Tournament: GBX | Round: Quads | Opponent: x | Judge: x
The advantage is Military Urbanism

We begin the 1ac with a story of terror— In an effort to fulfill modernity's foundational conquest, the marketized control of life itself, military doctrine invades the cityscape. Discplinary mechanisms are now the hallmark of civil society, blurring the ethical calculus of all by integrating into urban structures
Clement 12
(Matthew, doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Oregon, "Neoliberalism, Imperialism, and the Militarization of Urban Spaces", Monthly Review, Vol. 64, Issue 5, http://monthlyreview.org/2012/10/01/neoliberalism-imperialism-and-the-militarization-of-urban-spaces)
Meanwhile, the militarization of cities around the world, in both the core and
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of urban and social life, blending invisibly with it" (91).

Policing is unique, — as the disciplinarians of the urban cityscape, they utilize overarching claims of terror to  blur the line between military violence and peacekeeping, legitimating the use of violence as a form of neocolonization
KRASKA 09 professor and senior research fellow, college of justice and strategy @ Eastern Kentucky University 2009  (Peter, "Militarization and Policing – It's Relevance to 21st Century Police",  Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, Vol 1, Issue 4, p.1-2 note://// indicates par. breaks) CS
Simplicity is comforting. Modernity's basic dichotomies such as fact/value, private/
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police institution, the activity of policing, crime control, and warfare.

Indeterminacy is our internal link—The lynchpin of the polices power comes from qualified immunity-it absolves the sovereign from accountability in unknowability as a tactic to curb citizen agency
De Stefan 16, Lindsey J.D. Candidate, 2016, Seton Hall University School of Law; B.A., Ramapo College of New Jersey., ""No Man Is Above the Law and No Man Is Below It:" How Qualified Immunity Reform Could Create Accountability and Curb Widespread Police Misconduct" (2017). Law School Student Scholarship. Paper 850. http://scholarship.shu.edu/student_scholarship/850  CS
Of course, the most outwardly evident and alarming problem with qualified immunity jurisprudence has
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no means 'clearly establish' that Brosseau's conduct violated the Fourth Amendment."1

The advent of these structures represents the cessation of our moral agency to the state—complacency in these mechanisms means that structures within the law like qualified immunity serve to diffuse conflict between citizens and the state- trapping us into a neverending cycle of endorsing violent subjectivities
Hassel 85
 Hassel, Diana. (Associate Professor, Roger Williams University School of Law
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can develop into an obstacle to the very aims it professes to accomplish. 

The impact is endless warfare—-the security state has resulted in a new politics of military urbanism that extends warfare into the battlespace, with no beginning or end, and where everyone is a target.
Graham 12, Professor of Cities and Society at Newcastle University, January 2012, "When Life Itself is War: On the Urbanization of Military and Security Doctrine," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 36.1, pgs. 136 – 155, AJX
 The first key feature of the new military urbanism is the way it normalizes
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advance of civil or criminal offences being proven (see Amoore, 2009).

And this doctrine calls for the end of the public sphere – the collapse of citizen agency necessitates violent forms of moral conceptions demanding the extermination of the other
Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois '4
(Prof of Anthropology @ Cal-Berkely; Prof of Anthropology @ UPenn)
(Nancy and Philippe, Introduction: Making Sense of Violence, in Violence in
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including the house gun and gated communities; and reversed feelings of victimization).

Plan Text

Thus the plan text: The USFG should Remove the "clearly established" standard, which holds that police officers are entitled to qualified immunity as long as the law they broke was not clearly established
Sam Wright 15 (Sam Wright, public interest lawyer who has spent his career exclusively in nonprofits and government) Want to Fight Police Misconduct? Reform Qualified Immunity, Above the Law 11-3-2015 LADI
Despite the fact that it doesn't appear to be supported by evidence, FBI Director
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show that that conduct's illegality has already been clearly established in the courts? 

Solvency

Solves indeterminacy—Eliminating the standard removes the cloak that veils police brutality, providing a solid ground for civil rights legislation confronts the heart of police avoiding the problems and is key to creating change
Hassel 99 Hassel, Diana. "Living A Lie: The Cost of Qualified Immunity." Missouri Law Review Vol 64 Issue 1. 1999. Web. October 06, 2016. http://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3402andcontext=mlr. CS
The emphasis that qualified immunity places on the reasonableness of the defendant's actions rather than
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us peace, but it keeps from us the tools required for reform.

Also solves issues of brutal policing, forces the government to train and select better
Fallon and Meltzer 91. R. D. (Harry M. Cross Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, University of Washington; Pro- fessor of Law, Harvard University.  Professor of Law, Harvard University.) Harvard Law Review. June 1991 CS
 A body of official immunity law could easily be founded on the enduring,
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cost-avoiding measures, such as improved training and personnel selection.518

Framing

Rather than attempting to eliminate use of the law, you should adopt a politics of playing with the law —- switch it from sacred to toy —- in the context of this debate round that means using hypothetical implementation to deactivate the law—we control the internal link to every epistemology since the debate comes down to resisting the violence of the soverign
Mills 8 (Catherine Mills is currently an ARC Future Fellow and Associate Professor of Bioethics in the Centre for Human Bioethics at Monash University. I was previously employed at University of Sydney, Australia, and have been Lecturer in Philosophy at University of New South Wales, and the Australian National University. I completed a PhD in Philosophy at the Australian National University.  My main research interests lie in the areas of biopolitics and bioethics.  "Playing with Law: Agamben and Derrida on Postjuridical Justice", The Agamben Effect p. 23-24) CS
To return to my starting point more can now be said of the idea of
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can study have no rightful end, it does not even desire one."

Also solves their kritiks, we view the law as more than just ends —- it is part of a slow unraveling of normative legality that will create a better vocabulary to discuss sovereign violence
Agamben, 2005 – professor of philosophy at the College International de Philosophie in Paris (Giorgio, "The State of Exception", pg. 63) CS
In the Kafka essay, the enigmatic image of a law that is studied but
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that absolutely cannot be appropriated or made juridical (Benjamin 1992, 41).

Tournament: College Prep | Round: 1 | Opponent: Newport independent | Judge: Travis Fife
The advantage is militarism
Free speech zones are a sham – rather than creating a space for speech, they confine dissent to overlooked corners of university campuses, where it is no longer effective. This regime of restrictions on free speech uses military tactics to suppress open debate and political dissent, an extension of the state’s extralegal violence in the War on Terror
Elmer 8 (Greg Elmer, associate professor of communication and culture at Ryerson University, PhD in communication from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, director of the Infoscape Research Lab at Ryerson University, Andy Opel, associate professor of communication at Florida State University, PhD in mass communication from the University of North Carolina, member of the International Communication Association, November 2008, “Preempting Dissent: The Politics of an Inevitable Future,” pages 29-41)
SHORTLY AFTER THE LARGE-SCALE PROTESTS against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in late November 1999, police, law enforcement agencies, the military, and global weapons manufacturers began to rethink their responses to public protests. Since the Seattle protests, similar semi—annual gatherings of government officials and corporate trade lawyers have consistently attracted large public protests, organized by public-interests groups denied participation in the decision-making process of trade agreements such as the Global Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Wide—scale protests were seen in Prague, Genoa, Cancun, Quebec City, Miami, and, most recently, Mar Del Plata, Argentina. Moreover, as we will see in this chapter, as the size and sophistication of resistance grew, so too did political and legal responses to that resistance. Responses to such protests have been greatly influenced by military and so—called ‘homeland’ security strategies enacted after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the initiation of the controversial second Gulf War. As we see in this chapter, the combination of a changing political climate in response to war and terrorism, particularly the expansion of preemptive forms of social control and political containment, has resulted in a new set of practices that have reconfigured public space and criminalized multiple aspects of free speech and public assembly in the United States. This chapter argues that in the shadow of 9/11, the war in Iraq, and the ongoing “War on Terror,” a disturbing form of geopolitical apartheid has emerged in the United States. At the core of this trend is a set of micro-political strategies and technologies that attempt to contain spaces of dissent and detain protestors (Boghosian, 2004). Some activists and critics have labeled these anti-democratic tendencies the “Miami Model,” after the strategies deployed in November 2003 against Free Trade of the Americas protestors by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies stationed in Miami. The Miami model of law enforcement was characterized by 1) the deployment of overwhelming numbers of law enforcement officers, 2) preemptive arrests of peaceful and law—abiding protestors, and 3) widespread police surveillance techniques before, during, and after protests (Getzan, 2004). And while these three pillars—overwhelming force, preemptive arrests, and surveillance—-provide a good overview of police and law enforcement strategies, in this chapter we focus on the manner in which spaces of dissent, debate, and democracy are being regulated and policed through the courts, going into more depth in the next chapter, through a study of the introduction of weapons meant to easily contain and detain protestors and, more broadly, immobilize dissent. Of greater concern is the degree to which such strategies systematically marginalize dissent, spatially and politically speaking. From the creation of “free speech zones” and the proposal for protest free “Pedestrian Safety Zones”2° to the political screening of participants in political “town hall meetings,” space has increasingly become a tool to limit open debate, freedom of speech, and political dissent in the US. Part of our interest in exposing the strategies of political segregation, first through the containment of protest spaces, and second, through the deployment of preemptive hand-held weapons, is theoretical. The segregation of deviance has often been influenced by Foucaultian theories of panopticism and social control. An increasing number of scholars, however, are arguing that Foucault’s panoptic prison, even deployed in metaphorical terms, has been overextended, particularly when considering broader geographic perspectives (Haggerty and Ericson, 2000; Elmer, 2004). Many scholars arguing that panopticism must move beyond architectures or institutions of social control, do so in large part to theorize emerging technological, “virtual,” or simulated forms of surveillance and discipline (e.g., Bogard; Gandy). While we find such arguments to be productive, they typically juxtapose their ideas against corporeal surveillance and monitoring of the past. Human surveillance and policing factors, conversely, play a key role in monitoring political organizing activities and training, peaceful protests, and acts of civil disobedience (Boghosian, 2004, p. 29). Moreover, Foucault’s metaphorical use of a penitentiary as the historical trope or dispositif for social discipline, reformation, and self-actualization, while providing a broad conceptual framework for a dispersed theory of self-discipline, control, and conformity, has little to say about that which escapes conformity, namely public protest, civil disobedience, and other forms of social and political dissent. Under the constant gaze of social mores and values, Foucault’s subjects are implored to change and police their own behaviour. The proliferation of surveillance technologies (such as closed-circuit TV, CCTV), preemptive policing, programs that attempt to anticipate future social and geopolitical risks (Elmer Opel, 2006), and the presumption of guilt instead of innocence, are in part a response to past intelligence failures. The inability to gain adequate and up-to-date intelligence on domestic and international risks in the US, UK, Iraq, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, etc., continues to highlight the limits and shortcomings of surveillance programs and intelligence—gathering techniques. The recognition of decentred and distributed network infrastructures and relationships among protesters, migrants, and terrorists in the US and elsewhere, has similarly stretched conventional thinking about the structure and deployment of surveillance programs and technologies. In short, members of such feared networks are not typically considered panoptic subjects, that is to say, they are not clients, candidates, or inmates in need of reform, or self-discipline. Rather, it is argued that such networked subjects have become increasingly influenced by strategic and indefinite forms of containment and detainment. Didier Bigo’s (2006) extension of Foucault’s theories of social control provides a helpful point of departure. While Bigo shares the goal of extending theories of social and political control outside of the prison and other social institutions, he maintains an interest in the social control of populations, specifically through the mobility, capture, and detainment of specific populations. By introducing the concept of the “ban-opticon,” Bigo succeeds in moving outside the panoptic walls of punishment, to question the optics and governmentality of indefinite detainment, a questionable spatial and legal tactic used in the “War on Terror” and with migrant communities. Such detainees, be they in Guantanamo Bay or in immigrant holding centres in the EU and elsewhere, have no intention of turning their subjects into law-abiding, productive citizens (Miller, 1993), rather their goal is both to remove individuals from war, or to merely return them to their previous location—to ban them. In both cases, individuals are immobilized and excluded from participating in war and/ or entering Western societies. Although political protestors produce a different set of challenges from domestic law enforcement and forces of political control in the US—primarily their visibility in the media as increased evidence of opposition to the political status quo—they are similarly immobilized, contained, and in some cases detained without charge. Such detainments, further, in many instances are not subject to punishment (fines, etc.); rather, they are increasingly used to preemptively, and temporarily remove protestors from public spaces until the conclusion of protests (Boghosian, 2004, p. 29). The operationalization of preemptive tactics in the US further highlights the limitations of Foucault’s decentred model of power, in which sovereignty is manifest through dispersed disciplinary technologies. Strategies of political containment and detainment, spatially and individually speaking, are in large part enabled by what Giorgio Agamben (2005) refers to as the “state of exception,” the “no one’sman’s land between public law and political fact” (p. 1). Ironically, while conservatives in the US continue to argue against a “living constitution,” where interpretations over the nation’s law change over time,21 the Bush administration actively sought to reinterpret executive powers during the so-called War on Terror. Following Agamben, Didier Bigo (2006) argues that such interpretations are enacted through explicit declarations by political rulers, a declaration that invokes an exception to the rule of law. Broadly construed, the US administration continues to invoke the War on Terror to blur the line between law and politics. In defence of the secret wiretapping program, the Bush administration has argued that an exception to the rule of law was enacted by the legislation, giving the president preemptive powers to carry out surveillance. Similar arguments have been made in the UK, Canada, and France. The Boston Globe and other media in the US also reported about the growing use of “signing statements” by the US president, as a means to state his exception to the new law. For example, after the signing of US Senator John McCain’s anti—torture bill in the January 2006, the president declared that “The executive branch shall construe the law in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President as Commander in Chief.” He also added that this interpretation “will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President ... of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks” (Savage, 2004). Of course, many American laws that govern executive power, public debate, and, as we see next, dissent and protest in public space, are so broadly written that they practically cultivate political exceptionalism. For example, as an adjunct to debates over the US Patriot Act, the “spatial tactics” of law enforcement have recently produced a series of controversial rulings about the accessibility of public spaces for the purposes of political protest. Thus, at a time when public advocates and intellectuals have reinforced the importance of understanding the democratic and political aspects of various geographies——most notably innovative and tolerant ones (Florida, 2003) and environmentally sustainable ones (Gore, 2007)—the American legal system continues to downplay or altogether avoid spatial considerations in First Amendment cases. Timothy Zick (2005), for example, argues that “The reason courts fail to properly scrutinize spatial tactics is that they have accepted the common conception of place as mere res—a neutral thing, an undifferentiated mass, a backdrop for expressive scenes” (p. 3). Results of this legal conception of place as a “neutral thing” include the protest zones (some resembling cages”) established at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions during the summer of 2004 as well as the now routine practice of keeping protestors many blocks and often miles away from free trade, WTO, or GATT meetings. Later in the same year the G8 summit was held on the tiny (private) Sea Island, just off the coast near Savannah, Georgia, a choice that made it nearly impossible——given the security noose around the island——to stage a meaningful and visible protest. In South Carolina, the well-known activist Brett Bursey gained nationwide attention for a series of attempts to protest against President Bush at Republican Party organized rallies, the last of which, in 2004, resulted in his arrest and conviction under a statute that enables the Secret Security to establish a security perimeter or zone around the president. Mirroring Zick’s argument about the court’s treatment of space as an objective or neutral equation in contemporary politics, an aide to the former South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, was quoted on National Public Radio as saying that: The statute under which Mr. Bursey’s been charged alleges that he failed to vacate an area that had been cordoned off for a visit by the president of the United States. It is a content—neutral statute, and Mr. Bursey is charged not because of what he was doing but because of where he was doing it. The US statute in question—-USC 18: 1 752(a)(l)(ii), “Temporary residences and offices of the President and others”—while not a new, post-9/11 law, nevertheless raises obvious questions and concerns about its use as a political tool for spatially and politically marginalizing dissent. The law in effect establishes a temporary “residence” for the president as he goes about his business across the country. The law forbids groups or individuals from entering or remaining with an area (defined as “building,” “grounds,” or “any posted, cordoned off. . .” area where the president is visiting).24 Moreover, the law does not apply universally, only to those who intend “to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions.” Interestingly, in the course of preparing Bursey’s defence, lawyers were able to gain access to the Secret Service’s policy manual on protests. The South Carolina Progressive Network subsequently used the document to highlight the means by which the Bush administration was interpreting the above mentioned law to segregate protestors away from the president’s supporters and the media. Moreover, The Progressive Network also maintained that while the law did give the Secret Service the power to cordon off access to the president, “There is no limitation to the size of the restricted area.” Furthermore, “In the Bursey case, the restricted area was approximately 70 acres and stretched for a mile.”25 With no spatial limits on the separation of protestors from the US president, political marginalization becomes a distinct possibility. The spatial segregation of speakers according to the content of their messages all too easily bifurcates voices and perspectives into “two sides,” mirroring the dominant red/ blue political culture of the US. Thus in the absence of political leaders, protests, and, perhaps more importantly, acts of civil disobedience, lose their publicity, all too often becoming marginalized spectacles distanced from the machinations of political parties, candidates, and government. Zick put it this way: “In these places, protests and demonstrations become staged events, bland and neutered substitutions for the passionate and, yes, sometimes chaotic face-to—face confrontations that have characterized our country’s past” (Zick, 2005, p. 45). The process of segregating public space according to political message and turning public gatherings into “staged events” is contrasted with the actual political strategy of the staged event or “town hall meeting,” where pre-screened publics appear to ask government officials “authentic” questions, a practice that has many online examples as well.26 This illusion of public participation is another quality of the spatial turn in free speech politics where city streets are cordoned off to become de facto “stages” for media cameras. By literally separating the demonstrators from the object of their demonstration, the protest zone becomes “a way of controlling the content of the debate without really acknowledging that is what is being done” (Mitchell, 2003, p. 39). In addition to creating media frames and stages, protest zoning also facilitates preemptive police tactics, placing all potential protestors in one location in the name of security. Fencing in protestors or zoning them away from a given site implies a threat or danger that requires preemptive zoning, thus “assuming guilt until innocence is proven” (Mitchell, 2003, p. 39). Mitchell refers to this zoning as the “ghettoization” of protest; we prefer the South African analogy of an apartheid as more accurate. Whereas a ghetto is often viewed as the result of low-income people clustered together out of necessity and a lack of resources, apartheid was an explicit legal and spatial strategy that segregated settlements and produced a second-class citizenry. Parallels can be drawn to the state of liberal democracy in the United States, where protestors and political dissidents are legally restrained and contained outside of the so-called mainstream political stage. Yet, as we will see in the next chapter, preemptive arrests, facilitated by segregationist spatial tactics and exceptionalist forms of governmentality, often move beyond the realm of the panoptic to the violent repressive use of weaponry, what are creatively termed “less-lethal technologies.” As we shall see, many new crowd control technologies have incorporated decidedly preemptive logics that explicitly reinforce our belief that the preemptive doctrine is as much about controlling behaviours and seeking broader political compliance as it is a technique for reducing actual risks and dangers.
Public colleges deploy a militarized strategy to prevent dissent – they ensure the continuity of militarism by criminalizing opposition to it
Neoliberalism, Militarization, and the Price of Dissent:  Policing Protest at the University of California Farah Godrej. Edited by Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 2014. AS
I have offered here a particular window into the ways in which the interests, mechanisms, and operations of both the university system and the neoliberal state are aligned with those of private capital. Of course, that the academy is made to strategically ally with capital as a key piece of neoliberal consolidation should not surprise us. Rather, what is worth noting, I have argued here, is the necessity of the linkages between disinvestment in public education, militarization, and the criminalization of dissent. These necessary linkages demonstrate this volume’s premise that the university is an institution embedded in the hierarchies and inequalities of U.S. racial, gender, and class politics and shed light on the confluence of military and industrial interests as they appear within the U.S. university. I have sought also to emphasize the systematicity and multilayered complexity of this phenomenon. That is, the various pieces of this picture necessarily go together, as rhetoric, law, bureaucracy, and the force of arms all combine effectively to produce the desired end. The neoliberal logic entailed in the privatization of the University of California is, I have argued, necessarily interlinked with the logic of militarization and the criminalization of dissent, because it employs a militarized enforcement strategy, coupled with a political rhetoric that criminalizes the specific behaviors involved in protest and dissent against these strategies. The militarization of the university campus is thus not simply a reflection of the increasing militarization of American law enforcement based on the logic of ongoing threats to public safety encoded in years of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.25 Rather, such militarization is one prong of a necessary enforcement strategy designed to convey that dissent against privatization is meant to be costly in inflicting various forms of legitimized violence upon those who dissent. The second prong of the enforcement strategy also conveys that dissenters will pay a high price by being criminalized, either through rhetoric that paints them as violent and therefore marginal, unworthy, and undesirable in the public imagination or through legal machinations that force them to expend tremendous financial resources on extricating themselves from prosecution. The language of cost and price here, of course, reminds us of the ongoing hegemony— and perhaps victory— of the conceptual frameworks of neoliberalism and its theoretical accompaniments, such as rational choice theory, predominantly featured in neoclassical economics. These strategies of criminalization and militarization rest on sending signals to adversaries, encoded precisely in these languages, wherein value and worth are measured in terms of indicators such as price or cost, and rational actors are assumed to be guided by a universally comprehensible incentive structure. Thus the strategies of criminalization and militarization rest on de- incentivizing dissent, so to speak, assuming that dissenters will measure the costs inherent in their actions and choose rationally to cease from engaging in such dissent. The continued insistence on dissent is therefore resistance to the logic of neoliberal privatization on multiple levels: it not only calls out the complicity of the university with the neoliberal state and the forces of private capital but also continues to dissent despite the “incentives” offered in exchange for desisting from dissent. And in so doing, it should be signaling its rejection not simply of privatization but of the entire conceptual baggage of neoliberalism, including its logics of rational choice, cost, price, and incentive, as well as its logic of structural violence. In other words, the ongoing struggle against the logic of neoliberal privatization requires that dissent continue, despite its high “price.”
Militarism produces abhorrent violence – the fear of a phantom threat results in a limitless war against limitless enemies – only reconfiguring empire from within is politically effective
McClintock 9—chaired prof of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at UW–Madison. MPhil from Cambridge; PhD from Columbia (Anne, Paranoid Empire: Specters from Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, Small Axe Mar2009, Issue 28, p50-74)
By now it is fair to say that the United States has come to be dominated by two grand and dangerous hallucinations: the promise of benign US globalization and the permanent threat of the “war on terror.” I have come to feel that we cannot understand the extravagance of the violence to which the US government has committed itself after 9/11—two countries invaded, thousands of innocent people imprisoned, killed, and tortured—unless we grasp a defining feature of our moment, that is, a deep and disturbing doubleness with respect to power. Taking shape, as it now does, around fantasies of global omnipotence (Operation Infinite Justice, the War to End All Evil) coinciding with nightmares of impending attack, the United States has entered the domain of paranoia: dream world and catastrophe. For it is only in paranoia that one finds simultaneously and in such condensed form both deliriums of absolute power and forebodings of perpetual threat. Hence the spectral and nightmarish quality of the “war on terror,” a limitless war against a limitless threat, a war vaunted by the US administration to encompass all of space and persisting without end. But the war on terror is not a real war, for “terror” is not an identifiable enemy nor a strategic, real-world target. The war on terror is what William Gibson calls elsewhere “a consensual hallucination,” 4 and the US government can fling its military might against ghostly apparitions and hallucinate a victory over all evil only at the cost of catastrophic self-delusion and the infliction of great calamities elsewhere. I have come to feel that we urgently need to make visible (the better politically to challenge) those established but concealed circuits of imperial violence that now animate the war on terror. We need, as urgently, to illuminate the continuities that connect those circuits of imperial violence abroad with the vast, internal shadowlands of prisons and supermaxes—the modern “slave-ships on the middle passage to nowhere”—that have come to characterize the United States as a super-carceral state. 5 Can we, the uneasy heirs of empire, now speak only of national things? If a long-established but primarily covert US imperialism has, since 9/11, manifested itself more aggressively as an overt empire, does the terrain and object of intellectual inquiry, as well as the claims of political responsibility, not also extend beyond that useful fiction of the “exceptional nation” to embrace the shadowlands of empire? If so, how can we theorize the phantasmagoric, imperial violence that has come so dreadfully to constitute our kinship with the ordinary, but which also at the same moment renders extraordinary the ordinary bodies of ordinary people, an imperial violence which in collusion with a complicit corporate media would render itself invisible, casting states of emergency into fitful shadow and fleshly bodies into specters? For imperialism is not something that happens elsewhere, an offshore fact to be deplored but as easily ignored. Rather, the force of empire comes to reconfigure, from within, the nature and violence of the nation-state itself, giving rise to perplexing questions: Who under an empire are “we,” the people? And who are the ghosted, ordinary people beyond the nation-state who, in turn, constitute “us”? We now inhabit a crisis of violence and the visible. How do we insist on seeing the violence that the imperial state attempts to render invisible, while also seeing the ordinary people afflicted by that violence? For to allow the spectral, disfigured people (especially those under torture) obliged to inhabit the haunted no-places and penumbra of empire to be made visible as ordinary people is to forfeit the long-held US claim of moral and cultural exceptionalism, the traditional self-identity of the United States as the uniquely superior, universal standard-bearer of moral authority, a tenacious, national mythology of originary innocence now in tatters. The deeper question, however, is not only how to see but also how to theorize and oppose the violence without becoming beguiled by the seductions of spectacle alone. 6 Perhaps in the labyrinths of torture we must also find a way to speak with ghosts, for specters disturb the authority of vision and the hauntings of popular memory disrupt the great forgettings of official history. Paranoia Even the paranoid have enemies. —Donald Rumsfeld Why paranoia? Can we fully understand the proliferating circuits of imperial violence—the very eclipsing of which gives to our moment its uncanny, phantasmagoric cast—without understanding the pervasive presence of the paranoia that has come, quite violently, to manifest itself across the political and cultural spectrum as a defining feature of our time? By paranoia, I mean not simply Hofstadter’s famous identification of the US state’s tendency toward conspiracy theories. 7 Rather, I conceive of paranoia as an inherent contradiction with respect to power: a double-sided phantasm that oscillates precariously between deliriums of grandeur and nightmares of perpetual threat, a deep and dangerous doubleness with respect to power that is held in unstable tension, but which, if suddenly destabilized (as after 9/11), can produce pyrotechnic displays of violence. The pertinence of understanding paranoia, I argue, lies in its peculiarly intimate and peculiarly dangerous relation to violence. 8 Let me be clear: I do not see paranoia as a primary, structural cause of US imperialism nor as its structuring identity. Nor do I see the US war on terror as animated by some collective, psychic agency, submerged mind, or Hegelian “cunning of reason,” nor by what Susan Faludi calls a national “terror dream.” 9 Nor am I interested in evoking paranoia as a kind of psychological diagnosis of the imperial nation-state. Nations do not have “psyches” or an “unconscious”; only people do. Rather, a social entity such as an organization, state, or empire can be spoken of as “paranoid” if the dominant powers governing that entity cohere as a collective community around contradictory cultural narratives, self-mythologies, practices, and identities that oscillate between delusions of inherent superiority and omnipotence, and phantasms of threat and engulfment. The term paranoia is analytically useful here, then, not as a description of a collective national psyche, nor as a description of a universal pathology, but rather as an analytically strategic concept, a way of seeing and being attentive to contradictions within power, a way of making visible (the better politically to oppose) the contradictory flashpoints of violence that the state tries to conceal. Paranoia is in this sense what I call a hinge phenomenon, articulated between the ordinary person and society, between psychodynamics and socio-political history. Paranoia is in that sense dialectical rather than binary, for its violence erupts from the force of its multiple, cascading contradictions: the intimate memories of wounds, defeats, and humiliations condensing with cultural fantasies of aggrandizement and revenge, in such a way as to be productive at times of unspeakable violence. For how else can we understand such debauches of cruelty? A critical question still remains: does not something terrible have to happen to ordinary people (military police, soldiers, interrogators) to instill in them, as ordinary people, in the most intimate, fleshly ways, a paranoid cast that enables them to act compliantly with, and in obedience to, the paranoid visions of a paranoid state? Perhaps we need to take a long, hard look at the simultaneously humiliating and aggrandizing rituals of militarized institutions, whereby individuals are first broken down, then reintegrated (incorporated) into the larger corps as a unified, obedient fighting body, the methods by which schools, the military, training camps— not to mention the paranoid image-worlds of the corporate media—instill paranoia in ordinary people and fatally conjure up collective but unstable fantasies of omnipotence. 10 In what follows, I want to trace the flashpoints of imperial paranoia into the labyrinths of torture in order to illuminate three crises that animate our moment: the crisis of violence and the visible, the crisis of imperial legitimacy, and what I call “the enemy deficit.” I explore these flashpoints of imperial paranoia as they emerge in the torture at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. I argue that Guantánamo is the territorializing of paranoia and that torture itself is paranoia incarnate, in order to make visible, in keeping with Hazel Carby’s brilliant work, those contradictory sites where imperial racism, sexuality, and gender catastrophically collide. 11 The Enemy Deficit: Making the “Barbarians” Visible Because night is here but the barbarians have not come. Some people arrived from the frontiers, And they said that there are no longer any barbarians. And now what shall become of us without any barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution. —C. P. Cavafy, “Waiting for the Barbarians” The barbarians have declared war. —President George W. Bush C. P. Cavafy wrote “Waiting for the Barbarians” in 1927, but the poem haunts the aftermath of 9/11 with the force of an uncanny and prescient déjà vu. To what dilemma are the “barbarians” a kind of solution? Every modern empire faces an abiding crisis of legitimacy in that it flings its power over territories and peoples who have not consented to that power. Cavafy’s insight is that an imperial state claims legitimacy only by evoking the threat of the barbarians. It is only the threat of the barbarians that constitutes the silhouette of the empire’s borders in the first place. On the other hand, the hallucination of the barbarians disturbs the empire with perpetual nightmares of impending attack. The enemy is the abject of empire: the rejected from which we cannot part. And without the barbarians the legitimacy of empire vanishes like a disappearing phantom. Those people were a kind of solution. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the grand antagonism of the United States and the USSR evaporated like a quickly fading nightmare. The cold war rhetoric of totalitarianism, Finlandization, present danger, fifth columnist, and infiltration vanished. Where were the enemies now to justify the continuing escalation of the military colossus? “And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?” By rights, the thawing of the cold war should have prompted an immediate downsizing of the military; any plausible external threat had simply ceased to exist. Prior to 9/11, General Peter Schoomaker, head of the US Army, bemoaned the enemy deficit: “It’s no use having an army that did nothing but train,” he said. “There’s got to be a certain appetite for what the hell we exist for.” Dick Cheney likewise complained: “The threats have become so remote. So remote that they are difficult to ascertain.” Colin Powell agreed: “Though we can still plausibly identify specific threats—North Korea, Iran, Iraq, something like that—the real threat is the unknown, the uncertain.” Before becoming president, George W. Bush likewise fretted over the post–cold war dearth of a visible enemy: “We do not know who the enemy is, but we know they are out there.” It is now well established that the invasion of Iraq had been a long-standing goal of the US administration, but there was no clear rationale with which to sell such an invasion. In 1997 a group of neocons at the Project for the New American Century produced a remarkable report in which they stated that to make such an invasion palatable would require “a catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” 12
1ac – plan
Public colleges and universities should extend free speech zones to their entire campus.

Rod Kackley | Arizona Shuts Down College Campus Free Speech Zones in the Name of Free Speech. (2016). News and Politics. Retrieved 9 December 2016, from https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/2016/05/30/arizona-shuts-down-college-campus-free-speech-zones-in-the-name-of-free-speech/ Rod Kackley is an award-winning radio and print journalist who covers statehouse news from around the nation for PJ Media. He is also a novelist who has recently launched The St. Isidore Collection, a psychological thriller series, which begins with the novel "A Wicked Plan: Book 1 From the St. Isidore Collection." AS
State Rep. Anthony Kern said he handed out materials as part of a church group on the Glendale Community College campus for several years without any trouble. But one year, “all of a sudden they came up with this free speech zone which was way away from the people,” the Republican told the Arizona Capitol Times. That inspired Kern to introduce House Bill 2615, which broadens campus “free speech zones” to the entire public college campus as opposed to designated areas. It provides students the right to exercise their First Amendment rights without concerns about the time, place and manner unless the public higher education institution can prove the restriction is reasonable and justified. “The First Amendment right of free speech is a bedrock founding principle of our Republic,” said Gov. Doug Ducey (R) when he signed the legislation this month. “Likewise, part of the university experience is to be able to express diverse views, openly, without fear of retribution or intimidation – and to be exposed to other views and perspectives, even if they aren’t politically correct or popular.” “These bills protect free speech throughout our college campuses, and also ensure an individual’s right to engage in free speech isn’t shut down by someone else who disagrees with his or her perspective,” Ducey added. Gov. Ducey also signed House Bill 2548 which could help people like Brittany Mirelez. The Paradise Valley Community College student filed suit against PVCC after administrators prevented her from recruiting on campus for a Young Americans for Liberty chapter. Mirelez’s suit claimed that by confining her to a pre-designated free speech zone, her First Amendment rights had been violated. HB 2548 gives students the right to file lawsuits against colleges and universities, and to receive an award judgment if the court finds that the university or community college has restricted the student’s speech.

1ac – solvency
Student Protest in Campuses specifically allows for the instigation of dissent and questioning of the Military Industrial Complex within the departments in the University that fuel the war—Vietnam War proves
Tilly et. al. Marco Giugni, Doug McAdam, Charles Tilly. (1999). How Social Movements Matter. University of Minnesota Press. AS
The Anti-Vietnam War Movement and Science Although the United States had been involved in fighting nationalist Vietnamese forces on behalf of France as early as 1954, American involvement took a decidedly large step in 1965, when President Johnson took action on the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, dramatically increasing the bombing of North Vietnam. Unlike the earlier "ban the bomb" movement, which had been led mainly by professionals, some scientists, and a handful of pacifists, protest against American involvement in Vietnam was led by students (DeBenedetti 1990). Science was not an early target of campus-based protesters organized against the war, but it became so as a coincidence of student protests that not only took place on college campuses but were increasingly directed against universities themselves, which were seen as full partners in facilitating the war in Vietnam. It is a truism that people tend to protest against the nearest objects, and the military-science alliance on college campuses was quite visible. For many students it was no great leap to begin to ask questions about the relationship between universities and the "military-industrial complex" that Dwight Eisenhower had identified in 1958. There were also more ideological and intellectual reasons for attacking universities and their faculty: members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), who on many campuses acted as leaders of antiwar protest, took seriously the work of Frankfurt school philosopher Herbert Marcuse, who argued that repression in capitalist societies was located not only in the overt actions of the police and courts but in the very institutions, languages, and cultures of a given society (Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich 1969: 34—35). Increasingly, students targeted military recruitment programs and research laboratories that received funding for research that was ultimately used by American troops in Vietnam. Between 1965 and 1970 on at least eleven major college campuses,6 military-supported research buildings and laboratories were sites of antiwar protest and were associated with some of the most dramatic events of the period: the 1970 bombing of the Army Math Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, which killed a researcher; the 1970 Kent State University killings; and the 1968 sit-in at Columbia University. In each of these cases, protesters directed their actions against the physical representations of the alliances between universities and the military, usually Department-of-Defense-sponsored laboratories and programs. At Kent State as early as 1968, student protest was directed against the Liquid Crystals Institute, which developed motion detectors used in Vietnam (Heineman 1993: 37) and at Stanford, against the Stanford Research Institute, which was created explicitly to attract defense contracts and upon which Stanford was economically dependent, though the institute was nominally separate from Stanford University. At Columbia University, the 1968 campus occupation was sparked mainly by Columbia's association with the Institute for Defense Analysis, which poured millions of defense dollars into scientific research on campus. Similarly, the bombing of Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin in 1970 was motivated by anger toward the university's alliance with the military (Bates 1992; DeBenedetti 1990; Heineman 1993). More generally, protesters considered the war foolish, cruel, and stupid, perpetuated by authorities—including scientists—who were out of touch with citizens. The main charge against scientists was that they had failed to take responsibility for using scientific knowledge and goods for socially useful, rather than deadly and destructive, ends. The attack on science and technology was so widespread that at a White House ceremony for the National Medal of Science Award, President Johnson was compelled to defend scientists: "An aggrieved public does not draw the fine line between 'good' science and 'bad' technology. . . . You and I know that Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster. But it would be well to remember that the people of the village, angered by the monster, marched against the doctor" (qtd. in Kevles 1978: 400). This larger questioning of authority placed scientists directly in the line of fire, since they had earlier laid claim to status based on political authority and on their role in keeping America safe (DeBenedetti 1990; Kevles 1978; Lapp 1965; Leslie 1993). In conjunction with the direct and public attacks on the alliance between science, universities, and the war in Vietnam, antiauthoritarian challenges made scientists' claims to serve humanity increasingly implausible. It is possible that universities, professional science associations, scientists, and others might simply have ignored these protests. Yet that is not how the story unfolded.
Free Speech zones stifle free speech and make it ineffective, cause more disruption, and allows for schools to selectively choose what speech is acceptable—squo shows no sign of stopping these zones even with court rulings that deem them unconstitutional
David Hacker, It's Time to End Public University Speech Zones, JURIST-Hotline, May 21, 2014, http://jurist.org/hotline/2014/may/david-hacker-speech-zones.php. David J. Hacker serves as senior legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom at its Sacramento, California Regional Service Center, where he leads litigation efforts to uphold the constitutionally protected rights of Christian students, faculty and staff at public universities across the nation. He joined Alliance Defending Freedom in 2005 and earned his J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. AS
Free speech zones on public university campuses sound wonderful in the abstract—a special zone just for free speech! But don't be fooled. College's sell the idea of free speech zones like used car salesmen. They make students think that they want the zones, but in reality, students don't want them and they don't need them. And in the end, students realize they've been duped. Several recent news stories highlight the troubling irony of so-called free speech zones on public university campuses: they are used to stifle speech rather than encourage it. In one story, administrators at the University of Hawaii-Hilo stopped two students from handing out free copies of the US Constitution—the very document that gives us the right to free speech—because the students were standing outside the university's "free speech zone." According to a complaint filed in federal court in Hawaii, the university's free speech zone is essentially a muddy ravine that occupies less than one percent of the university's campus. This is the only place students may speak on campus without prior approval from administrators. In another story, administrators at Modesto Junior College stopped a student from distributing free copies of the Constitution on Constitution Day. The reason? Although he was standing in front of the student center on campus, a likely forum to communicate with his peers, administrators told him that he could not distribute the Constitutions without getting permission five days in advance and even then he could distribute them only in the "free speech area." Like the Hawaii case, the complaint alleged that the so-called "free speech area" was a mere 600 square foot stage. The college eliminated the speech zone and settled
 PDF the case in March. These cases would be funny, if only they weren't true. Sadly, despite decades of legal precedent declaring university campuses to be the "marketplaces of ideas" in keeping with their historic role, the restrictions public universities place on student speech today would come as a great surprise to James Madison and the Founding Fathers. A basic review of public forum case law reveals the multiple legal problems these policies present. Generally speaking, to assess a First Amendment claim arising on government property, the US Supreme Court determined in Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund that a court must first "identify the nature of the forum, because the extent to which the Government may limit access depends on whether the forum is public or nonpublic." Streets, sidewalks and parks are traditional public forums, where restrictions on speech are subject to strict scrutiny. Most public university campuses resemble traditional public forums with streets, sidewalks and open-air quads used by students not only to get around campus, but to socialize and debate ideas. As the court said in Widmar v. Vincent, the "campus of a public university, at least for its students, possesses many of the characteristics of a public forum." When analyzing public university campuses, many courts have ruled that student free speech rights are at their apex in the common outdoor areas of campus. And yet some universities still persist in attempting to classify the entire campus as non-public or limited public forums with lesser protections. But in University of Cincinnati Chapter of Young Americans for Liberty v. Williams, the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio commented that it was unaware of any precedent establishing that a "public university may constitutionally designate its entire campus as a limited public forum as applied to students." (In a limited public forum, restrictions on speech need only be reasonable and viewpoint neutral.) This makes sense. As the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit noted in Hays County Guardian v. Supple, students "live and work on campus, making the campus . . . a 'town' of which the resident student will be a 'contributing citizen.'" Thus, it should be no surprise that the Ninth Circuit recently declared
 that Oregon State University's campus was a public forum for students. Universities often intertwine speech zone policies limiting the location of student speech with policies that require advanced approval for speech. These prior restraints censor speech before it occurs, so there is a heavy presumption against their constitutionality. As the Supreme Court said in Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement, in order to survive constitutional scrutiny, a prior restraint may not delegate overly broad discretion to a government official; it may not be based on the content of the message if it regulates the time, place or manner of speech; it must be narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest; and it must leave open ample alternative channels for communication. Campus speech zones often fail the content-neutrality requirement because the policies implementing these zones grant administrators unbridled discretion. Thus, administrators allow popular student groups to speak outside the designated zones, but deny the same accommodations to less popular speech, like prolife or Christian students. That is exactly what happened in Pro-Life Cougars v. University of Houston, where university policy allowed administrators to restrict speech to certain areas of campus if it was "potentially disruptive." The Supreme Court warned of these dangers in Forsyth County. It said that policies which vest government officials with unbridled discretion to regulate speech will violate the content-neutrality requirement by allowing for veiled discrimination against some speakers. Universities claim that free speech zones protect student safety, preserve campus aesthetics and prevent disruption of the educational environment. But restricting student speech to one area of campus is not narrowly tailored to any of these interests. Placing all student speech in a small zone on campus actually causes more danger to student safety by requiring competing student groups to voice their ideas in close proximity. Everyone likes a beautiful college campus, but campus aesthetics can be preserved by prohibiting litter, not speech. And preventing substantial disruption of the educational environment can be accomplished by prohibiting bullhorns and loud events near classroom buildings, regardless of where the speech occurs on campus. Of course, free speech zones close off all alternative channels of communication in the outdoor areas of campus. Alternatives are not ample if the speaker is unable to reach his intended audience. So if students want to set up a "debt clock
" near the economics department, but the speech zone is located in a different part of campus, the policy fails constitutional review because it does not allow the students to reach their audience. Students have been incredibly successful in challenging speech zone policies in court. In Roberts v. Haragan, Texas Tech University limited speech to a gazebo on campus. A student who wanted to distribute religious literature elsewhere on campus sued and the Northern District of Texas struck down the policy because its regulation of even simple conversation between classmates was not narrowly tailored to the university's interest in preserving the educational environment. In Williams, the university restricted all "demonstrations, picketing and rallies" to a free speech area which constituted less than 0.1 of the campus. The Southern District of Ohio enjoined the policy because it determined that the outdoor areas of the university's campus were designated public forums for students to speak freely and the policy was not narrowly tailored to the university's interest in maintaining a peaceful and safe campus. Similarly, in Burbridge v. Sampson, the South Orange Community College District restricted student gatherings of twenty or more people to three "preferred" areas. The Central District of California enjoined the policy because the college failed to articulate any interest in limiting the location of speech and the designation of three preferred areas only did not leave open ample alternative channels of communication. Despite courts uniformly striking down university speech zone policies, they persist from coast to coast. "Free speech zones" might sound great at first glance, but they put the First Amendment rights of students in a box and in some cases, a ridiculously small box. When free speech zones prevent students from distributing the US Constitution, we know it is time to put the zones in a box—six feet under—and let students participate freely in the "marketplace of ideas."

1ac – framing
Militarism through war structures all inequalities—not the other way around
John Horgan, Director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology, 2012, The End of War, Chapter 5, Kindle p. 1600-1659
Throughout this book, I’ve examined attempts by scholars to identify factors especially conducive for peace. But there seem to be no conditions that, in and of themselves, inoculate a society against militarism. Not small government nor big government. Not democracy, socialism, capitalism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, nor secularism. Not giving equal rights to women or minorities nor reducing poverty. The contagion of war can infect any kind of society. Some scholars, like the political scientist Joshua Goldstein, find this conclusion dispiriting. Early in his career Goldstein investigated economic theories of war, including those of Marx and Malthus. He concluded that war causes economic inequality and scarcity of resources as much as it stems from them. Goldstein, a self-described “pro-feminist,” then set out to test whether macho, patriarchal attitudes caused armed violence. He felt so strongly about this thesis that he and his wife limited their son’s exposure to violent media and contact sports. But by the time he finished writing his 522-page book War and Gender in 2001, Goldstein had rejected the thesis. He questioned many of his initial assumptions about the causes of war. He never gave credence to explanations involving innate male aggression—war breaks out too sporadically for that—but he saw no clear-cut evidence for non-biological factors either. “War is not a product of capitalism, imperialism, gender, innate aggression, or any other single cause, although all of these influence wars’ outbreaks and outcomes,” Goldstein writes. “Rather, war has in part fueled and sustained these and other injustices.” He admits that all his research has left him “somewhat more pessimistic about how quickly or easily war may end.” But here is the upside of this insight: if there are no conditions that in and of themselves prevent war, there are none that make peace impossible, either. This is the source of John Mueller’s optimism, and mine. If we want peace badly enough, we can have it, no matter what kind of society we live in. The choice is ours. And once we have escaped from the shadow of war, we will have more resources to devote to other problems that plague us, like economic injustice, poor health, and environmental destruction, which war often exacerbates. The Waorani, whose abandonment of war led to increased trade and intermarriage, are a case in point. So is Costa Rica. In 2010, this Central American country was ranked number one out of 148 nations in a “World Database of Happiness” compiled by Dutch sociologists, who gathered information on the self-reported happiness of people around the world. Costa Rica also received the highest score in another “happiness” survey, carried out by an American think tank, that factored in the nation’s impact on the environment. The United States was ranked twentieth and 114th, respectively, on the surveys. Instead of spending on arms, over the past half century Costa Rica’s government invested in education, as well as healthcare, environmental conservation, and tourism, all of which helped make the country more prosperous, healthy, and happy. There is no single way to peace, but peace is the way to solve many other problems. The research of Mueller, Goldstein, Forsberg, and other scholars yields one essential lesson. Those of us who want to make the world a better place—more democratic, equitable, healthier, cleaner—should make abolishing the invention of war our priority, because peace can help bring about many of the other changes we seek. This formula turns on its head the old social activists’ slogan: “If you want peace, work for justice.” I say instead, “If you want justice, work for peace.” If you want less pollution, more money for healthcare and education, an improved legal and political system—work for peace

Debate’s focus shouldn’t solely be the production of ethical subjectivities.  Rather, taking stances on global issues is necessary to develop accountability to global violence.
David CHANDLER, Professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster, ‘9 “Questioning Global Political Activism,” in What is Radical Politics Today? Ed. Jonathan Pugh, 2009, p. 81-84
Today more and more people are ‘doing politics’ in their academic work. This is the reason for the boom in International Relations (IR) study and the attraction of other social sciences to the global sphere. I would argue that the attraction of IR for many people has not been IR theory but the desire to practise global ethics. The boom in the IR discipline has coincided with a rejection of Realist theoretical frameworks of power and interests and the sovereignty/anarchy problematic. However, I would argue that this rejection has not been a product of theoretical engagement with Realism but an ethical act of rejection of Realism's ontological focus.
It seems that our ideas and our theories say much more about us than the world we live in. Normative theorists and Constructivists tend to support the global ethical turn arguing that we should not be as concerned with 'what is' as with the potential for the emergence of a global ethical community. Constructivists, in particular, focus upon the ethical language which political elites espouse rather than the practices of power. But the most dangerous trends in the discipline today are those frameworks which have taken up Critical Theory and argue that focusing on the world as it exists is conservative problem-solving while the task for critical theorists is to focus on emancipatory alternative forms of living or of thinking about the world. Critical thought then becomes a process of wishful thinking rather than one of engagement, with its advocates arguing that we need to focus on clarifying our own END PAGE 81 ethical frameworks and biases and positionality, before thinking about or teaching on world affairs. This becomes 'me-search' rather than research. We have moved a long way from Hedley Bull's (1995) perspective that, for academic research to be truly radical, we had to put our values to the side to follow where the question or inquiry might lead.
The inward-looking and narcissistic trends in academia, where we are more concerned with our reflectivity- the awareness of our own ethics and values - than with engaging with the world, was brought home to me when I asked my IR students which theoretical frameworks they agreed with most. They mostly replied Critical Theory and Constructivism. This is despite the fact that the students thought that states operated on the basis of power and self-interest in a world of anarchy. Their theoretical preferences were based more on what their choices said about them as ethical individuals, than about how theory might be used to understand and engage with the world.
Conclusion
I have attempted to argue that there is a lot at stake in the radical understanding of engagement in global politics. Politics has become a religious activity, an activity which is no longer socially mediated; it is less and less an activity based on social engagement and the testing of ideas in public debate or in the academy. Doing politics today, whether in radical activism, government policy-making or in academia, seems to bring people into a one-to-one relationship with global issues in the same way religious people have a one-to-one relationship with their God.
Politics is increasingly like religion because when we look for meaning we find it inside ourselves rather than in the external consequences of our 'political' acts. What matters is the conviction or the act in itself: its connection to the global sphere is one that we increasingly tend to provide idealistically. Another way of expressing this limited sense of our subjectivity is in the popularity of globalisation theory - the idea that instrumentality is no longer possible today because the world is such a complex and interconnected place and therefore there is no way of knowing the consequences of our actions. The more we engage in the new politics where there is an unmediated relationship between us as individuals and global issues, the less we engage instrumentally with the outside world, and the less we engage with our peers and colleagues at the level of political or intellectual debate and organisation. END PAGE 82
You may be thinking that I have gone some way to describing or identifying what the problems might be but I have not mentioned anything about a solution. I won't dodge the issue. One thing that is clear is that the solution is not purely an intellectual or academic one; the demand for global ethics is generated by our social reality and social experiences. Marx spent some time considering a similar crisis of political subjectivity in 1840s Germany and in his writings - The German Ideology, Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Theses on Feuerbach, and elsewhere - he raged against the idealism of contemporary thought and argued that the criticism of religion needed to be replaced by the criticism of politics - by political activism and social change based on the emerging proletariat (see Marx, 1975, for example). Nearly two centuries later it is more difficult to see an emerging political subject which can fulfil the task of 'changing the world' rather than merely 'reinterpreting it' through philosophy.
I have two suggestions. Firstly, that there is a pressing need for an intellectual struggle against the idealism of global ethics. The point needs to be emphasised that our freedom to engage in politics, to choose our identities and political campaigns, as well as governments' freedom to choose their ethical campaigns and wars of choice, reflects a lack of socialties and social engagement. There is no global political struggle between 'Empire' and its 'Radical Discontents'; the Foucauldian temptation to see power and resistance everywhere is a product of wishful or lazy thinking dominated by the social categories of the past. The stakes are not in the global stratosphere but much closer to home. Politics appears to have gone global because there is a breakdown of genuine community and the construction of fantasy communities and fantasy connections in global space. Unless we bring politics back down to earth from heaven, our critical, social and intellectual lives will continue to be diminished ones. Secondly, on the basis that the political freedom of our social atomisation leads us into increasingly idealised approaches to the world we live in, we should take more seriously Hedley Bull's (1995) injunction to pursue the question, or in Alain Badiou's (2004: 237-8) words subordinate ourselves to the 'discipline of the real'. Subordination to the world outside us is a powerful factor that can bind those interested in critical research, whereas the turn away from the world and the focus on our personal values can ultimately only be divisive. To facilitate external engagement and external judgement, I suggest we experiment with ways to build up social bonds with our peers that can limit our freedoms and develop our sense of responsibility and accountability to others. We may have to construct these social connections artificially but their END PAGE 83 value and instrumentality will have to be proven through our ability to engage with, understand, critique and ultimately overcome the practices and subjectivities of our time.

Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 4 | Opponent: - | Judge: -
The student anti-militarism movement is back and growing – but colleges are cracking down. Ending the crackdown is key to the survival of the movement.
SW 5 (Socialist Workers) Cracking down on student protests, International Socialist Review10-7-2005 AT
CAMPUS ADMINISTRATORS are cracking down on student activists who stand up against the presence of military recruiters at their schools. In late September, peaceful protests by students at three campuses--Holyoke Community College (HCC), George Mason University (GMU) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison--were met with police repression that denied students their right to free speech. -- At Holyoke Community College in western Massachusetts, about 30 students were conducting a peaceful picket of an Army National Guard recruiting table in the school cafeteria. The activists had been assured by campus officials that they could leaflet and chant during their picket of the recruiters. But they were attacked by campus security after a few approached the recruiters' table to inquire if their homosexuality would make them ineligible to enlist. One student, Charles Peterson, was put in a chokehold by campus officer Scott Landry--and maced. Landry, who assaulted several other students and bystanders, happens to serve as a staff advisor to the HCC College Republicans, who were enthusiastically encouraging the attack from behind the police lines. Landry then saw another activist wearing a gay and lesbian liberation button, and loudly commented to another officer, "He'll have fun in jail." The counter-recruitment demonstration was called by the HCC Anti-War Coalition (AWC), an affiliate of the Campus Antiwar Network (CAN). A diverse group of activists--black, white, Latino, gay and straight--answered the call. "I was there to speak for my brother," said one student, a member of the AWC Steering Committee. "He was wounded in Iraq...He was promised money for college and a chance to see the world. But he went to Iraq, and he wasn't the same when he came back." Rather than take action against the officers who attacked protesters, campus police threatened Peterson with arrest if he came back to campus. Though an administration official later told him that he is welcome on campus, Peterson has yet to receive any such assurance from the campus police. Peterson says he won't back down, though. "The next time the recruiters are there, I'll be on the front ranks," he said. Following a successful October 3 press conference, preparations were underway for an October 6 solidarity action organized by student antiwar activists from University of Massachusetts-Amherst. -- Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, campus police at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., used the same sort of violent tactics against student Tariq Khan, a former airman turned counter-recruitment activist. Khan, who has protested recruiters on his campus before, taped a sign to his chest that read "U.S. out of Iraq, U.S. out of Palestine, U.S. out of North America: Resist tyranny" and silently sat down in a chair several feet away from recruiters. For this modest protest, Khan was exposed to abuse and battery from campus police and other students, pushed off a stage, subjected to pain compliance, and charged with disorderly conduct and trespassing--at his own school! As right-wing students shouted epithets in his face, his sign was ripped off his chest. A former Marine who had been to Iraq told Khan to "shut up," and when Khan asked him how many people he'd killed, the Marine responded "not enough." As Khan began to make another sign, an officer told him, "You're not allowed to do that" and ordered him to leave. When Khan refused, the officer tried to arrest him. Some students repeatedly chanted "Let him go!" as Khan squirmed out of various headlocks and grips, and other students began to jump in with the police, according to several witnesses. "I am being nonviolent while they are using violence against me!" shouted Khan. After finally handcuffing Khan, police dragged him to a police car. Khan, who is half Pakistani, said he received the worst racist abuse at the police station. "You people are the most violent people in the world," he recalls one cop telling him. Another told him not to mouth off in jail because they "will hang you from the ceiling by your feet," a veiled allusion to prisoner torture at Guantánamo Bay. -- At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 25 people mobilized to confront military recruiters at a career fair on one day's notice last week. But the police and administration were intent on preventing the protest from taking place. Ten cops were already inside, and building managers distributed a copy of the administrative code for protests in UW buildings to protesters on their arrival. But this code didn't seem to matter much, since the protesters weren't violating any part of it--they weren't preventing the event from taking place, blocking the recruiters' tables, using signs with sticks, or blocking entrances and exits. Police refused to give protesters any justification for their imminent arrest, and after some time, the protesters decided to move outside and began chanting and handing out leaflets for another hour. With enlistment slumping, military officials are increasingly desperate to find potential recruits. As of September 30, the military had fallen some 7,000 recruits short of its goal for fiscal year 2005--and the National Guard and Army Reserve did even worse. Military officials predict that meeting the coming year's goal will be even more difficult. "I think there's been a big shift in U.S. politics over the last few months," said Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a student at New York University and member of the Campus Antiwar Network. "The resurgence of the antiwar movement--especially among students who are focusing on counter-recruitment--promises to erect even more barriers to filling the ranks of the military. The antiwar movement has gone from feeling like an embattled minority to feeling like the majority we are. "But we're running up against college administrations that don't want to lose control of the campuses. And they may be facing pressure from a government that's seeing the Army in its worst recruiting slump since 1979--and telling administrators that they need to do whatever it takes to guarantee their success on campuses. "Last semester, there were cases of repression against counter-recruiters, and some of them sparked defense campaigns that were successful and showed the administration that they couldn't get away with repressing student protests. This time, what's amazing is how quickly the schools seemed prepared to deal with the protesters and how happy they were to collude with right-wing students who were singling out individual protesters. "But now we have the successes of last spring to draw on, so HCC and GMU students can have a connection to City College of New York and San Francisco State students who won. Most importantly, the whole student antiwar movement is growing and becoming more confident, and that means the HCC and GMU students have a more powerful movement that's got their back."

In attempt to stifle the anti-war movement, the militarized state has cracked down on resistance to militarism – free speech zones criminalize and marginalize political protests into media spectacles incapable of effectuating change – policing tactics reinforce the violent logic of pre-emption that underlies global warfare
Elmer 8 (Greg Elmer, associate professor of communication and culture at Ryerson University, PhD in communication from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, director of the Infoscape Research Lab at Ryerson University, Andy Opel, associate professor of communication at Florida State University, PhD in mass communication from the University of North Carolina, member of the International Communication Association, November 2008, “Preempting Dissent: The Politics of an Inevitable Future,” pages 29-41)
SHORTLY AFTER THE LARGE-SCALE PROTESTS against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in late November 1999, police, law enforcement agencies, the military, and global weapons manufacturers began to rethink their responses to public protests. Since the Seattle protests, similar semi—annual gatherings of government officials and corporate trade lawyers have consistently attracted large public protests, organized by public-interests groups denied participation in the decision-making process of trade agreements such as the Global Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Wide—scale protests were seen in Prague, Genoa, Cancun, Quebec City, Miami, and, most recently, Mar Del Plata, Argentina. Moreover, as we will see in this chapter, as the size and sophistication of resistance grew, so too did political and legal responses to that resistance. Responses to such protests have been greatly influenced by military and so—called ‘homeland’ security strategies enacted after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the initiation of the controversial second Gulf War. As we see in this chapter, the combination of a changing political climate in response to war and terrorism, particularly the expansion of preemptive forms of social control and political containment, has resulted in a new set of practices that have reconfigured public space and criminalized multiple aspects of free speech and public assembly in the United States. This chapter argues that in the shadow of 9/11, the war in Iraq, and the ongoing “War on Terror,” a disturbing form of geopolitical apartheid has emerged in the United States. At the core of this trend is a set of micro-political strategies and technologies that attempt to contain spaces of dissent and detain protestors (Boghosian, 2004). Some activists and critics have labeled these anti-democratic tendencies the “Miami Model,” after the strategies deployed in November 2003 against Free Trade of the Americas protestors by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies stationed in Miami. The Miami model of law enforcement was characterized by 1) the deployment of overwhelming numbers of law enforcement officers, 2) preemptive arrests of peaceful and law—abiding protestors, and 3) widespread police surveillance techniques before, during, and after protests (Getzan, 2004). And while these three pillars—overwhelming force, preemptive arrests, and surveillance—-provide a good overview of police and law enforcement strategies, in this chapter we focus on the manner in which spaces of dissent, debate, and democracy are being regulated and policed through the courts, going into more depth in the next chapter, through a study of the introduction of weapons meant to easily contain and detain protestors and, more broadly, immobilize dissent. Of greater concern is the degree to which such strategies systematically marginalize dissent, spatially and politically speaking. From the creation of “free speech zones” and the proposal for protest free “Pedestrian Safety Zones”2° to the political screening of participants in political “town hall meetings,” space has increasingly become a tool to limit open debate, freedom of speech, and political dissent in the US. Part of our interest in exposing the strategies of political segregation, first through the containment of protest spaces, and second, through the deployment of preemptive hand-held weapons, is theoretical. The segregation of deviance has often been influenced by Foucaultian theories of panopticism and social control. An increasing number of scholars, however, are arguing that Foucault’s panoptic prison, even deployed in metaphorical terms, has been overextended, particularly when considering broader geographic perspectives (Haggerty and Ericson, 2000; Elmer, 2004). Many scholars arguing that panopticism must move beyond architectures or institutions of social control, do so in large part to theorize emerging technological, “virtual,” or simulated forms of surveillance and discipline (e.g., Bogard; Gandy). While we find such arguments to be productive, they typically juxtapose their ideas against corporeal surveillance and monitoring of the past. Human surveillance and policing factors, conversely, play a key role in monitoring political organizing activities and training, peaceful protests, and acts of civil disobedience (Boghosian, 2004, p. 29). Moreover, Foucault’s metaphorical use of a penitentiary as the historical trope or dispositif for social discipline, reformation, and self-actualization, while providing a broad conceptual framework for a dispersed theory of self-discipline, control, and conformity, has little to say about that which escapes conformity, namely public protest, civil disobedience, and other forms of social and political dissent. Under the constant gaze of social mores and values, Foucault’s subjects are implored to change and police their own behaviour. The proliferation of surveillance technologies (such as closed-circuit TV, CCTV), preemptive policing, programs that attempt to anticipate future social and geopolitical risks (Elmer Opel, 2006), and the presumption of guilt instead of innocence, are in part a response to past intelligence failures. The inability to gain adequate and up-to-date intelligence on domestic and international risks in the US, UK, Iraq, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, etc., continues to highlight the limits and shortcomings of surveillance programs and intelligence—gathering techniques. The recognition of decentred and distributed network infrastructures and relationships among protesters, migrants, and terrorists in the US and elsewhere, has similarly stretched conventional thinking about the structure and deployment of surveillance programs and technologies. In short, members of such feared networks are not typically considered panoptic subjects, that is to say, they are not clients, candidates, or inmates in need of reform, or self-discipline. Rather, it is argued that such networked subjects have become increasingly influenced by strategic and indefinite forms of containment and detainment. Didier Bigo’s (2006) extension of Foucault’s theories of social control provides a helpful point of departure. While Bigo shares the goal of extending theories of social and political control outside of the prison and other social institutions, he maintains an interest in the social control of populations, specifically through the mobility, capture, and detainment of specific populations. By introducing the concept of the “ban-opticon,” Bigo succeeds in moving outside the panoptic walls of punishment, to question the optics and governmentality of indefinite detainment, a questionable spatial and legal tactic used in the “War on Terror” and with migrant communities. Such detainees, be they in Guantanamo Bay or in immigrant holding centres in the EU and elsewhere, have no intention of turning their subjects into law-abiding, productive citizens (Miller, 1993), rather their goal is both to remove individuals from war, or to merely return them to their previous location—to ban them. In both cases, individuals are immobilized and excluded from participating in war and/ or entering Western societies. Although political protestors produce a different set of challenges from domestic law enforcement and forces of political control in the US—primarily their visibility in the media as increased evidence of opposition to the political status quo—they are similarly immobilized, contained, and in some cases detained without charge. Such detainments, further, in many instances are not subject to punishment (fines, etc.); rather, they are increasingly used to preemptively, and temporarily remove protestors from public spaces until the conclusion of protests (Boghosian, 2004, p. 29). The operationalization of preemptive tactics in the US further highlights the limitations of Foucault’s decentred model of power, in which sovereignty is manifest through dispersed disciplinary technologies. Strategies of political containment and detainment, spatially and individually speaking, are in large part enabled by what Giorgio Agamben (2005) refers to as the “state of exception,” the “no one’sman’s land between public law and political fact” (p. 1). Ironically, while conservatives in the US continue to argue against a “living constitution,” where interpretations over the nation’s law change over time,21 the Bush administration actively sought to reinterpret executive powers during the so-called War on Terror. Following Agamben, Didier Bigo (2006) argues that such interpretations are enacted through explicit declarations by political rulers, a declaration that invokes an exception to the rule of law. Broadly construed, the US administration continues to invoke the War on Terror to blur the line between law and politics. In defence of the secret wiretapping program, the Bush administration has argued that an exception to the rule of law was enacted by the legislation, giving the president preemptive powers to carry out surveillance. Similar arguments have been made in the UK, Canada, and France. The Boston Globe and other media in the US also reported about the growing use of “signing statements” by the US president, as a means to state his exception to the new law. For example, after the signing of US Senator John McCain’s anti—torture bill in the January 2006, the president declared that “The executive branch shall construe the law in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President as Commander in Chief.” He also added that this interpretation “will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President ... of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks” (Savage, 2004). Of course, many American laws that govern executive power, public debate, and, as we see next, dissent and protest in public space, are so broadly written that they practically cultivate political exceptionalism. For example, as an adjunct to debates over the US Patriot Act, the “spatial tactics” of law enforcement have recently produced a series of controversial rulings about the accessibility of public spaces for the purposes of political protest. Thus, at a time when public advocates and intellectuals have reinforced the importance of understanding the democratic and political aspects of various geographies——most notably innovative and tolerant ones (Florida, 2003) and environmentally sustainable ones (Gore, 2007)—the American legal system continues to downplay or altogether avoid spatial considerations in First Amendment cases. Timothy Zick (2005), for example, argues that “The reason courts fail to properly scrutinize spatial tactics is that they have accepted the common conception of place as mere res—a neutral thing, an undifferentiated mass, a backdrop for expressive scenes” (p. 3). Results of this legal conception of place as a “neutral thing” include the protest zones (some resembling cages”) established at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions during the summer of 2004 as well as the now routine practice of keeping protestors many blocks and often miles away from free trade, WTO, or GATT meetings. Later in the same year the G8 summit was held on the tiny (private) Sea Island, just off the coast near Savannah, Georgia, a choice that made it nearly impossible——given the security noose around the island——to stage a meaningful and visible protest. In South Carolina, the well-known activist Brett Bursey gained nationwide attention for a series of attempts to protest against President Bush at Republican Party organized rallies, the last of which, in 2004, resulted in his arrest and conviction under a statute that enables the Secret Security to establish a security perimeter or zone around the president. Mirroring Zick’s argument about the court’s treatment of space as an objective or neutral equation in contemporary politics, an aide to the former South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, was quoted on National Public Radio as saying that: The statute under which Mr. Bursey’s been charged alleges that he failed to vacate an area that had been cordoned off for a visit by the president of the United States. It is a content—neutral statute, and Mr. Bursey is charged not because of what he was doing but because of where he was doing it. The US statute in question—-USC 18: 1 752(a)(l)(ii), “Temporary residences and offices of the President and others”—while not a new, post-9/11 law, nevertheless raises obvious questions and concerns about its use as a political tool for spatially and politically marginalizing dissent. The law in effect establishes a temporary “residence” for the president as he goes about his business across the country. The law forbids groups or individuals from entering or remaining with an area (defined as “building,” “grounds,” or “any posted, cordoned off. . .” area where the president is visiting).24 Moreover, the law does not apply universally, only to those who intend “to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions.” Interestingly, in the course of preparing Bursey’s defence, lawyers were able to gain access to the Secret Service’s policy manual on protests. The South Carolina Progressive Network subsequently used the document to highlight the means by which the Bush administration was interpreting the above mentioned law to segregate protestors away from the president’s supporters and the media. Moreover, The Progressive Network also maintained that while the law did give the Secret Service the power to cordon off access to the president, “There is no limitation to the size of the restricted area.” Furthermore, “In the Bursey case, the restricted area was approximately 70 acres and stretched for a mile.”25 With no spatial limits on the separation of protestors from the US president, political marginalization becomes a distinct possibility. The spatial segregation of speakers according to the content of their messages all too easily bifurcates voices and perspectives into “two sides,” mirroring the dominant red/ blue political culture of the US. Thus in the absence of political leaders, protests, and, perhaps more importantly, acts of civil disobedience, lose their publicity, all too often becoming marginalized spectacles distanced from the machinations of political parties, candidates, and government. Zick put it this way: “In these places, protests and demonstrations become staged events, bland and neutered substitutions for the passionate and, yes, sometimes chaotic face-to—face confrontations that have characterized our country’s past” (Zick, 2005, p. 45). The process of segregating public space according to political message and turning public gatherings into “staged events” is contrasted with the actual political strategy of the staged event or “town hall meeting,” where pre-screened publics appear to ask government officials “authentic” questions, a practice that has many online examples as well.26 This illusion of public participation is another quality of the spatial turn in free speech politics where city streets are cordoned off to become de facto “stages” for media cameras. By literally separating the demonstrators from the object of their demonstration, the protest zone becomes “a way of controlling the content of the debate without really acknowledging that is what is being done” (Mitchell, 2003, p. 39). In addition to creating media frames and stages, protest zoning also facilitates preemptive police tactics, placing all potential protestors in one location in the name of security. Fencing in protestors or zoning them away from a given site implies a threat or danger that requires preemptive zoning, thus “assuming guilt until innocence is proven” (Mitchell, 2003, p. 39). Mitchell refers to this zoning as the “ghettoization” of protest; we prefer the South African analogy of an apartheid as more accurate. Whereas a ghetto is often viewed as the result of low-income people clustered together out of necessity and a lack of resources, apartheid was an explicit legal and spatial strategy that segregated settlements and produced a second-class citizenry. Parallels can be drawn to the state of liberal democracy in the United States, where protestors and political dissidents are legally restrained and contained outside of the so-called mainstream political stage. Yet, as we will see in the next chapter, preemptive arrests, facilitated by segregationist spatial tactics and exceptionalist forms of governmentality, often move beyond the realm of the panoptic to the violent repressive use of weaponry, what are creatively termed “less-lethal technologies.” As we shall see, many new crowd control technologies have incorporated decidedly preemptive logics that explicitly reinforce our belief that the preemptive doctrine is as much about controlling behaviours and seeking broader political compliance as it is a technique for reducing actual risks and dangers.
Militarism requires dissent to be suppressed in colleges and universities to be criminalized – it is part and parcel of the state’s dissemination militarization of education and society at large
Godrej 14 Neoliberalism, Militarization, and the Price of Dissent:  Policing Protest at the University of California Godrej Farah. Edited by Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 2014. AS
I have offered here a particular window into the ways in which the interests, mechanisms, and operations of both the university system and the neoliberal state are aligned with those of private capital. Of course, that the academy is made to strategically ally with capital as a key piece of neoliberal consolidation should not surprise us. Rather, what is worth noting, I have argued here, is the necessity of the linkages between disinvestment in public education, militarization, and the criminalization of dissent. These necessary linkages demonstrate this volume’s premise that the university is an institution embedded in the hierarchies and inequalities of U.S. racial, gender, and class politics and shed light on the confluence of military and industrial interests as they appear within the U.S. university. I have sought also to emphasize the systematicity and multilayered complexity of this phenomenon. That is, the various pieces of this picture necessarily go together, as rhetoric, law, bureaucracy, and the force of arms all combine effectively to produce the desired end. The neoliberal logic entailed in the privatization of the University of California is, I have argued, necessarily interlinked with the logic of militarization and the criminalization of dissent, because it employs a militarized enforcement strategy, coupled with a political rhetoric that criminalizes the specific behaviors involved in protest and dissent against these strategies. The militarization of the university campus is thus not simply a reflection of the increasing militarization of American law enforcement based on the logic of ongoing threats to public safety encoded in years of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.25 Rather, such militarization is one prong of a necessary enforcement strategy designed to convey that dissent against privatization is meant to be costly in inflicting various forms of legitimized violence upon those who dissent. The second prong of the enforcement strategy also conveys that dissenters will pay a high price by being criminalized, either through rhetoric that paints them as violent and therefore marginal, unworthy, and undesirable in the public imagination or through legal machinations that force them to expend tremendous financial resources on extricating themselves from prosecution. The language of cost and price here, of course, reminds us of the ongoing hegemony— and perhaps victory— of the conceptual frameworks of neoliberalism and its theoretical accompaniments, such as rational choice theory, predominantly featured in neoclassical economics. These strategies of criminalization and militarization rest on sending signals to adversaries, encoded precisely in these languages, wherein value and worth are measured in terms of indicators such as price or cost, and rational actors are assumed to be guided by a universally comprehensible incentive structure. Thus the strategies of criminalization and militarization rest on deincentivizing dissent, so to speak, assuming that dissenters will measure the costs inherent in their actions and choose rationally to cease from engaging in such dissent. The continued insistence on dissent is therefore resistance to the logic of neoliberal privatization on multiple levels: it not only calls out the complicity of the university with the neoliberal state and the forces of private capital but also continues to dissent despite the “incentives” offered in exchange for desisting from dissent. And in so doing, it should be signaling its rejection not simply of privatization but of the entire conceptual baggage of neoliberalism, including its logics of rational choice, cost, price, and incentive, as well as its logic of structural violence. In other words, the ongoing struggle against the logic of neoliberal privatization requires that dissent continue, despite its high “price.”
The impact is endless warfare—the fear of protest as “domestic insurgency” results in a new politics of military urbanism that extends warfare into the battlespace, with no beginning or end, and where everyone is a target.
Graham 12, Professor of Cities and Society at Newcastle University, January 2012, “When Life Itself is War: On the Urbanization of Military and Security Doctrine,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 36.1, pgs. 136 - 155
The first key feature of the new military urbanism is the way it normalizes new imaginations of political violence and a whole spectrum of ambient threats to 'security' which centre on the everyday sites, spaces, populations and circulations of cities. As part of the defence of what Julian Reid calls 'logistical societies' societies where biopolitical threats emerge from the very central systems, flows and networks sustaining contemporary urban life — warfare within liberal modernity increasingly centres on securitizing and targeting the prosaic architectures and circulations of the city (see Reid, 2006; Dillon and Reid, 2009).
Driving the military targeting of the everyday sites, circulations and processes of urban life across the world is a new constellation of military doctrine and theory. In this, the spectre of state versus state military conflict is seen to be in radical retreat. Instead, the new doctrine is centred upon the idea that a wide spectrum of global insurgencies now operates across social, technical, political, cultural and financial networks, straddling transnational scales. These are deemed to provide existential threats to Western societies through themselves targeting or exploiting everyday urban sites, infrastructures and control technologies that sustain contemporary cities. Such lurking threats are deemed by security and military theorists to camouflage themselves within the 'clutter' of cities at home and abroad for concealment against traditional forms of military targeting. This, the argument goes, necessitates a radical ratcheting up of techniques of tracking, surveillance and targeting centred on both the architectures of circulation and mobility — infrastructures — and the spaces of everyday urban life.
The key concept driving the current 'transformation' in military thinking and practice is the shift from 'battlefield' to 'battlespace'. This concept is crucial because it basically sustains what Phil Agre (2001) has called 'a conception of military matters that includes absolutely everything'. Nothing lies outside the multidimensional and multiscale concept of battlespace, temporally or geographically. Battlespace has no front and no back, no start and no end; it is 'deep, high, wide, and simultaneous: there is no longer a front or a rear' (Blackmore, 2005). The concept of battlespace thus encompasses everything from the molecular scales of genetic engineering and nanotechnology, through the everyday sites, spaces and experiences of city life, to the planetary spheres of inner and outer space or the internet's globe-straddling 'cyberspace'. The focus of mobilization is thus no longer focused within delimited geographical or temporal spaces of 'symmetrical' state versus state warfare. Instead, it becomes increasingly unbound in time and space. Thus, state power seeks to target 'asymmetric' non-state forces and movements to the point where contemporary 'warfare' becomes effectively 'coterminous ... with the space of civil society itself' (Dillon and Reid, 2009: 128).
With wars and battle no longer declared or finished, temporalities of war threaten to extend indefinitely. 'War is back and seemingly forever' (Deer, 2007: l). No wonder Pentagon gurus convinced George Bush to replace the idea of the 'war on terror' with the new 'big idea' of the 'long war' in 2004 (McIntyre, 2004). All too easily, such a discourse slips into a world where life itself is war (Agre, 2001). Indeed, many military theorists now speak of a new (fourth) generation of asymmetric warfare in which nothing is ever outside the 'battlespace' (for a good example, see Hammes, 2006). This new 'generation' of war is based, they argue, on 'unconventional' wars, 'asymmetric' struggles, 'global insurgencies' and 'low intensity conflicts', which pit high-tech state militaries against informal fighters or mobilized civilians. Military theorist Thomas Hammes (2006:3) for example argues that, in the twenty-first century, so-called 'fourth generation' warfare will dominate global security politics, rooted in the concept that 'superior political will, when properly employed, can defeat greater economic and military power'. Using such doctrine, US commanders in Baghdad have emphasized the need to coordinate the entire 'battlespace' of the city, addressing civilian infrastructure, the shattered economy and cultural awareness, as well as 'the controlled application of violence' , in order to try and secure the city (Chiarelli and Michaelis, 2005).
Intrinsically anti-urban, such paradigms quickly transpose the prosaic social acts that together forge cosmopolitan urban life into existential societal threats. For example, US military theorist William Lind, radically extending the US 'culture wars' debates of the 1980s and 1990s, and swallowing whole Samuel Huntingdon's (1998) 'clash of civilizations' binary, has even argued that acts of urban immigration must now be understood as acts of 'warfare'. 'In Fourth Generation war', writes Lind (2004), 'invasion by immigration can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a state army'. Under what he calls the 'poisonous ideology of multiculturalism', Lind (ibid.) argues that immigrants within Western nations can now launch 'a homegrown variety of Fourth Generation war, which is by far the most dangerous kind'.
Here we confront the realities of what the Center for Immigration Studies has called the 'weaponization' of immigration (Cato, 2008). Such new imaginations of warfare provide a powerful example of what happens when all aspects of human life are rendered as nothing but war; nations are imagined in narrow ethno-nationalist ways and diasporic cities emerge as mere cultural pollutants (See Cowen, 2007). 'The road from national genus to a totalized cosmology of the sacred nation' , writes Arjun Appadurai (2006: 4), 'and further to ethnic purity and cleansing, is relatively direct'.
Crucially, the emerging body of urban military doctrine thus works to radically blur the traditional separation of peace and war, military and civil spheres, local and global scales, and the 'inside' and 'outside' of nations. On the one hand, then, a wide variety of Western military theorists now concur that that 'modern urban combat operations will become one of the primary challenges of the 21 st century' (DIRC, 1997: 11). As US theorist of urban warfare Keith Dickson (2002: 4) puts it, the increasing perception within Western militaries is that 'for Western military forces, asymmetric warfare in urban areas will be the greatest challenge of this century ... The city will be the strategic high ground — whoever controls it will dictate the course of future events in the world'.
On the other hand, the US military's search for new doctrines to deal with the perceived urbanization of war, organized violence and security explicitly recognizes the similarities when dealing with 'urbanized terrain' at home and abroad. Whilst the various warlords, gangs, militias and insurgents operating throughout the burgeoning informal urban areas of the global South (see Souza, 2009) are widely imagined by Western military theorists to represent the key military challenges of the twenty-first century, dense labyrinthine cities everywhere — both at home and abroad — are imagined together as key future battlespaces. 'Despite the geographic differences' , writes Maryann Lawlor (2007) in the military magazine Signal, key personnel at the US Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) in Norfolk, Virginia have engaged in massive war games and simulations (such as the exercise named 'Urban Resolve'), and in so doing 'identified several key concerns common to both areas'. These involve the difficulty of separating 'terrorists' or 'insurgents' from the urban civilian population; the high densities of infrastructure; the way cities interrupt old-style military surveillance and targeting systems; and the complex three-dimensional nature of urban battlespace.
Through such an analytical lens, the LA riots of 1992, various attempts to securitize urban cores for major sports events or political summits, the militarized responses to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, and the challenges of 'homeland security' in US cities, have all blurred together to be perceived as 'urban ' or 'low-intensity' operations or moments of 'irregular warfare' , in common with episodes of counterinsurgency warfare taking place on the streets of Baghdad (see Boyle, 2005). Indeed, the paradigms underpinning the new military urbanism allow transnational social movements and mobilizations against state oppression or the devastating effects of market fundamentalism, ecological crises and neoliberalization — for example, the Zapatistas or environmental and global justice campaigners — to be tackled as forms of 'netwar', equivalent to the radical and murderous Islamism of Al Qaeda (see Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 2001). Post-operational 'lessons learned' reports drawn up after military deployments to contain the Los Angeles riots in 1992, credited 'the "success" of the mission to the fact that "the enemy" — the local population — was easy to outmaneuver given their simple battle tactics and strategies' (cited in Cowen, 2007: 1).
Finally, the US military's focus on military operations within the domestic urban sphere of the 'homeland' has strengthened dramatically since the start of the so-called 'war on terror' (see Canestaro, 2003). This process allows the US military to overcome traditional legal obstacles to deployment in the US itself (Canestaro, 2003). It allows the tactics and lessons of planning and designing 'Green Zone' urban bases in the hearts of Baghdad and other cities to be imported domestically as the template for implanting analogous 'security zones' around financial and government districts in New York and other major US cities (see Nemeth, 2009). Finally, it means that high-tech targeting practices employing unmanned drones and organized satellite surveillance programmes, previously limited to the permanent targeting of spaces beyond the nation's boundaries to (purportedly) make the nation safe, are also starting to colonize the domestic urban spaces of the nation (see Gorman, 2008).
Significantly, the emergence of the new military urbanism works to compound longstanding trends towards punitive criminology and revanchist urban policy that have marked processes of urban neoliberalization in many Western and global South nations (see Smith, 2002; Wacquant, 2008). The US response to the devastation of the largely African-American city of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in November 1995 provides a paradigmatic example (Graham, 2006). For a brief period, some US Army officers articulated their highly militarized responses to the Katrina disaster in New Orleans as an attempt to 'take back' New Orleans from African-American 'insurgencies' (Chiarelli and Michaelis, 2005). In this case, rather than a massive humanitarian response treating the victims as citizens requiring immediate help, a largely military operation was (eventually) organized. Such a response merely reinforced the idea that the internal geographies of the US are the sites of state-backed wars against racialized and biopolitically disposable others as much as external actors (Giroux, 2006). This operation treated those abandoned in the central city as a threat and a military objective to be contained, targeted and addressed in order to protect the property of the normalized and largely white suburban and exurban populations who had escaped in their own cars (Giroux, 2006). In the process, African-American citizens of the city were rendered refugees in their own country. As Robert Stam and Ella Shohat (2007: 167) argue, 'Katrina not only ripped the roofs off Gulf Coast houses but also ripped the fagade off "the national security state
Together, these blurring processes thus sustain the imagination of all cities everywhere as key battlespaces requiring permanent targeting and mobilization within limitless imaginations of war. In the process, they threaten to fundamentally challenge accepted notions of citizenship, law and the distinction between a liberal 'inside' of the nation, controlled through policing, and an illiberal 'outside' where a nation's military forces are deployed (Bigo and Anastassia, 2006; Cowen and Smith, 2009). Instead of such (inevitably precarious and contradictory) binaries, we are rapidly moving towards a context where, as Jeremy Packer (2006: 378) puts it, 'citizens and non-citizens alike are now treated as an always present threat. In this sense, all are imagined as combatants and all terrain the site of battle'. The proliferation of anticipatory profiling and targeting systems, as we shall see in the next section, increasingly uses computer algorithms to define deviance, and hence threat, from the mass circulations and populations of the city, in advance of civil or criminal offences being proven (see Amoore, 2009).

Advantage 2 is the end of times
Colleges are the missing link in the expanding counter-movement to militarism – campus anti-war activism has failed to materialize, but is necessary to support broader global movements and turn the tide against the culture of US militarism
Harding and Kershner 11 (Scott Harding School of Social Work, University of Connecticut; and Seth Kershner, Simmons College) “Just say No”: Organizing Against Militarism in Public Schools” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare Vol. 38  Iss. 2 (2011) AT
Discussion Counter-recruitment demands that its activists perform the same sorts of functions normally associated with community organizing. Our analysis illustrates the following implications for CRM strategy: (1) CRs must avoid taking an overtly anti-war position, stressing instead the anti-militarism of the movement. To do otherwise and frame CR as a form of opposition to particular wars runs the risk of alienating key community leaders whose support may be needed to build future coalitions; (2) While the CRM is explicitly inclusive, in that it is multi-generational and multiracial, CR organizing paradoxically needs at the same time to be somewhat exclusive in recruiting activists. Not everyone can be a community organizer, and those who lack good interpersonal skills and a feel for the political will fail to advance the movement’s goals; and (3) Given the long-term dimension of this work, CRs would do well to focus their efforts on achieving some of the goals 100 Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare identified by Friesen (2010). With the possible exception of Arlene Inouye, none of these examples of counter-recruitment sought to organize around all five of the goals at once. Indeed, one of the counter-recruiters in this study compared his role in fighting the Goliath of American militarism to the plucky determination of the American bull terrier highlighted in James Thurber’s short story, “Snapshot of a Dog.” “You pick a bit, you become an expert in it, and you don’t let go” (Pat Elder, personal communication, May 12, 2010). Counter-recruitment organizing starts with recruiting allies to build effective local coalitions. The examples of CR analyzed in this study demonstrate that the best allies are typically school stakeholders: parents and teachers. With a coalition firmly in place, these groups seek to clarify goals and objectives. Counter-recruiters do this by framing their coalition’s public message in non-threatening, inclusive language. The activists we interviewed all agree that an anti-war or antimilitary message will end up alienating the coalition from the community whose support it needs to survive. If these groups cannot transmit their finely-honed message to enough people, or to those they want to target, counter-recruiters then try to utilize alternative media outlets. The counter-recruiters profiled here lobby policy-makers and relevant public officials when they want to see concrete (policy) change. They get on the phone, write letters, and reach out to local places of worship to influence decisions. As another means of advocacy, counter-recruiters may get themselves seated on committees. If none exist they may start the process to create one so that there will be some forum to address the concerns of their coalition. And finally, if their coalition isn’t getting a chance to be heard, and if those in power won’t let them be heard because they are ignoring a law, counter-recruiters first try and cajole them or convince them to come to their senses. And, if all else fails, they litigate. Current counter-recruitment strategy can be summarized in three key phrases: anti-militarist, long term, and inclusive. CR strategy is anti-militarist, not simply anti-war. It is aimed at countering that part of U.S. culture which promotes violence and war as the optimal response to conflict. Anti-militarism is seen by movement organizers as a way to keep the movement viable for the long-term. One lesson CRs must learn from the Vietnam war is that to focus on individual issues (a specific war) and tactics (like draft resistance) may result in sacrificing long-term relevance for short-term goals (Jahnkow, 2006a). Counter-recruitment is thus a means of resisting not just one war, but the larger culture of militarism whose survival depends in part on young people’s passive acceptance of military values and ideals. CR strategy is also focused on a long-term vision of incremental gains. If the CRM had a symbol, it would surely be the tortoise. As the anti-ASVAB campaigns in Maryland and San Diego attest, when activists win, it may be only be one local school district. Thus, as the movement goes forward, activist victories will be measured by the “summation of a series of small, incremental struggles” (Theberge, 2005, p. 16). For CR strategist Rick Jahnkow, “people have to be operating from a very long-term perspective and be willing to accept that you might not achieve real measurable and visible victories quickly, that it requires time, it requires dedication” (personal communication, May 27, 2010). Finally, CR strategy is inclusive in that it is a multi-generational, multiracial movement and needs to be to remain a credible force for change in the communities most heavily targeted by military recruiters. However, there are obstacles to keeping the movement inclusive. Older CRs often have trouble working with the co-leadership of younger, high-school-age CRs. This reluctance reflects an authoritarian thread of movement culture and must be addressed for a truly multigenerational movement to flourish (Jahnkow, personal communication, May 27, 2010). Further, despite its success, CR has trouble attracting attention and respect from the broader peace movement, a problem which will ensure that the counter-recruitment movement remains under-resourced in terms of volunteer recruitment and fundraising. Interestingly, Rick Jahnkow (2009) identified class divisions as a barrier to greater (movement) solidarity: peace activists “generally come from a more affluent part of society than those who are targeted by recruiters.” As a result, Those of us who have been doing this work have sometimes felt that the struggle to educate the peace movement about the social injustice dimensions of this problem has been just as frustrating at times as trying to break through the pro-military biases of school officials. (p. 2) As important, CR activists recognize the ways that public policy serves to reinforce a culture of militarism. At over sixhundred pages, the mammoth No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 is the best-known example of such legislation. Section 9528 of the bill requires all U.S. high schools to provide the Pentagon with contact information for their students or face the loss of federal education funding. That directive was added in the final hour “by a Louisiana congressman who was offended that some high schools chose to protect their students’ privacy by not giving out student information to military recruiters” (Anderson, 2009, p. 275). Parents and students can still “opt out” of having their private information rendered to military recruiters. Indeed, as shown, counter-recruitment organizers have increased the number of students who opt out every year by, for example, lobbying school districts to send opt-out forms home for parents to sign. While such efforts surely make a difference, the lack of an opt-out provision on the national level means that CR successes will retain the limited impact of local campaigns. But even if CRs and their allies were to gain repeal of Section 9528 of NCLB, it would probably fail to have the desired effect. When it comes to collecting the kind of student information most helpful to military recruiters, the Pentagon is hardly dependent on NCLB; it can and does get private student information from elsewhere. Other, lesser-known pieces of legislation (e.g., the National Defense Authorization Act of 2002) give military recruiters practically the same level of access as NCLB (Anderson, 2009). Although the legislative outlook may be bleak—Congress remains staunchly pro-military and the repeal of NCLB is unlikely—the counter-recruitment movement has to exploit what little advantage it has within the existing legal framework. For example, Section 9528 of NCLB not only includes the mandate noted above, it also requires that military recruiters be given the same level of student access enjoyed by other types of recruiters. An example of what the CRM could do Organizing Against Militarism in Public Schools 103 with this “equal access” provision is provided by the students of Watervliet High School in New York State. Fed up with the military recruiters who stalked the school cafeterias almost on a daily basis, Watervliet students and their adult allies successfully lobbied their local school board to pass a policy limiting visits by all types of recruiters to one per month (Geurin, 2009). As their example shows, there is a growing recognition that effective counter-recruitment can be done even when schools are forced to open their doors to military recruiters. Regardless of tensions with the broader peace movement, and despite legislative obstacles that make it difficult to eliminate militarism in schools, since the 1980s counter-recruiters have scored significant victories. Project YANO’s successful use of litigation as a tactic won the equal access rights critical to counter-recruitment in schools. And as the military devised new methods of securing the private information of students, CRs joined outraged parents and teachers in launching a counter-attack. Organizers like Pat Elder and Arlene Inouye have also successfully used legislative tactics at the state and school district levels. Charting the ways in which the CRM achieves its victories represents an important contribution to the social sciences literature, which until now has all but ignored the counter-recruitment movement. Conclusion Counter-recruitment has been criticized for its narrow focus and lack of engagement with the larger aims of U.S. militarism abroad and structural inequality at home (Tannock, 2005). Nonetheless, though it only has limited support from some national peace organizations, properly understood, CR remains a viable method of addressing U.S. foreign policy and a culture of militarism. In what amounts to a division of labor among antiwar activists, Travieso (2008) identified counter-recruitment as one of three strategic interests to develop out of the U.S. peace movement following the invasion of Iraq (along with targeting multi-national corporations like Halliburton, and lobbying members of Congress to cut off war funding.) Ultimately, he suggested, this “professionalization” of strategy represents a marked improvement over the non-hierarchical and largely ineffective peace movement represented in the 104 Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare run-up to the war in Iraq. Where does this leave the future of counter-recruitment? In terms of scholarship, academics and others concerned with the impacts of increased militarism should consider work on this and related topics. Ironically, colleges are being pushed to roll out the welcome mat to the armed forces and increase the university presence of ROTC nationwide (Lewin and Hartocollis, 2010; Nelson, 2010). Instead of uncritically accepting a military presence on campus, colleges and those who teach in them could more effectively confront American militarism through focused research and vigorous public debate. In spite of stereotypes about American universities as bastions of radicalism, these institutions and those working inside their ivy-covered walls have failed to adequately grapple with the reality of U.S. militarism. The time to turn the tide is now. With Pentagon spending at record levels, the occupation of Afghanistan in its tenth year, a long-term American military presence in Iraq likely, and military operations expanding in places like Yemen and Pakistan, the stakes could not be higher. If colleges are to be more than mere incubators of military values, scholars—social scientists in particular—must critically examine America’s culture of militarism and its domestic and global impacts. Research on counter-recruitment as one aspect of peace activism offers such an opportunity. Despite the utility of Friesen’s (2010) study, for example, larger sample sizes are needed to better assess the similarities and differences among groups engaged in counter-recruitment organizing. Evaluation of the success of counter-recruitment is also needed. Field research and in-depth case studies could help explain the strengths and limitations of CR, along with its relationship to other forms of peace activism. NNOMY supports a directory of nearly 150 U.S.-based groups engaged in some type of counter-recruitment and demilitarization work. Absent a national magazine or information source devoted to counter-recruitment, this presents a vital opportunity for scholars and others to follow such activism. The study of international counter-recruitment efforts offers another line of inquiry, given the lack of such research. In countries with a military situation similar to the United States (no draft, an all volunteer army), there is little evidence of counter-recruitment organizing per se. Instead, we do see a growing interest in the issue of military recruitment and youth militarism in places like the United Kingdom, where Scottish parliamentarian Christine Grahame has criticized the Army for making visits (often uninvited) to elementary schools, high schools and even preschools (Johnson, 2010). In Spain, Canada, and Italy, activists have gone beyond an idle interest in this issue; they have spontaneously organized counter-recruitment events in their schools, colleges and communities. From the limited information on international CR-related activities we draw two conclusions. First, the United States is the only country with a well-organized network of counterrecruitment groups. Outside U.S. borders the most obvious examples are demonstrations targeting military recruitment kiosks (in Spain and Canada) or against groups perceived to be promoting or profiting from youth militarism (Italy) (Alacant, 2010; Denomme, 2005; Micci, 2010). Second, we suggest that these limited international efforts underscore that the American model of recruiting for the military is uniquely dependent upon the schools. While these countries are similar to the United States by virtue of their reliance on all-volunteer forces, only two (Spain and Italy) ended conscription within the last ten years. More research is needed to determine the extent to which a military recruiter presence in schools grows in proportion to the length of time without conscription. It is interesting, in this regard, to note a possible correlation. Only the United Kingdom has had a longer period without conscription (since 1963) than the United States. Today the UK’s school recruitment program is just as robust as the U.S. model. The armed forces seek recruits starting at age 16; army visits to schools are also an integral part of the program. As opportunities for transnational peace organizing increase, counter-recruitment may emerge as an essential activity in other countries. Trends in key western states indicate a shift away from conscription, and toward all-volunteer, professional armies. At the same time, military forces from NATO countries are increasingly being called upon to support U.S. foreign policy goals—which often means sending troops into combat in Afghanistan or other neo-imperial outposts. This suggests an opportunity for counter-recruiters in the United States to collaborate with European peace movements with the aim of promoting CR as a viable anti-war organizing strategy. For U.S. activists, outreach efforts could be as simple as monitoring peace movements outside the United States. They could also involve leading workshops on counter-recruitment at international peace conferences or writing guest editorials on blogs and in magazines read by the European peace community. Regional networks of counter-recruitment activists organizing their own conferences will likely assume a greater role in the future; as an example, we note the contingent of Micronesian counter-recruiters that grew out of the 2009 International Network of Women Against Militarism conference in Guam (Kershner, 2010). Promoting dialogue on issues of mutual concern thus offers the potential to build a CR network in other countries and regions within established peace and anti-war organizations. If successful, such efforts will not only build bridges of understanding between U.S. activists and their international allies, they will also bolster global defenses against militarism at a time of increasingly global war.
It’s try or die for the global resistance – a brutal eruption of warfare and fascistic violence will soon engulf the globe – but the conditions are ripe for an equally powerful opposition movement to prevent global catastrophe
Socialist Equality Party (Uk) 16 (Socialist Equality Party (Uk), ) For A New Socialist Movement Against Militarism, Austerity And War, International Committee Of The Fourth International 11-14-2016 AT

1. The Third National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (UK) endorses the February 18, 2016 statement of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), “Socialism and the Fight Against War: Build an International Movement of the Working Class and Youth Against Imperialism!” 2. A quarter century has passed since the apologists for capitalism hailed the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 as the “end of history” and the final victory of the free market and liberal democracy. Instead, the drive to establish a new world order has succeeded only in creating global disorder: a series of unending wars; entire countries devastated; millions killed, maimed and/or turned into refugees; the re-emergence of fascistic tendencies and the pursuit of brutal class war policies in an “age of austerity.” 3. Far more rapidly than most people are aware, US imperialism is preparing a direct military confrontation with its geopolitical rivals. At a “Future of the Army” panel in Washington this October, Army Chief of Staff General Mark A. Milley declared that war between nation states “is almost guaranteed... Our army and our nation must be ready.” The Atlantic Council think tank urges preparations by the US to fight “major and deadly” wars between “great powers,” identified as Russia and China, entailing “high levels of death and destruction” and the possibility of “a nuclear exchange.” 4. Plans for a major military escalation in Syria are integral to Washington’s offensive to secure hegemony over the Eurasian land mass. Realising this geo-strategic goal demands the dismemberment of Russia and its reduction to semi-colonial status, while the US “pivot to Asia” is aimed at encircling and neutralising China as an economic rival. Consequently, the entire world has become a tinderbox. With 60 nations presently involved, the Syrian civil war threatens to become the flashpoint for a broader conflagration in the Middle East. At the same time, NATO forces have advanced to the very borders of Russia, while the Far East is an arena for military confrontation between both regional and imperialist powers, such as Japan and Australia. Washington’s showering of strategic favours on India so as to harness it to its anti-China pivot has overturned South Asia’s “balance of terror” and greatly exacerbated tensions between India and Pakistan—the rival, nuclear-armed states created by the 1947 communal partition of the subcontinent. 5. The US is at the forefront of this eruption of militarism, but the same tendencies are present in every country. Britain’s June 23 vote to leave the European Union (EU) is a turning point in the resurgence of national tensions that are tearing Europe apart, heralding intensified trade war measures and militarism. Every one of the major European powers is participating in the conflict in Syria, each with their own competing national objectives. All the relations that have existed in Europe since the Second World War have been thrown into question. Whether the UK’s “special relationship” with the US can endure, whether Germany will be content to accept a US hegemony that runs counter to its own interests, and the exact line-up of relations between the major powers on the continent is yet to be determined. But, however events unfold, what is certain is that a new world war is inevitable without the independent intervention of the international working class. 6. The drive to war emerges as a result of the intractable crisis of capitalism as a world system. The fundamental contradiction between the globalisation of production and the capitalist nation state system, based on private ownership of the means of production and class exploitation, is fuelling social and political discontent, destabilising traditional mechanisms of rule, throwing bourgeois politics into a state of upheaval and flux, and preparing a global catastrophe. This danger is made all the more immediate by the deepening crisis of the capitalist profit system, which is the source of war. 7. All efforts to overcome the financial meltdown of 2008—through bank bailouts and austerity—have not only failed, they have sharpened class tensions and prepared the way for a new economic crash. According to the International Monetary Fund, total global debt now stands at $ 152 trillion, equivalent to 225 percent of world GDP—the largest debt bubble in the history of humanity. The quantitative easing programmes employed by the US Federal Reserve Board, Bank of England, European Central Bank and Bank of Japan have overwhelmingly benefited the super-rich. The balance sheets of the world’s central banks have risen from $6 trillion in 2007 to $21 trillion today. The collapse of this debt bubble will send entire economies into meltdown. 8. It is in preparation for this that the bourgeoisie is attempting to effect a political readjustment: a pre-emptive strike against what it fears above all—a unified struggle by the international working class that challenges its rule. In the United States, the fascistic demagogue and real estate billionaire Donald Trump was able to win the presidential election under conditions where his Democratic Party challenger, Hilary Clinton—the favourite of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex—arrogantly dismissed social concerns in favour of the promotion of reactionary racial and sexual politics and attacks on Trump from the right for his stated opposition to waging war on Russia. In Europe, the elevation of fascistic and xenophobic parties such as the National Front in France is accompanied by the promotion of forces such as Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain as a supposed “left” alternative. 9. Among workers and youth there exists a powerful desire for peace and social equality that finds no organised expression. The building of a conscious anti-war movement requires that the working class develop a scientific understanding of the objective roots of the crisis, based on a precise assessment of the economic and class interests that are driving the policies of their “own” bourgeoisie and its rivals. Only then will the working class be able to delineate its independent class interests, in solidarity with its class brothers and sisters the world over, in irreconcilable opposition to the bourgeoisie’s promotion of “national unity” as the ideological basis for war. Brexit and the promotion of nationalism 10. This is the fundamental lesson to be drawn from the June referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. The crisis of the global economy following 2008 exacerbated divisions within the ruling elite between those who viewed EU membership as vital to projecting their economic and political interests and those for whom EU moves towards greater integration, under German domination, threatened the City of London and its ability to exploit the new centres of economic growth such as China. It was in a bid to placate anti-EU sentiment in the Conservative Party and counter the growth of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) that then-Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to a referendum on EU membership. The aim was to exploit anti-EU and anti-immigrant rhetoric to channel social discontent in a rightward direction and force concessions from the EU that would block plans for closer economic and political union. Oblivious to the alienation of millions from the existing institutions, the ruling class was shocked when its arguments for a Remain vote—based on warnings of financial collapse and economic insecurity—had little traction among those who felt they had nothing to lose. 11. Through its call for an active boycott of the referendum, the Socialist Equality Party was alone in advancing an independent political perspective for the working class. Based on a sober evaluation of the balance of class forces and the lessons of history, especially of Germany in the 1930s, its starting point was to define a policy that upheld the interests not only of workers in Britain, but in Europe and internationally. Explaining that both the Remain and Leave camps were equally hostile to the working class, the SEP made clear its irreconcilable opposition to the EU as an instrument of the major powers in imposing austerity, in facilitating the attack on immigrants through its Fortress Europe policy, and in backing militarism across the continent. But it rejected any support for a Leave campaign dominated by right-wing xenophobes and Thatcherites for whom “national sovereignty” was a banner for trade war, based on deepening the offensive against working people. 12. Crucially, the SEP warned that the referendum was the most advanced expression of the failure of the post-Second World War project of European unification through which the “ruling elites had sought to resolve the fundamental contradiction that had twice in the 20th century plunged the continent into war—between the integrated character of European and global production and the division of the continent into antagonistic nation states… But unity within the framework of capitalism could never mean anything other than the domination of the most powerful nations and corporations over the continent and its peoples. Rather than national and social antagonisms being alleviated, they have taken on malignant forms.” The SEP stressed, “The EU is breaking apart and cannot be revived. It is only through the creation of the United Socialist States of Europe, established as an integral component of a world federation of socialist states, that the vast productive forces of the continent can be utilised for the benefit of all.” 13. Underscoring these dangers, the referendum campaign saw an unprecedented intervention of the Armed Forces and the security services, MI5 and MI6. Both sides proclaimed their commitment to NATO and its offensive against Russia and China: The Remain camp argued that British EU membership strengthened NATO, while the Leave camp declared that plans to create a European Army would undermine the US-led alliance. Cameron described EU membership as essential to combating a “newly belligerent Russia,” marshalling the support of senior military and security chiefs as well as US President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and five ex-NATO secretaries-general. Obama warned that UK membership was vital in keeping the “EU open, outward looking, and closely linked to its allies on the other side of the Atlantic,” ensuring that NATO meets its “overseas commitments from Afghanistan to the Aegean,” and to “reassure allies who are rightly concerned about Russian aggression.” The campaign for a UK exit was backed by a dozen former senior military officers, with Major General Julian Thompson, who led the 1982 Falkland Islands/Malvinas war, describing the EU as a security threat because it includes “many members who cannot be trusted due to their close relationship with Russia.” 14. The principled approach taken by the SEP delineated a genuinely socialist, internationalist standpoint from both the pseudo-left apologists for the EU such as Left Unity, who joined Labour and the trade unions in supporting Remain, and the “Left Leave” advocates of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and Socialist Party (SP). The SEP stressed, “The biggest political danger in this situation is the mixing of class banners on the basis of the espousal of a supposedly ‘left nationalism.’” The politically criminal character of this policy was made clear by George Galloway, who appeared alongside UKIP leader Nigel Farage to call on the left and right to “march together.” As the SEP stated, the advocates of Left Leave “are wholly indifferent to the actual forces being strengthened by the Leave campaign. In reality, they are subordinating the working class to an initiative aimed at shifting political life even further along a nationalist trajectory, thereby strengthening and emboldening the far right in the UK and across Europe, while weakening the political defences of the working class. Having helped release the genie of British nationalism, they are politically responsible for its consequences.” Brexit unleashes a carnival of reaction 15. This warning was prophetic. The narrow 52 percent vote in favour of Leave has been seized on by the most right-wing sections of the Tory Party as an opportunity to complete the Thatcherite social counterrevolution. Cameron was replaced by Theresa May, who campaigned to remain in the EU but has since come forward as a strident advocate of a “hard-Brexit.” Echoing the spurious claims of the “Left Leave” pseudo-left, she has described the result as a rebellion by “ordinary, working class people” against the “international elites,” and is using it as the basis for invoking “patriotism” and whipping up British nationalism. Her government has adopted the policies of UKIP in all essentials, including calls to phase out the employment of foreign doctors and nurses in the National Health Service and other vicious anti-immigrant measures. The collapse in sterling has been welcomed by these right-wing pyromaniacs as a means of further slashing living standards. A comment in the London Evening Standard gave an indication of their agenda when insisting, “Brexit means this: Work Harder.” “Ironically, we all will have to learn to be more like immigrants now... If we want British jobs for British workers we are going to have to stop being choosy.” 16. Opposition to Brexit continues to enjoy the support of powerful sections of Britain’s ruling class, as well as the US. A minority position within the Tories—the desire to ameliorate or, if possible, overturn the referendum result—unites the majority of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, Scottish National Party (SNP), Plaid Cymru (Party of Wales) and the Greens. Concerted efforts, backed by legal action, are being made to create the basis for parliament to vote down any agreement triggering Article 50 (which begins the UK’s formal exit from the EU) and/or force a second referendum or a general election. The formation of a “progressive” pro-EU alliance or even a new party is also being discussed. 17. This has been given additional weight by the reigniting of a constitutional crisis that threatens the break-up of the UK. Only two years after the defeat of the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, the SNP administration has said it will hold a second referendum in the event of a hard-Brexit, and is seeking an alliance with various parties in the devolved administrations of Wales and Northern Ireland to block or limit exit from the EU. Sectarian conflict is also threatened in Ireland. Northern Ireland voted by 56 percent to remain in the EU. The Democratic Unionist Party favours Brexit and the smaller Ulster Unionist Party, which opposed it, says it will defend the all-UK vote. But Sinn Fein, the Social Democratic and Labour Party and the Alliance Party all support remaining in the EU and are uniting with the Republic of Ireland government in voicing concern over its economic impact and the possibility that a hard border will be reinstated between the north and south. This would also undermine the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and raise the issue of Ireland’s partition once again, over which a civil war and decades of violent conflict have taken place within the past century. 18. The real measure of this “progressive alliance” is its encouraging of divisions in the working class, so long as access to the Single European Market for Britain’s corporations and banks is preserved. Their denunciations of pro-Brexit voters as a “mob” and the anti-democratic character of attempts to overturn the referendum drive threaten to drive sections of workers into the arms of UKIP and other right-wing elements. Moreover, political success for this bourgeois faction would do nothing to lessen the dangers posed to the working class by nationalist reaction and militarism. There can be no turning back the clock to a supposed “golden age” of European unity. 19. In their attempts to prevent the growth of anti-EU sentiment in other countries, the major powers have threatened to punish Britain for its vote—warning that exit from the bloc means losing access to the Single Market. This has been accompanied by a stepping up of plans by the major European powers for the formation of a European Army and the build-up of its internal security forces. According to policy papers drawn up by Germany, France and Italy, the proposed army must be able to “act autonomously if and when necessary” all over the world. 20. The issue, however, is who will command such a force. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has declared that Germany is “too big merely to comment on world affairs from the side-lines.” But Berlin’s efforts to assert its hegemony over the continent will only intensify the disintegration of the EU into competing power blocks, North, South and East. Germany is seen as the natural focus of an alliance of the Benelux, Nordic and Baltic countries. France is flirting with leadership of a southern bloc that includes Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus and Malta as a counterweight to German hegemony, while an eastern bloc centres on Hungary and Poland. 21. What unites the bourgeoisie in Britain with its European counterparts is their agreement on the brutal repression of migrants, the whipping up of anti-Muslim sentiment, strengthening police-state measures at home, and imperialist war abroad. Obscene arguments over who is responsible for sheltering the victims of Western aggression who have been forced to flee their homes and attempt the often-fatal passage to Europe are an occasion for portraying Islam as an existential threat to European civilisation, based on invocations of Christianity or the secular ideals of the Enlightenment. Far right parties have formed governments in East European countries such as Hungary and Poland, while in Western Europe the hard-right Austrian Freedom Party could yet take the presidency. The Alternative for Germany party has adopted an anti-Islamic manifesto for next year’s German elections, and in France, the National Front of Marine Le Pen is almost certain to go through to the second round in May’s presidential election. Europe’s official parties—whether nominally conservative or social democratic—in turn utilise the growth of the far right to shift their own politics in the same direction. A resurgence of British imperialist militarism 22. In a bid to contain intractable social, political and economic problems for which it has no progressive solution, Britain’s ruling elite is being driven on a path to war. Even more so than in the past, the bourgeoisie hopes to secure its interests by manipulating international tensions and playing rival powers against one another. Such a balancing act cannot be sustained. The May government’s decision to proceed with Chinese involvement in the building of the Hinkley Point nuclear reactor in England follows on from the UK’s pioneering role in the Beijing-inspired Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. But closer economic relations with China and other rising powers, as a means of counteracting the decline of British capitalism, are incompatible with the UK’s historic dependence on the US. 23. This is especially the case under conditions in which the vote to leave the EU has severely undermined the UK’s use-value to Washington and therefore its continued ability to punch above its weight on the world arena. The prospect of Germany consolidating its domination of Europe following the UK’s withdrawal led to Robert D. Kaplan, an influential member of the US foreign policy establishment and architect of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, warning in the Wall Street Journal, “The returning geopolitical chaos is akin, in some respects, to the 1930s… Brexit has undermined a key goal of British geopolitics going back hundreds of years: preventing any one power from dominating the Continent. Yet now Germany is empowered to do just that. Germany could strike a separate bargain with Russia or turn inward toward populist nationalism. Great Britain should reinvigorate its alliance with America. Acting together, the two nations can still project power on the European mainland up to the gates of Russia.” 24. The UK is already playing a lead role in ratcheting up tensions with Russia and is in open conflict with Germany and France over plans for a European Army, seeking to use its position as the fifth largest nuclear power in the world, and the second largest contributor to NATO’s budget, to provide it with leverage. But its nuclear capability is only operable with US technology and warheads, while the new Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales aircraft carriers, the largest ever built in the UK, will be platforms for US-built F-35 stealth fighters and Apache helicopter gunships. Britain’s alliance with the US means it will be drawn inexorably even further into military conflicts anywhere in the world. In Europe, it places it in the front line of the US build-up against Moscow, raising the prospect of a confrontation with Germany and the re-opening of the fault-lines that led to two world wars. 25. The ever-expanding burden of this upsurge in militarism will be borne by the working class. In 2016, the government increased military spending for the first time in six years, to a projected £39.7 billion in 2020/21. This does not include the cost of Trident’s renewal, the final cost of which is expected to reach £205 billion—almost two years’ spending on the National Health Service. This is only a beginning. In a letter to Defence Minister Michael Fallon, retiring General Sir Richard Barons called for a massive rearmament of Britain’s military capabilities, complaining, “neither the UK homeland nor a deployed force... could be protected from a concerted Russian air effort.” The pro-imperialist politics of the pseudo-left 26. The Brexit referendum confirmed the pseudo-left groups as bourgeois tendencies. In its aftermath, the pro-Remain supporters of Another Europe is Possible are lining up behind demands for parliament to reassert its authority over the terms of Brexit and have taken part, alongside the Liberal Democrats and others, in pro-EU demonstrations. For its part, the Socialist Party calls for a campaign to ensure a “socialist, internationalist Brexit” based on support for a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government. But the most degenerate expression of the integration of the pseudo-left into the mechanisms of capitalist rule is their support for militarism and war. There is nothing to distinguish their writings on these issues from that of their imperialist governments. Gilbert Achcar, a member of Socialist Resistance, spoke for a broad section of the pseudo-left groups in a recent attack on the US-Russian ceasefire in Syria. Achcar urged the arming of the pro-Western opposition groups with anti-aircraft missiles and other weapons. 27. The Stop the War Coalition (STWC) does not represent an alternative to the militarist politics of the pseudo-left. An alliance of Counterfire (a break-off from the SWP) with the Communist Party of Britain, it promotes the fatal illusion that the fight against war can be conducted outside of and separate from the class struggle. On this basis, it combines petty-bourgeois pacifist appeals with an anti-American, rather than an anti-imperialist, perspective. Its convenor, Lindsey German, has declared, “We’ve said for some years that one of our aims as a movement should be to break Britain from following the US in every step of its foreign policy.” In 2003, the STWC subordinated the mass protests against the invasion of Iraq to appeals to the United Nations, France and Germany to oppose Washington. Today, the CPB distinguishes itself in being openly pro-Assad and in portraying Russia as a bulwark against both US imperialism and ISIS-inspired terrorism. 28. The SEP rejects the designation by the pseudo-left groups of Russia and China as imperialist states. This false characterisation, torn out of all historical context, is a key means through which they seek to legitimise US and European aggression aimed at subordinating these regions to their direct control. However, our rejection of this designation implies no support for the right-wing capitalist regimes in Moscow and Beijing. The reintroduction of capitalism in both countries was carried out by the Stalinist bureaucracy. It was the end product of a social and economic counterrevolution that began with the repudiation of the perspective of world socialist revolution and the destruction of Lenin’s Bolshevik party in a series of bloody purges targeting above all Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition. 29. Representing the interests of a parasitic layer of oligarchs, neither the Russian nor Chinese bourgeoisie have any genuine independence from imperialism and are entirely incapable of principled opposition to the machinations of the US and Europe. Both their diplomatic manoeuvres and military interventions are aimed at securing an accommodation with imperialism—safeguarding their own ability to continue the brutal exploitation of the working class—that is the defining feature of these societies. The admirers of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, their armed forces and nuclear arsenals only disorient the working class, prevent its independent mobilisation and prepare the way for a catastrophic war. 30. The rightward lurch of the pseudo-left is not the product of mistaken ideas or the rotten politics of one or another individual. Such a broad political shift into the camp of imperialism has profound social roots. In 1999, David North, international editorial board chairman of the World Socialist Web Site, wrote: “The objective modus operandi and social implications of the protracted stock market boom have enabled imperialism to recruit from among sections of the upper-middle class a new and devoted constituency. The reactionary, conformist and cynical intellectual climate that prevails in the United States and Europe—promoted by the media and adapted to by a largely servile and corrupted academic community—reflects the social outlook of a highly privileged stratum of the population that is not in the least interested in encouraging a critical examination of the economic and political bases of its newly-acquired riches.” A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global Hegemony 1990-2016 31. The 2007/08 financial crisis, the plundering of societal wealth to bail out the banks and the super-rich, which in turn is dependent on military aggression abroad and austerity at home, has only served to cement the loyalty of the pseudo-left to imperialism. These groups speak for privileged sections of the middle class that want a bigger share of the wealth of the top 10 percent and more influence and power within the corporate elite, the trade union apparatus and the state. The ICFI as the revolutionary centre of opposition to militarism and war 32. Against all forms of middle-class, pseudo-left politics, the Socialist Equality Party bases its perspective on the central and leading role of the working class. The working class must adopt its own strategy to counter the efforts of the imperialist powers to save the capitalist order through war. It must follow not the map of imperialist nation-state geopolitics, but the map of the class struggle—basing its strategy on the unification and mobilisation of its forces internationally for social revolution. 33. The objective conditions for such a struggle are rapidly emerging. The same global crisis that drives the bourgeoisie to impose savage austerity, a turn to authoritarian forms of rule and the re-division of the planet and its resources through military force, also creates the conditions of an eruption of the class struggle. But for this to become a conscious political offensive against the capitalist class and its state machinery demands the building of the International Committee of the Fourth International as the revolutionary, global centre of opposition to imperialist war. 34. The ICFI takes responsibility for building a mass anti-war movement based on four essential precepts: The struggle against war must be based on the working class, the great revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it all progressive elements in the population. The new anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist, since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and the economic system that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war. The new anti-war movement must therefore, of necessity, be completely and unequivocally independent of, and hostile to, all political parties and organisations of the capitalist class. The new anti-war movement must, above all, be international, mobilising the vast power of the working class in a unified global struggle against imperialism. The permanent war of the bourgeoisie must be answered with the perspective of permanent revolution by the working class, the strategic goal of which is the abolition of the nation-state system and the establishment of a world socialist federation. This will make possible the rational, planned development of global resources and, on this basis, the eradication of poverty and the raising of human culture to new heights.
   Student protest on campuses specifically allows for the instigation of dissent and questioning of the Military Industrial Complex within the departments in the University that fuel the war—Vietnam War proves  means we solve
   Tilly et. al. Marco Giugni, Doug McAdam, Charles Tilly. (1999). How Social Movements Matter. University of Minnesota Press. AS
   The Anti-Vietnam War Movement and Science Although the United States had been involved in fighting nationalist Vietnamese forces on behalf of France as early as 1954, American involvement took a decidedly large step in 1965, when President Johnson took action on the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, dramatically increasing the bombing of North Vietnam. Unlike the earlier "ban the bomb" movement, which had been led mainly by professionals, some scientists, and a handful of pacifists, protest against American involvement in Vietnam was led by students (DeBenedetti 1990). Science was not an early target of campus-based protesters organized against the war, but it became so as a coincidence of student protests that not only took place on college campuses but were increasingly directed against universities themselves, which were seen as full partners in facilitating the war in Vietnam. It is a truism that people tend to protest against the nearest objects, and the military-science alliance on college campuses was quite visible. For many students it was no great leap to begin to ask questions about the relationship between universities and the "military-industrial complex" that Dwight Eisenhower had identified in 1958. There were also more ideological and intellectual reasons for attacking universities and their faculty: members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), who on many campuses acted as leaders of antiwar protest, took seriously the work of Frankfurt school philosopher Herbert Marcuse, who argued that repression in capitalist societies was located not only in the overt actions of the police and courts but in the very institutions, languages, and cultures of a given society (Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich 1969: 34—35). Increasingly, students targeted military recruitment programs and research laboratories that received funding for research that was ultimately used by American troops in Vietnam. Between 1965 and 1970 on at least eleven major college campuses,6 military-supported research buildings and laboratories were sites of antiwar protest and were associated with some of the most dramatic events of the period: the 1970 bombing of the Army Math Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, which killed a researcher; the 1970 Kent State University killings; and the 1968 sit-in at Columbia University. In each of these cases, protesters directed their actions against the physical representations of the alliances between universities and the military, usually Department-of-Defense-sponsored laboratories and programs. At Kent State as early as 1968, student protest was directed against the Liquid Crystals Institute, which developed motion detectors used in Vietnam (Heineman 1993: 37) and at Stanford, against the Stanford Research Institute, which was created explicitly to attract defense contracts and upon which Stanford was economically dependent, though the institute was nominally separate from Stanford University. At Columbia University, the 1968 campus occupation was sparked mainly by Columbia's association with the Institute for Defense Analysis, which poured millions of defense dollars into scientific research on campus. Similarly, the bombing of Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin in 1970 was motivated by anger toward the university's alliance with the military (Bates 1992; DeBenedetti 1990; Heineman 1993). More generally, protesters considered the war foolish, cruel, and stupid, perpetuated by authorities—including scientists—who were out of touch with citizens. The main charge against scientists was that they had failed to take responsibility for using scientific knowledge and goods for socially useful, rather than deadly and destructive, ends. The attack on science and technology was so widespread that at a White House ceremony for the National Medal of Science Award, President Johnson was compelled to defend scientists: "An aggrieved public does not draw the fine line between 'good' science and 'bad' technology. . . . You and I know that Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster. But it would be well to remember that the people of the village, angered by the monster, marched against the doctor" (qtd. in Kevles 1978: 400). This larger questioning of authority placed scientists directly in the line of fire, since they had earlier laid claim to status based on political authority and on their role in keeping America safe (DeBenedetti 1990; Kevles 1978; Lapp 1965; Leslie 1993). In conjunction with the direct and public attacks on the alliance between science, universities, and the war in Vietnam, antiauthoritarian challenges made scientists' claims to serve humanity increasingly implausible. It is possible that universities, professional science associations, scientists, and others might simply have ignored these protests. Yet that is not how the story unfolded.
   Anti-war activism is alive and larger than ever – social media technologies and movement miscibility allow movements to gain wider audiences and challenge US militarism broadly – now is the key time for the movement to flourish
   Vasi 06 Ion Bogdan Vasi (2006) The New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations, Social Movement Studies, 5:2, 137-153 AT
   Mobilization against war has been one of the most visible forms of collective action in recent times. Since 11 September 2001, a number of massive demonstrations for peace have brought hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets of many cities in the USA and around the world. Just during the last weekend of October 2002, more than 100,000 people participated in anti-war protests in Washington, DC, over 40,000 in San Francisco, and many others in different cities in the USA in what the media have called ‘the biggest anti-war protests since the Vietnam War’.1 Two weeks later, the peace protests in the European city of Florence were described as ‘the largest peace marches Europe has ever seen, an enormous festival of music and costumes’.2 While considerable debates exist regarding the ‘true nature’ of these protests – i.e. whether they represent a strong new peace movement or merely ‘a weak and provincial movement’3 – there is a widespread recognition of the fact that these protests express many people’s growing dissatisfaction with the prospect of war. Scholars and activists share a broad consensus that the peace movement has gone through many different cycles of protest and its mobilization has periodically waxed and waned. During the Cold War, the highest peaks in mobilization were against nuclear weapons: the test ban campaign from 1955 to 1963, and the nuclear freeze movement from 1980 to 1984 (Meyer, 1993). The mobilization for peace peaked again in mid-January 1991, when over 25,000 people per day gathered in Washington over one weekend to protest against the Gulf War, but fell sharply in the next decade, when there were virtually no mobilizations for peace. Anti-war protests reemerged in 2001: on 29 and 30 September, Washington, DC and other American cities witnessed major peace demonstrations, with estimates ranging from over 25,000 people – according to the organizers – and over 7,000 – according to the police. Smaller demonstrations of up to 5,000 people were held in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other cities across the USA. The anti-war protests from late September 2001 represent a turning point in the history of anti-war mobilization in the USA. They are crucial for understanding the new peace protests for a number of reasons. First, they were the largest protests for peace seen in the USA since the Gulf War; second, unlike many past anti-war protests, they appeared before the beginning of the armed conflicts; third, they appeared after more then a decade of constant decline in the number and strength of peace movement organizations; fourth, they took place despite the fact that the political opportunity structure was unfavorable to mobilization against war. Therefore, to explain the relative successes of the recent mobilizations for peace, I argue that it is essential to analyze the anti-war protests from the end of September 2001. Why is it that the peace movement mobilized so vigorously at a particular point in time? In other words, where did the protests against the war in Afghanistan from 29 and 30 September 2001 come from? I argue that these relatively successful mobilizations cannot be explained by any of the resource mobilization, political process, or new social movement theories of mobilization if they are applied narrowly to the peace movement. Instead, one has to develop a synthesis between these theories and focus the analysis on how trigger events and new information technologies influence ‘fluid’ or miscible mobilizations. Subsequently, I will review briefly the literature on social movement mobilization and then examine in detail the first significant anti-war protests of the twenty-first century. Traditional resource mobilization and political process theories have recognized that mobilization is shaped by a number of factors. An important factor is the presence of social movement organizations (SMOs) which offer selective incentives (Klandermans, 1984; Klandermans and Oegema, 1987) and can help turn the bystander public into adherents and adherents into constituents (McCarthy and Zald, 1977). Moreover, owing to the alliances formed between SMOs that possess organizational flexibility and ideological pluralism, movements could gain new ‘mesomobilization’ resources (Gerhards and Rucht, 1992). Another important factor is the structure of social networks, either those of individuals or those of organizations (Diani, 2003). Social networks serve a number of key functions such as socialization, structural connection and decision shaping and, although attitudinal affinity may create a ‘push’ toward a movement, movements grow fastest when they are able to recruit new members through a ‘pull’ to participation by using individuals’ social networks (Klandermans and Oegema, 1987; Friedman and McAdam, 1992; McAdam and Paulsen, 1993; Passy, 2003). Still another important factor which affects social movements’ mobilization is the structure of political opportunity. Favorable political opportunity structures could stimulate mobilization even for disorganized challengers, as in the case of 138 I. B. Vasi weak movements which benefit from a favorable political context by gaining legitimacy and protection from their influential allies (Tarrow, 1998). The ‘new social movement’ and collective identity theories have also recognized that mobilization is influenced by collective identities. Individuals are transformed into political actors when movement sympathizers construct collective identities through boundary definition, consciousness raising and symbolic negotiation (Taylor and Whittier, 1992). Yet the process of identity construction does not take place in a vacuum but in a space shaped by ‘invisible, submerged networks’, which allow multiple membership, require only part-time commitment, and depend on the affective solidarity of those who belong to them (Melucci, 1988, 1994). Collective identities are dependent on the previous existence of ‘cat-nets’ (Tilly, 1978) and social networks are the structural foundation that a social category requires in order to generate a collective identity (McAdam, 1986; Johnston, 1991; Stryker, 2000). The mobilization against war from late September 2001 cannot be explained by narrow application of the resource mobilization, political process, or new social movement theories of mobilization to the peace movement. From these perspectives, this anti-war mobilization is puzzling since it occurred despite the fact that the peace movement has been in decline for over a decade and that the political context was unfavorable for peace protests. The peace movement’s decline during the last two decades could be seen most clearly from the dissolution of its traditional SMOs. Starting from the mid-1980s, traditional peace SMOs had weakened such that by 1988 almost 60 percent of SMOs were operating in some sort of affiliate relationship and only 14 percent of all SMOs were formally organized (Edwards, 1993). Moreover, 35 percent of the peace movement organizations active in 1988 had ceased operations by 1992 (Edwards and Marullo, 1995). Despite a spike in mobilization against the Gulf War in early 1991, the movement remained weak throughout the 1990s; during this time the ‘pacifist’ collective identity had become something of a Cold War relic. That the US political context was detrimental to any form of political protests after 11 September could be observed from the changes that appeared in the structure of political opportunities. First, the peace movement lacked influential allies and there were no visible splits among the political elites. In the first weeks after the terrorist attacks, the political elites were united in their support of the war and no politicians criticized publicly the president’s declaration of ‘war on terrorism’. Second, the public overwhelmingly supported the USA’s foreign policy and the president enjoyed unprecedented popularity. For instance, 89 percent approved of President Bush’s response to the terrorist attacks, while his general approval rating was higher than his father’s during the Gulf War in 1990, and virtually the same as that of President Roosevelt after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.4 Moreover, the public mood was unfavorable to any form of protest: as one journalist observed, a serious hazard for peace protesters was that many people would find the dissenters ‘distasteful at best and traitors at worst’.5 Third, the state had an increased capacity to repress popular dissent. In the weeks following the attacks, the police had increased power to ban demonstrations and an unprecedented number of police were brought out on the streets of many American cities, especially in Washington, DC. Finally, the fact that the political opportunity structures were unfavorable to anti-war protests could be seen from the negative response of the mainstream media toward the anti-war demonstrations. Thus, at best the media ignored the demonstrations, and at worst they distorted the peace protesters’ message.6 New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations 139 Social movement scholars have recently recognized that contemporary society is a ‘movement society’, characterized by a variety of ebbing-and-flowing, wave-like mobilizations, and have urged us to develop dynamic models of mobilization (Meyer and Tarrow, 1998; McAdam et al., 2001; Rucht and Neidhardt, 2002). Some studies have documented that mobilizations are influenced by spillover effects between similar movements. Spillover effects may result from the fact that movements can influence each other through mechanisms such as organizational coalitions, overlapping communities, shared personnel and broader changes in the external environment (Meyer and Whittier, 1994). Yet it is unclear from these studies why communities overlap, when coalitions are likely to form, or which changes in the environment are likely to lead to these transformations. Moreover, the concept of spillover effects can create the false impression that movements are separated by rigid divides; indeed, the imagery of spillover evokes the flow between two or more separate containers. The spillover effect terminology suggests that a movement can temporarily increase its mobilization potential when activists and organizations from other movements spill into it but the movements remain separated from one another. I argue that contemporary mass mobilizations such as the anti-war protests can be better understood by employing the concepts of ‘miscible’ movements and mobilizations. I conceptualize miscible movements as social movements with compatible ideologies, or beliefs systems that can ‘dissolve’ in each other, and activist communities and SMOs that overlap to a considerable degree. Conversely, immiscible movements have incompatible ideologies and distinct activist communities and SMOs.7 Miscible and immiscible movements, however, are two extremes on a continuum: most movements are miscible to a certain degree. For instance, the anti-nuclear, environmental, peace and global justice movements are highly miscible since they have congruent belief systems and they share activist communities and non-profit organizations. Many of those who support the antinuclear and environmental movement, because they believe that nuclear and chemical pollution poses a serious threat to life on Earth, are also likely to support the peace and global justice movements, because they believe that wars and global injustices bring environmental destruction and human suffering. Indeed, NGOs such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are campaigning not only to protect the environment from industrial pollution but also to stop wars and prevent global social injustices.8 Yet the environmental and conservative movements have low miscibility, since they have opposing ideologies and separate activist communities and SMOs (McCright and Dunlap, 2003). Miscible mobilizations result from the simultaneous mobilization efforts of highly miscible movements, not from a single movement’s mobilization efforts. Moreover, miscible mobilizations are influenced by external processes or variations in movements’ environment that can either increase or decrease the degree of miscibility between movements.9 The degree of miscibility between movements is a function of the compatibility between their belief systems and a function of the degree of overlap between their activist communities and SMOs. Although ideologies remain relatively stable, the degree of overlap between activist communities and SMOs can fluctuate over time as a result of two main external processes. The first is the occurrence of a catalyzing or ‘trigger event’ that increases the degree of miscibility between movements by raising the salience of an issue for passive movement sympathizers and motivating them to mobilize, as well as by moving an issue to the top of SMOs’ agenda for mobilization. For instance, the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were trigger events that increased 140 I. B. Vasi the miscibility between the anti-nuclear, peace and environmental movements because they motivated many environmental and peace activists to mobilize against nuclear energy and they determined many environmental and peace movement organizations to engage in sustained anti-nuclear campaigns. A second external process that shapes miscible mobilizations is the availability of modern communication technologies. Miscible movements are likely to engage in simultaneous mobilization efforts when social movement sympathizers and activists have easy access to alternative sources of information and are easily connected to one another as well as to SMOs. This conceptualization of social movement mobilizations has a number of advantages. First, it emphasizes the fact that social movements are not rigid and clearly divided social phenomena but fluid events with various degrees of miscibility between them. Second, the examination of miscible mobilizations implies going beyond an analysis of framing processes and refocusing attention on ideologies, understood as coherent systems of ideas which provide theories of society and involve social construction processes such as educating and socializing (Oliver and Johnston, 2000).10 Third, the concept of miscible mobilizations leads us to study the mobilization efforts not only of isolated movement entrepreneurs but also of ‘critical communities’, or groups of activists that spread new ideas into the broader culture and ideology (Rochon, 1998). Finally, this concept draws attention to the fact that mobilizations are influenced by external trigger events which create new grievances and can stimulate the formation of organizational coalitions (Rochon and Meyer, 1997).11 Based on these considerations, I hypothesize that the new mobilization for peace from late September 2001 was a miscible mobilization, i.e. it was the result of simultaneous mobilization efforts of miscible movements. This miscible mobilization was shaped by two factors: trigger events, and the use of new information technologies. The threat posed by the new ‘war on terrorism’ acted as a trigger event which created grievances for movements with compatible ideologies and joint activist communities and SMOs. Since many politically involved citizens and activists from various social movements feared that the impending war in Afghanistan would contribute to a vicious circle of violence and would aggravate their concerns about various social injustices, they decided to mobilize against the perceived threat of war. Additionally, the use of new information technologies such as the Internet offered efficient resources for the rapid mobilization of activists and the development of new SMOs, despite the fact that the new war on terrorism created a political environment that was hostile to any form of dissent. To search for empirical support for this hypothesis, I conducted research during the demonstrations from 29 September 2001. The main data were collected using a survey which was administered to a sample of anti-war protesters in Freedom Plaza, Washington, DC. To insure that the sample was representative, the area of protests was divided in equal parts among six survey administrators, who first distributed randomly and then collected self-administered surveys. Though not everybody who was asked to complete a survey responded to this request, every attempt was made to reach out to the diverse population of anti-war protesters.12 The overall rate of return was relatively high, such that approximately seven out of ten people who were asked completed and returned a survey. After eliminating a few incomplete questionnaires, 299 surveys were available for final analysis. Further data were generated from participant observation and from examining the mass media articles covering the peace protests. New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations 141 Compatible Ideologies and Shared Activist Communities I use a number of indicators to measure the possibility that the late September 2001 peace protests were the result of highly miscible movements’ mobilization efforts. The first indicator is the participants’ compatibility of ideologies or congruence of belief systems. To test the congruence of attitudes and beliefs, respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with a number of statements, which were intended to measure their egalitarian and postmaterialist attitudes.13 Results showed that most of the peace protesters scored significantly higher than the general population on the scales of postmaterialism and egalitarianism. Over 97 percent of the respondents had postmaterialist values, while less than 3 percent had materialist values. Similarly, most respondents scored high on the egalitarianism index: 79 percent of them agreed with the statements about the need to reduce the world’s inequalities.14 Furthermore, correlation analysis shows that these beliefs correlate significantly and substantively ( p , 0.001; r ¼ 0.33). Given that anti-war protesters share a similar worldview, which stands in sharp contrast with the mainstream society’s beliefs and attitudes toward a number of issues such as egalitarianism and materialism, it is plausible that many of those who participated in these protests perceived war to be related to other social movements’ grievances. The available data show that many perceived the protests from late September 2001 to be directed not only against war but also as part of a general struggle for social justice. When asked about the main goals of the protests, respondents mentioned mostly promoting peace (91 percent), but also expressing their discontent with American foreign policies and the breakdown of civil rights (41 percent). As one demonstrator put it: We want to demonstrate to world media that many citizens oppose the manufactured war hysteria, blank check to the Pentagon, missile defense fantasy, the intransigence of our foreign policy, the savaging of social services and civil liberties at home, and to build a coherent coalition around progressive issues and anti-war sentiment. In addition, a number of people included protesting against racism (26 percent) and capitalism (6 percent) as a goal. Moreover, the great majority of respondents (77 percent) perceived the protests as part of multiple movements with mostly common goals; an additional minority (15 percent) considered that the protests were part of a single movement with unified goals, while only a small minority (8 percent) perceived the protests to be part of different movements with mostly different goals. The second indicator of miscible mobilization is the degree to which activist communities are shared, and was measured by asking protesters about their past involvement in various movements.15 Similar percentages of respondents said they were activists in the peace movement (33 percent) and in the social justice movement (32 percent), while the number of respondents who self-identified as activists in the global justice movement was lower (14 percent) (see Table 1). The lowest numbers of activists were those involved in the labor movement (8 percent), the anti-nuclear movement (10 percent), and gay and lesbian rights movements (13 percent), while women’s rights (23 percent) and environmental movements had somewhat higher numbers of activists (20 percent) (Table 1). A significantly higher degree of shared communities was found between the communities of sympathizers or occasional participants; thus, a majority of participants in the anti-war protests declared themselves to be sympathizers of 142 I. B. Vasi the environmental, gay and lesbian rights, and social justice movements (56 percent, 51 percent, and 50 percent, respectively). Many of the respondents also identified themselves as sympathizers of the women’s rights, peace, and global justice movements (49 percent, 48 percent, and 45 percent, respectively) (Table 1). Moreover, all respondents answered that they were sympathizers or occasional participants in more than one movement and almost 16 percent responded that they were sympathizers or occasional participants in all eight movements they were asked about. When asked about their involvement with different movement organizations, respondents indicated that they were mostly involved in peace (32 percent) and social justice (34 percent) SMOs and, to a lesser degree, in global justice organizations (23 percent) (see Table 2).16 Formal involvement was lowest for the labor and anti-nuclear organizations (12 percent and 10 percent, respectively) while involvement with women’s rights, environmental, and gay and lesbian rights SMOs was moderate (18 percent, 21 percent, and 13 percent, respectively) (Table 2). These results show a consistent pattern in which the peace movement’s communities of activists, occasional participants, and SMO personnel are shared to a considerable degree with the communities of activists and sympathizers from other movements, most notably the social justice, women’s rights, global justice, and environmental movements. Remarkably, all respondents answered that they were somewhat involved in more than one movement and almost 16 percent responded that they were involved in all eight movements they were asked about.17 The correlation analysis measuring the degree of association between general involvement in different movements shows that general Table 1. Percentage of anti-war protesters who have been involved as activists and sympathizers in different social movements in the past Activists () Sympathizers () Total () (activists and sympathizers) Social justice 32 50 82 Peace 33 48 81 Environmental 20 56 76 Women’s rights 23 49 72 Gay and lesbian rights 13 51 64 Global justice 14 45 59 Labor 8 41 49 Anti-nuclear 10 38 48 Table 2. Percentage of anti-war protesters who have been active as personnel in different SMOs SMO personnel () Social justice 34 Peace 32 Global justice 23 Environmental 21 Women’s rights 18 Gay and lesbian rights 13 Labor 12 Anti-nuclear 10 New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations 143 involvement in most movements is significantly associated ( p , 0.001) with involvement in the peace movement (see Table 3). Moreover, the degree of association between some of these movements is very strong, with the value of the Pearson correlation coefficient being 0.5 or higher. As shown in Table 3, if one is somewhat involved in the peace movement, one also has a 59 percent chance of being involved in the social justice movement, a 55 percent chance of being involved in the gay rights movements, and a 50 percent chance of being involved in the anti-nuclear or women’s rights movements. The chance of being somewhat involved in the global justice movement is lower, but nevertheless impressive: 34 percent. Consequently, it appears that the communities of occasional participants in the peace movement overlap to a considerable degree with the communities of occasional participants in other movements. The results also show that some activists were not previously involved in the peace movement. A significant percentage of peace protesters (19 percent) were neither past activists nor past sympathizers or occasional participants in the peace movement. Since all participants in the peace protests indicated that they have been involved either as activists or as occasional participants in at least one social movement, it follows that at least 19 percent of the anti-war demonstrators were totally new to the peace movement, but not to other movements. Hence, it is likely that a significant number of the participants in the September 2001 anti-war protests responded to the call for mobilization despite the fact that they were not directly involved with the peace movement, simply because they were involved to different degrees in other movements with grievances that were related to those of the peace movement. The third indicator of the probability that these anti-war protests were the consequence of miscible mobilizations comes from the data about protesters’ social networks and collective identities. Almost 80 percent of the respondents had at least one friend who accompanied them to the protests, while 26 percent had at least one colleague or coworker and 23 percent came with at least one family member. In fact, a mere 8 percent of the respondents had come alone, but it is possible that even these people had a friend or a relative who participated, even if they didn’t come together. Moreover, the majority of friends, family, coworkers and significant others were supportive of respondents’ participation in the protests against war.18 Results from the questions about collective identity show that identification with the group of protesters against the war was relatively strong: 94 percent of the protesters felt that they shared most common values with other protesters. In contrast, the perception of shared common values with other groups was significantly lower: only 68 percent felt they shared values with the people in their own country, 40 percent with national government employees, 35 percent with the police, and 23 percent with World Bank and International Monetary Fund employees. These results suggest that participants in the peace protests had multiple ties to other protesters and had Table 3. Correlation analysis predicting involvement in different movements (very and somewhat involved) Global justice Labor Environment Social justice Anti-nuclear Women Gay rights Peace 0.34* 278 0.24* 276 0.31* 278 0.59* 276 0.50* 277 0.50* 277 0.55* 275 *p , 0.001. 144 I. B. Vasi developed a relatively strong collective identity. This conclusion may seem surprising, since the peace movement had been weakened by the decline of its SMOs over the past decade. Yet it is entirely consistent with the argument that shared activist communities offer resources for mobilization even for weak movements with compatible ideologies. In other words, it is likely that the strength of social networks and collective identities are at least partially due to the fact that many of the participants in the peace protests were involved in miscible movements. Finally, additional support for the hypothesis that the anti-war protests were the result of miscible movements’ mobilization efforts comes from data about individual attributes. For instance, many of the participants in the new peace protests were extremely educated and placed themselves overwhelmingly towards the left pole of the political spectrum, which makes them more likely to become involved in a range of so-called ‘new social movements’ (Kriesi, 1989). Moreover, women were slightly more numerous than men, offering some support to the idea of a significant overlap between women’s rights and peace movements (Meyer and Whittier, 1994) and to the observation that women constitute ‘the backbone of the peace movement in America’ (Wittner, 1984, p. 5).19 Shared SMOs and the Internet Miscible movements are characterized not only by compatible ideologies and shared activist communities but also by shared SMOs. Here I examine how the anti-war protests from late September 2001 were influenced by the formation of new shared SMOs as a result of a series of trigger events and the use of the Internet. The peace movement in the USA has a long and irregular history, reflected in the cyclical growth and decline of peace SMOs. The movement developed rapidly during the first decade of the twentieth century into an affluent movement consisting of many of the country’s political, business, religious and academic leaders, organized in a few but well-funded organizations (Marchand, 1972). After the First World War, the number of peace SMOs grew rapidly from a small number of mostly conservative organizations to multiple and various organizations, such that by the 1930s the American peace movement included both conservative and radical SMOs (Wittner, 1984). Following the drastic decline in the number of peace organizations as a result of the Second World War, peace SMOs slowly multiplied during the Cold War and reached a peak of about 10,000 in the mid- 1980s (Lofland, 1993). Since then, these organizations have declined rapidly: Edwards and Marullo (1995) estimate that in the period between 1988 and 1992 the annual mortality rate of peace SMOs was approximately 9 percent. Moreover, most of these SMOs operated in some affiliate relationship and very few were formally organized (Edwards, 1993). Social movement scholars have shown that wars, or the mere perception of the threat of armed conflicts, typically create a ‘bellwether issue’ representing what activists view as the most urgent problem, which unifies a broad spectrum of groups with similar concerns (Meyer and Whittier, 1994). Thus, wars frequently act as trigger events which affect the political context by changing partisan alignment or elite allegiance and also by changing the boundaries of legitimate discourse (Meyer, 1993; Koopmans, 1999). Moreover, while peace organizations have traditionally defined their goals differently, the peace movement has always been interconnected with various social movements which aim to reduce social injustices. Peace groups from the eighteenth and nineteenth century, such as the Quaker or New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations 145 Mennonite peace churches, and organizations from the early twentieth century, such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, have advocated social justice as well as peace. More recently, during the 1980s, many local peace organizations such as the Austin Peace and Justice Coalition explicitly linked peace and anti-nuclear issues with various social inequality issues (Benford, 1993). The degree of miscibility between the peace movement and other progressive movements increased in the 1990s when, as a result of the end of the Cold War, peace movement frames became more inclusive and radical. Peace activists became socialized through their activism and developed more sophisticated analyses of the problems they tried to remedy, making more explicit linkages among issues and using the concept of social justice to connect them (Marullo et al., 1996). As former peace activists developed more radical and systemic critiques of US foreign policy, they shared SMOs which represent simultaneously the demands of various movements such as peace, social and global justice, women’s rights or gay and lesbian rights. The International Action Center, for instance, is an organization created in 1992 by radical anti-war activists which aims to ‘incorporate the demands to end racism, sexism and poverty in the U.S. with opposition to U.S. militarism and exploitative domination around the world’.20 While peace activists have moved into the economic realm, global justice activists have begun to articulate a sustained critique of the state and of its war-making tendencies. However, unlike traditional peace SMOs, global justice SMOs went through a waxing phase throughout the 1990s; since the vast majority of these SMOs are loose coalitions of grassroots organizations with a website but no headquarters, they are relatively easy to form and flourished during the last decade (Smith, 2001). Many global justice SMOs are shared by movements that have developed similar ideologies of the state and its relationship to capital. Thus, when the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in late September 2001 were cancelled, most of the global justice SMOs that were planning the anti-WB and -IMF protests chose to support either directly or indirectly the new demonstrations for peace. For instance, some shared SMOs such as the Mobilization for Global Justice canceled their plans for street demonstrations but went ahead with teach-ins on the global economy, and encouraged their individual members to join the anti-war protests. As one member of the Mobilization for Global Justice acknowledged, the issues of peace and justice are intertwined: I think the fight for global justice is not just economic, but it also deals with issues of peace and war. I think there’s a sense of breaking through the media blackout of voices that want restraint and justice instead of revenge.21 Other SMOs such as the Anti-capitalist Convergence endorsed the peace protests openly, noting that the militaristic American foreign policy is responsible to a large degree for creating the global economic inequalities that foster terrorism. For instance, the Anticapitalist Convergence’s call to protest from 19 September states: Instead of emphasizing blocks and autonomous cells, we must unite in our vision for a better world. It is for these reasons that we call for a massive march on Washington DC on September 29th where we will unite as a community and ask ‘Why? – why most of the world hates the US, why the US chooses to go to war, why there is such stark inequality and poverty in this country and others?’ 146 I. B. Vasi Finally, a number of shared SMOs formed coalitions and took an active role in organizing the peace demonstrations; for instance, activists from organizations such as International Action Center, Nicaragua Network or American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice formed a new organization called Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER). This organization had the explicit goal of coordinating new protests against the impending war in Afghanistan while maintaining the momentum of the global justice protests. According to their call to join the ANSWER coalition: On September 29, tens of thousands of people had planned to demonstrate against the Bush administration’s reactionary foreign and domestic policy and the IMF and World Bank. In light of the current crisis, with its tragic consequences for so many thousands of people, we refocused the call for our demonstration to address the immediate danger posed by increased racism and the grave threat of a new war. The terrorist attacks from 11 September acted as trigger events which imposed a new provocation for the peace movement. Moreover, by closing the opportunity to protest against the WB and IMF, these events encouraged the formation of alliances between new and old SMOs. Thus, the new ANSWER coalition joined forces with older peace and justice SMOs such as the Washington Peace Center and the American Friends Service Committee in order to organize the demonstrations and obtain permits for 29 and 30 September 2001.22 Results from our survey of peace protesters support the thesis that the organizational coalitions between shared peace and social justice SMOs contributed to the mobilization against war. For instance, when asked whether they had planned to participate in the antiIMF and WB protests programmed initially to take place on the same date in Washington, 36 percent of the respondents indicated they definitely planned to participate, and an additional 21 percent answered that they were probably planning to participate. When asked whether they had participated in previous global justice protests, 32 percent of the respondents answered that they had participated in one or more of these protests. Shared SMOs such as the ANSWER coalition played two important roles in the mobilization against war.23 The first was that of providers of resources for coordinating collective action, by obtaining legal permits for demonstrations, organizing street protests, and conducting mobilizing campaigns on the Internet. Thus, the ANSWER coalition obtained a permit for a march on 29 September from Lafayette Park to the White House and, when the police and the Secret Service banned demonstrations in these areas, ANSWER negotiated a permit for a march from Freedom Plaza to Capitol Hill. The organization also provided loudspeakers, banners (with the slogan ‘War is not the ANSWER’), and other paraphernalia necessary for street demonstrations, and led an intense mobilizing campaign before the demonstrations. One aspect of the mobilizing campaign led by these organizations which deserves to be emphasized is the fact that it was based mostly on the Internet. Without the possibility of rapid communication through the Internet, these protests could not have been organized in such a short time – in fact, the ANSWER coalition itself was formed only two weeks before the planned protests. As many organizers acknowledge, the Internet has played a major role in their mobilization campaigns; according to one of the ANSWER organizers, ‘the character of political action organizing has completely shifted since the Gulf War. Instead of a physical location like our office, the Web site has become our mobilization headquarters.’24 Results from our survey of the demonstrators support this New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations 147 assertion: 57 percent of the respondents indicated that their desire to participate in the protests was significantly influenced by the information they found on the Internet, while only 25 percent were influenced very little and 18 percent were not influenced at all. Moreover, 80 percent have used emails and websites to gather information about these protests, 52 percent have used listservs and 5 percent have used chatrooms.25 Since the mainstream media were critical or, at best, indifferent to the peace protests, the Internet worked as an alternative medium and was used widely for disseminating information and distributing calls on mobilization. As a result, SMOs could reach their sympathizers faster and form coalitions more easily, while the cost of joining any one group was decreased and multiple memberships in different SMOs was encouraged for both regular and occasional participants in social movements. Hence, due to the creation of ‘virtual protest organizations’, civic-minded individuals were encouraged to participate in multiple social movements.26 The second role played by shared SMOs is that of developers of collective action frames. For instance, ANSWER’s engagement in ‘meaning-work’ or framing was especially important in the context in which the patriotic zeal was peaking and many people considered anti-war protesters to be traitors. Unlike other wars in the past fifty years, the USA’s ‘war on terrorism’ was a response to a direct attack on its own territory; thus, the anti-war protesters faced the serious danger of being stigmatized by the mass media, ostracized by mainstream society and, consequently, of alienating their sympathizers. The peace and social justice SMOs attempted to avoid this danger by building a collective action frame that combined two key elements: pacifism and justice. The ‘peaceful justice’ frame was intended to deflect accusations of anti-patriotism by pointing out that war is not efficient in stopping terrorism since it indiscriminately punishes terrorists and civilians and further fuels anti-American resentments. Simultaneously, this frame was offering as an alternative the pursuit of justice through international justice courts and structural changes that would address the roots of the problem, namely world poverty and social injustices. Scholars have shown that innovative master frames contribute significantly to the emergence of protest cycles (Snow and Benford, 1992). In the case of the peace movement, a number of new protest cycles have emerged when SMOs were capable of developing innovative frames that challenged the dominant interpretation of American foreign policy. Throughout history the peace movement had the general goal of preventing wars; yet the peace protesters’ grievances have been framed in various ways, depending on the particular political context. Both old and more recent peace movements demanded international arbitration and a world court for solving the problems that led to war. Nevertheless, while the early peace movement was ‘uncritically nationalistic in its vision of a world order reshaped in the American image’ (Marchand, 1972), the more recent peace movement has criticized in various ways American foreign policy and the USA’s role as a world leader. Social movement scholars have pointed out that the surge in protests witnessed by the peace movement in the early 1980s was partially determined by the innovative idea of a nuclear freeze. This idea provided not only a diagnosis but also a viable prognosis for the aggressive Reaganite foreign policy posing the threat of a nuclear war (Snow and Benford, 1992). The rise of another protest cycle in the early 1990s was determined by the innovative framing of the Gulf War as a conflict over economic interests and not as ‘a morally inspired battle for the liberation of a small, innocent country from the claws of a “new Hitler”’ (Koopmans, 1999, p. 58).27 This framing was popular because it resonated with the belief system of many groups that considered that the American government is serving the interests of Big Business and not of ordinary people.28 Similarly, shared SMOs such as ANSWER developed an innovative framing of the ‘war on terrorism’ which transformed the ‘infinite justice crusade’ against fundamentalist terrorists into a militaristic campaign against people in a poor country that would negatively affect Arabs and Muslims around the world, perpetuating the vicious circle of violence.29 Yet, in contrast to the anti-Gulf War protests, the peace protests from September 2001 were centered on a frame of collective action that viewed peace protests as directed not only against the militaristic US foreign policy but also as part of a more general struggle for social justice. Results from the survey show that a significant percentage of the respondents (41 percent) considered that the main goal of the protests was to express discontent with American foreign policy and the global injustices it creates. Conclusion In late September 2001 many US cities witnessed mobilizations against war comparable in size with those against the Gulf War from 1991, despite the fact that the peace movement had weaker organizational resources and had encountered less favorable political opportunities. Since then, anti-war mobilizations have increased significantly, such that, approximately one year later, mobilizations against war registered similar numbers of participants as those from the Vietnam era. I have argued that these successful mobilizations cannot be explained without examining the role of trigger events such as the terrorist attacks on the USA and the US government’s declaration of the war on terrorism. These trigger events imposed new grievances for many politically involved citizens and, combined with the use of the Internet as a mobilization tool, acted as catalysts for what I call miscible mobilizations, or simultaneous mobilization efforts by movements with compatible ideologies and shared activist communities and SMOs. Results from a survey of the participants in the protests against the war in Afghanistan confirm that participants in these protests were involved in highly miscible movements. Indeed, it appears that many peace protesters are part of an informal network of ‘politicized individuals’ who share common goals with different movements and form a ‘progressive community’ of social movements (Taylor and Whittier, 1992; Meyer and Whittier, 1994). Similar to other wars, the impending war in Afghanistan represented a bellwether issue for activists involved in a number of movements, including social justice, women’s rights, global justice, environmental, and gay and lesbian rights.30 By using the Internet as a mobilization tool, shared SMOs were able to develop organizational coalitions and to mobilize rapidly and efficiently shared communities of activists. These results point to the need to synthesize the traditional resource mobilization, political process, and new social movement theories of mobilization and to focus further research on the fluid processes of miscible mobilizations.
   Advantage 3 is framing
   Prioritize the ethical enframing of of the plan--Preventing our slide into a deeply violent and antidemocratic state requires rethinking the role of educators as engaged citizens and public intellectuals. The judge has an ethical obligation to resist the militarization of reason.
   Giroux 13 Henry A. Giroux, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Neoliberalism’s War Against Teachers in Dark Times. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 13(6) 458– 468. © 2013 SAGE Publications Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1532708613503769 csc.sagepub.com SW 12/14/15
   The tragic deaths of 26 people shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, included 20 young children and 6 educators. All of the children were shot multiple times. Many more children might have been killed or injured had it not been for the brave and decisive actions of the teachers in the school. The mainstream media was quick to call them heroes, and there is little doubt that what they did under horrific circumstances reveals not only how important educators are in shielding children from immanent threat but also how demanding their roles have become in preparing them to negotiate a world that is becoming more precarious, more dangerous—and infinitely more divisive. In this case, teachers not only saved the lives of many young people, but they also gave their lives in doing so. Teachers are one of the most important resources a nation has for providing the skills, values, and knowledge that prepare young people for productive citizenship—but more than this, to give sanctuary to their dreams and aspirations for a future of hope, dignity, and justice. It is indeed ironic, in the unfolding nightmare in Newtown, that only in the midst of such a shocking tragedy are teachers celebrated in ways that justly acknowledge—albeit briefly and inadequately—the vital role they play every day in both protecting and educating our children. What is repressed in these jarring historical moments is that teachers have been under vicious and sustained attack by right-wing conservatives, religious fundamentalists, and centrist democrats since the beginning of the 1980s. Depicted as the new “welfare queens,” their labor and their care has been instrumentalized and infantilized (Bessie, 2011); they have been fired en masse under calls for austerity; they have seen roll backs in their pensions, and have been derided because they teach in so-called “government schools.” Public school teachers too readily and far too pervasively have been relegated to zones of humiliation and denigration.1 The importance of what teachers actually do, the crucial and highly differentiated nature of the work they perform, and their value as guardians, role models and trustees only appears in the midst of such a tragic event. If the United States is to prevent its slide into a deeply violent and antidemocratic state, it will, among other things, be required fundamentally to rethink not merely the relationship between education and democracy but also the very nature of teaching, the role of teachers as engaged citizens and public intellectuals, and the relationship between teaching and social responsibility. This essay makes one small contribution to that effort. The War Against Public School Teachers Right-wing fundamentalists and corporate ideologues are not just waging a war against the rights of unions, workers, students, women, the disabled, low income groups, and poor minorities but also against those public spheres that provide a vocabulary for connecting values, desires, identities, social relations, and institutions to the discourse of social responsibility, ethics, and democracy, if not thinking itself. Neoliberalism or unbridled free-market fundamentalism employs modes of governance, discipline, and regulation that are totalizing in their insistence that all aspects of social life be determined, shaped, and weighted through market-driven measures (Giroux, 2008; Harvey, 2005; Steger and Roy, 2010). Neoliberalism is not merely an economic doctrine that prioritizes buying and selling, makes the supermarket and mall the temples of public life, and defines the obligations of citizenship in strictly consumerist terms. It is also a mode of pedagogy and set of social arrangements that uses education to win consent, produce consumer-based notions of agency, and militarize reason in the service of war, profits, power, and violence while simultaneously instrumentalizing all forms of knowledge. The increasing militarization of reason and growing expansion of forms of militarized discipline are most visible in policies currently promoted by wealthy conservative foundations such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute along with the high profile presence and advocacy of corporate reform spokespersons such as Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee and billionaire financers such as Michael Milken (Ravitch, 2012; Saltman, 2010). As Ken Saltman, Diane Ravitch, Alex Means, and others have pointed out, wealthy billionaires such as Bill Gates are financing educational reforms that promote privatization, deprofessionalization, online classes, and high-stakes testing, while at the same time impugning the character and autonomy of teachers and the unions that support them (see Giroux, 2012; Kovacs, 2010; Means, 2013; Ravitch, 2011; Saltman, 2012). Consequently, public school teachers have become the new class of government dependent moochers and the disparaged culture of Wall Street has emerged as the only model or resource from which to develop theories of educational leadership and reform.2 The same people who gave us the economic recession of 2008, lost billions in corrupt trading practices, and sold fraudulent mortgages to millions of homeowners have ironically become sources of wisdom and insight regarding how young people should be educated. Attesting to the hard to miss fact that political culture has become an adjunct of the culture of finance, politicians at the state and federal levels, irrespective of their political affiliation, advocate reforms that amount to selling off or giving away public schools to the apostles of casino capitalism. 3 More importantly, the hysterical fury now being waged by the new educational reformists against public education exhibits no interest in modes of education that invest in an “educated public for the culture of the present and future” (Marruchi, 2006, p. 176). On the contrary, their relevance and power can be measured by the speed with which any notion of civic responsibilities is evaded. What these individuals and institutions all share is an utter disregard for public values, critical thinking, and any notion of education as a moral and political practice (Robinson, 2012). The wealthy hedge fund managers, think-tank operatives, and increasingly corrupt corporate CEOs are panicked by the possibility that teachers and public schools might provide the conditions for the cultivation of an informed and critical citizenry capable of actively and critically participating in the governance of a democratic society. In the name of educational reform, reason is gutted of its critical potential and reduced to a deadening pedagogy of memorization, teaching to the test, and classroom practices that celebrate mindless repetition and conformity. Rather than embraced as central to what it means to be an engaged and thoughtful citizen, the capacity for critical thinking, imagining, and reflection are derided as crucial pedagogical values necessary for “both the health of democracy and to the creation of a decent world culture and a robust type of global citizenship” (Nussbaum, 2009; also see, Nussbaum, 2010).

Debate about arcane legal details are crucial to the short-term survival of oppressed populations
Arkles et al 10 (Gabriel Arkles, Pooja Gehi and Elana Redfield, The Role of Lawyers in Trans Liberation: Building a Transformative Movement for Social Change, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 8 Seattle J. Soc. Just. 579, Spring / Summer, 2010)
While agenda-setting by lawyers can lead to the replication of patterns of elitism and the reinforcement of systems of oppression, we do believe that legal work is a necessary and critical way to support movements for social justice. We must recognize the limitations of the legal system and learn to use that to the advantage of the oppressed. If lawyers are going to support work that dismantles oppressive structures, we must radically rethink the roles we can play in building and supporting these movements and acknowledge that our own individual interests or even livelihood may conflict with doing radical and transformative work. n162 A. Community Organizing for Social Justice When we use the term community organizing or organizing, we refer to the activities of organizations engaging in base-building and leadership development of communities directly impacted by one or more social *612 problems and conducting direct action issue campaigns intended to make positive change related to the problem(s). In this article, we discuss community organizing in the context of progressive social change, but community-organizing strategies can also be used for conservative ends. Community organizing is a powerful means to make social change. A basic premise of organizing is that inappropriate imbalances of power in society are a central component of social injustice. In order to have social justice, power relationships must shift. In Organizing for Social Change: Midwest Academy Manual for Activists (hereinafter, "the Manual"), n163 the authors list three principles of community organizing: n164 (1) winning real, immediate, concrete improvements in people's lives; (2) giving people a sense of their own power; and (3) altering the relations of power. n165 Before any of these principles can be achieved it is necessary to have leadership by the people impacted by social problems. n166 As Rinku Sen points out: Even allies working in solidarity with affected groups cannot rival the clarity and power of the people who have the most to gain and the least to lose . . . organizations composed of people whose lives will change when a new policy is instituted tend to set goals that are harder to reach, to compromise less, and to stick out a fight longer. n167 She also notes that, "If we are to make policy proposals that are grounded in reality and would make a difference either in peoples' lives or in the debate, then we have to be in touch with the people who are at the center of such policies. n168 We believe community organizing has the potential to make fundamental social change that law reform strategies or "movements" led by lawyers cannot achieve on their own. However, community organizing is not always just and effective. Community-organizing groups are not immune to any number of problems that can impact other organizations, including internal oppressive dynamics. In fact, some strains of white, male-dominated *613 community organizing have been widely criticized as perpetuating racism and sexism. n169 Nonetheless, models of community organizing, particularly as revised by women of color and other leaders from marginalized groups, have much greater potential to address fundamental imbalances of power than law reform strategies. They also have a remarkable record of successes. Tools from community organizers can help show where other strategies can fit into a framework for social change. The authors of the Manual, for example, describe various strategies for addressing social issues and illustrate how each of them may, at least to some extent, be effective. n170 They then plot out various forms of making social change on a continuum in terms of their positioning with regard to existing social power relationships. n171 They place direct services at the end of the spectrum that is most accepting of existing power relationships and community organizing at the end of the spectrum that most challenges existing power relationships. n172 Advocacy organizations are listed in the middle, closer to community organizing than direct services. n173 The Four Pillars of Social Justice Infrastructure model, a tool of the Miami Workers Center, is somewhat more nuanced than the Manual. n174 According to this model, four "pillars" are the key to transformative social justice. n175 They are (1) the pillar of service, which addresses community needs and stabilizes community members' lives; (2) the pillar of policy, which changes policies and institutions and achieves concrete gains with benchmarks for progress; (3) the pillar of consciousness, which alters public opinion and shifts political parameters through media advocacy and popular education; and (4) the pillar of power, which achieves autonomous community power through base-building and leadership development. n176 According to the Miami Workers Center, all of these pillars are essential in making social change, but the pillar of power is most crucial in the struggle to win true liberation for all oppressed communities. n177 *614 In their estimation, our movements suffer when the pillar of power is forgotten and/or not supported by the other pillars, or when the pillars are seen as separate and independent, rather than as interconnected, indispensable aspects of the whole infrastructure that is necessary to build a just society. n178 Organizations with whom we work are generally dedicated solely to providing services, changing policies, or providing public education. Unfortunately, each of these endeavors exists separate from one another and perhaps most notably, separate from community organizing. In SRLP's vision of change, this separation is part of maintaining structural capitalism that seeks to maintain imbalances of power in our society. Without incorporating the pillar of power, service provision, policy change, and public education can never move towards real social justice. n179 B. Lawyering for Empowerment In the past few decades, a number of alternative theories have emerged that help lawyers find a place in social movements that do not replicate oppression. n180 Some of the most well-known iterations of this theme are "empowerment lawyering," "rebellious lawyering," and "community lawyering." n181 These perspectives share skepticism of the efficacy of impact litigation and traditional direct services for improving the conditions faced by poor clients and communities of color, because they do not and cannot effectively address the roots of these forms of oppression. n182 Rather, these alternative visions of lawyering center on the empowerment of community members and organizations, the elimination of the potential for dependency on lawyers and the legal system, and the collaboration between lawyers and directly impacted communities in priority setting. n183 Of the many models of alternative lawyering with the goal of social justice, we will focus on the idea of "lawyering for empowerment," generally. The goal of empowerment lawyering is to enable a group of people to gain control of the forces that affect their lives. n184 Therefore, the goal of empowerment lawyering for low-income transgender people of *615 color is to support these communities in confronting the economic and social policies that limit their life chances. Rather than merely representing poor people in court and increasing access to services, the role of the community or empowerment lawyer involves: organizing, community education, media outreach, petition drives, public demonstrations, lobbying, and shaming campaigns . . . Individuals and members of community-based organizations actively work alongside organizers and lawyers in the day-to-day strategic planning of their case or campaign. Proposed solutions--litigation or non-litigation based--are informed by the clients' knowledge and experience of the issue. n185 A classic example of the complex role of empowerment within the legal agenda setting is the question of whether to take cases that have low chances of success. The traditional approach would suggest not taking the case, or settling for limited outcomes that may not meet the client's expectations. However, when our goals shift to empowerment, our strategies change as well. If we understand that the legal system is incapable of providing a truly favorable outcome for low-income transgender clients and transgender clients of color, then winning and losing cases takes on different meanings. For example, a transgender client may choose to bring a lawsuit against prison staff who sexually assaulted her, despite limited chance of success because of the "blue wall of silence," her perceived limited credibility as a prisoner, barriers to recovery from the Prison Litigation Reform Act, and restrictions on supervisory liability in § 1983 cases. Even realizing the litigation outcome will probably be unfavorable to her, she may still develop leadership skills by rallying a broader community of people impacted by similar issues. Additionally, she may use the knowledge and energy gained through the lawsuit to change policy. If our goal is to familiarize our client with the law, to provide an opportunity for the client *616 and/or community organizers to educate the public about the issues, to help our client assess the limitations of the legal system on their own, or to play a role in a larger organizing strategy, then taking cases with little chance of achieving a legal remedy can be a useful strategy. Lawyering for empowerment means not relying solely on legal expertise for decisionmaking. It means recognizing the limitations of the legal system, and using our knowledge and expertise to help disenfranchised communities take leadership. If community organizing is the path to social justice and "organizing is about people taking a role in determining their own future and improving the quality of life not only for themselves but for everyone," then "the primary goal of empowerment lawyering is building up the community." n186 C. Sharing Information and Building Leadership A key to meaningful participation in social justice movements is access to information. Lawyers are in an especially good position to help transfer knowledge, skills, and information to disenfranchised communities--the legal system is maintained by and predicated on arcane knowledge that lacks relevance in most contexts but takes on supreme significance in courts, politics, and regulatory agencies. It is a system intentionally obscure to the uninitiated; therefore the lawyer has the opportunity to expose the workings of the system to those who seek to destroy it, dismantle it, reconfigure it, and re-envision it. As Quigley points out, the ignorance of the client enriches the lawyer's power position, and thus the transfer of the power from the lawyer to the client necessitates a sharing of information. n187 Rather than simply performing the tasks that laws require, a lawyer has the option to teach and to collaborate with clients so that they can bring power and voice back to their communities and perhaps fight against the system, become politicized, and take leadership. "This demands that the lawyer undo the secret wrappings of the legal system and share the essence of legal advocacy--doing so lessens the mystical power of the lawyer, and, in practice, enriches the advocate in the sharing and developing of rightful power." n188 Lawyers have many opportunities to share knowledge and skills as a form of leadership development. This sharing can be accomplished, for example, through highly collaborative legal representation, through community clinics, through skill-shares, or through policy or campaign meetings where the lawyer explains what they know about the existing structures and fills in gaps and questions raised by activists about the workings of legal systems. D. Helping to Meet Survival Needs SRLP sees our work as building legal services and policy change that directly supports the pillar of power. n189 Maintaining an awareness of the limitations and pitfalls of traditional legal services, we strive to provide services in a larger context and with an approach that can help support libratory work. n190 For this reason we provide direct legal services but also work toward leadership development in our communities and a deep level of support for our community-organizing allies. Our approach in this regard is to make sure our community members access and obtain all of the benefits to which they are entitled under the law, and to protect our community members as much as possible from the criminalization, discrimination, and harassment they face when attempting to live their lives. While we do not believe that the root causes keeping our clients in poverty and poor health can be addressed in this way, we also believe that our clients experience the most severe impact from state policies and practices and need and that they deserve support to survive them. n191 Until our communities are truly empowered and our systems are fundamentally changed to increase life chances and health for transgender people who are low-income and people of color, our communities are going to continue to have to navigate government agencies and organizations to survive.

Tournament: HW | Round: 1 | Opponent: Harker DS | Judge: -
Chapter 1 is Militarism:
The student anti-militarism movement is back and growing – but colleges are cracking down. Ending the crackdown is key to the survival of the movement.
SW 5 (Socialist Workers) Cracking down on student protests, International Socialist Review10-7-2005 AT
CAMPUS ADMINISTRATORS are cracking down on student activists who stand up against the presence of military recruiters at their schools. In late September, peaceful protests by students at three campuses--Holyoke Community College (HCC), George Mason University (GMU) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison--were met with police repression that denied students their right to free speech. -- At Holyoke Community College in western Massachusetts, about 30 students were conducting a peaceful picket of an Army National Guard recruiting table in the school cafeteria. The activists had been assured by campus officials that they could leaflet and chant during their picket of the recruiters. But they were attacked by campus security after a few approached the recruiters' table to inquire if their homosexuality would make them ineligible to enlist. One student, Charles Peterson, was put in a chokehold by campus officer Scott Landry--and maced. Landry, who assaulted several other students and bystanders, happens to serve as a staff advisor to the HCC College Republicans, who were enthusiastically encouraging the attack from behind the police lines. Landry then saw another activist wearing a gay and lesbian liberation button, and loudly commented to another officer, "He'll have fun in jail." The counter-recruitment demonstration was called by the HCC Anti-War Coalition (AWC), an affiliate of the Campus Antiwar Network (CAN). A diverse group of activists--black, white, Latino, gay and straight--answered the call. "I was there to speak for my brother," said one student, a member of the AWC Steering Committee. "He was wounded in Iraq...He was promised money for college and a chance to see the world. But he went to Iraq, and he wasn't the same when he came back." Rather than take action against the officers who attacked protesters, campus police threatened Peterson with arrest if he came back to campus. Though an administration official later told him that he is welcome on campus, Peterson has yet to receive any such assurance from the campus police. Peterson says he won't back down, though. "The next time the recruiters are there, I'll be on the front ranks," he said. Following a successful October 3 press conference, preparations were underway for an October 6 solidarity action organized by student antiwar activists from University of Massachusetts-Amherst. -- Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, campus police at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., used the same sort of violent tactics against student Tariq Khan, a former airman turned counter-recruitment activist. Khan, who has protested recruiters on his campus before, taped a sign to his chest that read "U.S. out of Iraq, U.S. out of Palestine, U.S. out of North America: Resist tyranny" and silently sat down in a chair several feet away from recruiters. For this modest protest, Khan was exposed to abuse and battery from campus police and other students, pushed off a stage, subjected to pain compliance, and charged with disorderly conduct and trespassing--at his own school! As right-wing students shouted epithets in his face, his sign was ripped off his chest. A former Marine who had been to Iraq told Khan to "shut up," and when Khan asked him how many people he'd killed, the Marine responded "not enough." As Khan began to make another sign, an officer told him, "You're not allowed to do that" and ordered him to leave. When Khan refused, the officer tried to arrest him. Some students repeatedly chanted "Let him go!" as Khan squirmed out of various headlocks and grips, and other students began to jump in with the police, according to several witnesses. "I am being nonviolent while they are using violence against me!" shouted Khan. After finally handcuffing Khan, police dragged him to a police car. Khan, who is half Pakistani, said he received the worst racist abuse at the police station. "You people are the most violent people in the world," he recalls one cop telling him. Another told him not to mouth off in jail because they "will hang you from the ceiling by your feet," a veiled allusion to prisoner torture at Guantánamo Bay. -- At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 25 people mobilized to confront military recruiters at a career fair on one day's notice last week. But the police and administration were intent on preventing the protest from taking place. Ten cops were already inside, and building managers distributed a copy of the administrative code for protests in UW buildings to protesters on their arrival. But this code didn't seem to matter much, since the protesters weren't violating any part of it--they weren't preventing the event from taking place, blocking the recruiters' tables, using signs with sticks, or blocking entrances and exits. Police refused to give protesters any justification for their imminent arrest, and after some time, the protesters decided to move outside and began chanting and handing out leaflets for another hour. With enlistment slumping, military officials are increasingly desperate to find potential recruits. As of September 30, the military had fallen some 7,000 recruits short of its goal for fiscal year 2005--and the National Guard and Army Reserve did even worse. Military officials predict that meeting the coming year's goal will be even more difficult. "I think there's been a big shift in U.S. politics over the last few months," said Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a student at New York University and member of the Campus Antiwar Network. "The resurgence of the antiwar movement--especially among students who are focusing on counter-recruitment--promises to erect even more barriers to filling the ranks of the military. The antiwar movement has gone from feeling like an embattled minority to feeling like the majority we are. "But we're running up against college administrations that don't want to lose control of the campuses. And they may be facing pressure from a government that's seeing the Army in its worst recruiting slump since 1979--and telling administrators that they need to do whatever it takes to guarantee their success on campuses. "Last semester, there were cases of repression against counter-recruiters, and some of them sparked defense campaigns that were successful and showed the administration that they couldn't get away with repressing student protests. This time, what's amazing is how quickly the schools seemed prepared to deal with the protesters and how happy they were to collude with right-wing students who were singling out individual protesters. "But now we have the successes of last spring to draw on, so HCC and GMU students can have a connection to City College of New York and San Francisco State students who won. Most importantly, the whole student antiwar movement is growing and becoming more confident, and that means the HCC and GMU students have a more powerful movement that's got their back."
In attempt to stifle the anti-war movement, the militarized state has cracked down on resistance to militarism – free speech zones criminalize and marginalize political protests into media spectacles incapable of effectuating change – policing tactics reinforce the violent logic of pre-emption that underlies global warfare
Elmer 8 (Greg Elmer, associate professor of communication and culture at Ryerson University, PhD in communication from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, director of the Infoscape Research Lab at Ryerson University, Andy Opel, associate professor of communication at Florida State University, PhD in mass communication from the University of North Carolina, member of the International Communication Association, November 2008, “Preempting Dissent: The Politics of an Inevitable Future,” pages 29-41)
SHORTLY AFTER THE LARGE-SCALE PROTESTS against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in late November 1999, police, law enforcement agencies, the military, and global weapons manufacturers began to rethink their responses to public protests. Since the Seattle protests, similar semi—annual gatherings of government officials and corporate trade lawyers have consistently attracted large public protests, organized by public-interests groups denied participation in the decision-making process of trade agreements such as the Global Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Wide—scale protests were seen in Prague, Genoa, Cancun, Quebec City, Miami, and, most recently, Mar Del Plata, Argentina. Moreover, as we will see in this chapter, as the size and sophistication of resistance grew, so too did political and legal responses to that resistance. Responses to such protests have been greatly influenced by military and so—called ‘homeland’ security strategies enacted after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the initiation of the controversial second Gulf War. As we see in this chapter, the combination of a changing political climate in response to war and terrorism, particularly the expansion of preemptive forms of social control and political containment, has resulted in a new set of practices that have reconfigured public space and criminalized multiple aspects of free speech and public assembly in the United States. This chapter argues that in the shadow of 9/11, the war in Iraq, and the ongoing “War on Terror,” a disturbing form of geopolitical apartheid has emerged in the United States. At the core of this trend is a set of micro-political strategies and technologies that attempt to contain spaces of dissent and detain protestors (Boghosian, 2004). Some activists and critics have labeled these anti-democratic tendencies the “Miami Model,” after the strategies deployed in November 2003 against Free Trade of the Americas protestors by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies stationed in Miami. The Miami model of law enforcement was characterized by 1) the deployment of overwhelming numbers of law enforcement officers, 2) preemptive arrests of peaceful and law—abiding protestors, and 3) widespread police surveillance techniques before, during, and after protests (Getzan, 2004). And while these three pillars—overwhelming force, preemptive arrests, and surveillance—-provide a good overview of police and law enforcement strategies, in this chapter we focus on the manner in which spaces of dissent, debate, and democracy are being regulated and policed through the courts, going into more depth in the next chapter, through a study of the introduction of weapons meant to easily contain and detain protestors and, more broadly, immobilize dissent. Of greater concern is the degree to which such strategies systematically marginalize dissent, spatially and politically speaking. From the creation of “free speech zones” and the proposal for protest free “Pedestrian Safety Zones”2° to the political screening of participants in political “town hall meetings,” space has increasingly become a tool to limit open debate, freedom of speech, and political dissent in the US. Part of our interest in exposing the strategies of political segregation, first through the containment of protest spaces, and second, through the deployment of preemptive hand-held weapons, is theoretical. The segregation of deviance has often been influenced by Foucaultian theories of panopticism and social control. An increasing number of scholars, however, are arguing that Foucault’s panoptic prison, even deployed in metaphorical terms, has been overextended, particularly when considering broader geographic perspectives (Haggerty and Ericson, 2000; Elmer, 2004). Many scholars arguing that panopticism must move beyond architectures or institutions of social control, do so in large part to theorize emerging technological, “virtual,” or simulated forms of surveillance and discipline (e.g., Bogard; Gandy). While we find such arguments to be productive, they typically juxtapose their ideas against corporeal surveillance and monitoring of the past. Human surveillance and policing factors, conversely, play a key role in monitoring political organizing activities and training, peaceful protests, and acts of civil disobedience (Boghosian, 2004, p. 29). Moreover, Foucault’s metaphorical use of a penitentiary as the historical trope or dispositif for social discipline, reformation, and self-actualization, while providing a broad conceptual framework for a dispersed theory of self-discipline, control, and conformity, has little to say about that which escapes conformity, namely public protest, civil disobedience, and other forms of social and political dissent. Under the constant gaze of social mores and values, Foucault’s subjects are implored to change and police their own behaviour. The proliferation of surveillance technologies (such as closed-circuit TV, CCTV), preemptive policing, programs that attempt to anticipate future social and geopolitical risks (Elmer Opel, 2006), and the presumption of guilt instead of innocence, are in part a response to past intelligence failures. The inability to gain adequate and up-to-date intelligence on domestic and international risks in the US, UK, Iraq, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, etc., continues to highlight the limits and shortcomings of surveillance programs and intelligence—gathering techniques. The recognition of decentred and distributed network infrastructures and relationships among protesters, migrants, and terrorists in the US and elsewhere, has similarly stretched conventional thinking about the structure and deployment of surveillance programs and technologies. In short, members of such feared networks are not typically considered panoptic subjects, that is to say, they are not clients, candidates, or inmates in need of reform, or self-discipline. Rather, it is argued that such networked subjects have become increasingly influenced by strategic and indefinite forms of containment and detainment. Didier Bigo’s (2006) extension of Foucault’s theories of social control provides a helpful point of departure. While Bigo shares the goal of extending theories of social and political control outside of the prison and other social institutions, he maintains an interest in the social control of populations, specifically through the mobility, capture, and detainment of specific populations. By introducing the concept of the “ban-opticon,” Bigo succeeds in moving outside the panoptic walls of punishment, to question the optics and governmentality of indefinite detainment, a questionable spatial and legal tactic used in the “War on Terror” and with migrant communities. Such detainees, be they in Guantanamo Bay or in immigrant holding centres in the EU and elsewhere, have no intention of turning their subjects into law-abiding, productive citizens (Miller, 1993), rather their goal is both to remove individuals from war, or to merely return them to their previous location—to ban them. In both cases, individuals are immobilized and excluded from participating in war and/ or entering Western societies. Although political protestors produce a different set of challenges from domestic law enforcement and forces of political control in the US—primarily their visibility in the media as increased evidence of opposition to the political status quo—they are similarly immobilized, contained, and in some cases detained without charge. Such detainments, further, in many instances are not subject to punishment (fines, etc.); rather, they are increasingly used to preemptively, and temporarily remove protestors from public spaces until the conclusion of protests (Boghosian, 2004, p. 29). The operationalization of preemptive tactics in the US further highlights the limitations of Foucault’s decentred model of power, in which sovereignty is manifest through dispersed disciplinary technologies. Strategies of political containment and detainment, spatially and individually speaking, are in large part enabled by what Giorgio Agamben (2005) refers to as the “state of exception,” the “no one’sman’s land between public law and political fact” (p. 1). Ironically, while conservatives in the US continue to argue against a “living constitution,” where interpretations over the nation’s law change over time,21 the Bush administration actively sought to reinterpret executive powers during the so-called War on Terror. Following Agamben, Didier Bigo (2006) argues that such interpretations are enacted through explicit declarations by political rulers, a declaration that invokes an exception to the rule of law. Broadly construed, the US administration continues to invoke the War on Terror to blur the line between law and politics. In defence of the secret wiretapping program, the Bush administration has argued that an exception to the rule of law was enacted by the legislation, giving the president preemptive powers to carry out surveillance. Similar arguments have been made in the UK, Canada, and France. The Boston Globe and other media in the US also reported about the growing use of “signing statements” by the US president, as a means to state his exception to the new law. For example, after the signing of US Senator John McCain’s anti—torture bill in the January 2006, the president declared that “The executive branch shall construe the law in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President as Commander in Chief.” He also added that this interpretation “will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President ... of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks” (Savage, 2004). Of course, many American laws that govern executive power, public debate, and, as we see next, dissent and protest in public space, are so broadly written that they practically cultivate political exceptionalism. For example, as an adjunct to debates over the US Patriot Act, the “spatial tactics” of law enforcement have recently produced a series of controversial rulings about the accessibility of public spaces for the purposes of political protest. Thus, at a time when public advocates and intellectuals have reinforced the importance of understanding the democratic and political aspects of various geographies——most notably innovative and tolerant ones (Florida, 2003) and environmentally sustainable ones (Gore, 2007)—the American legal system continues to downplay or altogether avoid spatial considerations in First Amendment cases. Timothy Zick (2005), for example, argues that “The reason courts fail to properly scrutinize spatial tactics is that they have accepted the common conception of place as mere res—a neutral thing, an undifferentiated mass, a backdrop for expressive scenes” (p. 3). Results of this legal conception of place as a “neutral thing” include the protest zones (some resembling cages”) established at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions during the summer of 2004 as well as the now routine practice of keeping protestors many blocks and often miles away from free trade, WTO, or GATT meetings. Later in the same year the G8 summit was held on the tiny (private) Sea Island, just off the coast near Savannah, Georgia, a choice that made it nearly impossible——given the security noose around the island——to stage a meaningful and visible protest. In South Carolina, the well-known activist Brett Bursey gained nationwide attention for a series of attempts to protest against President Bush at Republican Party organized rallies, the last of which, in 2004, resulted in his arrest and conviction under a statute that enables the Secret Security to establish a security perimeter or zone around the president. Mirroring Zick’s argument about the court’s treatment of space as an objective or neutral equation in contemporary politics, an aide to the former South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, was quoted on National Public Radio as saying that: The statute under which Mr. Bursey’s been charged alleges that he failed to vacate an area that had been cordoned off for a visit by the president of the United States. It is a content—neutral statute, and Mr. Bursey is charged not because of what he was doing but because of where he was doing it. The US statute in question—-USC 18: 1 752(a)(l)(ii), “Temporary residences and offices of the President and others”—while not a new, post-9/11 law, nevertheless raises obvious questions and concerns about its use as a political tool for spatially and politically marginalizing dissent. The law in effect establishes a temporary “residence” for the president as he goes about his business across the country. The law forbids groups or individuals from entering or remaining with an area (defined as “building,” “grounds,” or “any posted, cordoned off. . .” area where the president is visiting).24 Moreover, the law does not apply universally, only to those who intend “to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions.” Interestingly, in the course of preparing Bursey’s defence, lawyers were able to gain access to the Secret Service’s policy manual on protests. The South Carolina Progressive Network subsequently used the document to highlight the means by which the Bush administration was interpreting the above mentioned law to segregate protestors away from the president’s supporters and the media. Moreover, The Progressive Network also maintained that while the law did give the Secret Service the power to cordon off access to the president, “There is no limitation to the size of the restricted area.” Furthermore, “In the Bursey case, the restricted area was approximately 70 acres and stretched for a mile.”25 With no spatial limits on the separation of protestors from the US president, political marginalization becomes a distinct possibility. The spatial segregation of speakers according to the content of their messages all too easily bifurcates voices and perspectives into “two sides,” mirroring the dominant red/ blue political culture of the US. Thus in the absence of political leaders, protests, and, perhaps more importantly, acts of civil disobedience, lose their publicity, all too often becoming marginalized spectacles distanced from the machinations of political parties, candidates, and government. Zick put it this way: “In these places, protests and demonstrations become staged events, bland and neutered substitutions for the passionate and, yes, sometimes chaotic face-to—face confrontations that have characterized our country’s past” (Zick, 2005, p. 45). The process of segregating public space according to political message and turning public gatherings into “staged events” is contrasted with the actual political strategy of the staged event or “town hall meeting,” where pre-screened publics appear to ask government officials “authentic” questions, a practice that has many online examples as well.26 This illusion of public participation is another quality of the spatial turn in free speech politics where city streets are cordoned off to become de facto “stages” for media cameras. By literally separating the demonstrators from the object of their demonstration, the protest zone becomes “a way of controlling the content of the debate without really acknowledging that is what is being done” (Mitchell, 2003, p. 39). In addition to creating media frames and stages, protest zoning also facilitates preemptive police tactics, placing all potential protestors in one location in the name of security. Fencing in protestors or zoning them away from a given site implies a threat or danger that requires preemptive zoning, thus “assuming guilt until innocence is proven” (Mitchell, 2003, p. 39). Mitchell refers to this zoning as the “ghettoization” of protest; we prefer the South African analogy of an apartheid as more accurate. Whereas a ghetto is often viewed as the result of low-income people clustered together out of necessity and a lack of resources, apartheid was an explicit legal and spatial strategy that segregated settlements and produced a second-class citizenry. Parallels can be drawn to the state of liberal democracy in the United States, where protestors and political dissidents are legally restrained and contained outside of the so-called mainstream political stage. Yet, as we will see in the next chapter, preemptive arrests, facilitated by segregationist spatial tactics and exceptionalist forms of governmentality, often move beyond the realm of the panoptic to the violent repressive use of weaponry, what are creatively termed “less-lethal technologies.” As we shall see, many new crowd control technologies have incorporated decidedly preemptive logics that explicitly reinforce our belief that the preemptive doctrine is as much about controlling behaviours and seeking broader political compliance as it is a technique for reducing actual risks and dangers.
Colleges are the missing link in the expanding counter-movement to militarism – campus anti-war activism has failed to materialize, but is necessary to support broader global movements and turn the tide against the culture of US militarism
Harding and Kershner 11 (Scott Harding School of Social Work, University of Connecticut; and Seth Kershner, Simmons College) “Just say No”: Organizing Against Militarism in Public Schools” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare Vol. 38  Iss. 2 (2011) AT
Discussion Counter-recruitment demands that its activists perform the same sorts of functions normally associated with community organizing. Our analysis illustrates the following implications for CRM strategy: (1) CRs must avoid taking an overtly anti-war position, stressing instead the anti-militarism of the movement. To do otherwise and frame CR as a form of opposition to particular wars runs the risk of alienating key community leaders whose support may be needed to build future coalitions; (2) While the CRM is explicitly inclusive, in that it is multi-generational and multiracial, CR organizing paradoxically needs at the same time to be somewhat exclusive in recruiting activists. Not everyone can be a community organizer, and those who lack good interpersonal skills and a feel for the political will fail to advance the movement’s goals; and (3) Given the long-term dimension of this work, CRs would do well to focus their efforts on achieving some of the goals 100 Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare identified by Friesen (2010). With the possible exception of Arlene Inouye, none of these examples of counter-recruitment sought to organize around all five of the goals at once. Indeed, one of the counter-recruiters in this study compared his role in fighting the Goliath of American militarism to the plucky determination of the American bull terrier highlighted in James Thurber’s short story, “Snapshot of a Dog.” “You pick a bit, you become an expert in it, and you don’t let go” (Pat Elder, personal communication, May 12, 2010). Counter-recruitment organizing starts with recruiting allies to build effective local coalitions. The examples of CR analyzed in this study demonstrate that the best allies are typically school stakeholders: parents and teachers. With a coalition firmly in place, these groups seek to clarify goals and objectives. Counter-recruiters do this by framing their coalition’s public message in non-threatening, inclusive language. The activists we interviewed all agree that an anti-war or antimilitary message will end up alienating the coalition from the community whose support it needs to survive. If these groups cannot transmit their finely-honed message to enough people, or to those they want to target, counter-recruiters then try to utilize alternative media outlets. The counter-recruiters profiled here lobby policy-makers and relevant public officials when they want to see concrete (policy) change. They get on the phone, write letters, and reach out to local places of worship to influence decisions. As another means of advocacy, counter-recruiters may get themselves seated on committees. If none exist they may start the process to create one so that there will be some forum to address the concerns of their coalition. And finally, if their coalition isn’t getting a chance to be heard, and if those in power won’t let them be heard because they are ignoring a law, counter-recruiters first try and cajole them or convince them to come to their senses. And, if all else fails, they litigate. Current counter-recruitment strategy can be summarized in three key phrases: anti-militarist, long term, and inclusive. CR strategy is anti-militarist, not simply anti-war. It is aimed at countering that part of U.S. culture which promotes violence and war as the optimal response to conflict. Anti-militarism is seen by movement organizers as a way to keep the movement viable for the long-term. One lesson CRs must learn from the Vietnam war is that to focus on individual issues (a specific war) and tactics (like draft resistance) may result in sacrificing long-term relevance for short-term goals (Jahnkow, 2006a). Counter-recruitment is thus a means of resisting not just one war, but the larger culture of militarism whose survival depends in part on young people’s passive acceptance of military values and ideals. CR strategy is also focused on a long-term vision of incremental gains. If the CRM had a symbol, it would surely be the tortoise. As the anti-ASVAB campaigns in Maryland and San Diego attest, when activists win, it may be only be one local school district. Thus, as the movement goes forward, activist victories will be measured by the “summation of a series of small, incremental struggles” (Theberge, 2005, p. 16). For CR strategist Rick Jahnkow, “people have to be operating from a very long-term perspective and be willing to accept that you might not achieve real measurable and visible victories quickly, that it requires time, it requires dedication” (personal communication, May 27, 2010). Finally, CR strategy is inclusive in that it is a multi-generational, multiracial movement and needs to be to remain a credible force for change in the communities most heavily targeted by military recruiters. However, there are obstacles to keeping the movement inclusive. Older CRs often have trouble working with the co-leadership of younger, high-school-age CRs. This reluctance reflects an authoritarian thread of movement culture and must be addressed for a truly multigenerational movement to flourish (Jahnkow, personal communication, May 27, 2010). Further, despite its success, CR has trouble attracting attention and respect from the broader peace movement, a problem which will ensure that the counter-recruitment movement remains under-resourced in terms of volunteer recruitment and fundraising. Interestingly, Rick Jahnkow (2009) identified class divisions as a barrier to greater (movement) solidarity: peace activists “generally come from a more affluent part of society than those who are targeted by recruiters.” As a result, Those of us who have been doing this work have sometimes felt that the struggle to educate the peace movement about the social injustice dimensions of this problem has been just as frustrating at times as trying to break through the pro-military biases of school officials. (p. 2) As important, CR activists recognize the ways that public policy serves to reinforce a culture of militarism. At over sixhundred pages, the mammoth No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 is the best-known example of such legislation. Section 9528 of the bill requires all U.S. high schools to provide the Pentagon with contact information for their students or face the loss of federal education funding. That directive was added in the final hour “by a Louisiana congressman who was offended that some high schools chose to protect their students’ privacy by not giving out student information to military recruiters” (Anderson, 2009, p. 275). Parents and students can still “opt out” of having their private information rendered to military recruiters. Indeed, as shown, counter-recruitment organizers have increased the number of students who opt out every year by, for example, lobbying school districts to send opt-out forms home for parents to sign. While such efforts surely make a difference, the lack of an opt-out provision on the national level means that CR successes will retain the limited impact of local campaigns. But even if CRs and their allies were to gain repeal of Section 9528 of NCLB, it would probably fail to have the desired effect. When it comes to collecting the kind of student information most helpful to military recruiters, the Pentagon is hardly dependent on NCLB; it can and does get private student information from elsewhere. Other, lesser-known pieces of legislation (e.g., the National Defense Authorization Act of 2002) give military recruiters practically the same level of access as NCLB (Anderson, 2009). Although the legislative outlook may be bleak—Congress remains staunchly pro-military and the repeal of NCLB is unlikely—the counter-recruitment movement has to exploit what little advantage it has within the existing legal framework. For example, Section 9528 of NCLB not only includes the mandate noted above, it also requires that military recruiters be given the same level of student access enjoyed by other types of recruiters. An example of what the CRM could do Organizing Against Militarism in Public Schools 103 with this “equal access” provision is provided by the students of Watervliet High School in New York State. Fed up with the military recruiters who stalked the school cafeterias almost on a daily basis, Watervliet students and their adult allies successfully lobbied their local school board to pass a policy limiting visits by all types of recruiters to one per month (Geurin, 2009). As their example shows, there is a growing recognition that effective counter-recruitment can be done even when schools are forced to open their doors to military recruiters. Regardless of tensions with the broader peace movement, and despite legislative obstacles that make it difficult to eliminate militarism in schools, since the 1980s counter-recruiters have scored significant victories. Project YANO’s successful use of litigation as a tactic won the equal access rights critical to counter-recruitment in schools. And as the military devised new methods of securing the private information of students, CRs joined outraged parents and teachers in launching a counter-attack. Organizers like Pat Elder and Arlene Inouye have also successfully used legislative tactics at the state and school district levels. Charting the ways in which the CRM achieves its victories represents an important contribution to the social sciences literature, which until now has all but ignored the counter-recruitment movement. Conclusion Counter-recruitment has been criticized for its narrow focus and lack of engagement with the larger aims of U.S. militarism abroad and structural inequality at home (Tannock, 2005). Nonetheless, though it only has limited support from some national peace organizations, properly understood, CR remains a viable method of addressing U.S. foreign policy and a culture of militarism. In what amounts to a division of labor among antiwar activists, Travieso (2008) identified counter-recruitment as one of three strategic interests to develop out of the U.S. peace movement following the invasion of Iraq (along with targeting multi-national corporations like Halliburton, and lobbying members of Congress to cut off war funding.) Ultimately, he suggested, this “professionalization” of strategy represents a marked improvement over the non-hierarchical and largely ineffective peace movement represented in the 104 Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare run-up to the war in Iraq. Where does this leave the future of counter-recruitment? In terms of scholarship, academics and others concerned with the impacts of increased militarism should consider work on this and related topics. Ironically, colleges are being pushed to roll out the welcome mat to the armed forces and increase the university presence of ROTC nationwide (Lewin and Hartocollis, 2010; Nelson, 2010). Instead of uncritically accepting a military presence on campus, colleges and those who teach in them could more effectively confront American militarism through focused research and vigorous public debate. In spite of stereotypes about American universities as bastions of radicalism, these institutions and those working inside their ivy-covered walls have failed to adequately grapple with the reality of U.S. militarism. The time to turn the tide is now. With Pentagon spending at record levels, the occupation of Afghanistan in its tenth year, a long-term American military presence in Iraq likely, and military operations expanding in places like Yemen and Pakistan, the stakes could not be higher. If colleges are to be more than mere incubators of military values, scholars—social scientists in particular—must critically examine America’s culture of militarism and its domestic and global impacts. Research on counter-recruitment as one aspect of peace activism offers such an opportunity. Despite the utility of Friesen’s (2010) study, for example, larger sample sizes are needed to better assess the similarities and differences among groups engaged in counter-recruitment organizing. Evaluation of the success of counter-recruitment is also needed. Field research and in-depth case studies could help explain the strengths and limitations of CR, along with its relationship to other forms of peace activism. NNOMY supports a directory of nearly 150 U.S.-based groups engaged in some type of counter-recruitment and demilitarization work. Absent a national magazine or information source devoted to counter-recruitment, this presents a vital opportunity for scholars and others to follow such activism. The study of international counter-recruitment efforts offers another line of inquiry, given the lack of such research. In countries with a military situation similar to the United States (no draft, an all volunteer army), there is little evidence of counter-recruitment organizing per se. Instead, we do see a growing interest in the issue of military recruitment and youth militarism in places like the United Kingdom, where Scottish parliamentarian Christine Grahame has criticized the Army for making visits (often uninvited) to elementary schools, high schools and even preschools (Johnson, 2010). In Spain, Canada, and Italy, activists have gone beyond an idle interest in this issue; they have spontaneously organized counter-recruitment events in their schools, colleges and communities. From the limited information on international CR-related activities we draw two conclusions. First, the United States is the only country with a well-organized network of counterrecruitment groups. Outside U.S. borders the most obvious examples are demonstrations targeting military recruitment kiosks (in Spain and Canada) or against groups perceived to be promoting or profiting from youth militarism (Italy) (Alacant, 2010; Denomme, 2005; Micci, 2010). Second, we suggest that these limited international efforts underscore that the American model of recruiting for the military is uniquely dependent upon the schools. While these countries are similar to the United States by virtue of their reliance on all-volunteer forces, only two (Spain and Italy) ended conscription within the last ten years. More research is needed to determine the extent to which a military recruiter presence in schools grows in proportion to the length of time without conscription. It is interesting, in this regard, to note a possible correlation. Only the United Kingdom has had a longer period without conscription (since 1963) than the United States. Today the UK’s school recruitment program is just as robust as the U.S. model. The armed forces seek recruits starting at age 16; army visits to schools are also an integral part of the program. As opportunities for transnational peace organizing increase, counter-recruitment may emerge as an essential activity in other countries. Trends in key western states indicate a shift away from conscription, and toward all-volunteer, professional armies. At the same time, military forces from NATO countries are increasingly being called upon to support U.S. foreign policy goals—which often means sending troops into combat in Afghanistan or other neo-imperial outposts. This suggests an opportunity for counter-recruiters in the United States to collaborate with European peace movements with the aim of promoting CR as a viable anti-war organizing strategy. For U.S. activists, outreach efforts could be as simple as monitoring peace movements outside the United States. They could also involve leading workshops on counter-recruitment at international peace conferences or writing guest editorials on blogs and in magazines read by the European peace community. Regional networks of counter-recruitment activists organizing their own conferences will likely assume a greater role in the future; as an example, we note the contingent of Micronesian counter-recruiters that grew out of the 2009 International Network of Women Against Militarism conference in Guam (Kershner, 2010). Promoting dialogue on issues of mutual concern thus offers the potential to build a CR network in other countries and regions within established peace and anti-war organizations. If successful, such efforts will not only build bridges of understanding between U.S. activists and their international allies, they will also bolster global defenses against militarism at a time of increasingly global war.
It’s try or die for the global resistance – a brutal eruption of warfare and fascistic violence will soon engulf the globe – but the conditions are ripe for an equally powerful opposition movement to prevent global catastrophe
Socialist Equality Party (Uk) 16 (Socialist Equality Party (Uk), ) For A New Socialist Movement Against Militarism, Austerity And War, International Committee Of The Fourth International 11-14-2016 AT

1. The Third National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (UK) endorses the February 18, 2016 statement of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), “Socialism and the Fight Against War: Build an International Movement of the Working Class and Youth Against Imperialism!” 2. A quarter century has passed since the apologists for capitalism hailed the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 as the “end of history” and the final victory of the free market and liberal democracy. Instead, the drive to establish a new world order has succeeded only in creating global disorder: a series of unending wars; entire countries devastated; millions killed, maimed and/or turned into refugees; the re-emergence of fascistic tendencies and the pursuit of brutal class war policies in an “age of austerity.” 3. Far more rapidly than most people are aware, US imperialism is preparing a direct military confrontation with its geopolitical rivals. At a “Future of the Army” panel in Washington this October, Army Chief of Staff General Mark A. Milley declared that war between nation states “is almost guaranteed... Our army and our nation must be ready.” The Atlantic Council think tank urges preparations by the US to fight “major and deadly” wars between “great powers,” identified as Russia and China, entailing “high levels of death and destruction” and the possibility of “a nuclear exchange.” 4. Plans for a major military escalation in Syria are integral to Washington’s offensive to secure hegemony over the Eurasian land mass. Realising this geo-strategic goal demands the dismemberment of Russia and its reduction to semi-colonial status, while the US “pivot to Asia” is aimed at encircling and neutralising China as an economic rival. Consequently, the entire world has become a tinderbox. With 60 nations presently involved, the Syrian civil war threatens to become the flashpoint for a broader conflagration in the Middle East. At the same time, NATO forces have advanced to the very borders of Russia, while the Far East is an arena for military confrontation between both regional and imperialist powers, such as Japan and Australia. Washington’s showering of strategic favours on India so as to harness it to its anti-China pivot has overturned South Asia’s “balance of terror” and greatly exacerbated tensions between India and Pakistan—the rival, nuclear-armed states created by the 1947 communal partition of the subcontinent. 5. The US is at the forefront of this eruption of militarism, but the same tendencies are present in every country. Britain’s June 23 vote to leave the European Union (EU) is a turning point in the resurgence of national tensions that are tearing Europe apart, heralding intensified trade war measures and militarism. Every one of the major European powers is participating in the conflict in Syria, each with their own competing national objectives. All the relations that have existed in Europe since the Second World War have been thrown into question. Whether the UK’s “special relationship” with the US can endure, whether Germany will be content to accept a US hegemony that runs counter to its own interests, and the exact line-up of relations between the major powers on the continent is yet to be determined. But, however events unfold, what is certain is that a new world war is inevitable without the independent intervention of the international working class. 6. The drive to war emerges as a result of the intractable crisis of capitalism as a world system. The fundamental contradiction between the globalisation of production and the capitalist nation state system, based on private ownership of the means of production and class exploitation, is fuelling social and political discontent, destabilising traditional mechanisms of rule, throwing bourgeois politics into a state of upheaval and flux, and preparing a global catastrophe. This danger is made all the more immediate by the deepening crisis of the capitalist profit system, which is the source of war. 7. All efforts to overcome the financial meltdown of 2008—through bank bailouts and austerity—have not only failed, they have sharpened class tensions and prepared the way for a new economic crash. According to the International Monetary Fund, total global debt now stands at $ 152 trillion, equivalent to 225 percent of world GDP—the largest debt bubble in the history of humanity. The quantitative easing programmes employed by the US Federal Reserve Board, Bank of England, European Central Bank and Bank of Japan have overwhelmingly benefited the super-rich. The balance sheets of the world’s central banks have risen from $6 trillion in 2007 to $21 trillion today. The collapse of this debt bubble will send entire economies into meltdown. 8. It is in preparation for this that the bourgeoisie is attempting to effect a political readjustment: a pre-emptive strike against what it fears above all—a unified struggle by the international working class that challenges its rule. In the United States, the fascistic demagogue and real estate billionaire Donald Trump was able to win the presidential election under conditions where his Democratic Party challenger, Hilary Clinton—the favourite of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex—arrogantly dismissed social concerns in favour of the promotion of reactionary racial and sexual politics and attacks on Trump from the right for his stated opposition to waging war on Russia. In Europe, the elevation of fascistic and xenophobic parties such as the National Front in France is accompanied by the promotion of forces such as Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain as a supposed “left” alternative. 9. Among workers and youth there exists a powerful desire for peace and social equality that finds no organised expression. The building of a conscious anti-war movement requires that the working class develop a scientific understanding of the objective roots of the crisis, based on a precise assessment of the economic and class interests that are driving the policies of their “own” bourgeoisie and its rivals. Only then will the working class be able to delineate its independent class interests, in solidarity with its class brothers and sisters the world over, in irreconcilable opposition to the bourgeoisie’s promotion of “national unity” as the ideological basis for war. Brexit and the promotion of nationalism 10. This is the fundamental lesson to be drawn from the June referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. The crisis of the global economy following 2008 exacerbated divisions within the ruling elite between those who viewed EU membership as vital to projecting their economic and political interests and those for whom EU moves towards greater integration, under German domination, threatened the City of London and its ability to exploit the new centres of economic growth such as China. It was in a bid to placate anti-EU sentiment in the Conservative Party and counter the growth of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) that then-Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to a referendum on EU membership. The aim was to exploit anti-EU and anti-immigrant rhetoric to channel social discontent in a rightward direction and force concessions from the EU that would block plans for closer economic and political union. Oblivious to the alienation of millions from the existing institutions, the ruling class was shocked when its arguments for a Remain vote—based on warnings of financial collapse and economic insecurity—had little traction among those who felt they had nothing to lose. 11. Through its call for an active boycott of the referendum, the Socialist Equality Party was alone in advancing an independent political perspective for the working class. Based on a sober evaluation of the balance of class forces and the lessons of history, especially of Germany in the 1930s, its starting point was to define a policy that upheld the interests not only of workers in Britain, but in Europe and internationally. Explaining that both the Remain and Leave camps were equally hostile to the working class, the SEP made clear its irreconcilable opposition to the EU as an instrument of the major powers in imposing austerity, in facilitating the attack on immigrants through its Fortress Europe policy, and in backing militarism across the continent. But it rejected any support for a Leave campaign dominated by right-wing xenophobes and Thatcherites for whom “national sovereignty” was a banner for trade war, based on deepening the offensive against working people. 12. Crucially, the SEP warned that the referendum was the most advanced expression of the failure of the post-Second World War project of European unification through which the “ruling elites had sought to resolve the fundamental contradiction that had twice in the 20th century plunged the continent into war—between the integrated character of European and global production and the division of the continent into antagonistic nation states… But unity within the framework of capitalism could never mean anything other than the domination of the most powerful nations and corporations over the continent and its peoples. Rather than national and social antagonisms being alleviated, they have taken on malignant forms.” The SEP stressed, “The EU is breaking apart and cannot be revived. It is only through the creation of the United Socialist States of Europe, established as an integral component of a world federation of socialist states, that the vast productive forces of the continent can be utilised for the benefit of all.” 13. Underscoring these dangers, the referendum campaign saw an unprecedented intervention of the Armed Forces and the security services, MI5 and MI6. Both sides proclaimed their commitment to NATO and its offensive against Russia and China: The Remain camp argued that British EU membership strengthened NATO, while the Leave camp declared that plans to create a European Army would undermine the US-led alliance. Cameron described EU membership as essential to combating a “newly belligerent Russia,” marshalling the support of senior military and security chiefs as well as US President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and five ex-NATO secretaries-general. Obama warned that UK membership was vital in keeping the “EU open, outward looking, and closely linked to its allies on the other side of the Atlantic,” ensuring that NATO meets its “overseas commitments from Afghanistan to the Aegean,” and to “reassure allies who are rightly concerned about Russian aggression.” The campaign for a UK exit was backed by a dozen former senior military officers, with Major General Julian Thompson, who led the 1982 Falkland Islands/Malvinas war, describing the EU as a security threat because it includes “many members who cannot be trusted due to their close relationship with Russia.” 14. The principled approach taken by the SEP delineated a genuinely socialist, internationalist standpoint from both the pseudo-left apologists for the EU such as Left Unity, who joined Labour and the trade unions in supporting Remain, and the “Left Leave” advocates of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and Socialist Party (SP). The SEP stressed, “The biggest political danger in this situation is the mixing of class banners on the basis of the espousal of a supposedly ‘left nationalism.’” The politically criminal character of this policy was made clear by George Galloway, who appeared alongside UKIP leader Nigel Farage to call on the left and right to “march together.” As the SEP stated, the advocates of Left Leave “are wholly indifferent to the actual forces being strengthened by the Leave campaign. In reality, they are subordinating the working class to an initiative aimed at shifting political life even further along a nationalist trajectory, thereby strengthening and emboldening the far right in the UK and across Europe, while weakening the political defences of the working class. Having helped release the genie of British nationalism, they are politically responsible for its consequences.” Brexit unleashes a carnival of reaction 15. This warning was prophetic. The narrow 52 percent vote in favour of Leave has been seized on by the most right-wing sections of the Tory Party as an opportunity to complete the Thatcherite social counterrevolution. Cameron was replaced by Theresa May, who campaigned to remain in the EU but has since come forward as a strident advocate of a “hard-Brexit.” Echoing the spurious claims of the “Left Leave” pseudo-left, she has described the result as a rebellion by “ordinary, working class people” against the “international elites,” and is using it as the basis for invoking “patriotism” and whipping up British nationalism. Her government has adopted the policies of UKIP in all essentials, including calls to phase out the employment of foreign doctors and nurses in the National Health Service and other vicious anti-immigrant measures. The collapse in sterling has been welcomed by these right-wing pyromaniacs as a means of further slashing living standards. A comment in the London Evening Standard gave an indication of their agenda when insisting, “Brexit means this: Work Harder.” “Ironically, we all will have to learn to be more like immigrants now... If we want British jobs for British workers we are going to have to stop being choosy.” 16. Opposition to Brexit continues to enjoy the support of powerful sections of Britain’s ruling class, as well as the US. A minority position within the Tories—the desire to ameliorate or, if possible, overturn the referendum result—unites the majority of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, Scottish National Party (SNP), Plaid Cymru (Party of Wales) and the Greens. Concerted efforts, backed by legal action, are being made to create the basis for parliament to vote down any agreement triggering Article 50 (which begins the UK’s formal exit from the EU) and/or force a second referendum or a general election. The formation of a “progressive” pro-EU alliance or even a new party is also being discussed. 17. This has been given additional weight by the reigniting of a constitutional crisis that threatens the break-up of the UK. Only two years after the defeat of the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, the SNP administration has said it will hold a second referendum in the event of a hard-Brexit, and is seeking an alliance with various parties in the devolved administrations of Wales and Northern Ireland to block or limit exit from the EU. Sectarian conflict is also threatened in Ireland. Northern Ireland voted by 56 percent to remain in the EU. The Democratic Unionist Party favours Brexit and the smaller Ulster Unionist Party, which opposed it, says it will defend the all-UK vote. But Sinn Fein, the Social Democratic and Labour Party and the Alliance Party all support remaining in the EU and are uniting with the Republic of Ireland government in voicing concern over its economic impact and the possibility that a hard border will be reinstated between the north and south. This would also undermine the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and raise the issue of Ireland’s partition once again, over which a civil war and decades of violent conflict have taken place within the past century. 18. The real measure of this “progressive alliance” is its encouraging of divisions in the working class, so long as access to the Single European Market for Britain’s corporations and banks is preserved. Their denunciations of pro-Brexit voters as a “mob” and the anti-democratic character of attempts to overturn the referendum drive threaten to drive sections of workers into the arms of UKIP and other right-wing elements. Moreover, political success for this bourgeois faction would do nothing to lessen the dangers posed to the working class by nationalist reaction and militarism. There can be no turning back the clock to a supposed “golden age” of European unity. 19. In their attempts to prevent the growth of anti-EU sentiment in other countries, the major powers have threatened to punish Britain for its vote—warning that exit from the bloc means losing access to the Single Market. This has been accompanied by a stepping up of plans by the major European powers for the formation of a European Army and the build-up of its internal security forces. According to policy papers drawn up by Germany, France and Italy, the proposed army must be able to “act autonomously if and when necessary” all over the world. 20. The issue, however, is who will command such a force. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has declared that Germany is “too big merely to comment on world affairs from the side-lines.” But Berlin’s efforts to assert its hegemony over the continent will only intensify the disintegration of the EU into competing power blocks, North, South and East. Germany is seen as the natural focus of an alliance of the Benelux, Nordic and Baltic countries. France is flirting with leadership of a southern bloc that includes Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus and Malta as a counterweight to German hegemony, while an eastern bloc centres on Hungary and Poland. 21. What unites the bourgeoisie in Britain with its European counterparts is their agreement on the brutal repression of migrants, the whipping up of anti-Muslim sentiment, strengthening police-state measures at home, and imperialist war abroad. Obscene arguments over who is responsible for sheltering the victims of Western aggression who have been forced to flee their homes and attempt the often-fatal passage to Europe are an occasion for portraying Islam as an existential threat to European civilisation, based on invocations of Christianity or the secular ideals of the Enlightenment. Far right parties have formed governments in East European countries such as Hungary and Poland, while in Western Europe the hard-right Austrian Freedom Party could yet take the presidency. The Alternative for Germany party has adopted an anti-Islamic manifesto for next year’s German elections, and in France, the National Front of Marine Le Pen is almost certain to go through to the second round in May’s presidential election. Europe’s official parties—whether nominally conservative or social democratic—in turn utilise the growth of the far right to shift their own politics in the same direction. A resurgence of British imperialist militarism 22. In a bid to contain intractable social, political and economic problems for which it has no progressive solution, Britain’s ruling elite is being driven on a path to war. Even more so than in the past, the bourgeoisie hopes to secure its interests by manipulating international tensions and playing rival powers against one another. Such a balancing act cannot be sustained. The May government’s decision to proceed with Chinese involvement in the building of the Hinkley Point nuclear reactor in England follows on from the UK’s pioneering role in the Beijing-inspired Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. But closer economic relations with China and other rising powers, as a means of counteracting the decline of British capitalism, are incompatible with the UK’s historic dependence on the US. 23. This is especially the case under conditions in which the vote to leave the EU has severely undermined the UK’s use-value to Washington and therefore its continued ability to punch above its weight on the world arena. The prospect of Germany consolidating its domination of Europe following the UK’s withdrawal led to Robert D. Kaplan, an influential member of the US foreign policy establishment and architect of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, warning in the Wall Street Journal, “The returning geopolitical chaos is akin, in some respects, to the 1930s… Brexit has undermined a key goal of British geopolitics going back hundreds of years: preventing any one power from dominating the Continent. Yet now Germany is empowered to do just that. Germany could strike a separate bargain with Russia or turn inward toward populist nationalism. Great Britain should reinvigorate its alliance with America. Acting together, the two nations can still project power on the European mainland up to the gates of Russia.” 24. The UK is already playing a lead role in ratcheting up tensions with Russia and is in open conflict with Germany and France over plans for a European Army, seeking to use its position as the fifth largest nuclear power in the world, and the second largest contributor to NATO’s budget, to provide it with leverage. But its nuclear capability is only operable with US technology and warheads, while the new Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales aircraft carriers, the largest ever built in the UK, will be platforms for US-built F-35 stealth fighters and Apache helicopter gunships. Britain’s alliance with the US means it will be drawn inexorably even further into military conflicts anywhere in the world. In Europe, it places it in the front line of the US build-up against Moscow, raising the prospect of a confrontation with Germany and the re-opening of the fault-lines that led to two world wars. 25. The ever-expanding burden of this upsurge in militarism will be borne by the working class. In 2016, the government increased military spending for the first time in six years, to a projected £39.7 billion in 2020/21. This does not include the cost of Trident’s renewal, the final cost of which is expected to reach £205 billion—almost two years’ spending on the National Health Service. This is only a beginning. In a letter to Defence Minister Michael Fallon, retiring General Sir Richard Barons called for a massive rearmament of Britain’s military capabilities, complaining, “neither the UK homeland nor a deployed force... could be protected from a concerted Russian air effort.” The pro-imperialist politics of the pseudo-left 26. The Brexit referendum confirmed the pseudo-left groups as bourgeois tendencies. In its aftermath, the pro-Remain supporters of Another Europe is Possible are lining up behind demands for parliament to reassert its authority over the terms of Brexit and have taken part, alongside the Liberal Democrats and others, in pro-EU demonstrations. For its part, the Socialist Party calls for a campaign to ensure a “socialist, internationalist Brexit” based on support for a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government. But the most degenerate expression of the integration of the pseudo-left into the mechanisms of capitalist rule is their support for militarism and war. There is nothing to distinguish their writings on these issues from that of their imperialist governments. Gilbert Achcar, a member of Socialist Resistance, spoke for a broad section of the pseudo-left groups in a recent attack on the US-Russian ceasefire in Syria. Achcar urged the arming of the pro-Western opposition groups with anti-aircraft missiles and other weapons. 27. The Stop the War Coalition (STWC) does not represent an alternative to the militarist politics of the pseudo-left. An alliance of Counterfire (a break-off from the SWP) with the Communist Party of Britain, it promotes the fatal illusion that the fight against war can be conducted outside of and separate from the class struggle. On this basis, it combines petty-bourgeois pacifist appeals with an anti-American, rather than an anti-imperialist, perspective. Its convenor, Lindsey German, has declared, “We’ve said for some years that one of our aims as a movement should be to break Britain from following the US in every step of its foreign policy.” In 2003, the STWC subordinated the mass protests against the invasion of Iraq to appeals to the United Nations, France and Germany to oppose Washington. Today, the CPB distinguishes itself in being openly pro-Assad and in portraying Russia as a bulwark against both US imperialism and ISIS-inspired terrorism. 28. The SEP rejects the designation by the pseudo-left groups of Russia and China as imperialist states. This false characterisation, torn out of all historical context, is a key means through which they seek to legitimise US and European aggression aimed at subordinating these regions to their direct control. However, our rejection of this designation implies no support for the right-wing capitalist regimes in Moscow and Beijing. The reintroduction of capitalism in both countries was carried out by the Stalinist bureaucracy. It was the end product of a social and economic counterrevolution that began with the repudiation of the perspective of world socialist revolution and the destruction of Lenin’s Bolshevik party in a series of bloody purges targeting above all Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition. 29. Representing the interests of a parasitic layer of oligarchs, neither the Russian nor Chinese bourgeoisie have any genuine independence from imperialism and are entirely incapable of principled opposition to the machinations of the US and Europe. Both their diplomatic manoeuvres and military interventions are aimed at securing an accommodation with imperialism—safeguarding their own ability to continue the brutal exploitation of the working class—that is the defining feature of these societies. The admirers of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, their armed forces and nuclear arsenals only disorient the working class, prevent its independent mobilisation and prepare the way for a catastrophic war. 30. The rightward lurch of the pseudo-left is not the product of mistaken ideas or the rotten politics of one or another individual. Such a broad political shift into the camp of imperialism has profound social roots. In 1999, David North, international editorial board chairman of the World Socialist Web Site, wrote: “The objective modus operandi and social implications of the protracted stock market boom have enabled imperialism to recruit from among sections of the upper-middle class a new and devoted constituency. The reactionary, conformist and cynical intellectual climate that prevails in the United States and Europe—promoted by the media and adapted to by a largely servile and corrupted academic community—reflects the social outlook of a highly privileged stratum of the population that is not in the least interested in encouraging a critical examination of the economic and political bases of its newly-acquired riches.” A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global Hegemony 1990-2016 31. The 2007/08 financial crisis, the plundering of societal wealth to bail out the banks and the super-rich, which in turn is dependent on military aggression abroad and austerity at home, has only served to cement the loyalty of the pseudo-left to imperialism. These groups speak for privileged sections of the middle class that want a bigger share of the wealth of the top 10 percent and more influence and power within the corporate elite, the trade union apparatus and the state. The ICFI as the revolutionary centre of opposition to militarism and war 32. Against all forms of middle-class, pseudo-left politics, the Socialist Equality Party bases its perspective on the central and leading role of the working class. The working class must adopt its own strategy to counter the efforts of the imperialist powers to save the capitalist order through war. It must follow not the map of imperialist nation-state geopolitics, but the map of the class struggle—basing its strategy on the unification and mobilisation of its forces internationally for social revolution. 33. The objective conditions for such a struggle are rapidly emerging. The same global crisis that drives the bourgeoisie to impose savage austerity, a turn to authoritarian forms of rule and the re-division of the planet and its resources through military force, also creates the conditions of an eruption of the class struggle. But for this to become a conscious political offensive against the capitalist class and its state machinery demands the building of the International Committee of the Fourth International as the revolutionary, global centre of opposition to imperialist war. 34. The ICFI takes responsibility for building a mass anti-war movement based on four essential precepts: The struggle against war must be based on the working class, the great revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it all progressive elements in the population. The new anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist, since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and the economic system that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war. The new anti-war movement must therefore, of necessity, be completely and unequivocally independent of, and hostile to, all political parties and organisations of the capitalist class. The new anti-war movement must, above all, be international, mobilising the vast power of the working class in a unified global struggle against imperialism. The permanent war of the bourgeoisie must be answered with the perspective of permanent revolution by the working class, the strategic goal of which is the abolition of the nation-state system and the establishment of a world socialist federation. This will make possible the rational, planned development of global resources and, on this basis, the eradication of poverty and the raising of human culture to new heights.
   Independently – Militarism requires dissent to be suppressed in colleges and universities to be criminalized – it is part and parcel of the state’s dissemination militarization of education and society at large
   Godrej 14 Neoliberalism, Militarization, and the Price of Dissent:  Policing Protest at the University of California Godrej Farah. Edited by Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 2014. AS
   I have offered here a particular window into the ways in which the interests, mechanisms, and operations of both the university system and the neoliberal state are aligned with those of private capital. Of course, that the academy is made to strategically ally with capital as a key piece of neoliberal consolidation should not surprise us. Rather, what is worth noting, I have argued here, is the necessity of the linkages between disinvestment in public education, militarization, and the criminalization of dissent. These necessary linkages demonstrate this volume’s premise that the university is an institution embedded in the hierarchies and inequalities of U.S. racial, gender, and class politics and shed light on the confluence of military and industrial interests as they appear within the U.S. university. I have sought also to emphasize the systematicity and multilayered complexity of this phenomenon. That is, the various pieces of this picture necessarily go together, as rhetoric, law, bureaucracy, and the force of arms all combine effectively to produce the desired end. The neoliberal logic entailed in the privatization of the University of California is, I have argued, necessarily interlinked with the logic of militarization and the criminalization of dissent, because it employs a militarized enforcement strategy, coupled with a political rhetoric that criminalizes the specific behaviors involved in protest and dissent against these strategies. The militarization of the university campus is thus not simply a reflection of the increasing militarization of American law enforcement based on the logic of ongoing threats to public safety encoded in years of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.25 Rather, such militarization is one prong of a necessary enforcement strategy designed to convey that dissent against privatization is meant to be costly in inflicting various forms of legitimized violence upon those who dissent. The second prong of the enforcement strategy also conveys that dissenters will pay a high price by being criminalized, either through rhetoric that paints them as violent and therefore marginal, unworthy, and undesirable in the public imagination or through legal machinations that force them to expend tremendous financial resources on extricating themselves from prosecution. The language of cost and price here, of course, reminds us of the ongoing hegemony— and perhaps victory— of the conceptual frameworks of neoliberalism and its theoretical accompaniments, such as rational choice theory, predominantly featured in neoclassical economics. These strategies of criminalization and militarization rest on sending signals to adversaries, encoded precisely in these languages, wherein value and worth are measured in terms of indicators such as price or cost, and rational actors are assumed to be guided by a universally comprehensible incentive structure. Thus the strategies of criminalization and militarization rest on deincentivizing dissent, so to speak, assuming that dissenters will measure the costs inherent in their actions and choose rationally to cease from engaging in such dissent. The continued insistence on dissent is therefore resistance to the logic of neoliberal privatization on multiple levels: it not only calls out the complicity of the university with the neoliberal state and the forces of private capital but also continues to dissent despite the “incentives” offered in exchange for desisting from dissent. And in so doing, it should be signaling its rejection not simply of privatization but of the entire conceptual baggage of neoliberalism, including its logics of rational choice, cost, price, and incentive, as well as its logic of structural violence. In other words, the ongoing struggle against the logic of neoliberal privatization requires that dissent continue, despite its high “price.”
   Thus, I advocate that public colleges and universities ought not restrict any constitutionally protected free speech.
   Chapter 2 is Solvency:
   Student protest on campuses specifically allows for the instigation of dissent and questioning of the Military Industrial Complex within the departments in the University that fuel the war—Vietnam War proves
   Tilly et. al. Marco Giugni, Doug McAdam, Charles Tilly. (1999). How Social Movements Matter. University of Minnesota Press. AS
   The Anti-Vietnam War Movement and Science Although the United States had been involved in fighting nationalist Vietnamese forces on behalf of France as early as 1954, American involvement took a decidedly large step in 1965, when President Johnson took action on the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, dramatically increasing the bombing of North Vietnam. Unlike the earlier "ban the bomb" movement, which had been led mainly by professionals, some scientists, and a handful of pacifists, protest against American involvement in Vietnam was led by students (DeBenedetti 1990). Science was not an early target of campus-based protesters organized against the war, but it became so as a coincidence of student protests that not only took place on college campuses but were increasingly directed against universities themselves, which were seen as full partners in facilitating the war in Vietnam. It is a truism that people tend to protest against the nearest objects, and the military-science alliance on college campuses was quite visible. For many students it was no great leap to begin to ask questions about the relationship between universities and the "military-industrial complex" that Dwight Eisenhower had identified in 1958. There were also more ideological and intellectual reasons for attacking universities and their faculty: members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), who on many campuses acted as leaders of antiwar protest, took seriously the work of Frankfurt school philosopher Herbert Marcuse, who argued that repression in capitalist societies was located not only in the overt actions of the police and courts but in the very institutions, languages, and cultures of a given society (Ehrenreich and Ehrenreich 1969: 34—35). Increasingly, students targeted military recruitment programs and research laboratories that received funding for research that was ultimately used by American troops in Vietnam. Between 1965 and 1970 on at least eleven major college campuses,6 military-supported research buildings and laboratories were sites of antiwar protest and were associated with some of the most dramatic events of the period: the 1970 bombing of the Army Math Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, which killed a researcher; the 1970 Kent State University killings; and the 1968 sit-in at Columbia University. In each of these cases, protesters directed their actions against the physical representations of the alliances between universities and the military, usually Department-of-Defense-sponsored laboratories and programs. At Kent State as early as 1968, student protest was directed against the Liquid Crystals Institute, which developed motion detectors used in Vietnam (Heineman 1993: 37) and at Stanford, against the Stanford Research Institute, which was created explicitly to attract defense contracts and upon which Stanford was economically dependent, though the institute was nominally separate from Stanford University. At Columbia University, the 1968 campus occupation was sparked mainly by Columbia's association with the Institute for Defense Analysis, which poured millions of defense dollars into scientific research on campus. Similarly, the bombing of Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin in 1970 was motivated by anger toward the university's alliance with the military (Bates 1992; DeBenedetti 1990; Heineman 1993). More generally, protesters considered the war foolish, cruel, and stupid, perpetuated by authorities—including scientists—who were out of touch with citizens. The main charge against scientists was that they had failed to take responsibility for using scientific knowledge and goods for socially useful, rather than deadly and destructive, ends. The attack on science and technology was so widespread that at a White House ceremony for the National Medal of Science Award, President Johnson was compelled to defend scientists: "An aggrieved public does not draw the fine line between 'good' science and 'bad' technology. . . . You and I know that Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster. But it would be well to remember that the people of the village, angered by the monster, marched against the doctor" (qtd. in Kevles 1978: 400). This larger questioning of authority placed scientists directly in the line of fire, since they had earlier laid claim to status based on political authority and on their role in keeping America safe (DeBenedetti 1990; Kevles 1978; Lapp 1965; Leslie 1993). In conjunction with the direct and public attacks on the alliance between science, universities, and the war in Vietnam, antiauthoritarian challenges made scientists' claims to serve humanity increasingly implausible. It is possible that universities, professional science associations, scientists, and others might simply have ignored these protests. Yet that is not how the story unfolded. 

Anti-war activism is alive and larger than ever – social media technologies and movement miscibility allow movements to gain wider audiences and challenge US militarism broadly – now is the key time for the movement to flourish
Vasi 06 Ion Bogdan Vasi (2006) The New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations, Social Movement Studies, 5:2, 137-153 AT
Mobilization against war has been one of the most visible forms of collective action in recent times. Since 11 September 2001, a number of massive demonstrations for peace have brought hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets of many cities in the USA and around the world. Just during the last weekend of October 2002, more than 100,000 people participated in anti-war protests in Washington, DC, over 40,000 in San Francisco, and many others in different cities in the USA in what the media have called ‘the biggest anti-war protests since the Vietnam War’.1 Two weeks later, the peace protests in the European city of Florence were described as ‘the largest peace marches Europe has ever seen, an enormous festival of music and costumes’.2 While considerable debates exist regarding the ‘true nature’ of these protests – i.e. whether they represent a strong new peace movement or merely ‘a weak and provincial movement’3 – there is a widespread recognition of the fact that these protests express many people’s growing dissatisfaction with the prospect of war. Scholars and activists share a broad consensus that the peace movement has gone through many different cycles of protest and its mobilization has periodically waxed and waned. During the Cold War, the highest peaks in mobilization were against nuclear weapons: the test ban campaign from 1955 to 1963, and the nuclear freeze movement from 1980 to 1984 (Meyer, 1993). The mobilization for peace peaked again in mid-January 1991, when over 25,000 people per day gathered in Washington over one weekend to protest against the Gulf War, but fell sharply in the next decade, when there were virtually no mobilizations for peace. Anti-war protests reemerged in 2001: on 29 and 30 September, Washington, DC and other American cities witnessed major peace demonstrations, with estimates ranging from over 25,000 people – according to the organizers – and over 7,000 – according to the police. Smaller demonstrations of up to 5,000 people were held in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other cities across the USA. The anti-war protests from late September 2001 represent a turning point in the history of anti-war mobilization in the USA. They are crucial for understanding the new peace protests for a number of reasons. First, they were the largest protests for peace seen in the USA since the Gulf War; second, unlike many past anti-war protests, they appeared before the beginning of the armed conflicts; third, they appeared after more then a decade of constant decline in the number and strength of peace movement organizations; fourth, they took place despite the fact that the political opportunity structure was unfavorable to mobilization against war. Therefore, to explain the relative successes of the recent mobilizations for peace, I argue that it is essential to analyze the anti-war protests from the end of September 2001. Why is it that the peace movement mobilized so vigorously at a particular point in time? In other words, where did the protests against the war in Afghanistan from 29 and 30 September 2001 come from? I argue that these relatively successful mobilizations cannot be explained by any of the resource mobilization, political process, or new social movement theories of mobilization if they are applied narrowly to the peace movement. Instead, one has to develop a synthesis between these theories and focus the analysis on how trigger events and new information technologies influence ‘fluid’ or miscible mobilizations. Subsequently, I will review briefly the literature on social movement mobilization and then examine in detail the first significant anti-war protests of the twenty-first century. Traditional resource mobilization and political process theories have recognized that mobilization is shaped by a number of factors. An important factor is the presence of social movement organizations (SMOs) which offer selective incentives (Klandermans, 1984; Klandermans and Oegema, 1987) and can help turn the bystander public into adherents and adherents into constituents (McCarthy and Zald, 1977). Moreover, owing to the alliances formed between SMOs that possess organizational flexibility and ideological pluralism, movements could gain new ‘mesomobilization’ resources (Gerhards and Rucht, 1992). Another important factor is the structure of social networks, either those of individuals or those of organizations (Diani, 2003). Social networks serve a number of key functions such as socialization, structural connection and decision shaping and, although attitudinal affinity may create a ‘push’ toward a movement, movements grow fastest when they are able to recruit new members through a ‘pull’ to participation by using individuals’ social networks (Klandermans and Oegema, 1987; Friedman and McAdam, 1992; McAdam and Paulsen, 1993; Passy, 2003). Still another important factor which affects social movements’ mobilization is the structure of political opportunity. Favorable political opportunity structures could stimulate mobilization even for disorganized challengers, as in the case of 138 I. B. Vasi weak movements which benefit from a favorable political context by gaining legitimacy and protection from their influential allies (Tarrow, 1998). The ‘new social movement’ and collective identity theories have also recognized that mobilization is influenced by collective identities. Individuals are transformed into political actors when movement sympathizers construct collective identities through boundary definition, consciousness raising and symbolic negotiation (Taylor and Whittier, 1992). Yet the process of identity construction does not take place in a vacuum but in a space shaped by ‘invisible, submerged networks’, which allow multiple membership, require only part-time commitment, and depend on the affective solidarity of those who belong to them (Melucci, 1988, 1994). Collective identities are dependent on the previous existence of ‘cat-nets’ (Tilly, 1978) and social networks are the structural foundation that a social category requires in order to generate a collective identity (McAdam, 1986; Johnston, 1991; Stryker, 2000). The mobilization against war from late September 2001 cannot be explained by narrow application of the resource mobilization, political process, or new social movement theories of mobilization to the peace movement. From these perspectives, this anti-war mobilization is puzzling since it occurred despite the fact that the peace movement has been in decline for over a decade and that the political context was unfavorable for peace protests. The peace movement’s decline during the last two decades could be seen most clearly from the dissolution of its traditional SMOs. Starting from the mid-1980s, traditional peace SMOs had weakened such that by 1988 almost 60 percent of SMOs were operating in some sort of affiliate relationship and only 14 percent of all SMOs were formally organized (Edwards, 1993). Moreover, 35 percent of the peace movement organizations active in 1988 had ceased operations by 1992 (Edwards and Marullo, 1995). Despite a spike in mobilization against the Gulf War in early 1991, the movement remained weak throughout the 1990s; during this time the ‘pacifist’ collective identity had become something of a Cold War relic. That the US political context was detrimental to any form of political protests after 11 September could be observed from the changes that appeared in the structure of political opportunities. First, the peace movement lacked influential allies and there were no visible splits among the political elites. In the first weeks after the terrorist attacks, the political elites were united in their support of the war and no politicians criticized publicly the president’s declaration of ‘war on terrorism’. Second, the public overwhelmingly supported the USA’s foreign policy and the president enjoyed unprecedented popularity. For instance, 89 percent approved of President Bush’s response to the terrorist attacks, while his general approval rating was higher than his father’s during the Gulf War in 1990, and virtually the same as that of President Roosevelt after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.4 Moreover, the public mood was unfavorable to any form of protest: as one journalist observed, a serious hazard for peace protesters was that many people would find the dissenters ‘distasteful at best and traitors at worst’.5 Third, the state had an increased capacity to repress popular dissent. In the weeks following the attacks, the police had increased power to ban demonstrations and an unprecedented number of police were brought out on the streets of many American cities, especially in Washington, DC. Finally, the fact that the political opportunity structures were unfavorable to anti-war protests could be seen from the negative response of the mainstream media toward the anti-war demonstrations. Thus, at best the media ignored the demonstrations, and at worst they distorted the peace protesters’ message.6 New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations 139 Social movement scholars have recently recognized that contemporary society is a ‘movement society’, characterized by a variety of ebbing-and-flowing, wave-like mobilizations, and have urged us to develop dynamic models of mobilization (Meyer and Tarrow, 1998; McAdam et al., 2001; Rucht and Neidhardt, 2002). Some studies have documented that mobilizations are influenced by spillover effects between similar movements. Spillover effects may result from the fact that movements can influence each other through mechanisms such as organizational coalitions, overlapping communities, shared personnel and broader changes in the external environment (Meyer and Whittier, 1994). Yet it is unclear from these studies why communities overlap, when coalitions are likely to form, or which changes in the environment are likely to lead to these transformations. Moreover, the concept of spillover effects can create the false impression that movements are separated by rigid divides; indeed, the imagery of spillover evokes the flow between two or more separate containers. The spillover effect terminology suggests that a movement can temporarily increase its mobilization potential when activists and organizations from other movements spill into it but the movements remain separated from one another. I argue that contemporary mass mobilizations such as the anti-war protests can be better understood by employing the concepts of ‘miscible’ movements and mobilizations. I conceptualize miscible movements as social movements with compatible ideologies, or beliefs systems that can ‘dissolve’ in each other, and activist communities and SMOs that overlap to a considerable degree. Conversely, immiscible movements have incompatible ideologies and distinct activist communities and SMOs.7 Miscible and immiscible movements, however, are two extremes on a continuum: most movements are miscible to a certain degree. For instance, the anti-nuclear, environmental, peace and global justice movements are highly miscible since they have congruent belief systems and they share activist communities and non-profit organizations. Many of those who support the antinuclear and environmental movement, because they believe that nuclear and chemical pollution poses a serious threat to life on Earth, are also likely to support the peace and global justice movements, because they believe that wars and global injustices bring environmental destruction and human suffering. Indeed, NGOs such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are campaigning not only to protect the environment from industrial pollution but also to stop wars and prevent global social injustices.8 Yet the environmental and conservative movements have low miscibility, since they have opposing ideologies and separate activist communities and SMOs (McCright and Dunlap, 2003). Miscible mobilizations result from the simultaneous mobilization efforts of highly miscible movements, not from a single movement’s mobilization efforts. Moreover, miscible mobilizations are influenced by external processes or variations in movements’ environment that can either increase or decrease the degree of miscibility between movements.9 The degree of miscibility between movements is a function of the compatibility between their belief systems and a function of the degree of overlap between their activist communities and SMOs. Although ideologies remain relatively stable, the degree of overlap between activist communities and SMOs can fluctuate over time as a result of two main external processes. The first is the occurrence of a catalyzing or ‘trigger event’ that increases the degree of miscibility between movements by raising the salience of an issue for passive movement sympathizers and motivating them to mobilize, as well as by moving an issue to the top of SMOs’ agenda for mobilization. For instance, the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were trigger events that increased 140 I. B. Vasi the miscibility between the anti-nuclear, peace and environmental movements because they motivated many environmental and peace activists to mobilize against nuclear energy and they determined many environmental and peace movement organizations to engage in sustained anti-nuclear campaigns. A second external process that shapes miscible mobilizations is the availability of modern communication technologies. Miscible movements are likely to engage in simultaneous mobilization efforts when social movement sympathizers and activists have easy access to alternative sources of information and are easily connected to one another as well as to SMOs. This conceptualization of social movement mobilizations has a number of advantages. First, it emphasizes the fact that social movements are not rigid and clearly divided social phenomena but fluid events with various degrees of miscibility between them. Second, the examination of miscible mobilizations implies going beyond an analysis of framing processes and refocusing attention on ideologies, understood as coherent systems of ideas which provide theories of society and involve social construction processes such as educating and socializing (Oliver and Johnston, 2000).10 Third, the concept of miscible mobilizations leads us to study the mobilization efforts not only of isolated movement entrepreneurs but also of ‘critical communities’, or groups of activists that spread new ideas into the broader culture and ideology (Rochon, 1998). Finally, this concept draws attention to the fact that mobilizations are influenced by external trigger events which create new grievances and can stimulate the formation of organizational coalitions (Rochon and Meyer, 1997).11 Based on these considerations, I hypothesize that the new mobilization for peace from late September 2001 was a miscible mobilization, i.e. it was the result of simultaneous mobilization efforts of miscible movements. This miscible mobilization was shaped by two factors: trigger events, and the use of new information technologies. The threat posed by the new ‘war on terrorism’ acted as a trigger event which created grievances for movements with compatible ideologies and joint activist communities and SMOs. Since many politically involved citizens and activists from various social movements feared that the impending war in Afghanistan would contribute to a vicious circle of violence and would aggravate their concerns about various social injustices, they decided to mobilize against the perceived threat of war. Additionally, the use of new information technologies such as the Internet offered efficient resources for the rapid mobilization of activists and the development of new SMOs, despite the fact that the new war on terrorism created a political environment that was hostile to any form of dissent. To search for empirical support for this hypothesis, I conducted research during the demonstrations from 29 September 2001. The main data were collected using a survey which was administered to a sample of anti-war protesters in Freedom Plaza, Washington, DC. To insure that the sample was representative, the area of protests was divided in equal parts among six survey administrators, who first distributed randomly and then collected self-administered surveys. Though not everybody who was asked to complete a survey responded to this request, every attempt was made to reach out to the diverse population of anti-war protesters.12 The overall rate of return was relatively high, such that approximately seven out of ten people who were asked completed and returned a survey. After eliminating a few incomplete questionnaires, 299 surveys were available for final analysis. Further data were generated from participant observation and from examining the mass media articles covering the peace protests. New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations 141 Compatible Ideologies and Shared Activist Communities I use a number of indicators to measure the possibility that the late September 2001 peace protests were the result of highly miscible movements’ mobilization efforts. The first indicator is the participants’ compatibility of ideologies or congruence of belief systems. To test the congruence of attitudes and beliefs, respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with a number of statements, which were intended to measure their egalitarian and postmaterialist attitudes.13 Results showed that most of the peace protesters scored significantly higher than the general population on the scales of postmaterialism and egalitarianism. Over 97 percent of the respondents had postmaterialist values, while less than 3 percent had materialist values. Similarly, most respondents scored high on the egalitarianism index: 79 percent of them agreed with the statements about the need to reduce the world’s inequalities.14 Furthermore, correlation analysis shows that these beliefs correlate significantly and substantively ( p , 0.001; r ¼ 0.33). Given that anti-war protesters share a similar worldview, which stands in sharp contrast with the mainstream society’s beliefs and attitudes toward a number of issues such as egalitarianism and materialism, it is plausible that many of those who participated in these protests perceived war to be related to other social movements’ grievances. The available data show that many perceived the protests from late September 2001 to be directed not only against war but also as part of a general struggle for social justice. When asked about the main goals of the protests, respondents mentioned mostly promoting peace (91 percent), but also expressing their discontent with American foreign policies and the breakdown of civil rights (41 percent). As one demonstrator put it: We want to demonstrate to world media that many citizens oppose the manufactured war hysteria, blank check to the Pentagon, missile defense fantasy, the intransigence of our foreign policy, the savaging of social services and civil liberties at home, and to build a coherent coalition around progressive issues and anti-war sentiment. In addition, a number of people included protesting against racism (26 percent) and capitalism (6 percent) as a goal. Moreover, the great majority of respondents (77 percent) perceived the protests as part of multiple movements with mostly common goals; an additional minority (15 percent) considered that the protests were part of a single movement with unified goals, while only a small minority (8 percent) perceived the protests to be part of different movements with mostly different goals. The second indicator of miscible mobilization is the degree to which activist communities are shared, and was measured by asking protesters about their past involvement in various movements.15 Similar percentages of respondents said they were activists in the peace movement (33 percent) and in the social justice movement (32 percent), while the number of respondents who self-identified as activists in the global justice movement was lower (14 percent) (see Table 1). The lowest numbers of activists were those involved in the labor movement (8 percent), the anti-nuclear movement (10 percent), and gay and lesbian rights movements (13 percent), while women’s rights (23 percent) and environmental movements had somewhat higher numbers of activists (20 percent) (Table 1). A significantly higher degree of shared communities was found between the communities of sympathizers or occasional participants; thus, a majority of participants in the anti-war protests declared themselves to be sympathizers of 142 I. B. Vasi the environmental, gay and lesbian rights, and social justice movements (56 percent, 51 percent, and 50 percent, respectively). Many of the respondents also identified themselves as sympathizers of the women’s rights, peace, and global justice movements (49 percent, 48 percent, and 45 percent, respectively) (Table 1). Moreover, all respondents answered that they were sympathizers or occasional participants in more than one movement and almost 16 percent responded that they were sympathizers or occasional participants in all eight movements they were asked about. When asked about their involvement with different movement organizations, respondents indicated that they were mostly involved in peace (32 percent) and social justice (34 percent) SMOs and, to a lesser degree, in global justice organizations (23 percent) (see Table 2).16 Formal involvement was lowest for the labor and anti-nuclear organizations (12 percent and 10 percent, respectively) while involvement with women’s rights, environmental, and gay and lesbian rights SMOs was moderate (18 percent, 21 percent, and 13 percent, respectively) (Table 2). These results show a consistent pattern in which the peace movement’s communities of activists, occasional participants, and SMO personnel are shared to a considerable degree with the communities of activists and sympathizers from other movements, most notably the social justice, women’s rights, global justice, and environmental movements. Remarkably, all respondents answered that they were somewhat involved in more than one movement and almost 16 percent responded that they were involved in all eight movements they were asked about.17 The correlation analysis measuring the degree of association between general involvement in different movements shows that general Table 1. Percentage of anti-war protesters who have been involved as activists and sympathizers in different social movements in the past Activists () Sympathizers () Total () (activists and sympathizers) Social justice 32 50 82 Peace 33 48 81 Environmental 20 56 76 Women’s rights 23 49 72 Gay and lesbian rights 13 51 64 Global justice 14 45 59 Labor 8 41 49 Anti-nuclear 10 38 48 Table 2. Percentage of anti-war protesters who have been active as personnel in different SMOs SMO personnel () Social justice 34 Peace 32 Global justice 23 Environmental 21 Women’s rights 18 Gay and lesbian rights 13 Labor 12 Anti-nuclear 10 New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations 143 involvement in most movements is significantly associated ( p , 0.001) with involvement in the peace movement (see Table 3). Moreover, the degree of association between some of these movements is very strong, with the value of the Pearson correlation coefficient being 0.5 or higher. As shown in Table 3, if one is somewhat involved in the peace movement, one also has a 59 percent chance of being involved in the social justice movement, a 55 percent chance of being involved in the gay rights movements, and a 50 percent chance of being involved in the anti-nuclear or women’s rights movements. The chance of being somewhat involved in the global justice movement is lower, but nevertheless impressive: 34 percent. Consequently, it appears that the communities of occasional participants in the peace movement overlap to a considerable degree with the communities of occasional participants in other movements. The results also show that some activists were not previously involved in the peace movement. A significant percentage of peace protesters (19 percent) were neither past activists nor past sympathizers or occasional participants in the peace movement. Since all participants in the peace protests indicated that they have been involved either as activists or as occasional participants in at least one social movement, it follows that at least 19 percent of the anti-war demonstrators were totally new to the peace movement, but not to other movements. Hence, it is likely that a significant number of the participants in the September 2001 anti-war protests responded to the call for mobilization despite the fact that they were not directly involved with the peace movement, simply because they were involved to different degrees in other movements with grievances that were related to those of the peace movement. The third indicator of the probability that these anti-war protests were the consequence of miscible mobilizations comes from the data about protesters’ social networks and collective identities. Almost 80 percent of the respondents had at least one friend who accompanied them to the protests, while 26 percent had at least one colleague or coworker and 23 percent came with at least one family member. In fact, a mere 8 percent of the respondents had come alone, but it is possible that even these people had a friend or a relative who participated, even if they didn’t come together. Moreover, the majority of friends, family, coworkers and significant others were supportive of respondents’ participation in the protests against war.18 Results from the questions about collective identity show that identification with the group of protesters against the war was relatively strong: 94 percent of the protesters felt that they shared most common values with other protesters. In contrast, the perception of shared common values with other groups was significantly lower: only 68 percent felt they shared values with the people in their own country, 40 percent with national government employees, 35 percent with the police, and 23 percent with World Bank and International Monetary Fund employees. These results suggest that participants in the peace protests had multiple ties to other protesters and had Table 3. Correlation analysis predicting involvement in different movements (very and somewhat involved) Global justice Labor Environment Social justice Anti-nuclear Women Gay rights Peace 0.34* 278 0.24* 276 0.31* 278 0.59* 276 0.50* 277 0.50* 277 0.55* 275 *p , 0.001. 144 I. B. Vasi developed a relatively strong collective identity. This conclusion may seem surprising, since the peace movement had been weakened by the decline of its SMOs over the past decade. Yet it is entirely consistent with the argument that shared activist communities offer resources for mobilization even for weak movements with compatible ideologies. In other words, it is likely that the strength of social networks and collective identities are at least partially due to the fact that many of the participants in the peace protests were involved in miscible movements. Finally, additional support for the hypothesis that the anti-war protests were the result of miscible movements’ mobilization efforts comes from data about individual attributes. For instance, many of the participants in the new peace protests were extremely educated and placed themselves overwhelmingly towards the left pole of the political spectrum, which makes them more likely to become involved in a range of so-called ‘new social movements’ (Kriesi, 1989). Moreover, women were slightly more numerous than men, offering some support to the idea of a significant overlap between women’s rights and peace movements (Meyer and Whittier, 1994) and to the observation that women constitute ‘the backbone of the peace movement in America’ (Wittner, 1984, p. 5).19 Shared SMOs and the Internet Miscible movements are characterized not only by compatible ideologies and shared activist communities but also by shared SMOs. Here I examine how the anti-war protests from late September 2001 were influenced by the formation of new shared SMOs as a result of a series of trigger events and the use of the Internet. The peace movement in the USA has a long and irregular history, reflected in the cyclical growth and decline of peace SMOs. The movement developed rapidly during the first decade of the twentieth century into an affluent movement consisting of many of the country’s political, business, religious and academic leaders, organized in a few but well-funded organizations (Marchand, 1972). After the First World War, the number of peace SMOs grew rapidly from a small number of mostly conservative organizations to multiple and various organizations, such that by the 1930s the American peace movement included both conservative and radical SMOs (Wittner, 1984). Following the drastic decline in the number of peace organizations as a result of the Second World War, peace SMOs slowly multiplied during the Cold War and reached a peak of about 10,000 in the mid- 1980s (Lofland, 1993). Since then, these organizations have declined rapidly: Edwards and Marullo (1995) estimate that in the period between 1988 and 1992 the annual mortality rate of peace SMOs was approximately 9 percent. Moreover, most of these SMOs operated in some affiliate relationship and very few were formally organized (Edwards, 1993). Social movement scholars have shown that wars, or the mere perception of the threat of armed conflicts, typically create a ‘bellwether issue’ representing what activists view as the most urgent problem, which unifies a broad spectrum of groups with similar concerns (Meyer and Whittier, 1994). Thus, wars frequently act as trigger events which affect the political context by changing partisan alignment or elite allegiance and also by changing the boundaries of legitimate discourse (Meyer, 1993; Koopmans, 1999). Moreover, while peace organizations have traditionally defined their goals differently, the peace movement has always been interconnected with various social movements which aim to reduce social injustices. Peace groups from the eighteenth and nineteenth century, such as the Quaker or New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations 145 Mennonite peace churches, and organizations from the early twentieth century, such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, have advocated social justice as well as peace. More recently, during the 1980s, many local peace organizations such as the Austin Peace and Justice Coalition explicitly linked peace and anti-nuclear issues with various social inequality issues (Benford, 1993). The degree of miscibility between the peace movement and other progressive movements increased in the 1990s when, as a result of the end of the Cold War, peace movement frames became more inclusive and radical. Peace activists became socialized through their activism and developed more sophisticated analyses of the problems they tried to remedy, making more explicit linkages among issues and using the concept of social justice to connect them (Marullo et al., 1996). As former peace activists developed more radical and systemic critiques of US foreign policy, they shared SMOs which represent simultaneously the demands of various movements such as peace, social and global justice, women’s rights or gay and lesbian rights. The International Action Center, for instance, is an organization created in 1992 by radical anti-war activists which aims to ‘incorporate the demands to end racism, sexism and poverty in the U.S. with opposition to U.S. militarism and exploitative domination around the world’.20 While peace activists have moved into the economic realm, global justice activists have begun to articulate a sustained critique of the state and of its war-making tendencies. However, unlike traditional peace SMOs, global justice SMOs went through a waxing phase throughout the 1990s; since the vast majority of these SMOs are loose coalitions of grassroots organizations with a website but no headquarters, they are relatively easy to form and flourished during the last decade (Smith, 2001). Many global justice SMOs are shared by movements that have developed similar ideologies of the state and its relationship to capital. Thus, when the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in late September 2001 were cancelled, most of the global justice SMOs that were planning the anti-WB and -IMF protests chose to support either directly or indirectly the new demonstrations for peace. For instance, some shared SMOs such as the Mobilization for Global Justice canceled their plans for street demonstrations but went ahead with teach-ins on the global economy, and encouraged their individual members to join the anti-war protests. As one member of the Mobilization for Global Justice acknowledged, the issues of peace and justice are intertwined: I think the fight for global justice is not just economic, but it also deals with issues of peace and war. I think there’s a sense of breaking through the media blackout of voices that want restraint and justice instead of revenge.21 Other SMOs such as the Anti-capitalist Convergence endorsed the peace protests openly, noting that the militaristic American foreign policy is responsible to a large degree for creating the global economic inequalities that foster terrorism. For instance, the Anticapitalist Convergence’s call to protest from 19 September states: Instead of emphasizing blocks and autonomous cells, we must unite in our vision for a better world. It is for these reasons that we call for a massive march on Washington DC on September 29th where we will unite as a community and ask ‘Why? – why most of the world hates the US, why the US chooses to go to war, why there is such stark inequality and poverty in this country and others?’ 146 I. B. Vasi Finally, a number of shared SMOs formed coalitions and took an active role in organizing the peace demonstrations; for instance, activists from organizations such as International Action Center, Nicaragua Network or American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice formed a new organization called Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER). This organization had the explicit goal of coordinating new protests against the impending war in Afghanistan while maintaining the momentum of the global justice protests. According to their call to join the ANSWER coalition: On September 29, tens of thousands of people had planned to demonstrate against the Bush administration’s reactionary foreign and domestic policy and the IMF and World Bank. In light of the current crisis, with its tragic consequences for so many thousands of people, we refocused the call for our demonstration to address the immediate danger posed by increased racism and the grave threat of a new war. The terrorist attacks from 11 September acted as trigger events which imposed a new provocation for the peace movement. Moreover, by closing the opportunity to protest against the WB and IMF, these events encouraged the formation of alliances between new and old SMOs. Thus, the new ANSWER coalition joined forces with older peace and justice SMOs such as the Washington Peace Center and the American Friends Service Committee in order to organize the demonstrations and obtain permits for 29 and 30 September 2001.22 Results from our survey of peace protesters support the thesis that the organizational coalitions between shared peace and social justice SMOs contributed to the mobilization against war. For instance, when asked whether they had planned to participate in the antiIMF and WB protests programmed initially to take place on the same date in Washington, 36 percent of the respondents indicated they definitely planned to participate, and an additional 21 percent answered that they were probably planning to participate. When asked whether they had participated in previous global justice protests, 32 percent of the respondents answered that they had participated in one or more of these protests. Shared SMOs such as the ANSWER coalition played two important roles in the mobilization against war.23 The first was that of providers of resources for coordinating collective action, by obtaining legal permits for demonstrations, organizing street protests, and conducting mobilizing campaigns on the Internet. Thus, the ANSWER coalition obtained a permit for a march on 29 September from Lafayette Park to the White House and, when the police and the Secret Service banned demonstrations in these areas, ANSWER negotiated a permit for a march from Freedom Plaza to Capitol Hill. The organization also provided loudspeakers, banners (with the slogan ‘War is not the ANSWER’), and other paraphernalia necessary for street demonstrations, and led an intense mobilizing campaign before the demonstrations. One aspect of the mobilizing campaign led by these organizations which deserves to be emphasized is the fact that it was based mostly on the Internet. Without the possibility of rapid communication through the Internet, these protests could not have been organized in such a short time – in fact, the ANSWER coalition itself was formed only two weeks before the planned protests. As many organizers acknowledge, the Internet has played a major role in their mobilization campaigns; according to one of the ANSWER organizers, ‘the character of political action organizing has completely shifted since the Gulf War. Instead of a physical location like our office, the Web site has become our mobilization headquarters.’24 Results from our survey of the demonstrators support this New Anti-war Protests and Miscible Mobilizations 147 assertion: 57 percent of the respondents indicated that their desire to participate in the protests was significantly influenced by the information they found on the Internet, while only 25 percent were influenced very little and 18 percent were not influenced at all. Moreover, 80 percent have used emails and websites to gather information about these protests, 52 percent have used listservs and 5 percent have used chatrooms.25 Since the mainstream media were critical or, at best, indifferent to the peace protests, the Internet worked as an alternative medium and was used widely for disseminating information and distributing calls on mobilization. As a result, SMOs could reach their sympathizers faster and form coalitions more easily, while the cost of joining any one group was decreased and multiple memberships in different SMOs was encouraged for both regular and occasional participants in social movements. Hence, due to the creation of ‘virtual protest organizations’, civic-minded individuals were encouraged to participate in multiple social movements.26 The second role played by shared SMOs is that of developers of collective action frames. For instance, ANSWER’s engagement in ‘meaning-work’ or framing was especially important in the context in which the patriotic zeal was peaking and many people considered anti-war protesters to be traitors. Unlike other wars in the past fifty years, the USA’s ‘war on terrorism’ was a response to a direct attack on its own territory; thus, the anti-war protesters faced the serious danger of being stigmatized by the mass media, ostracized by mainstream society and, consequently, of alienating their sympathizers. The peace and social justice SMOs attempted to avoid this danger by building a collective action frame that combined two key elements: pacifism and justice. The ‘peaceful justice’ frame was intended to deflect accusations of anti-patriotism by pointing out that war is not efficient in stopping terrorism since it indiscriminately punishes terrorists and civilians and further fuels anti-American resentments. Simultaneously, this frame was offering as an alternative the pursuit of justice through international justice courts and structural changes that would address the roots of the problem, namely world poverty and social injustices. Scholars have shown that innovative master frames contribute significantly to the emergence of protest cycles (Snow and Benford, 1992). In the case of the peace movement, a number of new protest cycles have emerged when SMOs were capable of developing innovative frames that challenged the dominant interpretation of American foreign policy. Throughout history the peace movement had the general goal of preventing wars; yet the peace protesters’ grievances have been framed in various ways, depending on the particular political context. Both old and more recent peace movements demanded international arbitration and a world court for solving the problems that led to war. Nevertheless, while the early peace movement was ‘uncritically nationalistic in its vision of a world order reshaped in the American image’ (Marchand, 1972), the more recent peace movement has criticized in various ways American foreign policy and the USA’s role as a world leader. Social movement scholars have pointed out that the surge in protests witnessed by the peace movement in the early 1980s was partially determined by the innovative idea of a nuclear freeze. This idea provided not only a diagnosis but also a viable prognosis for the aggressive Reaganite foreign policy posing the threat of a nuclear war (Snow and Benford, 1992). The rise of another protest cycle in the early 1990s was determined by the innovative framing of the Gulf War as a conflict over economic interests and not as ‘a morally inspired battle for the liberation of a small, innocent country from the claws of a “new Hitler”’ (Koopmans, 1999, p. 58).27 This framing was popular because it resonated with the belief system of many groups that considered that the American government is serving the interests of Big Business and not of ordinary people.28 Similarly, shared SMOs such as ANSWER developed an innovative framing of the ‘war on terrorism’ which transformed the ‘infinite justice crusade’ against fundamentalist terrorists into a militaristic campaign against people in a poor country that would negatively affect Arabs and Muslims around the world, perpetuating the vicious circle of violence.29 Yet, in contrast to the anti-Gulf War protests, the peace protests from September 2001 were centered on a frame of collective action that viewed peace protests as directed not only against the militaristic US foreign policy but also as part of a more general struggle for social justice. Results from the survey show that a significant percentage of the respondents (41 percent) considered that the main goal of the protests was to express discontent with American foreign policy and the global injustices it creates. Conclusion In late September 2001 many US cities witnessed mobilizations against war comparable in size with those against the Gulf War from 1991, despite the fact that the peace movement had weaker organizational resources and had encountered less favorable political opportunities. Since then, anti-war mobilizations have increased significantly, such that, approximately one year later, mobilizations against war registered similar numbers of participants as those from the Vietnam era. I have argued that these successful mobilizations cannot be explained without examining the role of trigger events such as the terrorist attacks on the USA and the US government’s declaration of the war on terrorism. These trigger events imposed new grievances for many politically involved citizens and, combined with the use of the Internet as a mobilization tool, acted as catalysts for what I call miscible mobilizations, or simultaneous mobilization efforts by movements with compatible ideologies and shared activist communities and SMOs. Results from a survey of the participants in the protests against the war in Afghanistan confirm that participants in these protests were involved in highly miscible movements. Indeed, it appears that many peace protesters are part of an informal network of ‘politicized individuals’ who share common goals with different movements and form a ‘progressive community’ of social movements (Taylor and Whittier, 1992; Meyer and Whittier, 1994). Similar to other wars, the impending war in Afghanistan represented a bellwether issue for activists involved in a number of movements, including social justice, women’s rights, global justice, environmental, and gay and lesbian rights.30 By using the Internet as a mobilization tool, shared SMOs were able to develop organizational coalitions and to mobilize rapidly and efficiently shared communities of activists. These results point to the need to synthesize the traditional resource mobilization, political process, and new social movement theories of mobilization and to focus further research on the fluid processes of miscible mobilizations.
Chapter 3 is Framing:
Militarism through war structures all inequalities—not the other way around
John Horgan, Director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology, 2012, The End of War, Chapter 5, Kindle p. 1600-1659
Throughout this book, I’ve examined attempts by scholars to identify factors especially conducive for peace. But there seem to be no conditions that, in and of themselves, inoculate a society against militarism. Not small government nor big government. Not democracy, socialism, capitalism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, nor secularism. Not giving equal rights to women or minorities nor reducing poverty. The contagion of war can infect any kind of society. Some scholars, like the political scientist Joshua Goldstein, find this conclusion dispiriting. Early in his career Goldstein investigated economic theories of war, including those of Marx and Malthus. He concluded that war causes economic inequality and scarcity of resources as much as it stems from them. Goldstein, a self-described “pro-feminist,” then set out to test whether macho, patriarchal attitudes caused armed violence. He felt so strongly about this thesis that he and his wife limited their son’s exposure to violent media and contact sports. But by the time he finished writing his 522-page book War and Gender in 2001, Goldstein had rejected the thesis. He questioned many of his initial assumptions about the causes of war. He never gave credence to explanations involving innate male aggression—war breaks out too sporadically for that—but he saw no clear-cut evidence for non-biological factors either. “War is not a product of capitalism, imperialism, gender, innate aggression, or any other single cause, although all of these influence wars’ outbreaks and outcomes,” Goldstein writes. “Rather, war has in part fueled and sustained these and other injustices.” He admits that all his research has left him “somewhat more pessimistic about how quickly or easily war may end.” But here is the upside of this insight: if there are no conditions that in and of themselves prevent war, there are none that make peace impossible, either. This is the source of John Mueller’s optimism, and mine. If we want peace badly enough, we can have it, no matter what kind of society we live in. The choice is ours. And once we have escaped from the shadow of war, we will have more resources to devote to other problems that plague us, like economic injustice, poor health, and environmental destruction, which war often exacerbates. The Waorani, whose abandonment of war led to increased trade and intermarriage, are a case in point. So is Costa Rica. In 2010, this Central American country was ranked number one out of 148 nations in a “World Database of Happiness” compiled by Dutch sociologists, who gathered information on the self-reported happiness of people around the world. Costa Rica also received the highest score in another “happiness” survey, carried out by an American think tank, that factored in the nation’s impact on the environment. The United States was ranked twentieth and 114th, respectively, on the surveys. Instead of spending on arms, over the past half century Costa Rica’s government invested in education, as well as healthcare, environmental conservation, and tourism, all of which helped make the country more prosperous, healthy, and happy. There is no single way to peace, but peace is the way to solve many other problems. The research of Mueller, Goldstein, Forsberg, and other scholars yields one essential lesson. Those of us who want to make the world a better place—more democratic, equitable, healthier, cleaner—should make abolishing the invention of war our priority, because peace can help bring about many of the other changes we seek. This formula turns on its head the old social activists’ slogan: “If you want peace, work for justice.” I say instead, “If you want justice, work for peace.” If you want less pollution, more money for healthcare and education, an improved legal and political system—work for peace
Militarism abroad causes violence at home – addressing policies helps dismantle the militaristic machine and challenge violence here
Brian Trautman 16 (Brian Trautman, writes for PeaceVoice, is a military veteran, an instructor of peace studies at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, MA, and a peace activist, ) Police Response in Ferguson Rooted in Systemic Violence and Militarism, Common Dreams 2-20-2016 AT
To better understand, effectively reduce, and eventually prevent the underlying factors which led to thew police slaying of Mike Brown and other unarmed citizens, we must openly debate two major forms of violence prevalent in the United States: systemic violence (aka structural violence) and militarism. Systemic violence is the type of violence that is deeply-embedded in a nation’s social, economic, educational, political, legal and environmental frameworks, and tends to be rooted in government policy. It is organized violence with an historical context, and often manifests in subtle but very specific and destructive ways. Examples include entrenched racism, classism and discrimination and economic inequality and relative poverty. Systemic violence paves the way for authoritarian and undemocratic values such as exploitation, marginalization and repression, especially of underrepresented, underprivileged populations. Militarism is the ideology that a nation must maintain a strong military capability and must use, or threaten to use, force to protect and advance national interests. America’s militaristic approach to overseas conflicts can be found in many aspects of its domestic policies. Systemic violence and militarism are interconnected and mutually dependent. They go hand in hand, building on and reinforcing each other. Both define and direct American policing, which regularly treats citizens like enemies of the state. We need not look further for an example than the military-style police assault in Ferguson. Systemic violence and militarism are responsible for the flow of military grade equipment such as mine resistance vehicles and semi-automatic weapons to police departments across the country. In an op-ed I wrote last month entitled “Escalating Domestic Warfare,” I discussed a report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on the emergence of a militarist ethos in American policing. The ACLU’s research showed that the militarization of police has become excessive and lethal. For example, SWAT teams are being deployed primarily to serve search warrants in low-level drug cases, and these teams are using methods and equipment traditionally reserved for war to do so. The ACLU also found that police militarization increased substantially after each of three major national events: the initiation of the “War on Drugs,” the attacks of 9-11, and a series of Supreme Court decisions which have eroded the rights guaranteed in the Fourth Amendment. Over the past two decades, the violent crime rate in the United States has decreased sharply. The militarization of policing, then, is counter-intuitive. Historically, nations that have militarized their police have done so not because of violent crime but rather to rapidly quell potential mass civil uprisings against tyranny, oppression and injustice. A statement released by Veterans for Peace (VFP), a global organization of military veterans and allies working to build a culture of peace, calls for justice for Mike Brown and his family through, in part, “a complete, swift and transparent investigation” into his death. VFP strongly condemns the use of violence – in any form – to secure justice. Instead, they implore protestors “to continue to channel their anger towards building power, solidarity and creating change nonviolently…” The organization expresses deep outrage for the state violence in Ferguson: “police over reaction to community expressions of grief and anger is the outcome of a national mindset that violence will solve any problem.” According to VFP, the military-industrial complex and a permanent war mentality are two major sources of this violence: “Thirteen years of war has militarized our whole society. We see equipment designed for the battlefield used in our nation’s streets against our citizens. We see police in uniforms and using weapons indistinguishable from the military.” This militaristic approach to domestic policing, says VFP, has resulted in tragedy on our streets: “Week after week we see reports of police abuse and killings of innocent and unarmed civilians.” Justice for the victims is often denied: “time and time again we see police given impunity for their crimes and citizens left in disbelief wondering where to turn next.” VFP reminds us of the repeated targeting of communities of color by police. The Ferguson protests are a natural reaction to this legacy of mistreatment and injustice. Police brutality against young black males, in particular, VFP argues, was a powder keg waiting to explode: “the unrest in Ferguson and similar incidents of citizen rebellions are the outcome of state abuse and neglect, not of hoodlums and opportunists. Eventually, any people who are held down will attempt to standup.” VFP’s statement also warns that militarism at home cannot be solved until we end our nation’s militarism abroad: “We cannot call for peace in the streets at home and at the same time conduct war for thirteen years in the streets of other nations.” America's violent system of policing and its antagonistic foreign policy are interrelated. Therefore, they must be addressed together before reforms can be effective and help to end our culture of violence. Solutions-based approaches begin with local, state and federal legislators acknowledging that many current laws and policies create and fuel systemic violence and militarism. They must then find the wisdom and muster the courage to act to change or abandon those laws and policies. One strategy that our towns and cities can adopt to contribute to this process is nonviolent community policing. Retired police captain Charles L. Alphin, who served for over twenty-six years in the St. Louis City Police Department, offers suggestions for such a policing model in an article titled “Kingian Non-violence: A Practical Application in Policing.” Alphin believes Kingian nonviolence holds great potential for American policing. He gives examples of how this model of policing can work using Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence. Alphin contends, as Dr. King did, that how we approach policing cannot stand alone from teaching nonviolence in the school, home, streets and in every phase of life. Alphin also explains that he applied Kingian philosophy effectively in interrogation of criminal suspects and in the organization of communities to get at the root causes of violence and drugs, effectively empowering communities to identify and work on these problems at the grassroots level (note: this community-based solution to violence is a feature of the theory and practice of transformative justice). There is an urgent need for models of paramilitary policing to be replaced with models of nonviolent community policing. Freedom and democracy are at stake. So are the lives of our innocent citizens. The killing of Mike Brown can be a pivotal moment for how we treat the systemic violence and militarism that produced the policing system of today. Ferguson has awakened many Americans to the realities of police militarism on their streets and to the urgent need to demilitarize the police. We cannot afford public apathy on this issue any longer. The people must insist on alternative models of policing that respect and protect civil and human rights. To reverse the trend of police violence in this country, we must work to eliminate the systemic and militaristic roots of this violence, remembering that military-style policing is inextricably linked to America’s belligerence abroad. No matter how you slice it, the weapons of war and other violent tactics used against Ferguson protestors will go down as a tragic chapter in American history. Still, robust and meaningful people-powered action for progressive social change can help make this chapter a turning point toward the positive transformation of policing in the United States. This action, change, and transformation are inevitable because justice demands it.

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