Spreading the word

It’s a quiet Friday morning in the Boston Mobilization office.

Carrine Luck sits on the floor, lettering a large protest sign. Alexander Cheney sits casually in front of a computer, next to a large bookcase filled with political references. Deepinder Mayell takes several phone calls.

A sign hanging on one of the bright blue walls in the Boston Mobilization office reads, “Peace Is Our Weapon.” Among the many other posters and pictures, this seems to stand out the most.

Boston Mobilization, along with other activist groups at Boston University and in the greater Boston area, is trying to change the world.

To the young activists, the prospect is not daunting, nor impossible. They created each of their grassroots campaigns in support of peace, democracy and economic justice with this single goal in mind.

“It’s been a year since the war on terrorism started, and we’re not any nearer to peace,” said BU College of Communication senior Carrine Luck, a part-time staff member. “It’s time to bring our resources together and do something about that.”

Following the Sept. 11 attacks and the looming possibility of war in Iraq, Mobilization said it has seen a significant growth in student activism, as well as an interest in international political and social issues. The organization, led by 2002 Boston College graduates Cheney and Mayell, brings in full-time college students as interns and eventually train them to run the program.

Originally founded in 1977 as an anti-nuclear organization, Mobilization has consistently been devoted to promoting local and international peace and justice. Recently, it established the No War, No Way campaign in protest of the United States’ possible military involvement in Iraq.

Mobilization works closely with BU and Boston College Students Unite For Peace and funds the Boston University division, which re-started after the Sept. 11 tragedies. Collaborating with BU and Boston College Students Unite for Peace, Mobilization forms a support network for other activist groups on campuses across Boston, rendering it a crucial link to the recent resurgence of student involvement in the area.

“There are large networks of activists in the cities,” Cheney said. “Once you start tapping into the networks, you can be in contact with a lot of people.”

Mobilization also runs Youth for Peace, training students and community members to run workshops for local high school students and educate them on issues of peace and anti-racism. Additionally, the organization formed Boston University Youth for Affordable Housing and prints Spark magazine, an alternative news publication.

With a small staff and a tiny office located at 971 Commonwealth Ave., Mobilization attempts to glaringly defy any preconceived notion of activism as a non-entity on the BU campus.

“I think this year has been incredible,” said Luck, a co-coordinator of Youth for Peace. “Activism at BU has a really solid ground from which to build upon. I never like to think of students as apathetic. It means no emotion, and I don’t believe that. I don’t think that the majority of students are apathetic; they just don’t realize they can make a difference. We’ve seen so many new faces this year. Tons of freshman, out of nowhere, are so into it.”

Fear of the unknown consequences of a war in Iraq, as well as the steps United States leaders have taken in foreign policy across the globe acted as a direct catalyst for the first few events Mobilization planned or assisted with this year, including a successful Walk for Peace on Oct. 20, according to Cheney and Luck.

BUSUP students represented one of 40 schools participating in the National Student Day of Action, which was implemented on Oct. 7. The group strung the area around Marsh Chapel with hundreds of construction paper cutouts, each one representing 500 Iraqis who have been killed since the Gulf War as a result of UN sanctions and U.S. bombing.

“It was really a powerful visual representation of the amount of people who have died a silent protest that was about showing something,” said Pam Mendelsohn, a leader of BUSUP and a junior in the University Professors Program.

Mendelsohn said BUSUP hopes to continue to attract BU students looking to educate themselves on political and social issues and then work toward instituting change. Last year, the students held a large teach-in shortly after Sept. 11, as well as two Jam For Justice open-mic nights. This past September, BUSUP sent a group of students to the IMF and World Bank protests in Washington, D.C.

Having many separate campaigns working toward the same cause can be one kind of key approach to transforming the system, Mendelsohn said.

“That’s how grassroots works it starts with the people,” Mendelsohn said. “I feel things are happening much more this year than the last two years. This is a direct result of more people getting involved. Even when things start out small, it’s refreshing and inspiring to see such dedication.”

Howard Zinn, a BU Professor Emeritus and an advisor to Mobilization, holds a similar view.

“Unity is important, but the history of social movements shows that even if groups do not unite organically around an issue, so long as they work along parallel lines, their respective energies combine to have an effect,” Zinn said.

Among the variation of student activist groups on campus is Love Art Action, a group started by College of Arts and Sciences junior Adam Friedman.

According Friedman, the group takes quality art and music and fuses them with social purpose and activism. Friedman, also a member of BUSUP, said he feels combining resources to unite the floating islands of progressively minded individuals on campus is an essential way to make even more people take notice and inevitably take action.

“People are so enriched in their traditional modes of entertainment that it’s difficult to get them to stop drinking and partying and do something like a teach-in instead. Rather, sometimes you have to take the fun stuff and all the positive energy and then sneak in a social message,” Friedman said.

According to Luck, raising awareness and educating students and community members is a top priority for most activist groups. Whether or not students and community members agree with activist organizations, Mendelsohn added, the important thing is that they make their own educated decisions. Both Luck and Mendelsohn maintain that actively striving to bring peace to a world in turmoil is a taxing but immensely rewarding pursuit.

“It’s mental time, and it is emotional,” Luck said. “But I think there’s so much positive energy that it’s not dragging me down. It makes me more inspired and empowered and hopeful.”

“I want to poke people. I want to shake people up,” Friedman added. “It’s such a struggle. Any type of really passionate endeavor can consume you if you don’t watch yourself. But I have so much fun with it. It’s not even work, it’s just what I do naturally now, and it keeps attracting me back again, every day.”

Modern young activists have often been slapped with the nü¸-hippie” label, as some relate their efforts to those taken by college students in the early 1970s, in protest of the Vietnam War and university policies.

Ryan Coughlan, a freshman at Harvard University and an intern for Massachusetts Peace Action, an international organization based out of Washington, D.C., said he has dealt with the stereotype on multiple occasions.

“To me, it doesn’t make sense when people make that generalization,” he said.

Coughlan said he has noticed a wide variety of individuals present at rallies and protests against the war in Iraq.

“[I’ve seen] eight-year-old children holding a sign with their parents,” he said. Even they seem to have a concept of what’s happening.”

However, Bruce Schulman, a history professor and director of the American Studies department at BU, said he does not observe any substantial change in the growth of activism on campus.

While the yippies, a group of politically active hippies in the 1960s and ’70s, were moving toward a post-modern or post-political style of activism, recent efforts have not brought any immediate reform, Schulman said.

“The majority of campus-based activism in the ’60s, whether it was over civil rights or university regulation or over the war, was geared toward direct action,” Schulman said. “The idea was that activism itself would produce effects. I think a lot of the campus actions you see in recent times are geared toward generating attention toward from the mass media, with the idea that media attention and publicity is going to produce action.”

“I don’t really see [a growth in activism at Boston University]. That doesn’t mean it isn’t there,” he added.

From the perspectives of Cheney, Luck, Mendelsohn and Friedman, the potential consequences of war strike close to home for many students at BU.

“After Sept. 11, people were really uncertain and unsure of what was going on,” Luck said. “The only sort of consolation they were offered was, ‘Trust in your country, believe in your government and let us do what we need to do.’ But people are starting to realize that this could end up like another Vietnam. Especially college students they read and hear things all the time.”

“I don’t think people realize that they can make a difference,” she added. “It doesn’t mean going out with a big bullhorn and shouting, but it can be as simple as signing a petition.”

Cheney said he agrees, adding that forming a large coalition of students and community members is within range.

“It does seem as though interest has grown at BU,” Cheney said. “But it’s going to be an important task to link the interest of students there with other schools. They can create a pretty big movement here in Boston. With the possibility of war, we’re really working overtime. We’ll see how much this grows.”