Students on campuses across the country are coming together to organize nationwide peace rallies Thursday.
Students began planning events in response to what they saw as an atmosphere of war frenzy and discrimination against Muslims and Arab Americans.
'We're organizing to show support for Arab Americans,' said Jeff Goddin, a senior at Ohio State University and self-proclaimed 'agitator at-large' of the Campus Green Party. 'We have been going to mosques ... and showing them that not all Americans are racist.'
According to Carl Camacho, a UW-Madison senior and one of the organizers of the Thursday rally on campus, a professor said that allowing harassment against Arab Americans and Muslims to continue was an act of injustice not only to the victims, but also to the entire community.
'If you allow ... racist domestic terrorism, then you have handed your country, and what makes it strong, to the terrorists,' he said.
The peace rally has three principles, Camacho said: To stop any war movement that exists, to stop racist scapegoating and to defend civil liberties.
Students at Wesleyan College and the University of California-Berkeley began organizing the movement and after sending out mass e-mails and contacting other student organizations, more than 80 schools have joined their effort.
Immediately following Tuesday's terrorist attacks, Goddin said he was scared the country was going to get 'whipped up into a war frenzy.'
'And I think a lot of nuts have come out of the woodwork,' he said. 'In the days after the terrorist attack, I thought for sure we were going to war and now I'm not 100 percent sure.
'I have gotten such a great response from everybody I've talked to. A lot of people want to make sure there's justice, but they're skeptical that an entire country is behind it and they don't want to see us go to war like that.'
Christina Whitenton, a student at Georgia Tech University and an organizer of the peace movement on her campus, said students there plan on having at least one speaker at Thursday's rally.
'There's been some trouble with that,' she said. 'We had one person lined up to speak, but she's on a green card and so she can't.'
The speaker, an Indian professor, decided not to speak after she heard the INS was asking to be allowed to put surveillance on foreign scholars engaging in subversive activities, Whitenton said.
'She realized it was too much of a risk,' she said.
Whitenton said the peace rally was a chance for the voices that have not been spoken to be heard.
The fact that the movement is present on campuses throughout the United States makes it more powerful, Goddin said.
'[Having] national conformity makes the message that much stronger,' he said. 'It'll be a voice that'll drown out the call for war.'
When asked if he thought having a rally at UW-Madison would make a difference, Camacho said he thought it would.
'If it wasn't, I wouldn't be doing it,' he said. 'We possess the changes that we want. ... It's not about what political line you stand on, or what race you are, or when you immigrated here. It's about the truth.'
Camacho said it was important for people to be educated about the issues 'encompassed in why we are at war.'
'I want to change this country for the better,' he said. 'I don't want attacks like this to come back around.'
