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Indybay Feature

Alternative to CSAW 4 Progressive/radical/anti-authoritarian Anti-War YOUTH

by Amina antiwar@disinfo.net
sick of the vanguards, sick of having the conferences you drive 8 hrs. to attend from being hijacked by the ISO and those who like to dominate from a white male prespective, well here is a place where you and your pals might want to plug in
this is long but please take the time to read it.

Ok everyone here is some news and updates. I think over the past few days we've all realized that our criticism only carries out so far,
until actuall action and change has to happen yes this weekend in Berkeley was a bit discouraging but that's not going to stop any of us from organizing against this tragic war. It's actually motiviated us more to work harder for a more collective and true democratic process.

So after this weekends awful experience in Berkeley and after talking this week to many many people all over so. cal, bay area, and Arizona a group of us calling ourselves so far "Progressive Radical Youth Against the War" are going to start organizing on a local campus, community level against the war. So far there are around 59 people from the Berkeley conference involved who are involved in this, the Long Beach info. shop has allowed the so. cal group a meeting space, and this group is open to ANYONE and EVERYONE who feels like the don't have a place or a voice within the liberal/ISOer anti-war movement.
another point that is important to make is that we are encouraging not only Students to get involved but for youth in general to get involved. Being able to go to a major college or university at many times is an extreme privilege, and there are plenty of youth within our movement who are extremely well organized and ready to help in the anti-war movement.. they just happen to not go to school. We want to push for more youth and especially youth of color,women, members of the queer community to become involved because these issues effect them directly, before it starts to effect the white priviledged class.
We have to realize just like the folks in Boston and Chicago have done over the past 2 weeks that IT is possible for us to have two anti-war movement. One for Liberal/Vanguard groups and one for more
progressive/radical/anti-authoritarian groups. Let's break the stereotypes and show that we can organize and we can allow for free
expression within this movement. Lets actually reach out to our middle eastern/muslim/south asian brothers and sisters in our communities and show them that they have a space and a voice in this movement. Instead of asking them to come to our meetings, and join our groups, let's go to them and take our guidance directly from them and help them in their struggle. Instead of going in and telling them how to organize and telling them what we think is the best way to organize, lets listen to them and take a bit of our direction and guidance from them.

We are a group of people who came out of the CSAW conference feeling a bit alienated and confused regarding the process of structure, and democratic process. For the most part we are youth from schools all over the West Coast who want to fight in this anti-war movement, in our communities and schools. Our group is a completely open group for discussion and dialogue and is going to be building and organizing around the anti-war movement from a non hierarchal, not patriarchal, anti-authoritarian standpoint. We want your input in every way possible, we have not set up the structure or decision making process of this group yet.

These are the points that we walked away with not wanting to repeat from the CSAW conference in Berkeley
Our main points were made and people brought up and had problems with were:
- the decision-making process in the conference was not agreed upon by the attendees, nor explained to us at any point
- the decision-making process before the conference was completely hidden from view - no one, including many Berkeley activists, had any idea what was being planned or had any input, even when they tried to participate.
- the ISO dominated many school delegations, dominated the speakers,
dominated the planning, and completely controlled the moderation.
- opposing views were almost always cut off "because we didn't have time" (At one point, an ISO woman named Leticia stood up and said "we don't have time for this, people want to go home. We can discuss this later! It's too late to bring this up anyway." Later? When would that be? It was the very last hour of the very last day of the conference! When she make this comment, a few people got furious and the rest tried not to laugh hysterically.
- speakers were often interrupted by ISO members
- an agenda for proposals was not public and information in general was tightly controlled by a few people, mostly ISO, who made little effor to get outside input or even let other people know what was going on.
-Women, people of color, and members of the queer community felt alianated by the conference, the moderator and structure that conference was set up towards.
-no explenation of consensus, majority vote, or any other decision making process was EVER at ANY point explained to anyone
-discussion were cut short, and voting was happening too quickly to the point that many stopped voting and felt a need to walk out
-3 conferences have been held at Berkeley, the first one anyone and everyone from schools was allowed to attend and participate in the decison making process, the 2nd Conference the decisions and voting was limited to only 5 delegates from each school, the 3rd conference that is now being planned took that even further and is planning on only allowing 1 delegate from each school to attend and make decisions. What's next? only one regional delegate representing 5 schools at a time?


we are going to be setting up meetings in So. Cal sometime a few days after Thanksgiving and that date will be announced, but this group is not going to be limited to So. CAl only because many people already involved are from Arizona, the Bay Area, and OR. So spread the message of this alternative setting trying to establish for people to plug into. We have a list server already set up that is not moderated and asking for discussion and organization within cities and groups to work autonomously and collectively.

If you would like to be involved, put on our list server, or know of people who would like to be involved and put on our list server please email:
antiwar [at] disinfo.net OR respond to this email

we always complain about not knowing where to plug in, well here is a forum now, and this group is young and just starting to organize. So we are all on the same page and equally need to be involved in the structure and decision making process.

Thank you all, especially those who helped with your words and guidance this past week to fully help this be organized and for progress to FINALLY be made.

please spread/circulate this email at will to those you think are interested



From: xantiglobaliaztionx [at] yahoo.com
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Comments (Hide Comments)
by mark
I go to hayward and there was nobody from my school at the conference, but this is great what you guys are doing. Im going to email you guys and hook up with this group because I don't think I can with a clear head be down with the things that happned at the conference this weekend. I wasnt even able to give a report about what is going on at my school because they said the ISO moderator said he didn't have any time left and closed the discussion.
are we going to be working with affinity groups?
by IamSO
werent there like 60 schools there? Would you have wanted to listen to reports of what is going on at the school of everyone there? that would have been the whole conference.
radical progressive youth against the war, now that's a subset. What's the cutoff age?
by ants
from what I heard AT the conference before we started on Sunday, the moderator said that there were only 45 schools there. Also they put a 1 minute limite on speaking from each school. That would have only made it 45-55 min. of the day would have gone to report backs from each school. The point of the conference was to come and share ideas and gain ideas. That's why the report backs were so crucial so you could get ideas about events and actions going on elsewhere so you can apply them when you go back home to your school. many schools were not able to do their report backs because the moderator decided it was not important enough.
by AC historyvegancat@yahoo.com (historyvegancat [at] yahoo.com)
just to add to what the peron befor me said. Each school only had ONE person standing up and real quickly giving report backs.
Also the night before there was a delegate meeting from each school, only one delegate they are the ones that voted and put the time restrictions for the next days AGenda. They voted that they would have discussion and continue, and when they ran out of time, that they would vote on it and extend the time if needed.
But this did not happen on Sunday, whenver something went over time, the moderator closed the discussion, even if there was a stack of 10 people. Never not once did they vote on time extension on a topic, the moderator made that decision for the whole group, basically over riding the decision that had been made the night before regarding time extension.
I was one of the people that walked out so I can speak about the new group that is trying to form.
The reason we use the word YOUTH is because CSAW is using the word SCHOOL. and not only do we want to do work with student activist, but we also want to do work with any YOUTH activist, the ones who don't have the luxuary of being able to afford to go to school, we don't want to leave anyone out. That's why the word YOUTH was used.

!AC!
Hi all.
I am writing in reponse to the various comments made about the ISO's "takeover" of the CSAW conference held in Berkley last weekend. I will try to keep them as brief and to the pont as possible, as I know all of us have a ton of organizing to do.
First, I just want to give props to all the people, especially to the Berkeley coalition , who helped to put this conference together. I also want to thank all the individuals and organizations who set up tables, passed out info, and brought their diverse voices to the various workshops that were taking place on the Saturday of the conference. The session I could only stay a brief time for, Alternatives to War, was led by two great speakers, followed by a discussion punctuated with questions and observations that display the diversity and entusiasm of the young movement. Because I had to work Saturday night , I could not stay for the last plenary session, but from what I heard from other people and activists from my school, San Francisco State , it was a resounding success.
Sunday, I feel, contrary to much of the testimony I've read on this website, was also extremely successful. In the four years I have been a student activist, I had never seen such a vital, mutiracial, geographically diverse collection of student activists united for one purpose, to stop the war. The decisions that came out of the conference, and were voted on democraticaly, especially the decision to have a National Conference, I feel will only create an opportunity for the movement to grow broader and larger.
In direct response to the criticisms leveled against the ISO directly, an organization I am a member of (I'm the Leticia who has been criticized in a couple of pieces), the fact that my organization is being criticized isn't what I find the most disconcerting. If you don't agree with the poltics of the ISO it's your preogative. People of different sets of politics uniting with common aims is what builds movements stronger. I don't even particularly care about me being singled out (and being misquoted, mind you). I'm a grown woman, I can carry my weight, and the character of political argument at different points of time can become incredibly contentious. Examining the Civil Rights and Vietnam War movements gives weight to this point.
What I find dangerous to the well-being of the movement is the deligitamization of an aspect of it, the CSAW conference, by claiming that the ISO took it over. Take the proposal I made on process, for instance: it was a proposal to take a vote on whether or not a discussion of process was necessary at all, . The people that claimed to be "silenced" by the conference simply made up the minority and didn't like that. They claim it was because they didn't have enough opportunity to make their case, but the case they were making , over process, was not important enough to the majority of participants in the room to vote to continue. I've been in many conferences and meetings where proposals I've made hadn't passed, or when I didn't get to speak as much as I would have liked, and although I didnt like it, I moved on, and reinjected the argument if I felt it was necesary.One example of this is my experience working in consensus-based committees. I don't think consensus decision making is the best way to organize, but my opinion was in a minority at the time, so I decided to deal with the process for the time being. At the CSAW conference in particular I was told, quite harshly by the chair, a fellow ISO member, Snehal, that I couldn't speak. People not agreeing with each other is characteristic of all social movements in this country. Just watch film footage of Ella Baker, the Civil Rights leader, in her consultations with SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the young Civil Rights and later Black Power organization, and that becomes clear.
And finally, I want to say in respons to people talking about the "oppressive" nature of the conference, that's absolutely wrong. It's one thing to disagree with the process and procedure of the conference, or the way it was explained, which I think is a totally legitimate complaint. It's a completely different thing to explain the process itself as excluding people of color, women, and gays and lebians, or to bait the organizers of the conference themselvesas beign "oppressive". As a Latina from the conservative Southwest, terms like "dirty Mexican" have been familiar to my ears since I was first called one when I was six years old. My experience of oppression is as legitimate as anyone elses on the face of this planet, totally regardless of my political affiliation, just as the voices of those who found the conference a great success (which is everyone I've talked to so far), are just as legitimate as those who wish to slam it.
Leticia
by Bill Shatoff
Nice try. Once again, the ISO overplayed their hand in a naked attempt to capture the leadership of the developing student anti-war movement. I've haven't seen this many people pissed off about an anti-war conference since the last time you folks tried this stunt during the Gulf War.

One nice thing about the ISO, many ex-ISO members who have not been completely alienated from Left political action have gone on to make excellent organizers and great comrades. Perhaps you should point this out to Ahmed S. in Chicago and the other architects of your current anti-war strategy :)
by ya
Leticia you are the girl who was in charge of the report back from the coordinating committee. the committee that was designed to basically form a government over the entire conference. to basically delegate one student from each school to be the sole communication between Berkeley/ISO and all the schools in CA. How can you depend on one person to communicate from each school when you can't even statisfy 5 delegates that you have. and guess what kids, when that ONE delegate from each school is picked most likely they will be ISO memebers, oh so guess what you'll have 45 CA schools and half of those will be ISO memebers, and once again they'll say "oh we fucked up, the process was wrong and we need to discuss it" so where the hell where you Leticia when the Process group was outside in the cold talking about what went wrong? where the hell where any of you ISO memebers? you don't give a damn about people being upset about the process because you got what you wanted. You say you want to discuss the process, well you had your chance when the people walked out announced they were having a meeting outside to talk about the process, but ooops I forget you were too busy INSIDE coordinating the steering comittee, to busy to listen to the "masses" outside, who give a fuck about them right? they are bitching you guys don't care, as long as they keep that bitching outside in the cold where it belongs you guys don't give a damn.
you are exposed and I hope every student sees you guys for who you really are. I actually used to like you guys and at one point was thinking about joining the group, now Im just ashamed I wasted so much time trying to get to know any of you, you don't know the difference between true activist work and politician work, by the way say what's up to your ISO god Todd your watchdog, Im wondering why he has not spoken out yet about all this, or is he just dictating what he thinks and having you guys type it? fuck the bull shit, fuck the bull shit, fuck the bull shit.
by huitzi
Now that I got your attention.... Actually I don't really give a fuck about the ISO either way. I have nothing against the organization, nor am I a supporter of it, but as one of the organizers for the conference, I feel the need to dismiss this whole nonsense about CSAW being an ISO "plot" or what not. For starters, the Berkeley Stop the War coalition elected 13 representatives to a coordinating committee. As a Chicana, we made damn well sure to have some sort of representation within the coalition. I must admit, I hate working in coalitions, and no offense, but I particularly hate working in coalitions where white males make up an overwhelming majority, yet I believe it is my responsibility to represent my people, our struggle, and our perspective among the white masses. It is up to me, and no one else, to speak and represent. Out of the 13 coordinators, 3 of the elected were from the Raza community. As for ISO, 2 members were elected, but ISO is not the only organization that they belonged to. I, myself belong to various organizations from the Raza community as well as other organizations outside of my community [not ISO] :) . So that accounts for 5 of us and as for the rest of the folks, we have all kinds of different folks (at this point I feel it ridiculous to continue with an ethnic/ racial/political/gender/sexual/religious breakdown of the representation of our coalition). My point is that ISO did not "high-jacked" this conference, nor was it the "main" organizer. Yes, the moderator we elected was from ISO, and looking back, damn did we fuck up by doing so :) but I say this only because of all the nonsense that arose from it and not because I regret backing up the moderator that we chose. All of the criticism that arose from the procedural way the moderator ran the meeting was wrongly misdirected as an accusation on the ISO, when in reality the moderator was trying to figure out how the fuck to run an efficient and representative meeting with a shit load of people. The funny part about this whole "fiasco" is that while people are accusing the moderator of favoritism on the selection of delegate speakers, it was not the moderator who was doing the choosing. If people who were at the meeting recall, there was a woman next to the moderator (non ISO member) who was actually in charge of the speaker's list and the moderator was targeted because he was the one who was calling out the names of the people that the woman had chosen. But putting this entire ISO bullshit aside, I guess I don't get why people are so caught up in that. I though what mattered was the fact that all of us are against the war, against racist scapegoating, and for the defense of civil liberties. I was very saddened that people feel that we cannot work out our differences. I am by no means stating that our conference was anywhere near perfect, fuck, I was surprised we were able to pull in as many people as we did, but this was the first time (for alot of us) to try and host something of the sort. I also hope that those who believed that the conference was an ISO plot/conference/scam/takeover could help organize another conference rather than breaking off and doing their own thing. Amongst Chicana/o organizers we have a saying, "La Union Hace La Fuerza" which means that there is strength in unity. I know alot of mistakes were made, but one of the greatest virtues of progressive folks (which I assume are among those who visit this web site!) is that we are not only critical, but open-minded and flexible enough to understand that shit happens but the struggle continues...
by huitzi
Now that I got your attention.... Actually I don't really give a fuck about the ISO either way. I have nothing against the organization, nor am I a supporter of it, but as one of the organizers for the conference, I feel the need to dismiss this whole nonsense about CSAW being an ISO "plot" or what not. For starters, the Berkeley Stop the War coalition elected 13 representatives to a coordinating committee. As a Chicana, we made damn well sure to have some sort of representation within the coalition. I must admit, I hate working in coalitions, and no offense, but I particularly hate working in coalitions where white males make up an overwhelming majority, yet I believe it is my responsibility to represent my people, our struggle, and our perspective among the white masses. It is up to me, and no one else, to speak and represent. Out of the 13 coordinators, 3 of the elected were from the Raza community. As for ISO, 2 members were elected, but ISO is not the only organization that they belonged to. I, myself belong to various organizations from the Raza community as well as other organizations outside of my community [not ISO] :) . So that accounts for 5 of us and as for the rest of the folks, we have all kinds of different folks (at this point I feel it ridiculous to continue with an ethnic/ racial/political/gender/sexual/religious breakdown of the representation of our coalition). My point is that ISO did not "high-jacked" this conference, nor was it the "main" organizer. Yes, the moderator we elected was from ISO, and looking back, damn did we fuck up by doing so :) but I say this only because of all the nonsense that arose from it and not because I regret backing up the moderator that we chose. All of the criticism that arose from the procedural way the moderator ran the meeting was wrongly misdirected as an accusation on the ISO, when in reality the moderator was trying to figure out how the fuck to run an efficient and representative meeting with a shit load of people. The funny part about this whole "fiasco" is that while people are accusing the moderator of favoritism on the selection of delegate speakers, it was not the moderator who was doing the choosing. If people who were at the meeting recall, there was a woman next to the moderator (non ISO member) who was actually in charge of the speaker's list and the moderator was targeted because he was the one who was calling out the names of the people that the woman had chosen. But putting this entire ISO bullshit aside, I guess I don't get why people are so caught up in that. I though what mattered was the fact that all of us are against the war, against racist scapegoating, and for the defense of civil liberties. I was very saddened that people feel that we cannot work out our differences. I am by no means stating that our conference was anywhere near perfect, fuck, I was surprised we were able to pull in as many people as we did, but this was the first time (for alot of us) to try and host something of the sort. I also hope that those who believed that the conference was an ISO plot/conference/scam/takeover could help organize another conference rather than breaking off and doing their own thing. Amongst Chicana/o organizers we have a saying, "La Union Hace La Fuerza" which means that there is strength in unity. I know alot of mistakes were made, but one of the greatest virtues of progressive folks (which I assume are among those who visit this web site!) is that we are not only critical, but open-minded and flexible enough to understand that shit happens but the struggle continues...
by farhanebin@yahoo.com (farhanebin [at] yahoo.com)
ok this is the thing you say to the people that are pissed off, that we should help you organize another conference, well sweety let me say this. You guys already elected now a coordinating committee, that means we all CANT be involved in the next conference, 3rd this coalition is called CSAW that means CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS AGAINST WAR, well by calling it that I think it's false because it seems to only be BERKELEY SCHOOLS AGAINST WAR, why are all of our 3 conferences now in the bay area in Berkeley? if this is truly going to be a statewide event it should be rotating from city to city, community college to Cal State, to ARt schools to UC schools. See that's where we come back to the equality thing. And we CANT be involved in putting together your conference? who should we contact? we have tried, nobody gets back to us, what list server should we use? what phone # should we call? we have TRIED OVER AND OVER and nobody gets back to us or the #s and emails are not made available to us.
You talk about unity, equality, democracy. Well let me break it down for you just like someone else pointed it out in another post.
The 1st conference was held in Berkeley and it was open to ANYONE from ANY school. Those people were involved directly in the decision making process, they did NOT have to be a delegate.
The 2nd Conference was held in Berkeley and it limited peoples choices and votes to only 5 delegates from each school.
now your 3rd Conference is going to be held once again in Berkeley and you have further taken away peoples freedom and the chance of being involved as you say by saying only ONE delegate from each school can now be invovled in the communication and voting for each school at that conference.

so you went from having everyone involved, to having only 5 involved, and now you only want 1 person from each school invovled.

You reap what you sow, on one hand you are talking about unity, and everyone coming together and working with one another. And on the other hand you guys are the ones that are alianating so many of us.

So you blame us for wanting to work with our brothers and sisters who disagree with this process? we wouldn't be in this position if it had not been for the choices you guys had made.

and Frankly I think the new group that's more progressive and does not shut anyone out will work great, because we wont be spending hours upon hours fighting over issues such as this but will actually be taking action and organizing aganist the war which is what our main purpose is. We just would like to know the type of people that we are working with and where they are coming from, so we are not wasting our time and being manipulated the entire way.

and you talk about the Berkeley stop the war coalition being open. Well let me ask you this, why did so many people who wanted to help in organizing or were PART of the organizing groups have so much to complain about after the conference, I have numerous emails from people that were involved, even ONE berkeley delegate who said in fact most of what we are saying is true. Communists and Anarchist were shut out, if you look at the structure and the process that decisions were made it was a pure SOCIALIST platform. Why were anarchist not given the chance to talk or discuss? for that matter why were communists not given that chance? so please stop making excuses and see things for what they are.

The only good thing about the entire conference weekend were the workshops. and the only reason that they were good was because they were NOT just put on by Berkeley, they were put on by schools from all over the west coast, that alone should prove to you that having all the schools involved DOES work. Because from reading all these posts and emails, those workshops given by other people NON BERKELEY related were the only good thing about the weekend.That was the highlight of my weekend, because I learned and I also got a chance to network with like minded people.

By the way my name is Farhane and im from Iran, and I know how important it is for us to untie and work with one another, but I also realize that there is no unity within this group. people were taken advantage of, and trust was broken, and me being a new comer to this movement can see and saw how the ISO played a huge part in those events taking place. Also it's funny to me that the same exact thing happned regarding the ISO both in Boston and Chicago, you don't believe me? go read the Chicago and Boston IMC. do you think that's just a random act of coincidence? please take a look around and see things for what they are. To me the true revolutionaries, were the ones who were out in the cold on the steps after the meeting ended having a process meeting, mostly women they were discussing their feelings, talking about what to do next. It's funny how only 3 people from the Berkeley conference group were out there with us, It's funny how no ISO member was out there with us. Once my eyes are open I cannot close them. It might sound very ego and bad of me, but I will only work with people who are doing this from their heart, not as an act of charity, and not as an act to gain political momentum. The middle east has fallen prey to that before, and I have learned from history. I will not be working with the CSAW coalition any longer, instead will turn to see and explore what the Progressive Radical Youth Against War have to offer.

thank you very much for taking the time to read my long post
Farhane
by Mark
Yes I used to be a socialist but as Ive grown older, read more and just had more personal releationships. I have found that I have more anarchist and anti authoritarian views. I think it's great that you guys are having this new discussion and organizing group. Im going to email and join because I would love to see this new prespective of opinions flowing this way, also I would like to help out in any way that I can. I live on Treasure Island in SF, I'll spread the word. thank you all for not just complaigning but actually doing this. lets take it to the streets, the revolution is all around us.
by Big Up East Bay
I have to say I wasn't at the conference as I moved from the Bay to NYC recently . But, this all sounds very familiar. From the Gulf-War to the "Students Against Sweatshops" group at SFSU the ISO has always behaved in a similar manner. As Farhane said, take a look at the local IMCs for Chicago, New York, etc. and peep what's going down. It's great that folks are getting wise to the ISO in Cali. More power to you!
by redd
Im glad i've come across the true representive of the chicano people. I'm wondering were you elected or self-appointed? But seriously your little college identity politics might get you a job in the academia but in the real world with real working people your just a big mouthed fool. Your silly nationalist politics are an obstacle to improving the conditions of all working class and poor people (of all races).
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