Student activism.

The Not in Our Name Project's Student/Youth Committee started its campaign to Stop the Military Recruiters at a general meeting on 21 August 2003. To participate in or get information about future meetings, contact NION Student/Youth at [e-mail].

An article in The Nonviolent Activist (July-August 2003) describes how YouthPeace Connecticut fights against military recruitment at the Norwich Free Academy (NFA). Recruiters come weekly; exaggerating the alleged fun and amount of money for college the military can bring to students who sign up. As a counter action, Youth Peace sets up Alternatives to the Military tables, providing information on military realities, helping students to apply for non-military scholarships, and getting students interested in YouthPeace activities. Since The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 mandates recruiter access to high school students' phone numbers, the tables also encouraged parents to take advantage of the provision allowing them to remove their children's names from the recruiters' lists.

Over 100 activists from 18 states and from over 50 organizations gathered the weekend of July 11 to 13, 2003 at the sixth national summit of the Independent Progressive Politics Network in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The Green Party of Michigan and its U-M Student Greens and Huron Valley Greens hosted the event. A spirit of resistance pervaded the conference from the keynote speech by former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney to the election of a new and diverse steering committee comprised of 45% people of color, 55% women, 14% youth, and 9% lgbt.

"Antiwar Students Rock the Vote" (The Nation, 4/11 August 2003) describes how protests against Bush's war on Iraq has drawn more students than any other recent protest movement, and the students are younger, more working-class, and more racially and geographically diverse than ever before. Hopefully, this protest energy will provide momentum for the 2004 elections. Since right-wing students helped elect George W. Bush, it makes sense that progressive students could carry equal strength in getting him out of office.

Following in the path set by the first two conferences of the student/community Palestine solidarity movement, Rutgers University held the Third North American Student Conference on the Palestine Solidarity Movement from 10-12 October 2003. The conference focused on divestment from Israeli apartheid, took a stand on an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, and advocated for the full right of return for all Palestinian refugees to their homes and their homelands. To become involved in next year's conference, go to http://www.njsolidarity.org.

Iranian student demonstrations began on June 10, 2003 to protest plans to privatize Teheran University and raise tuition, but then quickly became a forum for criticizing the repressive policies of the Islamic Republic. For more information on this complex protest movement, and the U.S. involvement in Iran, see The Nation's "Aiding Iran's Students" (14 July 2003), and a lengthy discussion paper by Jeremy Brecher for Foreign Policy in Focus (www.fpif.org), July 2003.