BY EMMA
CLANCY
Students from hundreds of high schools around Australia are set to participate in the March 5 student strike against the impending US war against Iraq. They will be joined by large numbers of college and university students, in the first nationally coordinated youth-initiated action against the war on Iraq.
The process of building the strike has facilitated the closer collaboration of different student groups united in their opposition to war, but more significantly, has given high school students a project around which to form anti-war collectives on their schools. There are more and more of these springing up every day, in regional areas as well as the major cities.
Coming out of March 5, student anti-war activists are hoping to launch a national anti-war coalition of students and young people, that will be able to attract and involve all the different student groups and individuals that are opposed to the war, and allow activists to organise and communicate more efficiently on a national level.
High school students organising the March 5 strike on Riverside Girls School in Sydney have told Green Left Weekly that being part of such a national coalition would make it easier for them to organise against the war on their school.
Everyone's really enthusiastic about the strike on our school and they're all helping to put up posters and hand out leaflets for March 5, said Amanda Lloyd-Tait. I think that being part of a national group would get these people more involved and would mean we've got something to do after March 5. It would give us more resources too, for building the next protests, like posters and other things to get information out to other people.
Elizabeth Highton-Williamson agrees: It would mean we're better able to build the next demonstrations, have more contact with people on other schools, communicate better about what to do next. It'd also be good because students on our school would realise that it's not just us who are against the war, we're part of something much bigger.
Both students believe it would not only benefit them in organising locally, but be a step forward for the anti-war movement as a whole. It would send a message to the prime minister that just cause we're too young to vote doesn't mean we don't have an opinion, said Lloyd-Tait. Getting more organised like this will mean we've got a better chance of being listened to, when people realise that we're not just going to show up to a rally every now and then, that we're deadly serious about stopping this war, and we're going to take responsibility for the movement ourselves, and organise other people.
Simon Cunich from the Illawarra Grammar School believes that a national coalition of students is the obvious next step for young people in the anti-war campaign. The anti-war group on his school is already networking with students from other schools, and is part of the Social Action Network a coalition of social justice student groups all around the Illawarra region.
Cunich told GLW: We can see the benefits that networking and collaborating with other people have by being part of the Social Action Network. It means there are more resources and ideas to pool, and that whatever action you take, it will be more effective because there are more people involved. And this is only collaboration on a relatively small scale. Imagine the impact we could have if every young person in Australia who is opposed to the war and that's the majority of young people could get together and organise on a national scale. It would be massive; think of what we could do!
The idea of a student strike on March 5 was first raised by student anti-war activists in the United States. They have already formed a broad alliance of student groups, called the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, and it involves organisations such as the US Muslim Students Association, the Student Environment Action Collective and the Black Radical Congress, as well as many local high school and campus anti-war collectives.
The basis for a student coalition against war in Australia exists already, in the form of student associations on campus and anti-war collectives on schools, TAFEs and campuses. Further collaboration by these anti-war groups to build another national student anti-war protest after March 5 could help consolidate the links already established between these groups.
National Union of Students (NUS) education officer Liz Thompson supports the idea of a national anti-war coalition of students as the next step in organising young people against the war. The basis for such a coalition is obviously there, Thompson said. It's been built from the ground up, all the high school and campus peace groups that are emerging all over the place, and launching this organisation will mean we have the means to put forward our own agenda, to maintain the pressure on the government and to build a sustained mass movement against the war.
It means we don't have to wait around for rallies to be called we'll be enough of a force to initiate them ourselves.
NUS would, of course, back this coalition and engage with it, and see it as a really useful and positive way to build the anti-war movement among young people.
Sydney University student Simon Butler says he has been amazed over the last few weeks by the explosion of student activism he has seen among high school students. It's been nothing short of inspiring. The outrage that people are feeling in response to Howard's war drive is no longer something passive; people all around the country feel confident after the huge mid-February demonstrations that people power can stop this war, and high school students are leading the way in terms of grassroots organising.
Butler, who is also the organiser of the Sydney branch of the socialist youth organisation Resistance, argues that the campus student anti-war groups in each city need to link up with the high school anti-war collectives as a first step toward forming a national student anti-war coalition.
The March 5 strike and rallies will be the perfect opportunity to do this, Butler said. Such a body an open, politically non-exclusionary, national activists' coalition will provide the means to transform the campuses and schools into anti-war organising centres, reaching out to, and drawing into political action, the broader community. That's the way we can stop this war.
From Green Left Weekly, March 5, 2003.
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