Australian Student Strike Against Iraqi War--March 5, 2003
Planning meetings held straight after the February 14-16 anti-war protests attracted many activists - nearly 50 people attended a meeting in Canberra mall on February 15, most of them high school students.
At the meetings, students had lively discussions about the international anti-war movement, how to publicise and organise the strike, how to set up anti-war groups at schools and on university campuses and what actions can be held after March 5.
Students from 15 different universities are organising for the March 5 strike, and the protest action has support from more than 20 university student association representatives, including National Union of Students president Daniel Kyrcacou.
Plans include a "die-in" at the Australian Defence Forces Association offices in Brisbane, followed by a carnival featuring bands and games such as "pin the weapon of mass destruction on the `terrorist'", and a three-headed pinata with Howard, Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The March 5 actions will provide an opportunity for young people to make it clear that Howard does not speak for us - or for the majority of Australians - in joining the "coalition of the willing" warmongers.
As Howard's international meetings have progressed - with Bush in Washington, then with UN secretary general Kofi Annan in New York and finally with Blair in London - it has only become more clear that he has already decided to support the US in attacking Iraq.
After Bush confirmed on February 3 that he considered Australia part of the if-the-UN-won't-support-us-we'll-attack-anyway gang, Howard began arguing that the only way to maintain "world peace" was if the "community of nations" united to authorise the US to launch a war!
Government documents uncovered by ALP leader Simon Crean show that the HMAS Kanimbla, recently "pre-deployed" to the Persian Gulf, was outfitted for combat in June last year, despite such a re-fit not being necessary for its scheduled task of enforcing the brutal economic blockade against Iraq.
The 12-year blockade has resulted in the deaths of more than a million Iraqis. A US war will cause hundreds of thousands more could die.
More Australians - most of them young people - have been sent to participate in the war on Iraq than in any other since the Vietnam War. Australian warplanes will be in the front line and will be directly responsible for the deaths of many Iraqi young people.
Howard argues that it is in Australia's "national interests" to support the US war. He argues that "we" share the values of the US rulers, and must therefore stand shoulder-to-shoulder with `our allies".
But what March 5 is about is saying that we are not with Bush and the super-rich owners of the big US oil companies that he serves. We - students in Australia and students in the US - stand instead with the Iraqi people, who are suffering impoverishment and, soon, a brutal military assault. The US is planning to rain 800 cruise missiles onto Baghdad in the first 48 hours of the war.
We stand against the US mega-businesses which will profit from Bush's war for control of the world's second largest oil reserves. Their profits are not our profits. Their wealth is not our wealth. We cannot even afford to purchase textbooks, or live on Youth Allowance or pay our HECS repayments. We have nothing to gain from this war for profit and so we stand where we belong, with those suffering under, and fighting against, corporate greed.
March 5 is about young people upping the ante, and building a powerful student anti-war movement that can help stop this war and the horrors it will bring. Already, mass, organised opposition to the war is having an impact.
Howard does not even have the support of the Australian parliament. He was too scared to put the troop "pre-deployment" to a vote, because the government would have lost the vote.
Condemning the decision to send the troops is not enough, though. We must demand that troops be brought home - not just those who don't trust the government's anthrax vaccine, but all the sailors, soldiers, pilots and their support crews. No Australians should be sent to participate in this slaughter.
This is a demand that we can win. Already, the Labor Party is under intense pressure. Despite Crean's insistence that the ALP will support a UN-approved war, many ALP members and supporters don't want any war on Iraq. Several branches have passed motions indicating this, some supporting anti-war rallies. More than a dozen federal MPs remain opposed to any war on Iraq. At least one, Tasmanian Harry Quick, has declared he will defy Crean and cross the floor in any parliamentary vote, even at the price of expulsion from the ALP.
Quick, along with fellow Labor backbencher Carmen Lawrence, is endorsing the student strike. Other endorsees include Democrats Senator Natasha Stott Despoja and Greens Senator Kerry Nettle.
The ALP is also under pressure from the strong stand that many unions have taken opposing the war. Unions WA has decided to encourage its affiliated unions to take action on the day that the war begins. In Melbourne, and Sydney, unions have been disseminating literature opposing the war.
Four branches of the National Tertiary Education and Industry Union - at Griffith University, La Trobe University, Melbourne University, and Southern Cross University - are supporting the March 5 strike.
Twenty high school and university students met after the February 9 Wollongong anti-war demonstration to plan for March 5 and form the Books Not Bombs collective. BNB student activists have been driving around to high schools in a 3-metre-high trailer covered in posters and anti-war slogans and graffiti giving the details of the strike.
High school students have been swarming the trailer for leaflets. There are three high school groups organising for the March 5 action.
BNB is building for a rally on March 5 which will be held at the city's university. The Wollongong University Students Representative Council is paying for buses to bring striking high school students to the rally.
In Sydney, three high school groups have been set up to build the March 5 strike. At Riverview High School there have been two meetings of each attended by more than 25 students, at Leichhardt High School 30 students came to a March 5 planning meeting, and at Bradfield College, four students have formed a peace group.
"The current political climate has meant that students and teachers feel more compelled, and more confident to campaign on their schools", commented Bradfield College anti-war activist Lauren Carroll Harris. "I don't think it's ever been easier to motivate students to get active. But still - there's such a massive gap between the level of anti-war sentiment among youth and the actual level of organisation. March 5 presents us with the biggest opportunity to activate this sentiment, and the best focus for high school activist groups."
The anti-war collectives and post-rally meetings have in large part been made up of young people completely new to political activity. Much of the organising for March 5 is being done by activists with no previous experience of such things.
"The March 5 protests could help to build up a national network of student anti-war activists", explained Simon Butler from the Students Against War group at Sydney University. "Students have been helping to organise emergency protests to be held if war breaks out, and that is important. March 5 is also important, however, because it gives us time to get students across the country organising together, especially those students that are new to activism. We hope this leads to a national organisation of some kind, and a regeneration of student activism."
[Kylie Moon is the national coordinator of the socialist youth organisation Resistance.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 19, 2003. Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.
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