Anti-war Youth Activism Explodes

As goes Greensboro, so goes the nation.

Don’t believe me? Greensboro, N.C. is a bellwether for the pulse of students across the country. This southern city has seven colleges and universities in its metropolitan area. These schools range in size and political temperament from the small and liberal Guilford and Bennett Colleges to larger, more conservative institutions such as Elon University and University of North Carolina-Greensboro (UNCG). As a whole, Greensboro and Guilford County are also a good microcosm of the country. Mostly rural North Carolina voted for Bush, but more urban Guilford County and Greensboro narrowly voted for Kerry. Greensboro also attracts lots of out-of-state students – for example, two-thirds of Guilford College’s students are out of state, letting us have our finger on the pulse of the nation.

And something’s happening here. I’m a sophomore at Guilford and there’s an energy here that I haven’t seen in nearly two years of organizing on this campus. Since late January, our campus has been consumed by organizing for a large demonstration against the Iraq War in nearby Fayetteville (home of Ft. Bragg ) on March 19. In our first two days of tabling, we signed up 80 students to attend the march. Students are engaged and determined to take action on Iraq.

This specific demonstration that we’re working toward is unusual as well. It will bring together military families, veterans, and their supporters for a rally calling for the United States to bring the troops home and end the war. That’s unusual because most in our activist community don’t identify with military families and veterans, for several reasons. First, Guilford is a Quaker school, and many in our activist community are pacifists. Cultural and class conflicts have often made our organizing more fragmented than it should be. Yet, a higher number than usual of our students (compared to other actions) are not only committed to going to the demonstration, but are actively organizing on our campus as well.

For example, we are reaching more and more students who are natives of the South. Some of the main leaders of our organizing committee for the March 19th action were born and raised in Greensboro. A specific person who signed up to get involved recently stands out in my mind — this guy, an adult education student at Guilford, is a native of North Carolina who is a semi-retired 11-year veteran of the United States Marine Corps and drives race cars for a living. You don’t get much more “red state” than that.

His and other veterans’ involvement in the movement reflect a main theme of the demonstration that is set for March 19. The peace movement is generally seeing more people who are directly affected by the war, namely veterans and their families, speaking out.

Anecdotes from Guilford are, of course, not the best determinant of the level of student activism in Greensboro. After all, Guilford is a Quaker school with a strong history of progressive political action. Yet, something is happening across Greensboro as well. Students are organizing on all seven campuses for this demonstration. For the first time we are actively coordinating our work by forming the Greensboro Student Action Coalition (GSAC). The coalition’s first big event, a teach-in connecting student activism to the peace work of military veterans, drew over 50 student activists from across Greensboro to network and strategize around ending the war. This event also attracted widespread attention from local media, which doesn’t often happen at progressive events in Greensboro.

“It’s been really incredible,” notes Liz Nemitz, a senior at Guilford who has been involved in the coalition since its inception. “We’re doing work with kids at University North Carolina-Greensboro, Bennett, and Agriculture and Technical University in Greensboro that we never had worked with before, and it’s brought a whole new perspective to our organizing – we see ourselves as a college town rather than in individual bubbles.”