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Where Have All the Protests Gone? US Students in Limbo
"There's a lot of apathy and a growing disconnectedness to what's going on in world affairs," the frustrated Howard University junior told AFP as some 200 people, including a handful of students, gathered for the march.
An anti-war protester holds a peace flag on the eight-year anniversary of military action in Afghanistan (AFP) "Students are more interested in trying to get a job and make money. That's essentially the bottom line."
With the US military several years into two faraway wars, American students like Amen are taking to the streets less often -- and to less effect -- than their Vietnam-era predecessors who were the vanguard of the anti-war movement in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Mounting economic and academic pressures on today's youth, intimidation by authorities, online distractions and conflicted views about the "good" war in Afghanistan, not to mention other causes such as health care and slashed school budgets clawing for attention, have conspired to snuff out anti-war activism on campus, experts and students say.
They acknowledge, too, that US President Barack Obama has paradoxically hampered the movement because many of the largely leftist protest groups haven't wanted to openly oppose him so early in his first term.
"There's this trust that he's going to fix it all," said Shara Esbenshade, 19, a sophomore at Stanford University and member of Stanford Says No To War.
She says there are no anti-war marches on her campus, only vigils, educational events and occasional protests against Condoleezza Rice, who has returned to Stanford after serving as George W. Bush's secretary of state.
"We'd really like to start doing more about Afghanistan," she added. "But students here rising up? I really don't see that happening."
At Kent State University, where in 1970 four unarmed students were shot dead by the Ohio National Guard, Andrew Ruminas, 20, a member of the Kent State Anti-War Committee, said "we're not even doing any demonstrations now."
Perhaps, according to 1960s protest icon and political activist Tom Hayden, that's because the single most important act to silence student dissent -- the privatization of conflict -- occurred a generation ago.
"Students were the bulwark of the anti-Vietnam war movement because students were being drafted, full stop," Hayden, a founding member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1962, told AFP.
"Ending forced conscription radically diminished the possibilities of future student anti-war protests."
Hayden, one of the "Chicago Seven" charged with inciting to riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, said students have "rechanneled" their activism, notably into Internet campaigns including the one last year that helped sweep Obama into the White House.
Many of today's students are marching with their fingers instead of their feet, signing online petitions, reading or writing blogs and planning anti-war agendas on the Web.
Stanley Aronowitz, a Vietnam anti-war organizer, insists online petitions do nothing but entrench users in the "anti-reality" of Internet activism.
"I don't believe petitions do anything," he said. "They are what middle-class people and intellectuals do to convince themselves they're getting somewhere."
Aronowitz, now a sociology professor at City University of New York, acknowledges that new social technologies on the Web -- Facebook, Twitter, YouTube -- have mass mobilization potential.
"But they also privatize people's lives to much more of a degree than when people had to go to meetings and act collectively."
As society has digitized, the American left has splintered, Aronowitz says, losing the confidence to mobilize people as it did in early 2003 when millions protested the looming Iraq invasion.
As a result, "many people have put their faith in electoral politics rather than direct action."
Jonathan Williams, who runs Student Peace Action Network, says it's not just a matter of apathy or a shift to campus issues like soaring student debt; there has been what he calls a "criminalization of dissent."
Williams said he was arrested along with other activists and journalists at a demonstration at last year's Republican National Convention and detained for four days.
In 2007, police used an electro-shock Taser on a student causing a disturbance during an address by Senator John Kerry. Videos of the event have been seen on YouTube more than seven million times.
"After seeing that, are you going to speak out?" Williams asked.
As US support for the Afghan mission retreats -- a CNN poll on Wednesday suggested 58 percent of Americans are now against the war -- Obama is mulling whether to approve a request to send up to 40,000 more troops.
Todd Gitlin, a former SDS president in the 1960s who now teaches at Columbia University, says a "critical mass" of youth against the war has not materialized to bring huge numbers out in protest.
Should Obama approve the Afghan troop request, Gitlin cautions, "that might be the trigger."
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Show AllAnd the PTB (police, NSA, FBI) monitor them all to PREVENT exactly such 'spontaneous' gatherings....
The article itself mentions "online distractions."
If these technologies were limited to phones, we may have had a tool to use to our advantage, maybe. But in the US, the Internet consumes all your time, from social networking services, to keeping up with celebrities and musicians, following the endless stream of new music hundreds of bands and artists continually release and remix, downloading and watching TV shows and movies, watching endless Youtube clips. These are all distractions. People have been over stimulated and can't get off it.
On Nov. 16, 2009 at least 150 people old, young, and middle age protested locating drone aircraft at a local Airfield. We held signs that said NO WAR: NO EMPIRE; NO OCCUPATION and WOULD DRONES CONVERT YOU TO DEMOCRACY?; EXECUTIONS WITHOUT TRIALS; among others . I did not see any disrespectful signs such as the ones the tea baggers carried.( They had a demonstration a few days before ours that protested any laws that would help immigrants in America.) My friend who was celebrating her 80th birthday was quoted in the local paper today that she " worried civilian casualties would prompt a response like the insurgency in Iraq. When they see their families getting killed, it makes them angrier at our country. It is not making anything better, it's making things worse."
Today a former Mayor of N.Y. city said that having the trials of the terrorist in N.Y.City courts will risk the lives of New Yorkers, nonsense! I believe there is a far greater risk that having a drone command center in our backyard will risk our lives. We signed a petition letter to be given to the Base Commander and handed it to her replacement,a security guard. The Peace Councils message was that:"We do not want Central N.Y. to become part of the global battlefield"
Media
A google of Drones and Syracuse brings up no mention of drones in a newspaper or tv website. Plenty of comment about their deployment on blogs.
Gee, wonder why the press didn't catch the congressman's praise for drones at the airport?
One big reason for shrinking protests that's missing from this article is that the antiwar movement has been ignored for about eight years. Eight effing years.
Obama comes into office and he continues the wars. He actually escalates them. People were so afraid of the Repugs that they voted for Obama even though he promised during the Presidential campaign to attack Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Loyalist Dems continue to engage in magical thinking that Obama is some kind of antiwar President - far from it. Even Tom Hayden quoted in this article proposed such absurd views.
Had alternative parties done better in the last Presidential election, that might have brought some pressure in Washington, D.C. As it is, the Dems and Repugs agree on continuing the wars, and no organized party has the political power to challenge them.
I think that's the most important reason. What difference would a letter to your war-supporting Congressperson make? What difference did those occupations of Hillary Clinton's Senate office make? Since mass protests were largely ignored by the corporate-owned press, most people didn't even know the protests were ongoing.
This article was by Agence France Press, but in France, various parties have representation. Not here. We have two corporate parties that both support the wars. And we've got a stupid public that continues to vote for them year after year.
-TIA
Look, it's not OUR war, it's THEIR war, to make THEM money...
We are little more than cattle, and customer to our corporate bosses.
Protests mean nothing, the only effective response is domestic terrorism (at least it makes the papers) like the kid in seattle or the muslim shrink at the cannonfodder farm.
The rest is just wishful hopeful, self righteous self congratulation.
Gandhi? MLK? SO what? End corporate personhood, reinstate the draft, dig a hole to china. save the whales... Kiss your babies. Be nice to your lover, meteor shower tonight.. all we have is now.
Todays students' lack of activism may be less a matter of current academic and economic conditions than their merely being products of prevalent modern child-rearing practices, which depend heavily on the use of pharmaceuticals to modify and regularize the behavior of a shocking percentage of young Americans throughout their educational years - for at least a generation now, control of "aberrant conditions" like hyperactivity, ADD and ADHD to "normalize" children's behavior can begin as early as pre-school, and continue through high-school and beyond, even connecting seamlessly with adult treatments that utilize mood-modifiers like anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs - these days individuals can age well into adulthood without ever knowing themselves as the individuals they really are, or would be without the chemical balancing required to produce the "orderly", calm, quiet, cooperative citizens that currently populate our colleges and universities - they aren't less idealistic, only less motivated to be disruptive, unruly and obstreperous, because they're "medicated" -
Yeah! Maybe were all too medicated to know right from wrong! that sux. I'm throwing away my Lexapro and going on a shooting spree!
Maybe the students dont want to be confused with Teabaggers...
"One big reason for shrinking protests that's missing from this article is that the antiwar movement has been ignored for about eight years. Eight effing years."
True, yet the teabaggers get most of the coverage.
www.NotOneMore.US
Don't support any candidate if they don't support peace and justice. Take the pledge, send the pledge to your local elected officials.
Now is the time to mobilize, not after the election.
www.NotOneMore.US - Pledge for Peace
Many problems here.
1. Much of the US left has signed itself to the Democratic Party. The Democratic party is, in the areas where it matters, center-right, corporate, militarist.
2. Poor education system in the US leads to a poor understanding of our true history, the struggle between the masses and the rulers, the alternative systems available to us, or that alternative systems can even be considered. This helps explain #1 as well.
3. US doesn't really have a left. We have people who support left points of view, anarchists, etc, but there is no threatening cohesion to make the left any sort of force here. Other countries have far more powerful and diverse unions (including anarchist), stronger left parties and a multitude to choose from. Instead, we have activist/hippy sort of things like infoshops, food not bombs, etc. that serve more as a social gathering for a subculture of "activists".
4. So, activism as a subculture is dependent on capitalist social trends. When the hyper-consumer cool kids are into the activist identity, suddenly, the left is on the rise again in America, or so everyone believes. Well, for about 2 years until the cool kids are too cool for it again, it becomes co-opted by the mainstream, resold as a consumer product, etc.
Instead of social organizing in areas where people can threaten power, the US left creates its own scene that other people must be converted to join, or decide to join based on social trends.
5. Bush wasn't cool at all. Obama is still cool. Cool kids don't get anal about politics right now. Better to focus on showing off your music collection and number of people you know. Again, this wouldn't matter at all if there were a true US left (as a cohesive threat to capitalist power).
6. The US left has been fixated on 60s anti-war activism and has largely forgotten the "old left" (radical trade unions, political parties, strikes, protests, etc.). Doesn't help that these things (excluding protests) are labeled with such a dismissive name. The anti-globalization protests in the US were very 60's-protest-esque in their nature, and the comparisons were abundant. The fixation with the 60's anti-war movement can also be seen when people seriously argue we should re-instate the draft to force people to become radical as if it will play out exactly as it did during the Vietnam War. Have you not asked yourselves, is the left in other countries dependent on military drafts and their country being at war in order for there to be a left? No. This is a lazy, deadly band-aid solution to a much deeper problem. It's time to stop worshiping 60's activism.
I think these are the main issues.
In countries where a true left exists, people become more agitated and participatory in hard times. In the US, they have no left to turn to, so they just keep hoping things magically get better and in the meantime fight to get/keep a job and entertain away their worries via TV, the Internet, clubs, and drugs.
What came first, the chicken or the egg? Do you think the existence of a "left" in other countries inspires the people to embrace their principles? Or did their embrace of principles inspire the organization?
It would seem to me that a pre-existing organization would uninspire people to live their principles, because they could continue their addictions to the carrots, cheese and other opiates dangled by the elites, while at the same time joining a party to pretend they're doing something. It's like the druggie voting for the ballot initiative to escalate the war on drugs, thinking that will get him off drugs.
Instead of that we could inspire the people to LIVE their principles, through grass-roots inspiration/influence. Then we can truthfully say: Look this movement is authentic as it gets eh? Yep. Look, the next step, obviously, is to organize to defend what we now have a stake in, eh? Yep. What we didn't have a stake in before, we NOW have a stake in, and a motivation to defend it. No hierarchy, nothing to attract elite pathogens. Nothing to fuel distrust. Nothing to argue with. Simple too. Easy to do. Change your demands in the markets and in politics. Demand local value, and the organization will build naturally, to protect it.
I'm an anarchist too, but I personally feel the somewhat prevailing US anarchist argument is sort of an easy way out. We don't have these things in the US, we don't need them, we'll somehow magically awaken everyone, somehow build a counter, hierarchy free shadow society, and it will all crumble. It just isn't happening. I see a dwindling anarchist subculture really (in the US), and one that often gets caught up in infighting over finite details.
IWW and radical unions aren't carrots and they're forms of organization people who are hardly politicized can plug in to and be a part of. Having help run an infoshop and FNB myself, I know these ideas are completely different. They require people to adapt some of the lifestyle of the existing participants or else they feel out of place or treated suspiciously. The participants need to be more politicized and in tune with the same thinking as other participants.
"bakunin2", I think is partially right. The draft made the war "real" to the youth. If you look at most countries, the marching populace is usually initiated by the youth. Many countries, after the protests of France and the United States, from the 60's & 70's, moved their newer universities into the suburbs.
But you don't need a draft to make the war real, you need media that's a true watchdog. Media that is a bit alarmist. How many times has Katie Couric interviewed Noam Chomsky or Amy Goodwin? What did FAIR report about the pre-Iraq invasion bias? Remember the "Pentagon Pundits"? Remember what Jim Lehrer said about that criticism? "We didn't want to appear negative". What happened to Phil Donahue when he wanted to debate the legitimacy of the decraceful claims of Bush?
In a way, "Suspect" is right. We no longer have a true Left in the MSM. Hell, we really don't have newspapers anymore. The Democratic party now appears mercenary - as they ignored even discussing "Single Payer", Obama's team was making deals with Big PHARMA and the insurance companies.
Considering the amazing power of the idiotic rantings of Beck, Rush, Savage, Hannity, Kristol, O'Reilly, etc. I'd say we need a more powerful leftist media on public airways - AM radio, not just the Internet. We used to have AirAmerica on the radio, but it was starved out by corporate lack of funds. Without corporate sponsorship, I don't know how the Left can regain a presence in MSM.
Bring America Back !!!!
****where have all the protests gone?
****gone to websites everywhere.
****where do all the lefties hang?
****only at digitals do they harangue.
****where are all the peaceniks throngs?
****don't taze me bro', I'll move along.
****where can all the love childs emote?
****nowhere man, jackboots got their goats.
This looks like a good time for a shameless plug for some photos I made during the sixties. Maybe they can play a small part in inspiring others of this generation:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=131879&id=560671722&l=8b6b5432e5
Why protest when it comes to naught? The best answer I've heard to that question is that no one should protest with the expectation of effecting change. One should protest when it is the right thing to do.
how does one protest one's own way of life, without understanding the need for another?
protesting portions of this life does nothing to address fundamental issues like property ownership and housing...the economics of land and power...religions that favor delayed gratification at the whim of another rather than independent responsibility for thought and action, coupled with understanding and respect for one's very real ties to the living world surrounding one...the violence that holds our current life in place...
these are not causes for protest, an appeal to another to redress, but causes for change...withdrawal...an erasing and redrawing...
we need to shake the big etch-a-sketch of life, folks, and come down loving this planet and all of the living things upon it, and keeping it as pure as we can...which, by the way, means alot of cleaning up...
what is needed is not protest, but true change in way of daily living...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...acoustic (no more electricity), agrarian...grown up...you take care of you, and you take care of the planet...
let's get those gardens growing...
There's one reason that lobbyists are in Washington. To effect change for their clients.
The people can only effect change with direct action. A movement can't move without people taking to the streets in collective direct action. A million people marching in the streets of Washington will have an impact--it will put the people in power on notice.
There's nothing paradoxical about 0bama's election dampening the antiwar movement.
0's sponsors hired a black face and suave tongue to convince people to not resist while he pursues policies that earned Bosh 20-something % approval ratings and Congress less than that.
Let's quit imagining that this is at all accidental. These people do hire publicity departments, after all. What else could it ever possibly be for?
"Todd Gitlin, a former SDS president in the 1960s who now teaches at Columbia University, says a "critical mass" of youth against the war has not materialized to bring huge numbers out in protest."
My, what a hypocrite. If I recall correctly, Todd Gitlin was on the horn just about every week in the run up to Iraq, preaching *against* war protests, part and parcel of the neo-con sonspiracy of silence of the time.
I seem to recall him stating that he preferred "teach ins" starring himself, (and this should be familiar as all his cultural productions star himself) down at Columbia--which, as we know, is always wide open and welcoming to the general public.
It seems to me that there are anumber of people from that 60s generation, answering to certain demographic, who still profess to be "liberals" but who have quietly and subversively gone over to David Horowitz.
Gitlin is one of them.
I should add that these people are among Obama's early adopters and his loudest promoters.
The remnants of their "liberalism" appeared in literally 100s of articles criticizing white working class people for their presumptive racism and Christian fundamentalism with this truly weird fixation on central Pennsylvania where, nevertheless, they've likely never trod even once in their lives. I guess they needed a follow up to the ubiquitous "southern strategy."
Who needs this? We live in a fascist state, and the fascists are not hangin' out in the rust belt.
Time to snap out of it.
"The remnants of their 'liberalism' appeared in literally 100s of articles criticizing white working class people for their presumptive racism and Christian fundamentalism with this truly weird fixation on central Pennsylvania where, nevertheless, they've likely never trod even once in their lives. I guess they needed a follow up to the ubiquitous 'southern strategy.'"
It's kind of like how right-wingers make inner city black people out to be violent predators, welfare queens, uncivilized, etc. yet won't dare go into the 'hood or actually speak to any of them.
When Palpatine in power was, many young people joined the Imperial military, received training on weapons, logistics, tactics, and then went awol and joined the Rebellion, their skills against their former employers they employed. Instead of planning protests, those against the Empire were organising and planning, long term, for an armed geurilla campaign to oust the Imperials and establish a new democratic Republic.
Palpatine never paid much attention to protests. But notice he took when his own weapons were directed against the Empire!
The elite have learned to ignore all protest because there's no impact or influence over a contiguous monoparty like the Red&Blue Corporate Party. The monied elites have engineered a bloodless coup of the public mind by appealing to greed while feeding the patient candied gibberish. They have illegally excluded any opposition through: advancing corporate personhood rights, stealing elections, writing confusionist and self-subsidied legislation, abandonment of policy platforms, and mass misinformation via corporate media including PBS.
Political suggestion? Read the Green Party Platform...
http://www.gp.org/platform/2004/2004platform.pdf
... and start using it as your platform and run for office.
Ecotopian suggestion? Relocalize your life, boycott everything corporate, urban gardenize, organize your blocks to share and start your own economies and currencies, and create car-free cities that are safe, sane and fun!