New anti-war student group establishes presence on campus

September activists training kicked off new academic year

Anti-war student group, Students for Peace and Justice, organized “Students Rising: A Grassroots Activists Training” on campus Sept. 28 and 29.

Events included numerous anti-war speakers, training seminars, free food gatherings and live music at Burnt Toast, on the Hill.

“How do we help Iraqis? We get out,” said keynote speaker, full-time activist Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, 35, Friday afternoon at 5:00pm.

Students for Peace and Justice, formed last May, is the only anti-war student group at CU. The mailing group numbers are close to 250, but there just over ten core members who do the majority of the planning and organizing for the group.

The mission, as stated on SPFJ’s Web site, says “[SPFJ] was organized as a vehicle for student action to achieve a more peaceful and just world.”

“SFPJ was created to form a platform for students to learn and get involved,” Mike Baratte, 30, a graduate student in neuroscience, said.

After countless e-mails, phone calls and meetings this past summer, SFPJ arranged a two-day weekend event to increase student involvement in the anti-war movement. Their goal was to teach students to “Learn the skills to stop the war in Iraq” as advertised on their flyer.

Speakers included two Iraqi war veterans, a mother of an Iraqi war veteran, a CU professor, a professor from University of Texas and multiple local peace activists.

The keynote speaker, Wasfi, a former resident of Iraq, American physician and current speaker and activist for Global Exchange, spoke to a crowd nearing fifty in the UMC on Friday afternoon.

Her speech, based on personal experience of her time spent in Iraq, illustrated the negative impact of the American occupation and the need for immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

“Iraq’s future should be up to Iraq,” Wasfi said.

On Sept. 29, the Ruckus Society, an activist training program, hosted the only events held. They directed two, three hour, training courses, entitled “Nonviolent Direct Action Planning” and “Strategic Campaign Planning.”

The courses were meant to train students how to form strategies, political campaigns, protests, and political leadership in order to thwart the war in Iraq.

While SFPJ meets little opposition from the general student body on campus, far more often they are met with indifference.

Turn out at many of the speeches did not meet expectations. Trevor McGill, 21, sociology major argues that things have changed quite a bit since the Vietnam Era when mass political mobilization of students, helped to bring the end of the war.

“Students, today, are more apathetic than sympathetic,” McGill said. “It is disappointing.”

However, SFPJ members have not lost hope.

“We have to show them a different light and then we will see change,” McGill said.

Contact Campus Press Online Editor Taran Volckhausen at taran.volckhausen@colorado.edu