COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: War Protests: General
We Will Not Be Intimidated
Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, Znet.org
October 03, 2005
The antiwar movement is back. The quarter-million marching past theWhite House on September 24 heralded its reemergence, and none too
soon. For those of us on campuses, it was particularly gratifying to
see evidence of the national student movement that is beginning to
cohere -- with "College Not Combat, Relief Not War" contingents
organized by the Campus Antiwar Network bringing together 2,000
students at the DC march and hundreds in San Francisco.
This student movement is significant, because it is students who are
targeted daily by military recruiters asking us to leave school and
become the next round of cannon fodder in a war most of us oppose. And
it is the rising opposition to war among young people, and the
grassroots counter-recruitment movement that began to take shape on
campuses last spring, that has put the Army in its worst recruiting
slump since 1979.
And yet events of the last week make it clear that students' right to
dissent from the war, and from the recruitment taking place on our
campuses, remains in question. At three different colleges in the last
week -- Holyoke Community College, George Mason University, and UW-
Madison -- students engaging in peaceful counter-recruitment were met
with police repression. At Holyoke and George Mason, students face
ongoing charges from the school or the state. The ability of the
student movement to grow, and to continue to challenge our schools'
role in recruiting for the war, will depend on our defending our own
right to dissent.
Holyoke Community College
On Thursday, September 29, 30 Holyoke Community College (HCC) students
engaged in a peaceful picket of the Army National Guard recruiting
table in the school's cafeteria, organized by the HCC Anti-War
Coalition, a chapter of the Campus Antiwar Network.
The police assault began after Peter Mascaro, the head of campus
security, snatched a homemade sign reading "Cops are hypocrites" from a
student's hands, calling it "inappropriate." Officer Scott Landry then
grabbed the student and, joined by three other officers, lifted him off
the ground and assaulted him. When other students came to his defense,
Landry then grabbed another student, Charles Peterson -- who witnesses
describe as playing a moderating role throughout the protest -- put him
in a headlock, and sprayed mace in his face. Around 20 state police
armed in riot gear and gas masks then arrived in the cafeteria. When
one student tried to leave, he found 10 to 15 police officers pointing
their guns at him. Only with difficulty were the protesters able to
peaceably disperse. (Pictures of this protest are available at
http://www.campusantiwar.net)
The next day, Charles Peterson was visited at home by two members of
the state police, who informed him that he is indefinitely banned from
campus, and will be arrested for trespassing if he sets foot on HCC.
In violation of the school's own rules, Charles has been denied any due
process, and has not even been given the ability to speak to
administrators about the charges against him. Since Charles -- in
addition to being a model student at HCC, holding the James Taylor
Award for Excellence in Philosophy and serving as the Vice President
for Academic Affairs on the Student Senate -- is also employed at the
school, this creates a financial hardship for him as well.
The assault on student protesters and the administration's banning of
Charles Peterson occurs in the context of an organized and confident
right wing on the extremely polarized HCC campus. Officer Scott
Landry, who led the assault on the students, is also the advisor to the
College Republicans. While the assault was taking place, those College
Republicans lined up behind the police to cheer on the attack. Last
year, the same group led a campaign of harassment and sexist
intimidation against then-president of the HCC Student Senate, Angela
Greany, after she passed a resolution opposing military recruitment on
campus. In the climate created by this group, many students who had
participated in Thursday's protest decided not to attend their classes
on Friday for fear of harassment from right-wing students.
George Mason University
On the same day as the assault on HCC's protesters -- Thursday,
September 29 -- Tariq Khan was assaulted and arrested by police at his
school, George Mason University (GMU) in Virginia. Tariq, a Pakistani-
American who himself served in the U.S. Air Force, stood near a Marine
recruiting table at his school wearing signs that said "Recruiters tell
lies. Don't be fooled" and "U.S. out of Iraq, Israel out of Palestine,
U.S. out of North America."
Three right-wing students quickly surrounded Tariq, yelling at him and
ripping one of the signs from his shirt. One of them, who claimed to
be a veteran of the Iraq war, said he could not wait to return and kill
more Iraqis. School administrators then arrived to question Tariq,
followed by officer T.L. Reynolds, who threw Tariq on the ground and
put him in a choke-hold.
According to GMU student David Curtis, who witnessed the entire
sequence of events, as Tariq's eyes were watering and his face turning
red, he struggled to keep saying that he was not being violent and was
being attacked for no reason. Officer Reynolds picked him up from
behind, slammed him into a stage (cutting his face), and threw him back
on the ground, choking him once again. Two students (including one who
had been harassing Tariq) and a non-security campus employee then
assisted Reynolds in violently handcuffing Tariq. Police dragged him
to a police car and threatened him with pepper spray. Throughout this
experience, Tariq Khan repeatedly stated his own non-violence and
innocence. (David Curtis's detailed account is available at
http://www.campusantiwar.net/)
Despite requests for medical treatment and a lawyer, Tariq received
neither, and was taken to the Fairfax Adult Detention Center, where he
was charged with trespassing (on his own campus), resisting arrest, and
disorderly conduct. His treatment throughout echoes the racism of the
U.S. treatment of Arab prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. As Tariq
relayed to me, Officer Reynolds justified handcuffing Tariq by telling
him, "I didn't know who you were, and what with 9/11 and everything,
there's no telling what you would do." Another officer chimed in, "You
people are the most violent people in the world. You're passive
aggressive!" Officer Reynolds then warned Tariq to keep his mouth shut
and avoid looking at anyone, because if he so much as looked at an
officer wrong, they would "hang you from the ceiling by your feet."
We will not be intimidated
The day before the assaults at HCC and GMU, 25 students at the
University of Wisconsin at Madison were threatened with arrest if they
continued to peacefully protest military and CIA recruiters at their
school's career fair -- even though no police officer or administrator
was able to show them a campus rule they were violating. It is clear
that HCC and GMU are not anomalies. Campus administrators and right-
wing forces on campus watched the counter-recruitment movement take off
last spring, and they are determined not to allow their schools to
become the sites of the new movement against military recruiters.
But no amount of repression can disguise a fundamental shift that has
taken place in U.S. politics over the past few months. Cindy Sheehan's
stand in Crawford ignited a sense among the antiwar majority that
something can be done -- and the callousness of the government's
response to Hurricane Katrina helped show why it must be. As hundreds
of thousands marched in DC, a Rasmussen Reports survey found that 23%
of Americans consider themselves part of the antiwar movement. For the
first time in years, it is supporters of the war, not its opponents,
who are on the defensive.
Our movement needs to defend students whose academic status, financial
security, and physical safety are threatened by campus administrators
and police. The HCC and GMU administrations were banking that no one
would care what they did to their students. The over 700 phone calls
of complaint HCC has already received -- and the statements of support
that have poured in, from people ranging from Cindy Sheehan to other
students who have faced similar repression -- show how wrong they
were. This is the time to stand up for our freedom of dissent --
because we're right to oppose the war, right to oppose recruitment in
our schools, and now, most people know it.
This archive consists of a topically organized selection of
articles culled by members of the Counter-Recruitment List Serve from printed
publications and web sites. The archive is not complete. We have chosen
material relevant to the work of