Anti-Recruitment Ground Report from UW-Madison, Wisconsin

Bill Linville

We'll be sending more e-mails soon, but just wanted to give a brief report on the walk-out against the occupation and military recruiting in Madison. We had a rally of over 200 people today followed by a march past a recruiting center and a sit-in near the chancellor's office demanding to meet with him and kick the military off campus. It was pitched as a "troops out walk out" and was built over a long period of a month and a half. It demanded troops out now and military off campus at UW.

A little bit into the rally, the cops shut down our sound system because we were getting complaints of noise. They shut our sound down when Jane Jensen a 60 year-old mother of a U.S. soldier in Iraq was giving a speech demanding her son be brought home. Ben Ratliffe, of CAN said on the megaphone (and it's quoted in the article below), "Apparently we've got complaints from around campus that we're being too loud. Well, we've got some complaints of our own." We continued the speeches with a megaphone and our planned hip-hop acts were shut down. Following a round of speakers, we marched past an army recruiting center (not officially on campus, but right near campus) where we encountered about 40 counter-protesters organized by students affiliated with Protest Warrior and the College Republicans. We shouted them to a standoff and continued (after a hip-hop intermission) up to Bascom Hill (where the chancellor's office is located).

At this point there were about 80 or so protesters left. The secretary immediately locked the door. After much noise and chanting, we sat down right outside the locked door of his office. We demanded a meeting with the chancellor and we were told he wasn't around. We then announced we wouldn't be leaving until we got a public forum about military on campus. After a while, they granted it for next Wed at 3 pm. Most people wanted to push for a forum at night that more people could attend but the Chancellor's secretary insisted that he couldn't meet until May 9 otherwise! We voted to take the 3 pm meeting and break up into groups.

There were lots of people there totally new to the movement who are excited to get the military off campus. While sitting in, we broke into working groups to publicize the forum and try to pack the meeting and embarass the chancellor, who has been quoted as saying there's "no way" he will disallow recruiters on campus, it's their first amendment right, etc.

Tomorrow, someone is coming to speak about recruiting opportunities for foreign language speakers, joining intelligence agencies, etc. We publicized a protest for 11 am tomorrow to build off of the momentum of the walk-out.

Anyway, we'll probably be sending more about this exciting day, but I wonder what people think about targeting administration more directly and using direct action tactics like the sweatshop movement (to go along w/ confronting recruiters when they come).

This has been a huge boost for people in Stop the War who have been struggling to grow and have had a few events fall through.

Solidarity,

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Bill Linville, UW-Madison Stop the War