The War Stops Here

CT Opposes the War, originally formed out of a schism in the antiwar movement on  the question of Palestine and working within the Democratic Party, this year committed to building the student antiwar movement by hiring a full-time organizer to put together a state-wide conference for new youth activists. Held at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT this past Saturday, the conference was a huge success, drawing young people from all sorts of campuses–high schools, community colleges, universities–and from a variety of political experiences. The conference agenda was tailored to the needs expressed by potential attendees, and included basic organizing, nonviolent civil disobedience, social movement history, Iraqi refugee support, and divestment campaigns in three workshop blocks, with most workshops repeating to allow people to go to attend most of the workshops they really wanted to.

I was also able to do a workshop I called, “The War Stops Here: Pushing the Envelope,” which had a little overlap with the workshop on nonviolent civil disobedience, but focused rather on giving attendees a conceptual understanding of direct action and some hands-on experience with planning and executing an action. Below is an overview of the workshop, followed by the powerpoint presentation I used with notes for each slide (in powerpoint, go to View, and Notes Page to see my notes for each slide) which give you a general idea of what I talked about for each slide.

The idea for this workshop is to introduce new activists to the concepts and practices of a direct action strategy to end the war, with a participatory, multimedia format. It will seek to answer such questions as:

What falls into that category?

Why do movements take action to that level?

What actions can people new to activism and protest do?

What tools do people need before they hit the streets?

How can we turn small, isolated groups into a mass movement?

To these ends, the workshop will

• give a number of examples of tactics from different traditions and levels,
• give a brief history of movements that have utilized direct action and why
• give an overview of the organization of affinity groups,
• do a participatory role-play of an action
• come back together for facilitated discussion on how these ideas can be coalesced into a mass movement

The history and examples of direct action will be brief, but supplemented with free literature (20 min). It will also include a slideshow presentation with images and film clips from various actions. The rest of the workshop will be split into 3 main parts:

• The affinity group portion will include a definition, a breakdown of the roles and processes within an affinity group, and the ways in which multiple groups can coordinate. (5)
• The role-play will begin with some brainstorming of different actions, which will then be assessed by their impact and risk. This will be used as a segue into a role-play exercise where we will act out a high-impact, low-risk direct action. Participants will fill many of the affinity group roles we covered previously. (20)
• Participants will then be encouraged to discuss the role of direct action in a mass movement, which I will facilitate with pointed questions and inclusiveness (weighted stack, etc). I will wrap up with a brief overview of some of the current initiatives in mass direct action, i.e. the RNC/DNC. (15)

cow-presentation