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from Toronto Star - torontostar.ca (http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Arti cle_Type1&c=Article&cid=1035776869006&call_page=TS_Boom&call_pageid=968867505075 &call_pagepath=Life/Boom) The Young and The Radical Youth activism on the rise again NICK MCCABE-LOKOS LIFE REPORTER It's 2003, and as America's war machine gears up for a potential invasion of Iraq, Saturday's peace demo sees 10,000 people rally in the streets. Banners whip, people chant and noses run as demonstrators leave Toronto's city hall, file past the U.S. Embassy on University Ave. heading toward Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto. That's where three members of the Radical Cheerleaders are standing in the snow. "My mom protested a lot in the '60s ... she tried to keep to the peaceful protest. She did a lot of things involving like, basically storming nuclear places," says Claire Hughes, a 15-year-old Grade 10 student at the Etobicoke School of the Arts. Following in her mother's footsteps, Hughes got involved with the Radical Cheerleaders, a group that writes up political cheers, then belts them out at demonstrations. In this case, their message is one of peace, and Hughes is standing shoulder to shoulder with someone who got it and then got active. Lauren Corindia is also 15 and a student at ESA. This is her first demonstration. "They told me that I should get involved," says the Grade 10 student. "I think it's awesome that people get involved." Thirty-three years earlier, the same ideals of peace and activism were spreading like wildfire through the minds of young people. In 1970, the student protest movement had hit a fever pitch and Jerry Rubin, radical co-founder of the Youth International Party releases his book, Do It! Scenarios For A Revolution. Read the book and one thing becomes obvious: psychedelic anti-establishment rants aside, the ways people organize to protest have hardly changed. Rubin's scenarios (the chapter titles in his book, highlighted below) can still be used as a guide for young people looking to get politically active. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ We Cannot Be Co-opted Be- cause We Want Everything This is about taking a hard-line approach, being militant and dedicated to radical change. Josh Zucker, 18, is a member of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. He graduated from Inglenook Community High School, where he organized the High School Flying Squad, a group of young activists who operated under the OCAP banner. Zucker helped organize walkouts at schools across Ontario during an anti-Mike Harris campaign called by OCAP in the fall of 2000. "The high school environment or being a youth can often really be a disempowering kind of position to be in, in the world," says Zucker. "There's a limit to what high school students can directly address if they are just addressing education issues. Sometimes it can't get them that far. They should be involving themselves in larger struggles but coming at them from a youth perspective." Zucker sees an exciting example of that going on in New York, where high school students have organized with the anti-war group Not In Our Name and staged walkouts against a U.S. invasion of Iraq. He had some suggestions for introductory reading material for youth interested in radical thought. "There's a good book called the Teenage Liberation Handbook, which is about de-schooling and it's about taking schooling into your own hands. It's by a woman named Grace Llewellyn." Two others books Zucker says offer a first step in radical literature, are Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen and A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present by Howard Zinn. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Revolution Is Theatre In The Streets Lost Carnival is a group of radical artists looking to shape art and culture through political theatre. They apply those same principles to demonstrations and rallies. At the Summit of the Americas protest and riot in Quebec city they built a huge octopus and the players/demonstrators read a Wizard of Oz-like script. At an anti-globalization demo, members dressed in "death" costumes to stage a mock funeral for a man in a business suit. "It adds to the sense of confidence and joy of the movement when there are things like large puppets and street theatre and that kind of thing," says Shawn Whitney of Lost Carnival. Young people should see the opportunities to get active in their daily lives, he says. "Whether that's in school, in the community amongst their friends, in their workplace, we tend to look elsewhere when we're surrounded all the time by people who want to change the world. "If there's a protest coming up, just get together with some friends and come up with an idea, and just see the protest as not just something that you go to, it's something that you shape." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Every Revolution Needs A Colour TV Be it painting a banner, speaking to reporters or documenting a protest for indie media outlets, demonstrations are about getting a message out, and often the media carry that message. Few groups do a better job of making sure their events get covered than People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Famed for its celebrity-endorsed anti-fur campaign and costumed fast food demos, PETA has it down to a science. According to PETA campaign co-ordinator Andrew Butler, getting a message covered boils down to simplicity: Clear banners, one cause, and images that are immediately recognized. "What applies to the media applies to everyone else. The aim obviously is to raise public awareness with a demonstration, whether it's presenting an image for cameras or whether it's presenting an image for the people you're targeting," Butler says in an interview from PETA headquarters in Norfolk, Va. A co-ordinated publicity stunt can be tough to pull off for someone who has just become politically active and it's helpful to link up with groups that can help. "Really key to someone, for anyone who's looking to start out: don't try and go it alone. Team up with other like-minded people in your area, perhaps your school or college," Butler says. Groups like the Toronto Video Activist Collective (TVAC) aren't content to sit by and wait for television cameras to document acts of protest. They do it themselves. David Hermolin of TVAC has taped more than 100 demonstrations. Those images have been submitted as evidence in court and helped get charges dropped against people who were arrested at rallies. His first bit of advice for someone looking to document a demonstration is to go with a friend who can serve as a lookout and alert you to danger. "When you're videotaping the action, your range of vision is severely narrowed because you're watching through a viewfinder or a flip-out screen," Hermolin says. "That sometimes gives you a sense of distance that you might not want to have in a situation that gets pretty intense and potentially violent." He knows the danger first-hand: while taping a demo his foot was broken by a police horse he didn't see. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Our Leaders Are Seven- Year-Olds Don't Trust Anyone Over 40 At some point, responsibility for change falls on the shoulders of sympathetic politicians. And for years Toronto's lefties have had city councillor Olivia Chow (Trinity-Spadina) on their side. "What young people need to do also is ... understand the political structure and the system so that you can be even more effective," says Chow, who believes activism outside the mainstream political system is equally important. She says youth in the GTA can be politically savvy when the issue is one they feel passionate about. Chow points to the flood of e-mails and phone calls to the mayor's office following an attempt to ban raves on city property. "We had a huge number of people going after the councillors and the mayor. In two hours, the mayor's office got 600 e-mails from people saying, `How dare you ban raves.' We had huge planning sessions ... it was wild." Chow's advice to young people who feel passionately about an issue is to make contact with government at the local level. She says a good place to start is with the Toronto Youth Cabinet. "There are advantages to go through things in a formal way ... I'm actually reaching the city officials and I'm actually doing it in a way that I feel gets heard," says Estee Fresco, an 18-year-old member of the Toronto Youth Cabinet. "As young people, often it's difficult for us," Fresco says. "Especially, one of the difficulties we face is we feel that our voice isn't heard. And that decisions being made on behalf of young people aren't actually coming from the young people themselves ... I really feel it's a way for me to get my voice out." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I Agree With Your Tactics I Don't Know About Your Goals This was Rubin's way of saying it's important to have diverse causes represented in a larger protest movement. The foremost example of that was the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, which were hailed for bringing together just about every group under the sun, from trade unionists to anti-racists to environmentalists like Greenpeace. "I think it's important, because if we are actually going to get a message across to politicians and other decision-makers that a population disagrees with a course of action, if we are going to be effective, than we're going to have to show broad-based support," says Peter Tabuns, executive director of Greenpeace Canada. "So if you have a demonstration that is clearly just one organization with one viewpoint you're far easier to dismiss ... a very diverse range of age groups, a very diverse range of Canadians, politicians have to deal with it in a very different way." Young people who feel strongly about various issues, gender equality for example, should not feel excluded from taking part in an anti-war demonstration, says Tabuns. His advice for a first-timer: "Keep your eyes open and keep calm and be prepared to meet people around you." ------------------------------------------- Macdonald Stainsby http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international -- In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
