I attended the anti-Iraq war rally and I was really disappointed by what I found. I went expecting a great anti-war rally, and what I found was considerably different. The first problem is that very few people showed up. I could come up with a million reasons why, from student apathy to the weather, but the end result is the same. Few people showed up, and the organizers can only blame themselves.
The second problem that I had is that despite being advertised as an anti-war rally, there was considerably more than that. Representatives from the International Socialist Organization were there and many people held signs critical of Israel. They also chanted things such as ""From Iraq to Palestine, occupation's never fine!""
This was supposed to be a rally against the Iraq war. What do socialism and the Arab-Israeli conflict have to do with Iraq? The message I got was that in order to be anti-war, I also have to throw away my iPod because it represents capitalism, and tear ?up my Israeli flag. Representatives from the Student Labor Action Committee also were present at the anti-war rally and passed out fliers against the UW-Adidas contract. What does an athletic contract have to do with Iraq? I honestly felt offended by this mixing of agendas.
Thirdly, I felt that the rally was poorly executed. There seemed to be an endless parade of terribly uninteresting speakers who seemed to say the exact same thing; some literally said the exact same thing.
I didn't even know who half of these people were! It isn't as if there was a soldier who talked about the awful management, followed by some elected official opposing the war, followed by someone else important and interesting. These were largely organizers of the rally who were up there to stroke their own egos. There also were ""random joes"" who would just jump up from the audience and start shouting about something.
The last problem I had with the rally was its utter hipocrisy. They went through with their threat and 40 people staged a sit-in overnight in Herb Kohl's office. The problem I have with this is that the head staffer of the office, who is five months pregnant and has a one- year-old at home, had to stay overnight as well. The organizers knew all of this, and still proceeded.
I find it hypocritical for an organization to hand out fliers opposing Adidas for its mistreatment of workers in Guatemala, but the same organization then turns around and knowingly forces a pregnant woman with a one-year-old at home to stay overnight in her office and then have to go to work the next day.
They really seem to care about how people are treated at work and they showed it in their actions. Overall, I found the rally to be disorganized, watered down because the students mixed agendas and were too hypocritical.
Steve Lawrence
UW-Madison freshmen
ASM member
