Campuses rocked by education rights protests March 4

March 4 protest at UCLA (Fight Back! News/Staff)

The following article by Kati Ketz is from Fight Back! News:

 Thousands of students, workers and faculty at over 100 campuses in at least 39 states participated in a national day of action March 4. One demand was that administrators and chancellors must quit raising tuition and fees. Another demand was that theycut the salaries of the highest-paid administrators instead of the lowest-paid staffers on campus. Many of the protests opposed layoffs. Actions ranged from walkouts and marches, to occupations and shut-downs, to teach-ins and movie showings.

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FRSO Students: Study and Struggle

Students protest at UCLA in 2009 (Fight Back! News/Staff)

The following article is from Fight Back! News. See also the FRSO pamphlet On the Student Movement in the United States by Josh Sykes.

The Student Commission of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) met over the 2009 winter break to discuss education rights, building a movement against war and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, fighting racism on campus and supporting immigrant rights. FRSO students came from as far as California and Florida, with large delegations from the South and Midwest. With a burning desire for social justice, the national cold wave could not stop them.

UNC-Chapel Hill students stand up for immigrant rights

The following is from Fight Back! News:

UNC-CHAPEL HILL
Students Protest Anti-Immigrant Speaker: Event Gets Shut Down

By Kati Ketz

Chapel Hill, NC – Over 200 protesters gathered here on April 15 to protest a talk given by the racist former congressman Tom Tancredo. Students, faculty and staff were in the streets and the lobby of the building chanting, “Shut it down – no racists in our town!” Some protesters were inside the room where the talk was being held and challenged Tancredo on his anti-immigration views while holding banners saying “No dialogue with hate,” and “No one is illegal.”

Celebrate the 115th Anniversary of the Birth of Mao Zedong

“We do not think that Mao Zedong was an infallible genius, nor do we think that he was solely responsible for the successes of the Chinese Revolution. Mainly that victory belongs to the Chinese people, but the communists helped to give form to their demands, and to carry out the revolution in strategic way that ultimately brought about success.

“We in Freedom Road draw a great deal from the work of Mao Zedong. He made great contributions to revolutionary strategy and tactics for Third World liberation struggles, in particular his theory of protracted people’s war and New Democratic revolution. We think his formulation of the Mass Line, a method of leadership that involves learning from masses as you move forward, is central to success. We have a document on our website concerning this: Some Points on the Mass Line. Mao also contributed to Marxism-Leninism in his understanding of various contradictions in society, and how they interrelate. These are major issues for all revolutionaries. Finally Mao fought against some of the mistaken ideas that were put forward at various times by others in the socialist camp, including the Soviet Union. He led the fight against modern revisionism, which pretends to ‘revise’ Marxism while in truth undermining Marxism’s basic revolutionary principles. In general the anti-revisionist struggle helped Marxist-Leninists clarify a number of pressing theoretical and practical issues.”

– From SDS: Study and struggle, unite and fight! by Kati Ketz, Tracy Molm, and Kosta Harlan for the Student Commission of Freedom Road Socialist Organization

October 18: National Conference on War, Socialism and the People’s Struggle

The following is from Fight Back! News:

WAR, SOCIALISM AND THE PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE
A conference on imperialism and how to end it.

Saturday, October 18, 2008
9 am – 5 pm
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Over the last six years there has been an upsurge in the people’s struggle in the United States: The growth of a mass anti-war movement not seen since the fight against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s; the emergence of an immigrant rights movement and the largest struggle for equality since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s; and a growing fight back against foreclosures, job cuts and cuts in health care, education, welfare and a growing economic crisis.

Fight Back! has covered these struggles and sees the growth of the people’s struggle calling for a higher level of understanding of our common struggle against imperialism – a system based on giant corporations that cross the globe in search for ever-greater profits, and these corporations’ control of our government and use of military force to achieve their goals. Fight Back! is sponsoring this conference so that activists can share their experiences and learn more about imperialism and how we can fight to end it and replace it with a system of socialism, where people’s needs, not corporate profits, are the basis of society.

Join us on Saturday, Oct. 18 in Minneapolis, Minnesota for this important conference on imperialism and how to end it. At the conference there will be workshops and discussion that brings together activists from the anti-war, immigrant rights, the labor, oppressed nationality, student and lowincome movements. There will be presentations from some of the leaders of these movements and from Freedom Road Socialist Organization. We will also be talking about how to build a revolutionary media that an serves the people, grassroots organizing, bringing together a broad united front of different forces, building a revolutionary organization and the direction for the people’s struggle in 2009.

Freedom Road – “SDS: Study and struggle, unite and fight!”

The following statement is from the website of Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

SDS: Study and struggle, unite and fight!

By Kati Ketz, Tracy Molm, and Kosta Harlan
for the Student Commission of Freedom Road Socialist Organization

We in Freedom Road Socialist Organization were disappointed to read Rachel Haut’s September 2008 interview with the Platypus project on “the present and future of SDS”. Freedom Road members work very hard to maintain Students for a Democratic Society as a strong, fighting organization that benefits from its ideological plurality while remaining united practically by radical, anti-imperialist activism. Unfortunately Rachel Haut, an SDS organizer in New York, said a few things to give us pause. We would like to take this opportunity to address those points here, because we think the things Rachel says have the potential to undermine some of SDS’s core principles. Mainly, we are concerned with the mistaken notion that FRSO wants to ‘take over’ SDS. We also want to address Rachel’s statement that “Maoism is in opposition to a democratic society” and that “it is inappropriate to have conversations about ideological differences when we still have Maoists in the organization”. Rachel says she will not ‘condone’ FRSO members being in SDS, and is, in effect, calling for all Marxist-Leninists to be purged. We think this sort of sectarianism is and has been a detriment to SDS as a whole. These are big issues, and we can’t deal with them thoroughly here. But we think a conversation is needed and that people in SDS should talk to us about these things, whether they agree or disagree with us.

30,000 march against war at the RNC

This article is from Fight Back! News:

Freedom Road banner at the RNC protest.

By Staff

Podcast Interviews The following are interviews with some people who helped organize for the march and lead some of the contingents. Carlos Montes Latinos Against War, Los Angeles Hatem Abudayyeh Palestinian community, Chicago Cherrene Horazuk AFSCME Local 3800, Minneapolis Kati Ketz Students for a Democratic Society

St. Paul, MN – On September 1, the opening day of the Republican National Convention, 30,000 people rallied at the Minnesota State Capitol and marched against the war. It was the largest anti-war march in the U.S. this year.

The four main themes of the march were U.S. out of Iraq now; money for human needs, not for war; say no to the Republican agenda; and demand peace, justice and equality.

The march was led off by large contingents of veterans, immigrants, labor, poor people, Somalis, Palestinians, and students.

Check out the article at Fight Back! News for more photos.