Activate--a Grand Rapids based antiwar group--is planning a protest this Friday at 5:00pm at the Armed Forces Career Center in Celebration Village (corner of East Beltline and Knapp). Media Mouse interviewed a member of the group about their Friday's protest, previous protests at the recruiting center, and their other work challenging military recruiters.
Start by telling our readers a little bit about ACTIVATE, when did the group get started and what have you been working on?
Activate started about a year ago, around the time that talk of the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) began. Some of us local students, representing GVSU, GRCC, and Aquinas attended a Michigan meeting in Lansing where we brainstormed with other Michigan students about what the new SDS should look like and what our goals would be. After that we started holding meetings in Grand Rapids and decided, first that we wanted to work on an anti-war campaign that focused primarily on anti-military recruitment work, as we saw that as being the most effective way that we could plan local actions and coordinate a campaign that might actually have some real consequences in terms of helping to end the Iraq war. Secondly, we decided that although we would still be affiliated nationally with SDS, we wanted to be more inclusive in the sense that we did not want to be or appear by our name to be a student-only group and we wanted to avoid the apprehension that might come along with being called SDS. So, we changed our name to Activate.
As stated above, we have primarily focused on anti-military recruiting/anti-war work, which has included protesting outside of military recruiting centers in an attempt to shut them down (for the day). However, we do not limit ourselves to anti-war actions and are committed to acting in support of other struggles, with other groups, and on other issues. We have also been involved in anti-Nazi organizing and have participated in organizing against other local and national hate groups, as well as groups that have come out against immigrants/immigration and affirmative action.
This Friday at 5:00pm at the Armed Forces Career Center—a military recruiting station serving multiple branches of the military—your group is planning a protest against the human costs of the Iraq War. What can people expect to happen at this protest?
As is probably expected, there will be signs, banners, and chants. Most of us will stand in front of the Center, and make our opposition known to the recruiters and those passing by, while others will hand out flyers with information to passer-bys. It’s a rather run-of-the-mill kind of protest, but it seems effective in getting a message across to recruiters, as they have been visibly agitated by our presence and thus these actions serve as one relatively easy way of letting recruiters know that there is public opposition to both the way in which they recruit youth—such as disproportionately targeting youth of color and low-income youth—as well as the ongoing occupation of Iraq. At our first action, the presence of around 10 of us was enough to convince the recruiters to pack-up and head home early for the day.
What has the response been to both the previous two actions at the recruiting station (1, 2)—in terms of pedestrians, media, and the recruiters themselves—as well as from the antiwar movement locally?
Most pedestrians have just taken flyers and not really responded, while some have refused to take them, and others have expressed support. Cars have honked in support while others have yelled pro-Bush, pro-war phrases out their windows. So I would say pedestrian responses in general have been mixed. The recruiters, of course are not very fond of us and have responded consistently quite negatively, even to go so far as to play Toby Keith’s “American Soldier” as loud as they could out the doors in an attempt to drown us out, which was really annoying and pretty ridiculous on their part. Activate, in terms of previous protests, failed to do a great job advertising and getting the word out to other anti-war groups about what we were doing, when, and where, and the same goes for the media (besides Media Mouse). So, we have gotten very little coverage (and very bad coverage) in terms of the mainstream press and the presence of members of other anti-war groups has been minimal. But we recognized this problem and have worked to try and repair it, so we hope to see more media and more allies at this upcoming protest.
This leads into the question of why your group chose to focus on counter-recruitment work? What factors went into making this decision?
Beyond the issues that directly involve recruiting itself (the lies recruiters tell, the way they target low income communities and people of color, their intrusion into the privacy and personal information of high school and college students), there is the fact that over 2,500 U.S soldiers and 100, 000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq. Consequently, the war in Iraq needs to end now and we wanted to do something that would be effective in bringing this about and that could add to the power of actions taken by anti-war groups around the country. It seemed like the anti-war movement in the United States needed more coordination, which is one reason we are affiliated with SDS, to increase our power through a campaign (other SDS chapters are also working on anti-recruiting) that if done right and if done by enough people could potentially contribute to stopping the war (in the sense that convincing people not to join the military directly affects the capacity of the military to wage war). We discussed targeting local companies who profit from the war as well as other approaches, but locally, anti-recruiting seemed like the most realistic and effective thing we could do.
Lastly, what are your plans for the future? I often hear this counter-recruitment work described as a “campaign,” which implies further activity beyond these protests at recruiting stations, so what are the next steps for this work?
In terms of the anti-recruiting campaign, we are working with the Institute for Global Education (IGE) on getting access into the public schools for the fall. Because recruiters heavily target high school students and have an almost constant presence within the schools, a counter presence is necessary. Once in the schools we hope to make sure opt-out forms and information about the myths recruiters tell as well as facts about alternatives to the military are available. We would also like to do presentations within classrooms (we are working on a PowerPoint presentation right now), work on supporting existing student groups, and helping to facilitate the formation of student groups opposed to military recruiters in their schools.
