Organizing against military recruiters in Seattle, USA

About Seattle Central Community College Students Against War

Why are we opposed to military recruiters on our campuses and in our communities? For the last five months, Seattle Central Community College Students Against War (SAW) has run a campaign against military recruiters on campus. We initiated the campaign after an action on January 20th, inauguration day, that resulted in a mob of 200 or more students surrounding military recruiters on campus.

From the War in Iraq to the War at Home
We are Fighting
Stop the war abroad. Fight the war at home.

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Why are we opposed to military recruiters on our campuses and in our communities? When we look at how the war manifests itself in our lives, what do we see? We see money that should be spent on education being thrown away on the militaries ever- fattening budget. We see K-12 schools closing and tuition rates at colleges rising. We see the war sucking away money that is intended for basic social services, healthcare, social security, and unemployment. We see our access to a decent living being cut out from beneath us and given to both the military and the corporations invading Iraq.

And then we see military recruiters. We see military recruiters selling lies with the language of dreams, fully aware of the fact that they are selling desperate kids on fighting a war that could likely maim and potentially kill them. The cost of war is the reason that tuition is rising and that times are hard for young people. Yet this war is taking a higher toll on the youth than just grossly mis- spent tax money. It's also about the growing human cost of this war. 1,720 U.S. soldiers have died, while another 12,000 have been maimed in one form or another. Meanwhile, casualties among civilian Iraqis has shot upwards of 22,000.

This war is the institutional theft of our future, and mil- itary recruiters are complicit. They are asking us to risk our lives in their war to further their ends at our expense. But it doesn't have to be this way. If the government spent just 10% of the military's budget on social services, we could have free education and free healthcare for everyone. Does this mean we're living in a first world version of a kleptocracy?

Military recruiters have us fighting people who aren't our enemies for people that are at our expense. This is why we are against military recruiters. They are the physical manifestation of war in our schools and our communities. They are also a strategic target for those of us who really want to stop this war. Why strategic? Money is one resource that the war relies on. But bodies are more important. They need bodies before they need money. Shutting down military recruiters is about shutting down the militaries ability to wage this war.

A case example:

Organizing against military recruiters in Seattle

The First Action

For the last five months, Seattle Central Community College Students Against War (SAW) has run a campaign against military recruiters on campus. We initiated the campaign after an action on January 20th, inauguration day, that resulted in a mob of 200 or more students surrounding military recruiters on campus and physically expelling them. The action in question resulted in a media blitz that put SAW in the negative spotlight both of right wing and so called 'liberal' media for about two straight weeks.

After seeing the student population spontaneously stand up against military recruiters, we concluded that the most effective way to consolidate student opposition to the war would come from challenging military recruiters on our campus. We recognized the unpopularity of rising tuition costs and that military recruiters were directly linked. Additionally, the negative response that we received from our administration and the right coupled with the positive response we received from students proved that this issue was a strategic nerve center in fighting the war and building student power.

The campaign began along two key points: first, that we could pressure the administration to meet our short term demands in limiting military recruiters access, and second, that we could directly target the recruiters on campus. The short term goals that we set included changing the opt-out policy, limiting military recruiters campus access, and building student power. Ending military recruitment on campus altogether and creating a ripple effect through our organizing were both long term goals of the campaign.

We began by circulating a petition among SCCC students asking for their support in expelling military recruiters from our campus. We intended this to be largely an educational endeavor to build mass student support for our campaign. After two months of petitioning two to three times a week, we accumulated over 1,000 signatures, or roughly 10% of SCCC's student population. In the process of doing this, we also had three separate encounters with recruiters tabling on campus where we harassed them until they left.

Our campaign had reached the point where we needed to start putting direct pressure on our administration rather than recruiters on campus. Recruiters had started breaking the schools own rules by showing up without notice. With the recruiters no longer scheduling their campus visits, targeting them no longer was an option. After researching the issue, we found out that the administration had the power to both limit their access on campus and to change the opt-out policy. We took the cautious first step of contacting the president of the college to negotiate the issue of military recruitment on campus. Months before, she had publicly stated that she was sympathetic to us and wanted to work with us in whatever capacity she could. The sympathetic support she claimed to have for us never materialized. She never once returned any of our phone calls, emails, or office visits. Instead, we sent her and the entire school's faculty a letter addressing the issue and drawing out our basic demands. To back up our demands we prepared an action that both the administration and the faculty of the school would have to recognize.

The Second Action

We organized an action on May 12th that would simultaneously educate people about military recruitment and give people an opportunity to act on that education. We hosted a teach-in where various members of SAW addressed key issues related to recruiters presence on campus. At the end of the teach-in, we took a crowd of thirty students armed with picket signs to the president's office. Much to our surprise, we found ourselves in a situation far more favorable than we had originally anticipated. The president of the college was not in her office, but in a meeting on campus with the entire board of directors for the community college school district. We packed their meeting with students, publicly embarrassing the president in front of her superiors and colleagues. Two of our members spoke at the board of directors meeting and presented our 1,000 signed petitions outlining our demands. She had no choice but to agree to meet with us and start negotiating our demands.

After invading the presidents meeting, we all marched up to the faculty union's meeting to ask for their support in our campaign. Being progressive educators, the union was extremely supportive of our demands and agreed to send us a letter of public support.

Our second action accomplished the goals we had set. It put pressure on the administration, won the faculty union's support for our cause, and put the president in a position where she had to talk to us. Our work is definitely not finished. We have taken the initial steps and begun negotiating with the various bureaucrats who make policy for the school. However, it is unclear what direction this negotiating will take and whether or not it will serve our purpose. Over the course of the campaign we have had victories and failures, and learned from them. Now the challenge is applying those lessons in the continuation of this campaign over the next year to make a real institutional impact on recruitment and the war.

Fight To Win

Fighting this war means fighting this Bush administration and the government they have tried to impose on the world. War is innate in any state. However, the U.S. state in particular has track record of starting imperial wars on a grand scale all over the world. Right now, the most important way that youth can fight the war is to fight its domestic impacts and its physical manifestation. Military recruiters are the physical manifestation of the war at home.

As anti-recruitment and anti-war organizing continues, a few key goals should be at the forefront of our organizing. The first and foremost goal should be building student and community power against the war. Not just protest in the streets, but strengthening and demonstrating our independent power over our communities and schools. The second should be pushing for our power to not succumb to the assimi- lating process of the democratic party and other more sectarian leftist parties. Whatever we achieve will be through our own action and not through the misguided leadership of political parties. The third should be maintaining and building grassroots direct democracy within the movement. Last of all, we should always be fighting to win in every campaign we engage in.

Lucas is a member of the Anarchist-Communist Union of Seattle, a Local Union of The Northwest Anarchist Federation.

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Democracy * Solidarity * Direct Action * For revolutionary change in North America

* From Unfinished Buisness issue 2: Agitational publication of the NORTHWEST ANARCHIST FEDERATION - NAF U..B.. B U P.o. Box 112 Portland, O R 97232