About last weekend's UC Berkeley student antiwar conference

Hi everybody:

This is Lee Siu Hin from ActionLA and PeaceNoWar.net from Los Angeles--put this way--I didn't go to UCB antiwar conference last weekend because for the past few weeks I knew the UCB antiwar coalition and the conference had been completely hijacked by ISO, the meeting will be sucks and I don't want to waste my time to come.

Few weeks ago, I had talked to some UCB students, they told me the UCB antiwar steering committee had been completely controlled by either: ISO UCB student chapters, left turn, Palestine coalition, or friends of above, no independent voices can be exist, and no official decisions can be made without steering committee approval (For example: few weeks ago, when a group of student start a student antiwar newspaper, the ISO SC members didn't show too much interests, but when the newspaper concept was very successful, ISO SC members suddenly demand a control, created a newspaper 'work group', put some of their people who never work on the paper before, and require each article must be pre-approved before publishing).

after I talked to several organizers across the country, their goal is clear, try to use current student antiwar activism to control student activism across the country. Like, IAC, which they want to control mainstream left nationwide antiwar activism (they did a great job to destroy LA antiwar movements), like a franchise, ISO want to focus on campus wide antiwar movements. It also cannot underestimates that ISO involvement on San Francisco Global Exchange's antiwar campaigns and promote themselves to be THE Bay area's labor spokesperson--keep in mind, many of them (I personally known) just two months ago before S11, they were busy want to control California-wide anti-sweatshop, immigrant rights and labor campaigns, right after S11, they switch their tasks!

As a former LA DAN member (completely destroy due to ongoing stupid internal struggle) and long several major antiglobalization and antiwar activist, struggle between political parties and selfish personal dynamics are so intense that sometimes I want to give up activism work. For the past few years, many socialists, Maoists, Troskists, Communists, anarchists' personall/political dynamics had destroyed many community/immigrant/anti-globalization movements. Again, the same negative political/personal energy come-in to this antiwar movement, and I am really worry this student antiwar coalition will not have enough credibility to service for too long.

Lee Siu Hin
ActionLA/PeaceNoWar.net
4167 S. Normandie Ave.,
Los Angeles, CA 91030
Tel: (323)389-4593
e-mail: ActionLA [at] ActionLA.org
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