College Campuses:
Liberal Enclaves or Centers of Resistance?
Revolution #024, November 27, 2005, posted at revcom.us
The following is excerpted from an article by Allen Lang on the worldcan'twait.org website .
Thoughts on Nov. 2nd and immediate, major steps to transform college campuses into centers for Driving the Bush Regime from power.
November 2nd marked a real launch in a society-wide movement to drive out the Bush Regime and ushered in the opening round of a two-sided fight for the future. Thousands of High School youth defied heavy suppression to take the streets in protest and at least 50 College campuses took part in the first major step in a movement to drive out the Bush regime. However, driving out a regime in the most powerful country in the world is an unprecedented goal not to be taken lightly and it is hard to see this happening without the Campuses shaking things up a lot more in society. So while putting this positive major step in the forefront, there are some real leaps we need to make in this rapidly changing world whose future will be decided by how we decide to act (or not act)...
A decisive question confronting many student organizers is a common scenario of: you've distributed boxes and boxes of World Can't Wait Calls; you've called up all the people on your contact list; you've caused a stir dramatizing Guantánamo torture victims; you've spoken (or busted in) in front of students in classrooms--and not everyone agreed with you but most did. So where was the critical mass on the 2nd? Simply tossing it up to apathy oversteps a big part of the picture...
Every day, we need to challenge people by stepping to them with the truth that they cannot find comfort or common ground with some Democratic savior. There is no referee. "We don't have to do anything because Bush is on his way out anyway" is (a) not true and (b) paralyzing.
In a general sense, the America we knew before 9/11 is never coming back. That is for real and people have to be acting with that understanding...
Basically, will a generation of college students be trained to perfect the workings of this Regime's death machine or will they act with the spirit of Mario Savio's call to put their bodies upon the gears and wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and make it STOP?...
What To Do Now
Through the twists and turns in our next steps it will be decisive in whether or not we direct everything we do toward driving out this regime, making the World Can't Wait Call central to all of our work and recognizing the major step we took on Nov. 2nd and that we are in a different place. To bring forward a generation to walk out of school because they saw the entire planet was hanging in the balance and will be plunged into darkness unless we drive this regime from power, speaks volumes to what we set in motion on Nov. 2nd and the potential for the politics of the Call to connect up with millions of youth throughout society. To bring forward the broad spectrum of people represented on Nov. 2nd solely around driving out a regime can mark a turning point in history if we make good on what we set out to do.
There are still millions of youth who don't know that this movement exists, and that it is the only thing that can meet the enormity of the challenge before us. We can't leave one stone unturned in saturating the campuses right off of the 2nd. For the people who heard about or were around for Nov. 2nd they need to be barraged with BUSH STEP DOWN everywhere they go on campus...