BY
ALISON DELLIT
The stunning success of the March 5 student strike for peace, which mobilised a whopping 30,000 mostly high school students, took even the corporate media by surprise.
Although mixed, much of the coverage was favourable. Even the rabidly pro-war Murdoch-owned Australian ran a headline on March 6 that said Gutsy students repeat protest history.
Sydney protest chairperson Lauren Carroll Harris, a high school activist in Resistance, had a 700-word piece printed in the Fairfax-owned Sydney Morning Herald on March 7. In it, she was able to put the case of the protesting students.
Describing March 5 as an the beginning of an international youth movement against war on Iraq, Carroll Harris argued that money that will be spent on the military would be better spent on upgrading educational facilities, public housing and hospitals.
Calling the mood of the protests passionate, exuberant, political and angry, she explained: The demonstrators felt ignored and that their only choice was to vote with their feet by walking out of school and sending the urgent message: we have a war to stop.
The demonstrations on March 5 were only the tip of the iceberg of the mass anti-war sentiment that exists among our youth, she warned. Since the start of the year, anti-war groups on high schools have blossomed, and more students have started to actively campaign in their schools against war."
After pointing out that the protests had voted overwhelmingly to take similar action again on March 26, Carroll Harris finished her argument with: There is no democracy in this country until Howard submits to the will of the majority.
From Green Left Weekly, March 12, 2003.
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