Hermes Activism Timeline

The 35th anniversary issue of the Hermes is out, as is a nifty poster-sized timeline of Wesleyan activism since the sixties. Get a copy of both/either at your local pile of Hermes's (they're everywhere)!

The HERMES student publishing collective wants to let you know that our February issue is a special one. The Wesleyan Activism Timeline is something that HERMES editors have been compiling since the sixties, and is traditionally published in the pages of our magazine.

This year, on the eve of HERMES's 35th anniversary, we've decided to publish this important document in poster form-- for you to hang in your dorms, woodframes, offices, and residence halls, to spark reflection, ideas, and conversation about the lengthy, inspiring (and at times ridiculous) history of activism at Wesleyan.

Take a poster, save it, give one to your favorite prof. and oh yeah, don't forget to read the actual magazine too!

Additionally, you might consider taking a personal stand against generational apathy by joining Hermes yourself:

***The HERMES publishing collective is going to shrink drastically after '09 graduates. If you want to get involved in the freeform, alternative publishing project that is HERMES, come to our meeting this SATURDAY, FEB 14th, at 2 P.M. at our office, 2nd floor of 190 high street (student bldg btwn beta and eclectic) to get to know us and get involved.***

Date: Saturday, February 14th
Time: 2 pm
Place: Hermes office, 2nd floor of 190 High St. (b/t Beta and Eclectic)

Alum's perspective: Helen Suzman & apartheid activism

I stumbled across this Jan. 3rd New American Media piece "I Helped Smear Helen Suzman" by Brian Shott '90, offering his reflections following the recent death of apartheid activist and divestment critic Helen Suzman. She came to speak at Wesleyan in 1989, to great student protest. Short's article is a fascinating perspective on the history of liberal activism at Wes:

Anti-apartheid activist Helen Suzman died on Thursday at the age of 91. As accolades from around the world pour in, news reports also mention the controversy she sparked on college campuses in the late 1980s.

I'll say. At my alma mater in Connecticut in 1989, we almost rioted when we heard Suzman had been invited to speak -- a fact that, today, fills me with contrition.

Suzman, who helped found South Africa's liberal Progressive Party, was for 13 years the lone voice against apartheid in the South African parliament. She spoke out fiercely against racist legislation, and frequently visited anti-apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela, in the nation's notorious prisons.

So what was our beef with Suzman at Wesleyan University, a small liberal arts school in Middletown, Conn.?

We and other campus activists were incensed that Suzman opposed economic sanctions against South Africa. Nor did she favor the divestment movement, still going strong in the late 1980s, which pushed colleges and municipalities to relinquish their financial holdings in companies that did business in South Africa.

Suzman argued that such actions were counterproductive and primarily hurt black South Africans.

We didn't care that Suzman met with imprisoned leaders of the freedom movement; she obviously wasn't listening to their nearly unified calls for sanctions. We thought she should resign her ineffectual post in an inherently racist system. And we were convinced that the university chose her to speak as a way of bolstering its refusal to immediately divest.

Fair enough, I suppose, except for the conspiratorial part. But what followed the announcement of her impeding campus speech was despicable.

In the days before Suzman's arrival, campus radicals started a smear campaign in the university's alternative press. I remember editing articles that attacked Suzman, of whom I had never heard. Quotations of Suzman's own words, which I and other politically motivated editors never fully checked, made her sound downright racist.

When the day of Suzman's speech finally came, many students couldn't fit into the campus cinema where she was scheduled to speak. So we demanded a larger venue -- we made a lot of "demands" in those days -- and eventually a crowd of about 300 marched across campus to the chapel. There, black students from Wesleyan's Malcolm X House lined up behind Suzman, who stood at a podium; they and others in the crowd hissed derisively (and some applauded) as she defended her views on sanctions.

And defend herself she did. Suzman had read everything written about her in the in the days preceding her talk. By reading aloud the complete text of her selectively quoted remarks, Suzman revealed a propaganda effort by left-wing students that would have made Joseph McCarthy proud.

...In the end, in a question and answer session after her talk, Suzman made mincemeat of most arguments for divestment from the campus left. She was like a lion. She destroyed us.

The whole article is worth a read. So, do Brian Shott's words have a lesson for us as Wesleyan students today? Are we still too quick to jump to administration conspiracy theories and to dismiss more conservative voices? More importantly, does our culture of activism overpower our desire and ability to meet concrete goals through activism? I don't know, but it's certainly some interesting food for thought.

Activist Leo Cerda to speak Thursday

Jonathon Booth '12 writes:

SDS and EON bring you Leo Cerda!

Leo Cerda is an indigenous human rights and environmental activist from Ecuador. He was born in the Amazon region of Ecuador, and his activism has focused on that area. Since he was 14 years old he has been fighting oil exploitation in the Amazon region of Ecuador, speaking in indigenous villages across Ecuador about the costs and consequences of the oil industry. These costs range from the destruction of the local environment to global climate change. He has also worked to support sustainable alternatives to oil for indigenous communities, including organic products cooperatives.

He will be speaking about the destruction he has seen and experienced in the Ecuadorian Amazon, what local groups are doing to resist this destruction, and what we, as American college students, can do to help.

Date: Thursday, Oct. 30
Time: 6:00 PM
Place: Exley 150

Echoing Green

Karimah Nichols '09 sends word of Echoing Green, an organization that she and quite a few Wes alumni are involved with, which is devoted to funding entrepreneurs working for social change:

Echoing Green, a leading investor in early-stage social entrepreneurs through a two-year fellowship program, has just launched its Facebook page. We're really interested in reaching out to young adults with a passion for social justice that are looking to turn that passion into a career.

Keeping in mind Wesleyan's reputation for student activism, we thought it would make sense to start our outreach here. Not to mention the fact that two thirds of our departmental leadership are Wesleyan alumnae—Carolyn Bess, VP of Development, and Lara Galinsky '96 (BA English), VP of Strategy and Communications—and three of this summer's interns are from Wes as well—Ellen Eng '08, former WSA President Zachary Kolodin '07, and Karimah Nichols '09. Check out the page, and if you like what you see, become a fan.

Other notable Wes alums who've gone through the fellowship program are 2000 Fellows Damilola Adebiyi '00 (Psychology/Neuroscience & Behavior) and Fadekimi Akinfaderin '00 (Biochemistry/Chemistry/Molecular Biology), co-founders of Education as a Vaccine Against AIDS (EVA); 2006 Fellow Sasha Chanoff '94 (COL), founder of Mapendo International; 1994 Fellow Jason Moss '93 (English/AFAM), founder of New Orleans Outreach; and 2002 Fellow Cynthia Willard, founder of the Utah Health &Human Rights Project.

Learn more about the fellowship program at EchoingGreen.org.

Links:

• Facebook Page
• Mapendo International
• Education as a Vaccine against AIDS (EVA)
• New Orleans Outreach
• Utah Health & Human Rights Project

for what it's worth,

Paul Auster remembers Vietnam and student activism:

"...We at Columbia were powerless, and our little revolution was no more than a symbolic gesture. But symbolic gestures are not empty gestures, and given the nature of those times, we did what we could."

From here.

NYTimes Essay Contest Entries

Last summer the New York Times held a "What's the Matter With College" essay contest in response to an essay by historian Rick Perlstein about the decline of campus activism in the past decades. I don't know how we missed this, but three Wes students' essays were posted on the website:

Vanessa Kurzweil '07: Commonplace? Or a Common Space?

Toni Latimer '09: Decline of the Teenage Wasteland

Katie Boyce-Jacino '10: We the Students

Congrats on being conscious of the challenges facing today's apathetic youth! Clearly these three are not among them.

[EDIT] The Argus wrote about this in October, they win.

Campus Anti-War Network Regional Conference

From Kathy Stavis '10:

Campus Anti-War Network Regional Conference
Their War, Our World: Building the Student Resistance
April 4th- 6th, 2008 at Hunter College

Join us, the Campus Antiwar Network's Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, for our spring regional conference on the US War on Terror and our student movement. Students from campuses across the East Coast will be convening to share their organizing experiences. Together, through workshops and plenaries, we'll try to address some of the issues facing the antiwar movement today, educating ourselves as well as combining efforts to create long and short-term strategies to end the war.

Housing provided, $5 registration fee. RSVP ASAP to kstavis@wesleyan.edu.

Don’t Blame Me — I Voted on ‘Hot or Not’

Most of us at Wesleyan place ourselves somewhere vaguely on the liberal end of the political spectrum. But there are those who find our motivation somewhat lacking in terms of like, actively complaining about things in a way that might actually change them. Here is an open letter from today's youth in the New York Times to liberals of yore, which you might want to paraphrase to your parents and ideologically pure elders who probably came of age in headier times that encouraged a little more political activity than watching the Daily Show and maybe taking Intro Sociology:

Dear Old Liberals,
Hi, it’s me, your collective child. It’s an election year and once again you’re going to make me feel bad for not “doing enough.” You’re going to tell me about how you protested in the 1960’s and how the movement meant something to young people back then. And the thing is we do care, our generation, we really do. It’s just that we got a Wii for Christmas and we absolutely have to beat “Super Mario Galaxy” before we do anything else... [continue reading]

The first rule of project mayhem is....

One anonymous commenter asked what the deal with the firebombing talk on the ACB is about. Surprisingly, this was not about chocolate sauce in various orifices, but rather, an incident that occurred 17 years ago in 1990.

An Argus Article from 2004 described the incident:

On April 7, 1990 at 4 a.m. a fist-sized rock was thrown through the Wesleyan President's window followed by two Molotov Cocktails. Shots were allegedly fired from an AK-47 in the bushes of Van Vleck Observatory towards South College.

Full article here

The short nytimes article about the guilty plea of the perpetrator (Link) had this excerpt:

Prosecutors said Mr. Ranganathan and Mr. Haddad had planned the firebombing to retaliate for what they saw as the university's failure to promote the rights of minorities.

From what I can gather, the firebombing was, at least in part, student protest calling for the divestiture of apartheid South Africa. The debate on the ACB shows that there is some disagreement about whether this was actually a legitimate act and whether it was handled fairly.

I just have to say: wow, I never heard about this event my entire freshman year. I mean, between stories about how a certain literary society paid the Grateful Dead to play on Foss Hill in LSD and the fact that Joss Whedeon had sex in the cinema you think someone would've mentioned a firebombing that wasn't just some kid being dumb Clark. Normally, I think throwing moltov cocktails at anything is a bad way to encourage your point in a debate, but i may just not understand power dynamics.

Perhaps my older and wiser fellow wesleying contributors wish to comment?

Sophomore Treks Across The USA for Peace

Ashley Casale '10 has been marching across the country (literally) to protest the Iraq War:

The idea for the march came to Casale last autumn. A freshman at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., she had attended war protests but thought that a cross-country march could attract more attention. She established a Web site, www.marchforpeace.info, sent out hundreds of fliers to other college campuses and contacted peace groups around the country. Israel, about to graduate a home-school high school program in Jackson, Calif., spotted a notice online. Though dozens of people showed interest, in the end, only Israel and another woman agreed to walk.

They set off from San Francisco on May 21, carrying 40-pound packs. By the end of the first week, the third marcher dropped out. Another activist told them they would never make it to Washington by their target date, Sept. 11. But they pressed on, crossing into Nevada and making their way across the desert in two weeks. Then on to Utah and Colorado.

Their determination has endeared them to many. After seeing the holes in Casale's shoes, a man in Sacramento bought her a new pair of sandals. An elderly man in Colorado drove their packs ahead for two days and called his friends who lived along the route to arrange for shelter.

"I read about them in the paper yesterday and thought, 'Oh my God, we have to help them,'" said Bobbi Benson, 48, of Boulder, who helped drive the packs forward through Colorado. "They just have such courage."

'This is the whole point'

On July 4, Casale and Israel walked the 20 miles from Loveland to Greeley, two towns in a solidly Republican corner of Colorado. As they trudged along the roadside, the Rocky Mountains dominated the horizon behind them. And before them, fields of wheat and corn stretched for miles.

"People who see us today might see us as un-American or unpatriotic," said Casale, about to dart across an expressway ramp. "But I think this is the whole point of this country and July 4: People taking an active role, and speaking out."

They walked for hours under the hot sun. When they finally made it to Greeley, someone yelled an obscenity out a car window. A few minutes later, a man in a Cadillac waved dismissively at them. But others honked support, signaling with a thumbs up or a peace sign.

And when they ducked inside a restaurant, one customer, Carla DeVries, 51, cheered them on. With perfectly coiffed blond hair and wearing a bright pink sweater, DeVries said she is a Republican and supports the war but said, "It's refreshing to see anyone do anything that takes adversity." She smiled at Casale and said: "You stick to your guns."

Twelve hours after they began walking, the sun going down on Greeley and the rat-a-tat-tat of celebratory firecrackers echoing in the distance, the two marchers arrived at a beige split-level house, where someone had offered them a place to sleep. A gray-haired woman rushed to the screen door. "Welcome! Welcome!" called Jean Taylor-Smith, 74, embracing them on the doorstep. "We didn't think you'd ever make it!"

Nearly halfway to goal

The two marchers were exhausted, but they also were nearly halfway to Washington. On Sunday they were near Gothenburg, Neb. A peace group has arranged a rally in Omaha, where they hope to draw large crowds.

"If I could have it my way, I would have hundreds of people out here. The more people the better. But I still don't believe it's insignificant that two people are marching," said Casale, sitting on a couch drinking a tall glass of ice water, her list of contacts spread on her lap. "What we're doing can be significant on a national level. But it's also the individuals we meet. Everywhere we go, there's someone we can meet and talk to."

Taylor-Smith, standing in the kitchen, beamed with pride.

"One person can change the world," she said, rushing to fill everyone's water glasses, asking what the marchers wanted to eat. "These two will plant the seeds, and the movement will grow."

A Closer Walk

Wesleyan's Student Global AIDS Campaign presents A Closer Walk, a movie about how people are affected by AIDS, be it personally, politically, economically, etc.

"It's not just a movie, it's a movement."

A Closer Walk will be shown on behalf of the Universities Allied for Essential Medicines National Day of Action.

Date: Wednesday, April 18
Time: 7pm
Place: PAC 002

Step it Up March....in April...

Emma Goodstein '10 very enthusiastically writes in:

This April 14th, tens of thousands of Americans will gather all across the country at meaningful, iconic places to call for action on climate change. We will hike, bike, climb, walk, swim, kayak, canoe, or simply sit or stand with banners of our call to action: STEP IT UP, CONGRESS! CUT CARBON 80% BY 2050!

On Saturday, April 14 at 3 pm EON will host a march as part of the national STEP IT UP campaign, calling for climate action now. The march will start at Harbor Park, by the Harbor Park Restaurant (80 Harbor Dr.) and culminate at the field on Williams Street above the power plant where we'll make a huge banner to show our support. At 2 pm we will gather at the Science Center lobby to make signs for the march, and at 2:45 we will head down to the park. Or you can meet us at the park at 3!

So to sum up: THIS SATURDAY 2 pm sign-making 2:45 pm walking down to the park 3 pm MARCHING! COME AND SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR CLIMATE ACTION!

Date: Saturday, April 14
Time: 2:45pm
Place: Science Center Lobby

Amy Goodman at Con College

Thomas Coen '07 wants you all to know that Award-winning journalist Amy Goodman, host of the daily, grassroots, global, radio/TV news hour Democracy Now!, is on a national speaking tour to mark DN!'s 10th anniversary and launch her second book with journalist David Goodman, Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back.

She'll be making a stop this week at Conn College!

Date: Wednesday, March 7th
Time: 7pm
Place:
Connecticut College Crozier
William College Center
1962 Room 270
Mohegan Avenue
New London, CT
(directions)

Admission is free, but donations are welcome to cover the cost of the event. No reservations are required.

This event is sponsored by numerous college and community organizations. For questions, please email: scbar(at)conncoll.edu.

Wesleyan BioJustice

Wesleyan BioJustice will be having its first meeting tomorrow. I'd tell you more about it but Brian Brotman '07 sent me the following email and nothing more, so this is all you get:

Wesleyan BioJustice is having its first meeting tommorrow, at 8pm in the Campus Center meeting room 2.

Got that?

Date: Tomorrow, February 28
Time: 8pm
Place: Campus Center Meeting Room 2

Vagabond/Photographer/Activist takes on American Racism

Photographer Jacob Holdt presents "American Pictures: A Danish vagabond's personal journey through the American underclass"

A self identified Danish vagabond presents his show (through a range of multi-media) on American poverty, racism and oppression. After spending many years hitchhiking across the US living among extreme poverty, KKK members, and being arrested by the secret service, he considers his show/workshop to be "racism shock therapy."

Date: This Friday, February 23
Time: 4:15-8:15
Location: Science Center 150
Motivation: Snacks will be served during intermission!

Wesleyan BioJustice

Brian Brotman '07 writes in:

Think it's kind of scary that a single multinational corporation owns 95% of all crops?

Frightened by the notion of untested, unproven, and potentially dangerous food technology has been given the green light to enter our diets without our consent or knowlege?

Think it's fucked up that ecological stability, sustainability, and global food production are all being threatened for a corporate bottom line?

Want to do something about it?

Join Wesleyan BioJustice. Right now we're organizing for the BioJustice convergence in Boston, planning awareness events, and bringing the Rising Tide Roadshow to Wesleyan, tentatively planned for April 29th.

Click this link to join our listserv

Click to join WesleyanBioJustice

or you can contact Brian Brotman at bbrotman@wes.

Industrial Hemp Fest

Live Music, munchies, informative speeches from awesome people like Captain Joint, hemp products, games, and more!

Date: Saturday, February 24
Time: 2:00pm - 7:00pm
Location: Eclectic

Sex Workers Art Show

(I almost wrote "Sex Workers Love Show").

From the website:

"The wildly successful cabaret-style show is hitting the road again, bringing audiences a blend of spoken word, music, drag, burlesque, and multimedia performance art. Intelligent and hot, disturbing and hilarious, the performances offer a wide range of perspectives on sex work, from celebration of prostitutes' rights and sex-positivity to views from the darker sides of the industry.
...
The show includes people from all areas of the sex industry: strippers, prostitutes, dommes, film stars, phone sex operators, internet models, etc. It smashes traditional stereotypes and moves beyond "positive" and "negative" into a fuller articulation of the complicated ways sex workers experience their jobs and their lives. The Sex Workers' Art Show entertains, arouses, and amazes while simultaneously offering scathing and insightful commentary on notions of class, race, gender, labor and sexuality!"

This event is sliding scale by donation. Bring a buck, or twenty bucks. Also bring flowers for Lola, but don't tell her I said that.

Date: Tuesday, February 20th
Time: 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: Campus Center MPR

Raise the Age

Wesprep, the on-campus prison activist group, is politely requesting your help:

CT automatically tries and sentences all 16 and 17-year-olds as adults, regardless of their crime. This policy has failed and must be reexamined: youth in adult prisons do not receive adequate rehabilitation or treatment in adult prisons, which does not change their behaviors or improve public safety. Later this term, the Connecticut legislature will be voting on 'Raise the Age' legislation to keep youth out of adult prisons. The more calls they receive encouraging them to support this legislation, the better, so please take a minute to make a call.

This week we are targeting:
1.) Senator Mary Ann Handley 860-240-0498
2.) Rep. Alfred Adinolfi 860-240-8700
3.) Rep. Bill Aman 860-240-8700
4.) Rep. Gerald Fox 860-240-8585
5.) Rep. Arthur O'Neill 860-240-8700

Here's what you can say:

"Hi, my name is _______________ , from Middletown, Connecticut. I know that Connecticut incarcerates more kids under the age of 18 in adult prisons than any other state and I am calling to ask Representative/Senator _____________ to support efforts to "Raise the Age" and return 16- and 17-year-old offenders to our juvenile justice system. A bill addressing this issue will be introduced soon and I'm hoping the (Representative/Senator) will vote in favor of this reform.

Thank you."

Join Incite Magazine!

Incite Magazine is looking for students who want to make a commitment to a unique and progressive magazine. They are specifically looking for writers, researchers, web designers, administrative assistants, layout editors, and photographers.

If you're interested in being part of the Incite team, come to the organizational meeting and check 'em out!

Date: Tuesday January 30th
Time: 6:30PM
Venue: Davenport Meeting Room 2

Questions? Please contact Thomas Coen, Aaron Sussman, Stacie Szmonko, and Elana Baurer at editors(at)incitemagazine.org

“The power of insight, the power to incite.”