Note to all of my younger readers—if I have any. Today is
International Student’s Day but you
would not notice it at any American school, college, university. Why? Because the day honors students not just for academics,
but for their traditional role as
being a kind of collective public
conscience, the bearers of high ideals, and a thorn in the side of arbitrary authority everywhere. In other words pretty much exactly what our oligarchs and authorities do not want.
They would prefer you train
quietly and diligently to
seamlessly become cogs in the machinery of their prosperity. Or if you must blow off steam, do it at football games, keggers, or meaningless hook-up
sex. Anything but protest.
I come from a quaint generation that took student
activism as a given inspired by
the Civil Rights Movement and
protests against the War in
Vietnam. We paid our dues in innumerable
marches, sit-ins, Freedom Rides, the Streets of Chicago, university
occupations, and at Orangeburg, Kent State, and Jackson State. But after the
war wound down and the Draft became an empty threat, campuses
quieted. Not that student activism
ever entirely disappeared—there was
always a level of activity and issues that
raised the passions of some. But no mass
movement, no sense of common purpose. In
fact in many places conservatives organized
effective counter presence.
Millions, including students, joined
in mass protests and marches to try
and stop a post-9/11 invasion of Iraq,
when the war actually started there was not much of a sustained movement
against it and what there was waned
as the War on Terror dragged
on interminably, becoming just background
noise.
The most significant new mass
social movement in decades, the Occupy
Movement, was spearheaded by
young post-college adults whose lives and hopes had been disrupted
by the economic crash of 2008 and crushing student debt. As it spread across the country from city to
city students became involved and there were some actions on campus as the
infamous pepper spraying of non-violent students at Santa Monica College, it never really
became a student movement.
But more recently things have begun
to change.
Youth,
including high school and college
student did become the driving force behind
the next important development—then Black
Lives Matter Movement. But at first
they were acting and reacting on the streets not as students per se.
That escalated this year after the murders of George Floyd,
Briana Taylor, and others. In many communities students spearheaded efforts to remove police from their schools.
After yet another school mass murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in
Parkland, Florida student survivor organized
what became a national anti-gun violence
movement, #NeverAgain with school
walk outs and local and national protests and marches. They were also very sophisticated in the use
of both social media and messaging in mainstream media. And they sustained activity well beyond
the first flush of actions in 2018 lobbying
state and Federal lawmakers for
significant action on gun control,
organizing boycotts of businesses
supporting the National Rifle
Association (NRA), and conducting youth
voter registration drives,
There were other stirrings—the Dreamers
movement and immigration protests,
the anti-rape culture movement. Students seem no longer so domesticated. But they were not alone on campuses
anymore. A vicious Alt-right movement—read racist and white supremacist—has
been emboldened. All of which
recalls the events that inspired the creation of International
Student’s Day.
But by far the most significant development is the world-wide movement inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and her
Friday Climate Change strikes. In September 2019 those scattered actions
became the Global Climate Strike and
continues as Extinction Rebellion. Importantly Third World students have joined privileged
Europeans and North American in leadership of the still growing movement.
International Student Day owes its origins to the dark days following the Nazi
occupation of Czechoslovakia in
1939. The country was perhaps the most sophisticated in Eastern Europe with a large and prosperous middle class which placed
value on what was called high
culture. Education was particularly esteemed
and it had one of the highest percentage
of its young people enrolled in
universities in the world. In Prague many of those students had watched glumly as German troops poured into the city in March.
Some students fled the country with their families,
it they were able. Jewish students were expelled
and Jewish professors fired. Some students, particularly young Communists and left Social Democrats went underground and began to form what
would become a resistance movement. Most stayed fearfully at their studies, but many were determined to protest the subjugation of their country.
On October 29, the
anniversary of the Declaration of the
Czechoslovak Republic in 1919,
students of the Medical Faculty of Charles University held a street rally which was violently suppressed by the Nazis. Among the wounded was Jan Opleta who was shot
and died of his wounds on November
11.
Students from all
over Prague and the now splintered
Czechoslovakia turned out by the tens of thousands to make
Opleta’s funeral procession into a mass protest on November 15. Students expected
reprisals. What they got was beyond any of their imaginations.
On November 17 the
Nazis stormed the University of Prague
and other campuses. All universities around the former nation were immediately closed and their students ejected. 1,200 were rounded up and deported
immediately to concentration camps. Others would be picked up and arrested
over the next year. Few of those sent to
the camps survived the War.
Nine professors and
students were shot without trial the
same day. Their names have become a litany of heroes to Czechs—Josef Matoušek, Jaroslav Klíma, Jan Weinert,
Josef Adamec, Jan Černý, Marek Frauwirt, Bedřich Koukala, Václav
Šafránek, and František Skorkovský.
In 1941 the International Student Council (ISC) which included many refugees, proclaimed November 17 International Students Day with the approval and encouragement of Allied governments
which used the proclamation in their
propaganda broadcasts to the Continent.
The celebration was
kept alive in the post war years by the successor
organization to the ISC the International
Union of Students. Along with the National Unions of Students in Europe and
others there has been an on-going attempt
to get the United Nations to officially recognize the day along with
celebrations for Women, Children,
Indigenous Peoples, and such. The effort has been met with what might be
called benign neglect. It turns out a lot of governments are worried about politicized students. And
support has been forthcoming and withdrawn depending on whose ox is being gored by students in the street.
Take the case of the
old Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies. They originally embraced the celebration as an extension
of anti-fascism. But that changed after another incident in Prague.
In 1989 independent student leaders and the official Student Union organized mass
demonstration for the 50th anniversary of
the attack on Czech schools and students.
The 15,000 students who took to
the streets in a peaceful parade
used the opportunity to criticize
the Communist Party and government
on an array of issues. Police responded
with a predictable baton attack
leaving many wounded and one dead. The
dead man turned out to be a secret
police agent who had infiltrated the students but had gotten too close to his own government’s clubs.
Students did not
realize the dead man was an agent, however, and rumors of the death of a comrade
swept the capital. A student strike was proclaimed and supported by actors and others. The
subsequent uproar led directly to
the Velvet Revolution and the ouster of the Communist Government breaking the hold of the Soviet Union on Eastern Europe.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, European student groups fractured on ideological lines.
In the chaos, international coordination of Student
Day observances fell by the way side,
although many countries and national Student Unions carried on independent celebrations.
Since then students
have been at the forefront of protest
and rebellion throughout the former Soviet empire, in China’s Tiananmen Square, in the Arab Spring, in anti-austerity protests across Europe, in Istanbul, and dozens of other places around the world. They protest against tyrants of the Left and of the Right,
against oligarchic wealth, and religious zealotry. No wonder governments are
so skittish about encouraging them
with United Nations recognition.
At the World Social Forum held in Mumbai, India in 2004 various student groups and national unions began to
discuss a re-launch an official,
coordinated movement. The movement
has picked up steam, particularly in Europe.
In 2009 there was a massive commemoration of the 70th
Anniversary and a major conference
held at the University of Brussels. Among the actions taken was a resolution pressing for the adoption of a European Student Rights Charter.
But still no
participation in the USA. Hey, here’s an idea, young readers. What say you
start something….
<a href="https://youtu.be/ouHNPzr8IjI>That which touches me most
ReplyDeleteIs that I had a chance to work with people
Passing on to others that which was passed on to me
To me young people come first
They have the courage where we fail
And if I can but shed some light as they carry us through the gale
The older I get the better I know that the secret of my going on
Is when the reins are in the hands of the young, who dare to run against the storm</a>
-- Ella Baker
Here's a link to the song as performed this year by Resistance Revival Chorus https://youtu.be/ouHNPzr8IjI
ReplyDelete