Under the brown-splotched ceiling and faintly humming fluorescent lights of the classically shabby Humanities Building classroom, a ring of battered desks held a collection of average-looking college students. As the early stages of the Monday night meeting progressed, late arrivals slipped into the room, gradually filling every empty seat. Subtracting sound from the scene, this gathering could have passed for any club get-together. But the words spilling from the Stop the War! members’ mouths were far from ordinary student discourse.
More than 30 years after the tumultuous Vietnam War-protest era, a new generation of University of Wisconsin student activists is gearing up to denounce a new war.
While most UW students spent Monday night with a caffeinated beverage and some homework, more than 25 antiwar activists contemplated Saddam Hussein’s latest moves, made plans for a Saturday antiwar rally at the Capitol and debated what kind of image their fledgling movement should project.
Largely lacking flowery, impassioned speeches and radical rhetoric, the Stop the War! group focused on the nitty-gritty of activism — postering, rallying, fundraising, chalking, etc.
“Organizing against the war on Iraq on campus involves a lot of advertising, meetings and coming up with ideas that will draw attention,” UW senior Melea Carvlin said.
Carvlin, also a member of the International Socialist Organization, has been with Stop the War! since its birth on Sept. 25, 2001. She said the group has been “growing by leaps and bounds,” steadily increasing from the eight to 10 regulars who attended last year’s meetings.
“I’d been looking for a way to get involved with the antiwar movement and their rally seemed really effective,” new member and UW sophomore Laura Witzling said. “Once people hear the facts, they’re compelled to care.”
On a campus of more than 40,000 people, however, the facts have only convinced a few to care enough to take action.
“You see someone protesting you agree with, but, you know, you have to go to class,” history expert and UW mass communications professor James Baughman said. “If the Iraq invasion were to take place and it turns out to be a disaster, a lot of people who wouldn’t give a rat’s patootie about protests on campus … would be mad.”
A failing war roused the campus to chaos in the late 1960s and early ’70s, but it took years to reach the infamous heights of the violent 1967 Dow Chemical protest and the tragic 1970 Sterling Hall bombing that killed a young researcher. The beginnings of the legendary protest movement were more modest.
“In the beginning, there were demonstrations sometimes where if you could get 300 to 400 people to show up we were very happy,” former antiwar protester and former Madison mayor Paul Soglin said. “That’s one out of 100 students on campus.”
Later, as the war escalated and more UW men got sucked into the draft, the protests intensified as well. Still, Baughman said, the movement was not all-inclusive.
“By ’68 and ’69, the numbers of college students increased dramatically, but I would hazard that the percentage might not be as large as you would think,” he said. “The Greeks were never involved, and there were students who opposed the protests, as well as probably fellow travelers who agreed but didn’t get involved.”
Today, the Stop the War! group is attempting to reinvigorate Madison’s activist soul. General student apathy, however, is tough to battle.
“There are very active people here on campus but also a whole lot of in-between,” Stop the War! member Steve Ringwood said. “For people who aren’t interested, it’s hard to convince them to pay attention.”
Contemporary activists have a few advantages these days; cell phones and photocopy machines make a modern movement a little easier.
While reminiscing with a fellow former activist recently, Soglin said technological advances could have helped the Vietnam protesters.
“As we were walking down State Street, my friend said, ‘Can you imagine what it would have been like with 15,000 of us demonstrating in the street if we had had cellular phones? We could have gone on for days, and they could never have gotten us,'” Soglin said.
Additionally, communication developments like the Internet and e-mail make information transmission much smoother. Soglin and his fellow activists had to rely on old-fashioned publicity techniques.
“I can remember the bare light bulb in the basement with the mimeograph machine and trying to make sure that the stencil didn’t tear so we could get a leaflet out,” he said. “There was certainly no photocopying.”
Although the technology and the enemy have changed, Soglin said, the students have stayed the same. Moreover, some feel the early stages of the Iraq conflict are eerily similar to Vietnam beginnings.
“Iraq smells and sounds and looks like Vietnam in a very troubling way,” Soglin said. “The justification for going in and taking action is very suspect and unconvincing. We’re hearing the same things we heard in Vietnam, which is, ‘it’s secret, you don’t need to know, but don’t worry, we have the secret evidence.'”
While history may be imitating itself, Stop the War! member and UW senior Neil Loehlein said the new antiwar movement can avoid becoming a carbon copy of UW’s Vietnam activism.
“We can learn from some of the mistakes of the Vietnam movement, but this isn’t the Vietnam movement,” he said. “With every new event, we need to figure out fresh responses. We’re not trying to live out another cycle of it.”
