Administration Hands Off Students Against War!

SFSU Suspends Protesters Against Military Recruiters

(Young Spartacus pages)

The following statement protesting repression against student activists at San Francisco State University (SFSU) was issued by the Bay Area Spartacus Youth Club on April 16. Attendees at a press conference organized in the students’ defense on April 17 expressed appreciation for our solidarity, with the notable exception of the International Socialist Organization’s Todd Chretien who is running for the U.S. Senate on the capitalist Green Party ticket and who pointedly refused to take a copy of this statement. The campus administration reduced the students’ suspension to three days. However, Students Against War, which organized the protest, may face further administration reprisals.

The Spartacus Youth Club vehemently protests the SFSU administration and police repression against students protesting military recruiters on April 14. Ten students were ejected from the “career fair” by campus police and cited for “disrupting campus activities.” They have been suspended from the campus for 7-14 days. Additionally, Students Against War (SAW), which organized the protest, could face being disbanded, stemming from its March 9, 2005 anti-recruiter protest, after which the International Socialist Organization (ISO) and SAW were outrageously sanctioned by the administration [see “No Reprisals Against Anti-Military Recruitment Protesters!” WV No. 846, 15 April 2005 and “Protest SFSU Clampdown on Antiwar Activists!” WV No. 851, 8 July 2005]. Despite our political differences with SAW and the ISO, we call on all students to defend these groups being targeted by [SFSU president] Corrigan’s administration, the agents of the capitalist class in the university, just as we have vigorously defended all those who have been victimized by campus administrations and the cops for their actions against military recruiters. Drop all charges against the anti-military recruitment protesters now! Hands off SAW!

The SYC opposes any extension of the repressive U.S. imperialist military onto college campuses and high schools. As Marxists, we seek to mobilize students to protest military recruiters as part of the struggle against the brutal, neocolonial occupation of Iraq and the entire imperialist system. We thus sharply stand out from groups like the ISO, which has acted as an appendage of bourgeois democracy, like when it made common cause with the imperialists in their drive for capitalist counterrevolution in the Soviet Union.

The SYC took part in the protest at SFSU on April 14 against military recruiters, raising calls for “Down With the Colonial Occupation of Iraq!”, “Military Recruiters, Cops and Border Patrol Off Campus!” and “Fight for Socialist Revolution!” At the rally, our speaker explained that in order to end imperialist wars you have to get rid of the capitalist system that breeds them. He exposed how the ISO and the Campus Antiwar Network base their program on pressuring the ruling class, and how the ISO’s campaign for the capitalist Green Party serves as an obstacle to creating revolutionary consciousness by tying working people to their class enemy.

The administration’s attack comes in the context of the bloody imperialist occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and provocations against Iran internationally, along with the phony “war on terror,” which is really a war on blacks, immigrants, leftists and the working class. At SFSU, leftists and minority students have faced a series of attacks and political intimidation by the university, including the racist case against black professor Antwi Akom, who was arrested last October after going into his own office. Akom faced criminal charges that were met by campus protest and subsequently dropped, but he still faces possible reprisals by the administration. Defend Professor Akom!

The SYC looks to the working class as the only social force with the power and interest to smash the capitalist system of wage slavery once and for all. To accomplish this requires breaking the chains that bind labor to the Democratic Party of war and racism and forging a revolutionary workers party that struggles for socialist revolution. The SYC fights to win youth to the perspective of building such a party.

The attack on these ten students is meant to intimidate and silence all who oppose and seek to protest against the presence of the American military machine on campus and the colonial occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by U.S. imperialism. Students, faculty and campus workers must come to the defense of these protesters. An injury to one is an injury to all! Down with campus repression! Cops, military recruiters off campus! Drop the charges now!