BY EMMA CLANCY
The March 5 student strike appears is set to become the next big, nationally coordinated anti-war protest across Australia. Hundreds of students attended meetings to organise the strike on the February 14-16 weekend, after distributing tens of thousands of strike leaflets to the enormous anti-war protests held across Australia. Since then, the strike has been getting attention from Sydney's main tabloid newspaper, further broadening those who know about the planned protests.
At the meetings, students who have never before taken political action pledged not only to take part in the strike, but to go back to their schools, form anti-war collectives and organise contingents to it.
Jemma Horsley, National Union of Students (NUS) Queensland women's officer, reports from the Brisbane post-rally meeting that the students decided on a rally and march, finishing up with a festival with local bands (and where people dressed up as US President George Bush will be dunked into water).
Horsley, who is studying at the University of Queensland, told Green Left Weekly that she believes it is imperative "that young people organise themselves against this war".
"We add vibrancy and an element of fun to the anti-war movement, which attracts and activates people and encourages them to get involved. It's not only important for the movement, it's important for us — it's our future."
She informed GLW that the anti-war collective on her campus is holding meetings of more than 30 students, although the studying year has not even begun. She added that the same thing is happening on Griffith University, and that a number of anti-war groups have recently sprung up on high schools, including All Hallows School and Brisbane State High School.
Students are now talking about whole year levels, even whole schools walking out of class on March 5. In Melbourne, already students from six TAFEs, eight universities and 53 high schools are planning to take part!
The February 21 editorial in Sydney's Daily Telegraph condemned the strike, declaring that "students need facts", and that the job of high school students is "to be at school, behind their desks, taking advantage of the liberal education which our society provides".
At a media conference held on the same day, Resistance member Lauren Carroll Harris, a high school student from Bradfield College, disagreed. "Striking on March 5, coming out to hear the real facts behind a war on Iraq, and learning how much power we have when we take action together — that is going to be a hell of a lot more educational than sitting behind a desk", she argued.
She said that the NSW education department's decision to condemn the strike would simply anger students, giving them more motivation to strike on March 5.
In a written response to the Daily Telegraph, Sydney University student and strike organiser Simon Butler said, "Students know enough of the damning facts about the US-led war on Iraq and this is the reason why we are striking".
Butler, who is the central Sydney Resistance organiser, said: "Last week's huge protests showed that there are two superpowers in the world today — the United States, with the Coalition government tagging along behind, determined to wage an unjust war and the global peace movement. Students are clever enough to know which side to back."
Not only are high school students participating in the anti-war movement in huge numbers, they are organising themselves into collectives between rallies.
Martin Filk and Jock Palfreeman are part of an anti-war group on their Sydney high school that is called the Riverview Peace and Unity Congress. It has weekly lunchtime meetings which involve more than 30 students, and in the next week will be holding an educational forum open to all students on the history of Iraq, as well as organising students to paint banners advertising the March 5 strike.
Thousands of high school students who attended "discovery days" at Wollongong University last week received leaflets for the strike, heard a Books Not Bombs speakout, and have been visited by the No War Mobile.
The Wollongong Books Not Bombs collective is organising a rally on the university lawns on March 5, followed by a march to the administration building, demanding an end to ties between the military and Wollongong University. They say either the vice-chancellor should resign from the nuclear weapons' council he sits on, or he should resign as vice-chancellor.
Michael Skitz, president of the Wollongong University Students Representative Council (SRC) has informed GLW that thousands of strike leaflets and "I oppose the war — I will strike on March 5" badges will go into the Orientation Week student showbags.
Support for March 5 is now widespread among SRCs around the country, and they are not only endorsing the strike, but providing material assistance to anti-war collectives — funding for posters and leaflets, and for buses from the campuses to the rallies on March 5.
Liz Thompson, NUS national education officer, told GLW that she believes "it's important that NUS realise the significance of the strike, that they give support to such a project being built from the ground up. Formal NUS support is the key to getting National Tertiary Education Industry Union endorsement for March 5."
Vanessa Bowden, president of the Newcastle University SRC, is active in the anti-war movement and in organising the student strike. She explained to GLW that she has been "inundated with phone calls" from young people wanting to find out more about the strike. "Uni, TAFE, high school, even primary school students", she explained.
Bowden argues that there is more "self-organising" for this strike than she has seen before. TAFE students have been coming into the SRC offices to pick up posters and leaflets to take with them back to colleges, and high school students are also doing the same.
"It's this quality that makes March 5 so exciting, the actual process — what we're seeing here is a broad revival of student activism. This is an issue which makes young people realise it's our responsibility to activate the rest of society — and we're actually doing it, for the first time in a long time."
[For the details of the student strike, visit <http://www.booksnotbombs.org.au> or the Resistance web site at <http//www.resistance.org.au>.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 26, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.