\In other words, when ... a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.""
This passage from Henry David Thoreau's 1849 letter ""Civil Disobedience"" eloquently sums up the rationale behind the growing anti-war actions taking place on this campus. On Feb. 16, a group of roughly 25 student protesters walked into a sparsely-attended career fair in the Memorial Union and loosely congregated around the Navy's recruitment table while holding signs and handing out counter-recruitment literature to passersby.
We chanted some anti-military slogans in unison, but after several warnings from the police, decided to stop chanting. Though we were not interfering with anyone's ability to approach the recruiter's table or pass through the fair, the authorities decided that they wanted to crush us (figuratively speaking). Eventually the building manager, paid by tuition money, came to say that we were only allowed to protest in the front lobby.
Blake Trimbell, one of the protesters, asked to see in writing the rule that stated this. The building manager responded that she didn't have to show us, to which Trimbell asked if there was a rule saying she didn't have to show us. The manager said no, and after several more verbal exchanges between the two, a group of police officers surrounded Trimbell to arrest her. She was never read her Miranda rights or told what she was being arrested for, but was issued a ticket for ""disturbing the peace"" at the police station several hours later.
The police were clearly trying to make an example of Trimbell for her willingness to challenge authority, and to discourage future protests of the military's presence on campus. However, this experience only emboldened those of us present, since we are now planning on protesting every time the military shows its face on campus.
Detractors to such a plan will say that we are infringing upon the military's right to free speech. However, such a claim is deceptive, because free speech rights-or any rights for that matter-belong to individuals. Government agencies are not human beings. They are institutions that are supposed to serve ""We the people.""
We have no intentions to shout-down, physically intimidate or otherwise infringe upon the free speech rights of individual personnel who happen to do military recruiting as their job. We're simply demanding the government stop sending them to UW-Madison, and that they vacate the ROTC and Army Recruiting office for good.
""But why waste your time?"" one might ask. The reason is simple: The U.S. military is the most murderous, destructive and reactionary institution in the world today. In just over three years, it has been responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians and the imperial conquering of three nations-Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti.
On top of that, it has a well-documented history of being a tool for the repression and subjugation of literally hundreds of nations, and billions of people throughout the world. To be blunt, our government is a world empire. That's right, I said it-we are subjects of an empire, sitting in the belly of the beast here in Madison.
For those still skeptical, there is a more compelling reason why you should join the movement demanding the military off campus. In addition to the current discussion about invading Iran, the Bush administration is building 14 permanent military bases in Iraq, and has no plans to leave anytime soon.
The Iraq war will continue so long as occupying forces cannot totally suppress any and all resistance to its presence. The guerilla resistance will continue so long as the existing government, which is now legitimized in the eyes of the American public by a highly-hyped but largely meaningless election, stays in power.
Democracy will never come to Iraq through marking ballots or an outside-imposed ""regime change."" The current government is headed by Iyad Allawi, an expatriate, ex-Baathist who takes marching orders from the Bush administration, not the people of Iraq.
Democracy is a feature of societies, not of governments. The democratization of Iraq can only begin when a native government has taken root out of the institutions of Iraqi society, followed by years of class struggle and social change. This requires unconditionally bringing all our troops home so they are no longer forced to defend the Western-style puppet regime currently in power.
Ending this war is not a matter of converting 51 percent of Americans to anti-war opinions. It is an issue of mobilizing the 40 to 50 percent who already are anti-war into a grassroots resistance, to knock the legs out from under the war machine. For college and high-school students, demanding that military recruitment be banned from their campus or school is exactly what needs to be done.
Bill Anderson is a UW-Madison sophomore and activist in the Green Progressive Alliance, Student Labor Action Coalition and Stop The War.
