On the one-year anniversary of President George W. Bush’s re-election, about 60 students gathered on Boston Common Wednesday as part of Youth Against War and Racism’s national student walk-out against the Iraq War and military recruitment in schools.
Similar walk-outs were held in cities in California, Iowa, Minnesota, Washington and Wisconsin.
YAWR, a grassroots organization with chapters around the country, used the student walk-out as a symbol for the war’s disruption of education in the United States — in terms of draining money for books and encouraging youths to enlist in the military, not enroll in college.
“The Army and Navy come to our school all the time,” said Katie Shetterly, a senior at Cambridge Rindge ‘ Latin High School who said she convinced about 30 of her classmates to join the walk-out. “All the pens and papers in our college resource center are from the Army. I feel like the government is targeting us because we are these inner-city kids. They think we have nowhere to go.”
At noon, high school and college students from Boston left their classrooms, exchanging books for posters, drums and megaphones. The students then rushed to YAWR’s rallying point on the Common, shouting war chants and slogans along the way. All students wishing to express their opinions about the war were invited to take up the microphone.
Some said they felt the crowd on the Common would have been bigger if high school students had not been threatened with suspension.
“I had the whole school behind me for this thing until my principal threatened them with a three-day suspension if they walked out,” said Willy Hanna, a senior at Cambridge Rindge ‘ Latin. “Usually, you only get two detentions for skipping class — but if you went to this rally, you got suspension.”
YAWR targets young people from middle school to college, believing that they are the most important contributors to the fight against war.
“The anti-war movement is small and relatively weak,” said Jesse Lessinger, an organizer for the walk-out and a recent graduate from Tufts University. “Young people are energetic, idealistic and the future of our country — but not only that. It is the youth who fight, who die and who are recruited for war. By walking out, they can say, ‘No, we won’t die for this.'”
Coordinators carefully chose the 2 p.m. rallying time to include younger students who do not have the freedom and flexibility of a college schedule.
“The idea behind having it at 2 p.m. is that students who are afraid to walk out can still make it after school. And when I say afraid, I mean threatened with repression,” Lessinger said.
Many onlookers said that protest movements have become so common in the United States that they are no longer effective in changing national policy.
“My outlook on protests is that there have been so many since the war started,” said Austin Bousley, a sophomore at Suffolk University who looked on at the rally from a distance. “No protest is going to stop it. I don’t think that there is going to be any direct action until we ride out the Bush administration.”
Members of the sparse crowd cited how massive protest movements finally led President Richard Nixon to pull U.S. troops out of Vietnam.
Christian Pulver, a protester and University of Massachusetts-Boston English professor, held a sign that read “A Vietnam for Generation Me.”
“It connects the Iraq War to Vietnam, but it also points to the apathy of this generation as compared to others,” Pulver said. “You see this kind of small turnout because of apathy —because of the idea of ‘It doesn’t affect me.'”
Some college students said that because classes cost thousands of dollars, many students are reluctant to skip, leading to low attendance at the protest.
“If I had had class, I wouldn’t have come to this,” said Valerie MacPhee, a freshman at UMASS-Boston. “I pay to go to class, so it’s a little ridiculous to walk out. However, I still think it’s a good cause to get involved in.”
About 2,000 protesters gathered on the Common last Saturday for a larger anti-war rally, joined by City Councilors and prominent anti-war personalities. That rally coincided with the 2,000th American death in the Iraq War.
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