[haw-info] Report on Iraq War teach-in at UC Berkeley Sept. 19

[Jim O'Brien]

*The following is a report on the Iraq War teach-in at UC Berkeley,
co-sponsored by Historians Against the War, War Times, and several campus
groups. For an additional report from the UC Berkeley News Center see
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/09/22_teachin.shtml.

The HAW Steering Committee hopes there will be a great number of campus
events around the country aimed at keeping the war in the public eye during
the election season.  See http://www.historiansagainstwar.org/teachin/ or
contact Margaret Power at power at iit.edu. Please keep us informated of any
events that you are planning or have already held.

We also call to your attention the document "Ten Easy Steps to Register
Students to Vote," on the HAW web site at
http://www.historiansagainstwar.org/registervote.html.
*

REPORT TO HISTORIANS AGAINST THE WAR:  Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Pre-Election Teach-In on the Iraq War


Summation of the day:


The Teach In on the Iraq War took place on Friday, September 19, on the
campus of the University of California at Berkeley, in the spacious glassed
in Heller Lounge of the Student Union right at the entrance to the campus
below Sather Gate, a historic location of course, recalling the Free Speech
movement of 1964 and thousands of demonstrations that have followed in the
free speech zone created by the 1964 militants.  Heller Lounge is now a
Multicultural Center, thanks to the struggles of Ethnic Studies students in
1999.



250 chairs were set up with sofas and easy chairs lining the walls and an
elevated stage in front with the sound equipment and a screen. In the other
1/3 of the room where people enter, Ramsay Kanaan of PM Press set up a
bookstore, and there was ample standing room for those who did not want to
commit to sitting down.



We began on time (every session began on time) with a talk by Daniel
Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers fame.  At that time only about 30 people
were in attendance beyond the dozen organizers, so we felt anxious that it
was going to be very small, but the numbers increased steadily to full
capacity by early afternoon.



John Yoo was speaking at 11 AM in a building across Sproul Plaza.  The UC
President's office and the Law School hastily organized an all day session
on torture and the constitution with a bunch of right wing lawyers,
including Yoo, to take place at the same time as the Teach In.  They
announced it only the day before our Teach In.



The 10 AM panel on torture and the constitution was better attended and was
excellent, with local civil rights attorneys Anne Weills and Dennis
Cunningham, and constitutional legal expert Tom Reifer,   The panel was
moderated by lawyer and critical theorist John Hayakawa Torok, professor at
Berkeley (all moderators for all panels were UC faculty or students).  The
discussion was excellent.



The 11 AM panel on US interventionism included a Palestinian activist,
Mexican writer, a Serbian who was under the bombs in Belgrade, and myself.
 By then, there were probably 100 people with lots of people lounging on the
sides and quite a number standing in the back.



At noon, we had box lunches for all the speakers and organizers, and a good
crowd gathered to watch film clips from Paul Cronon's documentary in
progress on the 1968 Columbia uprising.  He had just come from showing the 4
hour film at the Toronto Film Festival to critical acclaim.  Tom Hayden
arrived about that time, and Immanuel Wallerstein was there, and they are
both featured in the clips.



We had a hard time getting Iraq veterans lined up, but succeeded at the end
beyond our wildest dreams.  The 1:30 PM panel on "from Vietnam to Iraq" was
supposed to start with a half hour talk by Tom Hayden, but instead he
insisted on being one of the panelists.  IVAW finally responded (thanks to
Anne Weills work) and sent us a new member of theirs, Forrest Schaeffer, who
was in Delta special forces in Afghanistan.  A working class Irish-American
guy, his father, a Vietnam vet, shot himself when Forrest was 6 years old.
 At 19, Forrest signed up to special forces after 9/11 to "defend America."
 The other vet, Cleavon Gilman, is African-American, now a student at
UCBerkeley, and was a medic in Iraq.  Our main UC student organizer, Roberto
Hernandez, had met Cleavon in a class he TAed this summer.  He has a speech
impediment (stuttering), which somehow made his testimony even more
powerful. Neither Forrest nor Cleavon had spoken in public before, so it was
a liberating experience for each of them.  The room was packed and totally
silent when they spoke.  The discussion that followed with Carlos Muñoz
(Vietnam vet and founder of Chicano Studies), Antonia Juhasz, a young
activist/writer on the war, and Tom Hayden, and the two vets was powerful.
 To me, this was the highlight of the day and the reason for even doing the
teach in.



The 3-4:30 panel on how to stop US wars of aggression  featured Immanuel
Wallerstein, and students and faculty crammed the place, as he has,
deservedly, many fans.  But, Dunya Alwan, an Iraqi American that Max Elbaum
recruited for us, stole the show with her descriptions of everyday life of
Iraqis under occupation.



We then had an hour and a half of discussions led by two brilliant young
Chicana doctoral candidates, more video, some music and refreshments.



Comments:



We did not end up getting sponsorship by the Associated Students (ASUC).
 Classes had just started and they were new to their jobs and didn't even
know if they had the right to sponsor without consulting the student
assembly which is not scheduled to meet until the end of the month.
 However, we did have the student organization, Critical Response and
Intervention for a Sustainable Ethnic Studies (CRISES) as primary sponsor
(along with HAW and War Times, which, of course, have no standing on the
campus to do anything), and that made everything possible, not in terms of
funding, which was too soon in the semester, but in kind support--the space
free of charge, set up, just the right to be there.  We could not have had
the teach in without, specifically, Roberto Hernández, Daphne Taylor-Garcia,
and Dalida María Benfield, who were burdened with most of the day to day
work getting everything set up and recruiting the moderators.



>From "The Great Rehearsal" we were able to get publicity, thanks to HAW's
financial contribution--great posters put up by a professional thumb-tack
brigade.    The Great Rehearsal and University of San Francisco paid for
speakers to come to the USF symposium held on Saturday after the teach in,
and we were able to borrow those speakers for our panels, including Immanuel
Wallerstein.  The Working Group that came together, an intergenerational
group of young and 60s activists, was about the best group I've worked with
for a long time.  We're thinking of planning more teach ins.



Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, HAW Steering Committee, coordinator of the teach in.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://stopthewars.org/pipermail/haw-info_stopthewars.org/attachments/20080924/8305cc36/attachment.html