Statement at the Progressive Caucus, CCCC March 19, 2003
Charles Bazerman
As the turmoil of the Vietnam war years faded, I discovered literacy as a cause one could pursue within the system, even though with some institutional struggleóbut that struggle sometimes paid off and could be carried on locally within the politics of campus governance. I had not been out on the streets in thirty years. But last summer as the junta in the White House were setting their minds on war, if you remember even without congressional approval, I soon began to feel that I had to be out on the streets againóthat I could not let this outrage go unmarked, that these incompetent bullies could not be allowed just to walk over the constitution and the hard won lessons of the twentieth century that aggression, first strike, preemption should be allowedóand those bastards were claiming it as a new principle. This new principle would give license for any country to act violently on its fears and imagined interests, and not on any proven violation of national sovereignty. In a new century where limited resources would increasingly become matters that would without cooperative planning turn nations against each other; in a century where environmental problems would require the highest degrees of cooperation to keep the planet habitable; in a world were extreme differences of affluence made volatilely visible through extensive communications; in a world where people were already being drawn into extreme ideologies that focused and transformed their discontents into motives for terroróin such times this Bush doctrine would give license to new horrors. Having seen the downward spiral of the middle east in the last fifty years, I saw Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz drawing us into that spiral by adopting the same stances and policies that had led to Israel into endless conflict, militarization and brutalization of their society. After 9/11, as awful as that was, I saw American exceptionalism kick in full tilt as we claimed no one had ever been injured before as we had, no one had more cause for vigilante justice than we had, everyone should salute to our pain. But all that had happened was that we were introduced to the insecurity most of the world lives in. We couldnít bear living in a difficult world, and we had a cowboy-crusader shallow enough to think he could conquer all evil. Instead of facing the difficulties in all their complexities we have turned the whole world into our enemy.
So I have become enraged and in my rage I had to act. I was fortunate though to have friends equally upset and to live in a community that was quick to see the foolishness. So by September 2002 a number of us on campus had begun talking about creating teach-ins, lectures, speak-outs, rallies. And downtown the community had begun a series of marches that have continued weekly for the last twenty-six weeks. The marches at first were smallótwo to three hundred. But we persisted and now they range between 1000 and 5000 depending on the events and weather. The city council was one of the first to pass a resolution. And during the fall electoral campaign we pressured our congresswoman off the fence to oppose the war resolution. There has been a close connection between the downtown leaders and the campus group.
Meanwhile on campus we also started small. A core of about four of us organized a first planning meeting which drew around twenty faculty, We immediately established a listserve that quickly grew to about a hundred, and has grown to slightly more than thatófaculty staff and students. This has been a very useful means to share events, information, news stories. The list is not moderated, but it has stayed active and on focus, with traffic of from five to twenty messages a dayóbut no one complains about the amount of traffic. Core planning fell to a fluid group of three to five us who met weekly for an hour.
We also saw our first task was to get students engaged. We created a speak-out event in the plaza in front of the student center. That drew about two hundred peopleómore faculty and staff than students. But we began to identify some student leaders through organizing this event, and others started to come forward, as did members of the staff. So the core planning group now consisted of a floating group of students, staff, and faculty. We constituted our group as the Campus Community Peace Group, largely to facilitate booking of space. In the fall we also organized a formal panel that drew quite welló200 in the main room and another fifty or so in an overflow room with video feed. The videotape went to our local access channel and other outlets. We also were making connections with knowledgeable faculty members who were willing to talk.
Student engagement began to build with students organizing a concert rally in a park in the college town just by the end of the fall term. Also there were a number of other talks, panels, lectures through traditional academic units, which we helped publicize, occasionally adding a vigil or info table.
This winter term many more groups and students became engaged. The CCPG now serves more to share info, provide support, and coordinate where useful among the multiple active groups. We sponsor some events, but the biggest events are now sponsored and organized by the student groupsósuch as the March 5th walkout which pretty much shut down the campus. About 1000 high-energy students marched, rallied and took part in teach-in events. Faculty offered support by releasing classes, setting assignments around the events, and themselves leading workshops.
The student association early in the term passed an anti-war resolution. This inspired some of us to introduce an anti-war resolution to our faculty senate legislature, which then convened a special meeting. As we were drafting a strong statement, a Nobelist on our campus was putting together a statement signed by 41 US Nobelists. This was a more middle of the road statement, designed to gain wider approval. We decided to substitute that for ours because the prestige of the statement, the connections Walter Kohn and a couple of other signing Nobelists on campus had, and the broader appeal of the statement. We figured at the end of the day the headline would read ìUCSB Faculty Pass Anti-war Resolutionî--which was exactly how the headline in the local paper read. The only opposition came from people who thought we should not make political resolutions. There was a bit of procedural confusion, but the senate chairman quietly supported us and arranged for an extraordinary meeting of the entire faculty senateóall professorial faculty. The resolution passed 82-4. Then we had a supplementary electronic poll which showed approval of 176-16, with 37 saying the faculty should not engage in political resolutions..
One lesson we learned was that we had more friends in high places than we could imagine. As I was a department chair, I let my Dean know of my intention to get involved. He backed me all the way and would check legal matters with the campus attorneys. And then because I respected our Chancellor I informed him, and he let me know that he thought the best way he could be useful was to maintain an open discussion environment. He also encouraged a number of campus units to bring important speakers to campus. The people in the community relations office provided all the media contact we could use. To someone living through the sixties, having an administration who would work for and with the movement was an incredible blessing.
One of the most important lessons of this was persistence. We were constant unsure about where events would go and what we ought to need to plan for. But we just kept creating events with enough flexibility to react to the changing climate. It looks like now we will be heading into the long haul and we will need lots of persistence. Although it is not at all clear how we can turn this country away from the disastrous path the Bush Junta has placed us on, we have no alternative but to keep on trying to find a way. As specialist in rhetoric and communication we have useful knowledge about how to organize forums that will allow people to articulate and express the strong repugnance they have for the aggressive policies of this administration. As teachers of writing we can help people develop their statements to make arguments in public forums. Only words, ideas, and forming of large, articulate national and international constituencies demanding a more civilized and tolerant world will stop the terror of those who think the world is to be controlled at the point of a gun. Now we see the real power of language, and we see the responsibility of our professional commitment to bring about a better world through fostering articulateness and communication. It is on this front we must now struggle.