A op-ed written by NYU World Can’t Wait Organizers about the recent National Conference for their college newspaper. We are encouraging students to write op-eds in an ongoing way to bring the politics of World Can’t Wait Drive Out the Bush Regime into the political debate on college campuses and transform the terrain. As earth shaking news developments unfold, students need to hear a powerful and unapologetic voice not bound by the convention and calling for students and falculty to take part in the State of the Union Protests.
World Can’t Wait Op-Ed
By Abby Slawik and Danielle S-P
More ominous for American democracy than the fact that nearly half of the population did not vote in the 2004 election, is the fact that a much larger percentage of the country views elections as the only means of political action.
The fact that a large number of Americans cite indifference to the candidates as reason for not voting, combined with the elections in Iraq and Afghanistan, should sufficiently demonstrate the falseness of this assumption. It doesn’t seem necessary to preach to New Yorkers against the policies of this administration. Most would agree that we have lost the war in Iraq. A recent Gallup/CNN poll cites that 81 percent of Iraqis now view the US as an occupying force in their country, and 56 percent classify US troops’ behavior in Iraq as ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’. The fact that the vice president is pushing to expand the government’s right to torture, while senate Republicans are advocating defilement of the writ of Habeus Corpus shocks and awes in a manner different from that intended. That it is now suggested that the administration deliberately misled the public in the lead- up to the war, and also that the U.S. itself used illegal massively destructive weapons against the Iraqi people do not help us to wage a battle for hearts and minds any more than proposed expansions of the Patriot Act contribute to our freedom.
Scandals have been followed by high-level indictments, even while blatant war crimes have not, and as gas prices and unemployment levels rise, it seems that the levees have broken on the Bush agenda.
So where is the flood?
The world cannot wait another three years, although most Americans would assume that it must. Just as President Nixon was forced by public and congressional pressure to resign in 1974, we have reached a point in 2005 wherein the destructive and tyrannical nature of this administration should be and is generating a growing popular movement.
Three weeks ago, on November 2nd, demonstrations were held across the country endorsed by organizations ranging from the Progressive Democrats to the ANSWER Coalition, and from the Millions More Movement and various clergy to the Campus Anti-War Network. Last weekend, 200 organizers, including 60 youth and students, met at Columbia University to discuss strategy for mounting pressure on the president to step down.
Is this goal feasible? Many of us believe that it is.
The political backing is there. According to Democracy Now, an independent international news program, legislative dissent has reached ‘levels not seen even before Congress voted to approve the invasion,’ with previously pro-war senators speaking out in favor of immediate withdrawal of troops and increasingly centrist politicians being defensively relegated by the other side of the aisle to the ‘extreme liberal wing of the democratic party.’ With public opinion also strongly in our favor, we have the ability to reinforce mounting political pressure with heat from the street. In a recent FOX poll, Bush’s approval rating had plummeted to 36 percent, and according to NBC, since the government’s bungling of the response to Hurricane Katrina, support for the President among African Americans has dropped to a mere 2 percent. Feasibility is also less relevant than it seems. If nothing else, a popular movement will give strength to those members of the legislature who are beginning to raise issue with the administration’s policies, and will encourage those who have not to do so.
Regardless of whether you believe in reform or in revolution, American students should demonstrate that we are not apathetic, as most of the world assumes. This weekend, the World Can’t Wait Coalition put out a call for coordinated actions across the country in connection with a subsequent protest in the capital to ‘drown out’ the state of the Union address this January. Between now and then, we have to continue to pressure congress and the President. It’s past time to transform the people’s resignation to those in power into a popular movement to force those in power to resign. On February 17, 2003, the New York Times stated, ‘there may still be two superpowers in the world, the US and world public opinion.’ If we are not accountable, who will be?