KENNEDY HIGH YOUTH AGAINST WAR AND RACISM WIN
VICTORY FOR FREE SPEECH AND PEACE MOVEMENT
Thanks to everyone who offered us support and solidarity!
On Wednesday, February 23 [2005], the Kennedy High School
chapter of Youth Against War and Racism distributed countermilitary-recruitment information from a table during lunch
periods and held a teach-in after school. These events were
successes despite the attempts to ban our actions by the Kennedy
administration and the Bloomington Superintendent and Assistant
Superintendent.
The Superintendent ultimately acquiesced to our demands to be
allowed the same rights as other student organizations and the
military recruiters because they were flooded by phone calls
from people involved in the anti-war movement from around the
country, and because they saw that our student group was
organized and not about the back down.
We were informed Tuesday afternoon that despite prior approval
and precedent, we would not be allowed to have a table at lunch
when the military recruiters were present. The local American
Legion had contacted the school Superintendent and threatened to
withdraw their significant funding from the school if we were
permitted to table.
We organized an emergency meeting that evening on hearing the
news, and plotted our next moves. Fourteen active members
showed up and decided that we would table in violation of the
administration’s decry. If they demanded we take down our table
we would refuse, regardless of the consequences. This would
show them that we wouldn’t back down easily, and would create a
scene that would reflect badly on the administration.
We drafted a flier and petition to hand out to students asking
them to support our free speech rights. We sent an appeal to
anti-war groups across America asking them to call the
Superintendent and Principal to demand they allow us our free
speech rights. Finally, we sent a press release announcing a
press conference at 2:30 on Wednesday. We intended to show the
administration that if they were going to violate the
constitution so flagrantly, they would do it over our
resistance, and they would do it publicly.
Several students met with the Principal of Kennedy the next day.
The Principal informed us that the decision to bar us from
tabling was that of the Superintendent and that any student
attempting to set up a table would be summarily suspended for
three days. We would be allowed to speak with the
Superintendent, but not until 11 A.M., conveniently timed to
coincide with the lunch periods we planned to table at.
When the first lunch period began, three students began to
assemble the tables we had brought from home, hang sings from
the tables, sell buttons, hand-out informational leaflets, and
play guitar. Even in the short time before the administrators
arrived to shutdown the table, we elicited a very positive
response from students.
The Principal and vice-Principal demanded that we remove our
table, which we refused to do. Once the administrators
themselves began taking our materials, we decided that they
would not allow us to table successfully, and accepted their
offer of meeting with the Superintendent. They informed us that
the assistant Superintendent had canceled our teach-in that was
planned for that afternoon.
This meeting produced the startling revelation that the only
reason we were unable to table, was that the fliers we planned
to distribute did not have contact information on them. This
seems incongruous with the Principal’s insistence that we could
not table under any circumstances. This miraculous change of
heart could be due only to the fact that both the Principal and
Superintendent had been swamped with phone calls and a press
conference was scheduled for 2:30 that afternoon at the school.
The resolutions reached at this meeting were that Youth Against
War and Racism would be allowed to table in the future provided
the fliers contained contact information, and the teach-in
scheduled for later in the day would be allowed to happen (the
assistant Superintendent denied ever making any statement to the
contrary.)
Unfortunately, by the time we returned to school, the lunch
periods were almost over. Several months previously we had also
erected a table during lunch periods when recruiters were
present, and been immensely successful. We had received 120
signatures to our petition to ban recruiters from Kennedy, and
distributed hundreds of leaflets. The recruiters, on the other
hand, were largely ignored by the students and spent the day
looking lonely and bored.
This had obviously left an impression on them, because
Wednesday, in stark contrast to the six to ten recruiters
usually present from sundry branches of the military, only one
recruiter from the Navy even showed up. We were disappointed to
miss such an opportunity, but we had scored a decisive victory
over the recruiters and the administration, and won assurances
that we would be allowed to table when the military recruiters
return.
The teach-in was highly successful. Youth Against War and
Racism organizer, Brandon Madsen, described the events of the
day and triumphantly declared the restoration of our civil
liberties. Speakers from Veterans For Peace, Sabry Wazwaz of
the Anti-War Committee, and Ty Moore of Socialist Alternative
performed admirably and gave impassioned arguments against the
war in Iraq. Between 30 and 40 students attended, as did
several parents and approximately five members of the local
press (we got a story about us in the main Minneapolis
newspaper, the Star Tribune).
It remains to be seen if the administration will honor it’s
promised, but for now we have come out on top. This successful
resolution could only have been possible with the support of
others in the anti-war movement who called to protest the
administration’s disregard for our First Amendment rights. With
the press, all the solidarity phone calls, and the anti-war
groups showing up at our school door, our Principal
inadvertently revealed: “Its been overwhelming.”
Even Michael Moore put an article about us on his website:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=1536
Within 24 hours we went from
group, to assurances that we
facilities in the future.
made our successes possible,
the brink of the elimination of our
would receive equal access to all
To all those who supported us and
thank you.
Matt Johnson, Senior at Kennedy
Organizer for Youth Against War and Racism
www.yawr.org - against.war@gmail.com
---------------------------Also, here is an article written just a week ago about the
ongoing campaign the Kennedy students have been doing around
military recruiters in their school, written by Kennedy activist
Brandon Madsen. It was written for upcoming issue of “Justice,”
the publication of Socialist Alternative, which can be read
online at www.socialistalternative.org
“WE NEED TO MAKE OUR SCHOOLS OFF LIMITS TO MILITARY RECRUITERS”
By Brandon Madsen
Kennedy High School, Youth Against War and Racism
On December 8, military recruiters showed up as usual during
lunch at Kennedy High School in Bloomington, Minnesota. Unlike
before, however, they did not go unopposed. About 15 other
students and I set up a table near the recruiters with a
counter-recruitment display, informational leaflets, opt-out
forms, and petitions demanding that military recruiters cease
their activity at our school.
The recruiters’ table was abandoned by all but a few students
who wanted to grab some free pencils and water bottles.
Meanwhile, our table was mobbed by hundreds of interested
students who asked questions, signed petitions, took flyers and
pamphlets, and discussed politics. By the end of the day, we had
handed out hundreds of flyers, talked with all kinds of
students, and collected 120 signatures for the petition.
Teachers and students alike expressed excitement that there was
finally a voice at the school against the war and against
military recruitment. The students involved with the tabling
were thrilled by their newfound ability to be heard. Some
students even skipped class so they could continue to table
during all of the lunch periods.
This huge success was only possible because of hard work and
planning. Two friends and I, all members of Socialist
Alternative at Kennedy, began planning before the school year
started how to launch an anti-war campaign at our school. We
found a supportive teacher, a place to meet, and obtained
official group status through the administration. We held
preliminary teach-ins to try to draw people who would be
interested in joining an anti-war group.
Out of these efforts, Students Against War was formed and began
meeting weekly to discuss political issues and to plan actions.
We decided that a counter-recruitment drive would be our first
campaign. We drew up a counter-recruitment flyer and began
planning to table the next time military recruiters showed up.
For two months, we battled with the administration to get our
flyer and table approved. The first time the recruiters came, we
were denied. Finally, our efforts were successful when a school
district lawyer affirmed our right to table against the
recruiters and provide our own information. While this was lucky
for us, we had no intention of backing down a second time,
regardless of the administration’s verdict, and had resolved to
table anyway once we had exhausted the official channels.
Spread the Campaign!
Out of our success, Kennedy students and the Socialist
Alternative Twin Cities branch are working to launch Youth
Against War and Racism, a metro-wide network for students to
come together and fight to end the occupation of Iraq, to cut
the bloated military budget and fund education, to end military
recruitment in schools, and to oppose the government’s racist
attacks on civil liberties.
It is essential that we stand up and take action against
military recruiters. The entire U.S. war machine relies on the
willingness of young people to join the military and carry out
the imperialist policies ordered by corrupt politicians. If we
build a mass movement of young people against the war that
exposes the lies of Bush and the military recruiters, the
military will be unable to guarantee a stable supply of youth to
use as cannon fodder.
And just like in the Vietnam War, the spread of mass dissent
within the U.S. armed forces will be the key to bringing down
U.S. imperialism in Iraq and ending this brutal occupation.
We can’t count on the government or our school administrators to
stop military recruiters from spreading their lies. We need to
take it upon ourselves to educate and organize our fellow
students, and to make our schools off-limits to recruiters. If
every time they show up we provide an overwhelmingly unwelcome
environment, they will simply stop coming.
This is what we hope to accomplish at Kennedy and every school
across the Twin Cities, and this is what students need to do at
every school across the country.