he let me through ticketless.

As I waited for my elevator to flee the massed Republican horde in the Rove reception line, I had to once again ponder whether I should risk arrest or at least embarrassment by posing as one of the faithful. (I looked a lot like them; I had not worn my Che t-shirt that night, opting instead for a nice jacket and clean black slacks and shirt.)

But once again I decided not to get in trouble. Not tonight. Not for Karl Rove.

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Tom Hayden : The Rising Cost of College

Students at the State University of New York protest tuition hikes, November, 2009. Photo from Albany Times Union
We can't afford to be quiet
About the rising cost of college

By Tom Hayden / The Rag Blog / March 30, 2010

"There are some things we feel, feelings that our prevailing, acquisitive, and competitive corporate life, including tragically the universities, is not the way of life for us..."

That heartfelt plea for university reform, issued in 1969, is striking because it was voiced by Hillary Rodham, a student at Wellesley College. Are there any lessons or comparisons to be drawn from those turbulent times for the students and faculty members who are today demonstrating against the rising cost of higher education? As a student at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in those days and an itinerant sociologist at Scripps College now, I believe we can look to the past as legacy but not as blueprint.

The current generation of young people deserves admiration for the contributions they already have made: creating hip-hop culture, winning sweatshop-free purchasing agreements, leading online advocacy groups like MoveOn.org, and for being the backbone of Barack Obama's unprecedented volunteer campaign. They will be the cradle of social activism for the next 20 years.

But the challenges they face on their campuses are far different from those of my generation, and perhaps more profound. Tuition at Michigan in 1960 cost less than $150 per semester. So I could obtain my degree, edit the student newspaper, go south to work in the civil-rights movement for two years, return and enter graduate school, and never feel that I was falling behind in the competitive economic rat race that young Hillary spoke out against.

Students today, however -- even those who hold two part-time jobs -- fall tens of thousands of dollars into debt, a burden that limits their career choices. Dropping out for social activism brings competitive disadvantage. The speedup of academic pressures dries up discretionary time that used to go to dreaming and exploring. Campuses are crowded with scrambling multitaskers for the most part too busy to protest the pace. Meanwhile, increases in the cost of college exceed inflation every year, intensifying the squeeze.

We had different grievances. The curriculum was often irrelevant to the social crisis we perceived ourselves inheriting; it needed reform. Students were powerless under the paternal doctrine of in loco parentis; we wanted rights. Students were disenfranchised, even though men could be drafted; we needed the vote and alternatives to the draft.

Structurally excluded, we went to the streets, to the outside, demanding change on the inside. It's an exaggeration, but only after strikes, rioting, and taking over buildings did colleges offer the mainstream menu of women's studies; black, Latino and Asian studies; queer studies; and environmental programs that they do today.

Now most students read Howard Zinn in history classes; back then Zinn was fired from Spelman College for marching with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

In those days, university administrators were personified by the impersonal managerial elites depicted by C. Wright Mills, our sociologist hero. In recent decades, the multiversity has been succeeded by a privatized hybrid institution enmeshed in Wall Street machinations, a development epitomized by the former Harvard University president Lawrence H. Summers. Excessive financial risk-taking has resulted in depleted portfolios everywhere.

UT students lead a massive march against the War in Vietnam, May 8, 1970, in Austin. Photo from University of Texas / Houston Chronicle.
No longer independent, higher education has succumbed to the political pressures of regents and trustees who all too often are tied to banks and corporations. For an example of this inbred conservatism, consider a recent survey that showed the public favoring the use of federal stimulus money to keep tuition down, even if that meant leaving less money for operations. In response, a spokesman for the American Council on Education said, "The public is not always right."

The question for today's students is not whether they can read Noam Chomsky, Anaïs Nin, or Zinn, but whether they can afford to.

The recent outbreak of protests on hundreds of campuses is a promising sign that economic populism will be a central dynamic in any student movement of the future. Since many of the most active protesters today are students of color, there is greater potential for a coalition that includes inner-city taxpaying communities than there was when so many of the militants were from affluent suburbs.

Making college less affordable just as a large number of qualified aspirants are emerging from disadvantaged minority communities is an explosive issue. The numbers of women in college are larger than in the past, which might also widen the coalition.

The value of the past lies in remembering how recently higher education was affordable, even cheap. It's not inevitable that a college education today costs so much. Undergraduate education is virtually free at the Sorbonne or the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and a year at Oxford costs no more than community colleges charge here.

The choices we have made as a country -- to relentlessly privatize our public institutions; to eventually spend three trillion dollars, by some estimates, on the war in Iraq instead of on our public universities; to bail out billionaires on Wall Street while hitting students and their families with repeated tuition increases -- are choices with consequences that we have to rethink or accept.

As recently as 1982, when I entered the California State Assembly, my first battle as a naïve new legislator was against fee increases at community colleges, which then were proudly free and accessible.

Under President Ronald Reagan and Gov. George Deukmejian, the (Republican) lobbyists for the colleges supported first-time fee increases to avoid budget cuts. Their motivation was not merely budgetary but also a matter of ideological principle. Nothing, they said, should be free in life, which meant that investment in public colleges and universities should be replaced by a consumer-marketplace approach.

Most of the Democrats went along when they were promised that the fees would be temporary. When the recession of that period ended, those fees became permanent, and they have escalated ever since. A similar pattern has been true of tuition increases at California State University and the University of California.

Were I still in politics, I would run for office on a promise to keep the magical possibilities of higher education affordable for today's American families, and for the next generation seeking new opportunities for their children.

I wonder why the silence from politicians is so deafening. Is it that colleges and universities are easier targets at budget time than corporate-tax loopholes are? Is it that students and faculty members are marginal players in the great game of campaign contributions? Or that college constituencies are too fragmented, divided, and transitory to unify as an effective force for change?

The recent discontent on campuses is a healthy challenge to America's priorities. I hope that Hillary Clinton hears an echo of herself before she and her colleagues become the politicians she warned us against.

[Tom Hayden is a visiting professor of sociology at Scripps College, in Claremont, Calif. His most recent book is The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama (Paradigm, 2009).]

Thanks to Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog

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