San Francisco Chronicle Reports on Planned Student Strikes Against the Iraq War Feb. 15

It hasn’t reached the level of the campus peace movement during the 1960s,
but students at more than a dozen colleges from San Francisco State University
to Columbia University in New York will stage strikes and rallies Thursday to
protest the war in Iraq.

The anti-war demonstrations come as President Bush prepares to send more
troops to Iraq and are timed to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the
massive protests staged in the weeks before Operation Iraqi Freedom began on
March 20, 2003.

“Me and my roommate were hearing all these stories about the war, and we
said we can’t just sit around anymore. We really need to bring it back to the
protests of the ’60s,” said Alysha Higgins, 19, a freshman at UC Berkeley,
where a rally is planned on Sproul Plaza at noon. “We just need to target this
war and start this movement.”

The national effort came after students at Columbia heard of plans by
anti-war activists at UC Santa Barbara to stage a strike against the war on
Thursday and decided to have their own. From there, a national campaign was
launched with the help of the World Can’t Wait, a political group that opposes
the Bush presidency and urges resistance to his policies.

“There are a lot of students who are really looking for a vehicle for
this. … World Can’t Wait saw that and was really inspired,” said Ben Rosen,
an organizer for the World Can’t Wait. “These groups of passionate kids are
ready to make a difference.”

The campus movement has attracted the attention of schools across the
country from Sarah Lawrence College and Fordham University in New York to the
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and in the Bay Area at UC Berkeley,
San Francisco State, Mills College, Sonoma State University and UC Santa Cruz.
Students at several high schools in the Bay Area, including Lowell High in San
Francisco, Fremont High in Oakland and Berkeley High, are getting involved,
too. The actions will vary from strikes where students skip class and refuse to
patronize any stores or restaurants to informational rallies and marches.

At Sonoma State, students set up a half-dozen tents for a “camp-in”
against the war in anticipation of Thursday’s strike of classes and rally.

“It is time for the students to act and try to stop this war and make
people aware of all the people who are dying,” said Sonoma State freshman Ali
Leeds, 18.

The students will stage a “die-in” where they will lie down in the student
quad to represent all the people who have died in the war.

“People will have to choose whether to join us or to just walk on by and
be apathetic,” Leeds said.

Sonoma State sociology Professor Peter Phillips said he supports the
campus anti-war activities.

“I think it is very important for students to be activists speaking out
against the illegal war that the U.S. engaged in in Iraq and wanting to put an
end to the deaths,” Phillips said. “… I totally support them.”

As of this week, about 3,120 members of the U.S. military — many of
them of college age — had died, along with thousands of Iraqi civilians.

At San Francisco State, students will skip class and simulate the roadside
checkpoints in Iraq, asking passing students for their identification. They
will hold a rally at noon and then march to nearby Stonestown Galleria mall to
protest in front of the military recruitment center.

San Francisco State junior Alex Mejia, 22, said it is important for
college students to speak out — and not just because they would be affected
if the draft were reinstated.

“We are in college and that is a time when you have a little bit more
time. It is a time when you are debating different ideas and thinking about
what kind of a world you want to live in,” he said. “We have to escalate our
own strategy.”

Ironically, the anti-war organizing has been hardest at UC Berkeley,
where students in the 1960s and ’70s played a leading role in protests against
the Vietnam War.

“People are really focused on school and career, and they don’t pay
attention,” Higgins said. “A lot of people are against the war. If we get out
there and we are constantly in their faces having conversations with people,
hopefully, they will wake up. It is tough, but we have to start somewhere.”

TURNING OUT

Academic institutions where students plan to protest the Iraq war Thursday
include:

COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

Columbia College in Chicago; Columbia
University in New York; Fordham University in New York; Georgia State; Mills
College in Oakland; Occidental College in Los Angeles; Rutgers University in
New Jersey; San Francisco State University; Sarah Lawrence College in New York;
Sonoma State University; University of North Carolina in Greensboro; UC
Berkeley; UC Santa Barbara; UC Santa Cruz

BAY AREA HIGH SCHOOLS

Lowell High in San Francisco; Fremont High
in Oakland; Berkeley High