40 students at Mills College
in Oakland, California, didn’t attend class Feb. 15th, and instead led a speak-out against
the war. The speak-out took place in the
center of campus, and many students out of the 700 undergrads at Mills listened
to the rally during their lunch.
The area around the
speak-out was decorated with banners, including a 12 feet long banner covered
with lists of names in Arabic, which read “Imagine this list 10 times
longer. That is how many people have been killed in Iraq”,
along with pictures of the torture being carried out by the US
government. These visuals drew the
attention of many students passing by to the atrocities being carried out in
their name.
Speakers came from several
different organizations, including World Can’t Wait, Code Pink, ANSWER, Thank
You Lt Watada, and Peace and Freedom Party.
Student organizers at Mills
considered the event an advance over what has gone on before, and look forward
to building off of this to mobilize students to stop the war.