WCW Chapters and single activists can intervene in a very good way on campuses where Horowitz is holding the “Islamo Fascist Awareness Week.” The intent of the week is to spread the “cleansing” of opposition to the so-called “war on terror” on campuses, intimidating students and faculty with Orwellian rhetoric and twisted arguments.
At a time when the Bush regime is intensifying efforts to escalate war and bomb Iran and pushing through even more fascistic agenda here in US, we cannot allow David Horowitz and the organizers of IFAW (campus Republicans, Students for “Academic Freedom”, Rick Santorum, Ann Coulter) to put a clamp down on American universities where resistance to this entire program. They have support at the highest levels of government, direct access to FOX-some of the are FOX– and mass media. But we have the reservoir of people who hate all this.
We can bring in the truth of the situation: The Bush regime staged a coup to get in office, is staking everything on a rampaging global presence, especially in the Middle East, they”re pushing laws that don’t serve this out of the way, intimidating the world by practicing torture, fostering a climate –even on elite campuses — where nooses are being hung to intimidate black people, as part of a larger program to ram through an even more extreme white supremacy.
You can run it down – use the World Can’t Wait Call. Stand for intimidation and lies backing up illegitimate, immoral war and torture, and trying to create public opinion to attack Iran ? No”.What the world needs, and what we need in answer to this, is Bush and Cheney out NOW. We need open inquiry and critical thought on the campuses.
Here is the way to approach this, even with a couple of people.
1. Go to the frontpagemagazine.com website, and find out what Horowitz is doing in your area. View and spread the World Can’t Wait video on resisting IFA Week. Use the Defend Critical Thinking site.
2. Saturate the campus with the WCW flyer printed on orange. (If there is a specific person identified as a speaker on IFAW, you can do a separate flyer about that person). After work, you can find people at coffee houses, poster the edge of campus, write to professors, stand outside dorms and get out stacks of flyers. There are lots of evening programs running from 7-9 pm on many campuses, and also cultural events where you can find people. During the day, make a large sign, even hand-lettered that says “Islamo Fascism Awareness Week” with a red international “no” slash through it. You”ll attract attention and can meet people. Saturate email lists, professors mailboxes.
Give the IRAN QUIZ! This has proved to be a really useful way to get into political discussion. Students don’t know what they don’t know. And they are interested that people want their opinion, and not just for “credit”. Approach professors about giving the quiz in their class, and reporting back the results, or letting you come to class to do it.
3. Where speakers are coming in for the IFAW week, organize people to wear orange and perhaps turn their backs on the speaker. There can be protests inside and outside the auditorium. Inside, we are not aiming for a small number of them vs a small number of us. We need mass outpouring of students and faculty exposing the speakers and their purpose, cutting through the Orwellian use of language and their telling truths and half-truths about Islamic fundamentalists in the service of luring people into support of the US “War on Terror”/War for Empire and for an attack on Iran . Challenge them verbally, put the hard questions to them.
i. If IFAW doesn’t have a speaker, pick a day to hold a protest, picket, or have a program to oppose IFAW. Ask people to wear orange in opposition to IFAW and the Bush regime. Get orange vinyl tape or crepe paper for quick armbands or backpack ties. Pick one day to mobilize people on campus to oppose IFAW. Work with students or departments to hold an event highlighting the growing fascism in the US because of the BR and Horowitz doing IFAW in support of that and within that the particularity of building support for Iran. Help people argue against Horowitz” basic premises.
ii. If they try sit-ins at women’s studies and Muslim Student Assoc offices or such tactics ripped off from the 60’s progressive student movement, we should help those groups to be strong in condemning the attacks, and get mass support form them in opposition to Horowitz. The point of public protests of students and other supporters is to make clear the IFAW effort has no legitimacy. As IFAW is appearing more in the media, there will likely be coverage, and we should show mass opposition not just to the speakers but to the Bush regime itself, and in opposition to an attack on Iran .