U-MASS AMHERST
Teach-in hits wars, occupations
By Bryan G. Pfeifer and Mike Shaw
Amherst, Mass.
In preparation for widespread demonstrations
later in the month, over 200 people turned out for a March 6
teach-in on war and occupation at the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst. Over four months in the planning, the
teach-in included plenaries and workshops with speakers from
across the Northeast.
An Arab Cultural Festival the day before, held in
conjunction with the teach-in, informed the campus community
about Arab culture and politics. At evening festivities, the
Brooklyn-based artists' collective Movement in Motion
performed, along with various African American, Arab and Muslim
poets and dancers.
"This is not our war and we stand against it," declared Peta
Lindsay, Inter national ANSWER youth and student organizer, in
opening the morning "War and Resistance" plenary.
"It is our perspective that throughout history, the only
significant progressive change has been because of the mass
movement of people at the schools, in the factories and in the
streets. The war is the byproduct of a system that we call
modern imperialism.
"It is based on highly advanced U.S. capitalism, whose
interest in the world has little to do with humanitarian values
or democracy and everything to do with control of territory,
markets and natural resources," said Lindsay.
Lindsay called on those present to pro test the Bush
administration's wars and regime overthrows in Iraq, Afghan
istan and Haiti by taking part in the March 20 global actions.
Bill Fletcher of TransAfrica Forum and United for Peace &
Justice and Fernando Suarez del Solar of Military Families
Speak Out shared the opening plenary.
Suarez's son Jesus, a U.S. soldier, died on March 27, 2003.
Suarez recently returned from a fact-finding mission to Iraq,
where he was told by U.S. officials that his son had died from
Iraqi resistance gunfire. But fellow soldiers told him that his
son had stepped on a U.S. cluster bomb.
"Why does Bush lie to me?" he asked. "Bush is not the owner
of our children, not the owner of America. We are the owners.
It is amazing for them to take money from universities to
sustain an illegal occupation in Iraq."
Speakers at the afternoon plenary on "Internal and External
Occupations: U.S., Iraq and Palestine" included Sut Jhally of
the Media Education Foundation and a communications professor
at U-Mass. A canceled flight prevented Rania Masri of UFPJ from
speaking at this plenary.
In the "Racism at Home" workshop, presenter Ric Urrutia, a
U-Mass Amherst Labor Center graduate student, had a message for
progressive whites who ignore, marginalize or patronize the
struggles of the oppressed.
"Now don't you think it would be a good idea to support our
efforts to try and fight police brutality, environmental
racism, poor housing, gentrification and white supremacy
disguised as public policy? The issues are all interrelated.
They're all products of capitalist exploitation," said Urrutia,
whose homeland is El Salvador. "An injury to one is an injury
to all. What capitalism wants to eventually do with you,
they're testing out on us first."
Organizers of the teach-in included the Arab Student Club,
the American Friends Service Committee, the Graduate Student
Senate, the Office of ALANA Affairs, Palestine Action
Coalition, the Political Economy Research Institute, Radical
Student Union, Solidarity, U.S. Labor Against the War-Western
Mass., Veterans for Peace-Western Mass., and Western Mass.
ANSWER.
Reprinted from the March 18, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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