DC Student Coalition against Apartheid and Racism
DC Student Coalition against Apartheid and Racism (DC SCAR) had chapters at area colleges, universities and high schools between 1983 and 1998. Led by people of color, DC SCAR influenced generations of leaders. The coalition addressed racism locally, nationally and internationally. It was a small but powerful voice in student movements, alternative media and social change.
YLSN and former DC SCAR members are organizing a series of reunions and digitizing resources related to DC SCAR and student activism in the 1980s.
2008 marks 25 years since the founding of DC SCAR. If you were active in DC SCAR or worked with DC SCAR, we would like to hear from you. info@worldyouth.org
Political History of DC SCAR in the 1990s
By Doug Calvin
"Break the Isolation on Campus"
Overcoming the 1980s legacy of right-wing student repression
Interview With Doug C. by Jeremy Smith
[Doug C. edits SCAR News, a publication of the D.C. Student Coalition against Apartheid and Racism, and helps organize D.C. SCAR's campus chapter network. During the mid'80s, he was a founder of the Student Central American Network of New England and the national student organizer for the Committee in Solidarity of the People of El Salvador (CISPES).
Jeremy Smith co-chairs the Freedom Coalition at the University of Florida, and is an editor of Prairie Fire Progressive Student News-Journal. He also serves on the board of directors of the Civic Media Center in Gainesville, Florida, a cooperative institution created to promote alternative media.]
Jeremy: During the 1980s, how did the right establish itself on campus?
Doug: One of Reagan's agendas was to crush the radical left in this country. One of his first actions when he took office was Executive Order #12333, a decree granting the FBI and CIA powers to spy and actively repress social organizing in this country. He legalized much of what had been criticized in the COINTELPRO [FBI counterintelligence] program in the 1960s and 1970s. There was an emphasis on destroying what was left of the radical underground in this country, and also a mass projection of the conservative Reagan revolution onto campuses. That began when he took office with attempts to tour administration officials on college campuses, such as Al Haig, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and Henry Kissinger. All of them were chased off almost every campus they went to because of the unpopularity of the Reagan program. So they switched strategies.
The year following the invasion of Grenada, they decided to have a mass projection of pro-interventionism on campuses, to crystallize the idea that campuses are conservative now. They designed a very slick campaign of having pro- intervention rallies, flying in students who were supposedly rescued from the university that they were attending in Grenada to campuses around the US. holding pro-intervention rallies, and then having all of them converge on the White House for a press conference with Reagan just before the election. A few days before the Grenada solidarity rallies were to occur, the plans were leaked. After the U.S. Student Association, the Democratic Socialists of America, and CISPES received those plans, there were about 50 pro-intervention rallies and about 95 anti-intervention rallies. At each campus where there was a pro-intervention rally, they were outnumbered by about 10 to 1 by anti-intervention forces, and literally run off several campuses. That pretty much busted their whole idea. So they again adapted their strategies.
First they beefed up the private intelligence gathering networks such as the College Republicans, Students for a Better America, and Young Americans for Freedom, whose agenda was to disrupt and defund the left on campus, as well as to build a conservative cadre on campuses. They began funding conservative papers and had a massive media campaign starting in '85 and '86 about how conservative and apathetic students were. That was in direct retaliation to the massive activism on campuses around South Africa. The divestment campaigns in 1985 involved literally thousands of students. Over 3000 students were arrested in 1985
.
Jeremy: What kinds of repression and harassment did you see at that time?
Doug: It's interesting to note that in 1985, the National Association for College and University Attorneys organized a conference entitled "Universities and South Africa: Divestment and Campus Disruption," and it was attended by several hundred attorneys as well as by representatives from major U. S.. corporations, the State Department and the South African embassy. The focus was on how to disrupt and discourage campus protest around South Africa. Out of that starting in the spring of '86, and especially in the fall of '86 and '87, there was a major restructuring of the penal codes regarding protesters on campuses around the country. Part of the restructuring included providing for disciplinary and academic punishments along with strictly legal punishments. Also, they began using video recorders and stepped up surveillance and general harassment.
The college right wing embraced that whole concept and began using some very sophisticated means of disruption. For example, their numbers might be much smaller than the numbers of divestment protesters or anti-CIA protesters, but each one of them might have a huge sign, so in the media it would look like there were equal numbers. Once at the University of Massachusetts, the Radical Student Union initiated a takeover of the administration building regarding Reagan's policies, and at the same time as that was going on the College Republicans took over the office of the Radical Student Union.
Jeremy: I've got to give it to them, that's brilliant. I want to focus for a minute on the specifics of the funding apparatus for the right-wing papers and organizations on campus.
Doug: The emphasis that the Reagan and Bush administrations put on campus organizing was massive. Certainly, there were legal aspects like at the conference I just described, but the budget given to, for example, the College Republicans, was at $120,000 in 1980. In 1985, that was increased to $750,000. They were sponsoring trainings of thousands of conservative activists to go hack to their campuses and disrupt the left. In 1985, the Institute for Educational Affairs (now the Madison Center) invested $400,000 to support 60 alternative campus papers covering most of the nation's leading schools. While some of them were projecting a more or less legitimate conservative viewpoint, most of them were rabidly right-wing, and dedicated to trashing CISPES and peace and justice organizations.
Many in the rabid campus right of the mid-eighties went on to serve the Reagan and Bush administrations, the CIA, Accuracy in Academia (AIA), et cetera. Rob Jennings was a Young Republican at UMass, and he's working at the AIA now, and making lots of money. There's a lot of support for youth on the right, while on the left, you have generational splits, and a very strong lack of recognition of the possibilities and the role that students play. You take any national demonstration and it's very clear - invariably students are a third to two thirds of the people present and yet they're totally unrecognized. If they're organized and preparing for that, such as in '85 at a South African/Central American demonstration, we were able to get a student speaker, who was literally the last person to speak. We were able to organize ourselves into a student contingent so we could march together, but way back in the march, and that happens all the time. Whereas on the right, there is a very conscious grooming of younger activists: financially, politically, personally.
Jeremy: On the left, I think it goes both ways. I think there's also a lot of antagonism on the part of younger activists toward older people who know more, and an indifference to radical history in the United States. One thing we've tried to do in Gainesville to correct that is to have older activists consciously mentor the student leadership, and as a result there's a lot of cooperation and respect between the older activists and young people.
Doug: That's essential, because a people without any history are doomed to repeat it. I think that the situation on campus, where the turnover of students is so high, has exacerbated this dislocation, along with the whole concept of, "You go to school, you're an activist, and then you graduate and get a life." That's being countered also in places like Tuskegee right now, where some activists in the mid-eighties started an alumni association which asked alumni not to leave the south, and to actively support and mentor activists. It is also a more fundamental criticism of the left in this country, that it is chronically ahistorical, and that there is very little comparison beyond the rhetoric.
You don't go into a coffee shop anywhere and find people debating the tactics, strategies, strengths, weaknesses of, for example, the anti-nuclear movement or the Black Panthers. When the Nicaragua solidarity movement in this country collapsed, no one wanted to talk about it. There's very little discussion of what happened in the '80s at all in terms of progressive events, let alone any acknowledgment that there was any campus activism, period. You can't find that kind of stuff, and that's why it's essential for people who have been involved and continue to be involved now to really go out of their way and make sure that the history is preserved.
Jeremy: Well, we're lucky. We have older activists here, veterans from the struggles of the 60s and 70s, who talk an awful lot about that, they drill it into our little brains, that we need to learn about what they did, the mistakes they made, and that we really need to take steps to preserve that history as much as possible and to communicate amongst ourselves, and make sure to keep records, so that we and the people who come after us can learn. It seems to me that this knowledge is the best weapon to use against government repression and right-wing harassment.
Doug: I would travel around the country going to campuses and I would hear the same set of stories all over the place, and yet people were totally isolated and felt like their school was conservative and that the right-wingers were either very strong and organized or were a marginal set of loonies that just unfortunately disrupted their work sometimes. But if there was a network in place that was looking specifically at those kind of incidents, then they would have known that what they were dealing with was pretty much uniform. This knowledge would have enabled them to organize more effectively against the disruptions, while looking at new trends emerging. The way you uncover campaigns by the right-wing or by the government, particularly the government, is to have people share their stories and their experiences. That's the only way. You're certainly not going to get them through Freedom of Information or by calling up the FBI or the CIA or the campus administration and saying, "Hey, how are you trying to undermine us?" The only way is to create networks to make people aware that these things are going on.
The 1990s: Shifting Paradigms in U.S. Society and the World
Social and political climates were changing rapidly throughout the world as the 1990s began. In 1990, the system of South African Apartheid began to slowly dismantle, making headlines of “progress” while deploying a vicious and deadly counter-insurgency against the population under headlines of “black on black violence.” DC SCAR held the last US anti-apartheid demonstration at the South African Embassy in 1993, bitterly denouncing the state-inspired violence and racism in US media.
While this is not a comprehensive analysis, some of those changes had profound effect on the climate and opportunities for anti-racist organizing in the U.S. Within a few years, the clear “enemies,” such as apartheid, brutal regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala, the Contra war, and President Ronald Reagan, were no longer in the picture. US troops were deployed in the Middle East. The hope inspired by largely student-led revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Pro-Democracy Movement in China gave way to war, repression and despair in these parts of the world. A resurgent fascist movement was sweeping through Europe, stimulated by the mass influx of political and economic refugees in Western Europe and the legalization of fascist organizing in Eastern Europe. While fascist violence was perpetrated mostly by young people, the strategies and funding came from career fascists, including many former Nazi military leaders. [DC SCAR archives]
In the U.S., the radical right-wing and their allies in Congress turned their rhetoric to domestic issues targeting people of color, immigrants, gays and lesbians, and poor youth. President Clinton eased the militancy of progressive actions by replacing the Reagan-Bush policies of confrontation in favor of friendly rhetoric and a liberal facade. An example of this is the continued gay support for Clinton despite his reluctance to fight on their behalf. Another example was Clinton’s community service initiatives that espoused liberal ideals to youth while mainly offering only “band aid” service projects devoid of deeper political discourse and inadequate to solve deep economic and social problems. Economics were changing as businesses and politicians courted an older baby-boom generation, free-market capitalism opened vast new markets in Eastern Europe, and “free trade zones” were expanded in Third World countries. Job security and opportunity fell within the U.S., and young people filled new jails and prisons in phenomenal numbers. In the streets, youth-on-youth violence was surging, signaling an urgent need for effective anti-violence programs.
For DC SCAR, these new climates brought refinements in focus and strategy. Progressive student organizing on college campuses changed dramatically, and many of the youth networks and groups of the 80s ceased to exist. In Washington DC, there were no longer college groups coming together on a common cause, such as with the earlier anti-apartheid and Central America solidarity coalitions. Younger students were taking the brunt of restrictive local and federal educational and “criminal justice” policies and faced greater obstacles in getting an education due to ever-deepening funding cuts in education budgets, grants, summer job and student loan programs. Members of DC SCAR analyzed these social and political changes, and formulated new educational and organizing strategies from an anti-racist perspective.
In February 1990, DC SCAR organized National Days of Racism Awareness and Anti-Racist Action, which coincided with the 30th anniversary of the Greensboro anti-segregation student sit-ins. Several campuses around the country organized local actions and attended a DC SCAR city-wide conference in Washington DC.
Leadership Training
While college SCAR chapters declined in the late 1980s and early 1990s, new energy was found in younger students who formed high school SCAR chapters. This was a natural shift, as many important social battles for youth were taking place in this age group, including organizing against racist and bigoted violence, education funding cuts, and a host of pressing concerns. No less important were the many obstacles that prevented young people of color from attending college at all. While college radicalism declined in the 1990s, high school youth were far more politicized than ten years previous. Working in Washington DC, this shift also brought issues facing very poor “at risk” students to the forefront, and they moved beyond a narrow focus on the need for more educational funding to a broader social perspective that includes recognizing the contributions and struggles of all cultures.
Throughout its history, DC SCAR has conducted “unlearning racism” and organizing workshops and trainings for students, teachers, college faculty and staff, and community and non-profit organizations, such as the National Wildlife Fund and the Latin American Youth Center. These workshops have ranged in format from a few hours to several days. They have been initiated by DC SCAR upon request by high school and college students and academic programs; or have been components in other organizations’ youth leadership programs, such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the U.S. Student Association and the DC Service Corps. Generally speaking, the DC SCAR workshops focus primarily on institutional racism; and included history lessons, group exercises and multi-media presentations. DC SCAR members have developed these trainings through their own organizing experiences, and through intensive work with the Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond in New Orleans, Rosalinda Ramirez of Raven Associates in Atlanta, and participating in many other organizations’ workshops and programs.
SCAR chapters at area schools have also conducted smaller versions of these workshops, including George Mason University SCAR’s highly successful “Racism 101” workshops in school classrooms, Bethesda Chevy Chase High School SCAR conducting a workshop for all the teachers on the racial implications of their schools “tracking” system, and Wilson High School SCARs work in their school and others, using the National Coalition Building Institute workshop format, which raises awareness of interpersonal racism and bigotry. One DC SCAR “graduate,” Joan Heckscher, formed her own organization, the Community Action International Alliance, which hosts highly successful “reality tour” workshops for Washington DC students. These tours encompass visits to community centers and organizations, and often include a DC SCAR workshop.
Leadership Training for “At Risk” Youth
In Washington DC, there are many organizations working with young people from a wide-variety of backgrounds. But there are many more “at-risk” youth for whom there are only very limited programs available, if any at all. Existing organizations largely address specific constituencies and focus on service-oriented programming, often to considerable success. However, there is a strong need and desire within these groups and among the many more “unorganized” to build bridges and projects to learn from each other.
Washington DC is an incredibly diverse community, but instilled with historic ethnic divisions and increasingly severe structural, economic and social problems. Youth poverty rates hover around 50 percent; [District of Columbia Government statistic], the school system and social services are in deep crises; youth violence and cultural segregation are ever-present. While DC SCAR is working to develop its own base within the city through cultural events, conflict resolution programs and community service projects, these multiple issues can only be resolved through multiple collaborative efforts to reach and involve everyone in the community.
In 1994, DC SCAR worked with The Business Enterprise (TBE) and Educational Support Systems (ESS), to develop a pilot program for leadership and conflict resolution training with “at risk” youth. This program was designed to include collaborations with the DC Police Safe Streets program, the Howard University emergency response team (which provided counseling following shootings), the DC Health Innoculation Mobile Service, and neighborhood organizations. Unfortunately, this program was dependent upon the DC summer jobs program for participants, and the disorganization and budget cutbacks within that program made for low attendance and an abbreviated pilot project. It was an important learning experience for the organizers to develop and test their ideas with “at risk” youth, and cemented their commitment to work to develop this program further.
While funding sources proved elusive in 1995, this program continued to develop conceptually and through networking. DC SCAR participated in the DC PACT (Pulling America’s Communities Together) coalition of neighborhood organizations and social service agencies to address concerns for providing for DC youth. This coalition conducted a valuable survey about perceptions of safety and violence prevention throughout the DC public schools. Additionally, DC SCAR members attended conflict resolution and community safety conferences and consulted young organizers to continue developing ideas.
In 1996, funding for developing the DC SCAR conflict resolution program was provided by a grant from the United Methodist Youth Fund, the Jewish Fund for Justice, and DC Safe Summer Program. In early August, DC SCAR hosted an intensive ten-day conflict resolution and leadership program in Washington DC. Participants were recruited from three organizations: the DC Community Partnership, the Network of Educators of the Americas, and Operation Understanding, an organization promoting Black-Jewish relations. This program included intensive discussions, a community service river clean-up, an art workshop, video showings, group readings, participating in a DC SCAR workshop on coalition-building at an international peace studies conference in Washington DC, and a closing ceremony with folk singer David Sawyer. Evaluative feedback from all of the participants underscored the need for many more students to be exposed to this kind of program. Still in its formative stages, the DC SCAR conflict resolution program shows great promise. The DC Mayor’s Office on Policy has shown interest in promoting the 1997 summer program as well as ongoing conflict resolution efforts throughout the public school system.
High Schools SCAR Chapters
DC SCAR members had discussed focused outreach to high school-aged students beginning in 1989, but early plans were derailed by attention given to the protests at the University of the District of Columbia and elsewhere. Pat McCann, of University of Maryland SCAR, became a student-teacher at Blair High School, in Washington DC and brought DC SCAR members to speak to his classes. As his role increased there, he worked with students to form an ongoing, fully autonomous SCAR chapter. In 1992, former member, Joan Heckscher, was leading “reality tours” as the Washington-head of Global Exchange, a non-profit educational organization based in San Francisco. These tours brought different audiences (mostly students) to site visits and meetings with organizers in the DC area under specific themes, such as environmental racism, non-violence, and community health. She later formed her own organization, the Community Action Information Alliance, which furthered the concepts of “reality tours.” She had participated in the DC SCAR workshop at Blair High School, and found the experience to be inspiring.
Through informal discussions and a general sense of strategy, Heckscher organized two “reality tours” at Bethesda-Chevy Chase (BCC) High School, in Maryland, and Wilson High School, in Washington DC in the spring and fall of 1992, respectively. These tours included DC SCAR members as trainers for the anti-racism sections. At BCC, Hecksher and DC SCAR member, Lorraine Griffin, led an anti-racism workshop using DC SCAR training formats, and Ray Davis led a similar workshop at Wilson High School. Students at both schools decided to form SCAR chapters, and Hecksher, Davis and Doug Calvin continued to work with the students in a variety of supportive roles. [December 1996 interview with Joan Heckscher] Another SCAR chapter was formed and existed for two years at the Madeira School, a private girls’ school in Northern Virginia. Two Madeira students had attended a DC SCAR benefit concert and after speaking with Ray Davis and Doug Calvin, decided to organize a SCAR chapter.
In 1993-94, Wilson High School SCAR members, led by Sameena Mulah, Lindsay Moore, David Thurston and Ellie Davis, created a city-wide teen network and confronted the DC City Council’s budget cuts through pickets, meetings and direct action. Following one stormy afternoon City Council hearing in 1994, where the teens were continually treated disrespectfully by City Council members and then asked to leave, the students left the meeting and blocked half of Pennsylvania Avenue during rush hour in protest. Wilson High School SCAR members carried out a wide variety of educational programs, including informational poster campaigns in their school and adopting a sister-school in South Africa. Wilson teacher and SCAR advisor, Joanne Malone, reflects, “Two years ago SCAR was very strong in the school, and had tremendous support from the student body. Last year SCAR still existed, but focused mainly on in-school struggles, including mobilizing critical support to a teachers’ contractual dispute. This year there was a student who expressed interest in continuing SCAR, but hasn’t done much so far. It has always been very much a student-run organization. The older members of DC SCAR were very influential; giving direction, conducting summer meetings and general support.” [December 1996 interview]
Challenging the Politics of Prison
By 1991, the growing focus by DC SCAR members on the prison industry and political prisoners was closely associated with the organization’s history of addressing educational access. It developed further from close relationships with German youth organizers, where a substantial movement on behalf of US political prisoners had grown. The highly politicized youth movement in Germany had engaged in substantial education and solidarity with radical movements and prisoners in the US. Radical archives in Germany had more DC SCAR materials than many DC area schools. The timing of cutbacks in education funding directly correlated with the massive increase in funding for the prison industry and policy changes in the “criminal justice” system. Although record numbers of Americans were attending colleges, there were decreasing numbers of students of color in higher education, while at the same time the principle populations filling prisons were also youth of color.
DC SCAR members began investigating the situations in prisons, the development of new maximum security prisons, and the profits behind the politics of such policies and developments. DC SCAR members began visiting Mumia Abu-Jamal. In January 1991, DC SCAR launched a national campaign to free Mumia from death row. This marked the beginning of ongoing efforts to publicize and support the plight of political prisoners from the Black Panther Party, Puerto Rican Independistas, the American Indian Movement, and white anti-imperialist radicals. In the next few years, awareness of US political prisoners and Mumia Abu-Jamal grew exponentially, in small part because of the work of DC SCAR. Equally important, SCAR NEWS covered prisoner struggles, prison issues, networked with prison activists and reached inmates throughout the country.
Indigenous Human Rights
DC SCAR has consistently acted in support of Native American and Indigenous struggles throughout its history, including solidarity with Arizona Dine struggles against relocation, and solidarity with the victims and their families of massacres in Guatemala in the mid-1980s. In the early 1990s, Indigenous struggles in Canada and Latin America had escalated in militancy and political power. The well-publicized Mohawk occupation and stand-off with the Canadian military occurred to protect traditional burial grounds from a planned golf-course development. This was one of a dozen or more serious confrontations with developers, loggers and police throughout Canada. In Ecuador, the strongest Indigenous movement in the Americas engaged in a series of national strikes, blockades and other actions, often with serious reprisals, to protect their lands from development and be allowed to implement fully multi-cultural educational programs for their youth. In El Salvador and Brazil, Indigenous communities were attacked by government troops as they struggled for human and land rights. Local struggles facing the Piscataway Indian Nation in Southern Maryland and solidarity actions with their networks were constant. 1992 marked the 500th anniversary of the entry of Christopher Columbus into the Americas, and Indigenous groups and supporters throughout the Americas staged demonstrations, and prepared cultural, political and educational events and resources. DC SCAR worked to support many of these struggles through publishing SCAR News, participating in demonstrations, pickets (particularly at the Canadian Embassy), and distributing press statements and resource materials to youth organizations around the country.
Confronting White Supremacy
While projects against white supremacist movements had been a continual aspect of DC SCAR’s organizing since its inception in 1983, the dramatic resurgence of neo-nazi and racist police violence in Europe gave a new urgency and priority for anti-fascist organizing within DC SCAR. Critical information was provided by German exchange student members of DC SCAR who were in touch with organizers in Germany, and were knowledgeable about the history and strategies of the neo-nazi Movement. In 1991 and 1994, DC SCAR organizers, Ray Davis and Doug Calvin, toured German cities to learn firsthand about the situations there, and to share U.S. perspectives and organizing experiences. Several German and English youth organizers visited and worked with DC SCAR as well. In the days immediately following the 1991 nazi pogroms in Rostock, Germany, a DC SCAR solidarity statement was read to 10,000 anti-fascist demonstrators in Rostock.
DC SCAR stepped up its role as a source of information to U.S. activists about the rise of fascist movements in Europe and the U.S.. Close alliances were forged with organizations such as the Center for Democratic Renewal (CDR -- a national clearinghouse about white supremacists in the US), Searchlight Magazine (a London-based European-wide anti-fascist publication and research organization), the North Carolinians Against Racial and Religious Violence, the Coalition for Human Dignity in Portland, OR, the People Against Racist Terror (PART) in Los Angeles, Anti-Racist Action in Toronto, and the Berlin-based Antifa Infoblatt and Projekt Archive. Members of DC SCAR participated in and hosted forums for these groups, conducted in-depth meetings and research with their leadership, and additionally DC SCAR member Doug Calvin provided information to CDR, Searchlight, and Political Research Associates in Boston by performing sporadic infiltration and research into white supremacist organizations in the Mid-Atlantic region.
In 1992, all DC SCAR members initiated a call for demonstrations in Washington DC and elsewhere, against the rise of neonazi violence, upon request of German anti-fascists. The actions were held on November 9th in commemoration of the 54th anniversary of Krystallnacht, the night Nazi troops attacked Jewish businesses throughout Germany, and to oppose both contemporary neonazi violence and racist policies of the German government. Several cities in the U.S. and Canada held activities; dozens of solidarity statements were received from Europe, and a demonstration and meeting with the German Ambassador to the U.S. were held at the German Embassy in Washington DC. This was the first demonstration at the Embassy since the Vietnam War, and included twenty or so Jewish students from around the country who were in Washington for a Jewish youth leadership summit.
A second demonstration occurred in September 1994, at the German Embassy. This action was called by DC SCAR in response to continuing atrocities in Germany and a frame-up trial of one of the very few German-immigrant antifascist organizations. This action coincided with the release of a Helsinki Watch report that documented German government incidents of racism and support for neonazi activities. Soon after, rising international outcry led the German state to impose some highly publicized “crack-downs” on major nazi organizations, while the news of continued pogroms and violence was blacked out in the media. By 1995, the dramatic nazi street violence subsided to a less dramatic and ongoing campaign of turf control, international strategizing, collaboration, and recruiting and training of youth cadre. This was a strategic decision by nazi groups, as their main platform points regarding immigration policies had been achieved through national legislation and police violence. This marked a shameful collaboration in German politics; the German State justified its actions by blaming the victims for the violence, and the nazi viewpoints and organizing were supported by government statements and policies.
Continuing Anti-Fascist Organizing
International opposition to nazi violence and racist government policies has continued to grow exponentially throughout Europe, as fascist street violence, commando terrorist actions and political influence have consolidated. The United for Intercultural Action network, which includes the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS), European Roma Rights Centre (EERC), International Gay and Lesbian Youth Organisation (IGLYO), International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), Migrants’ Forum of the European Union, Mobility International -- Roma National Congress (RNC), Searchlight Magazine, and hundreds of organizations from all over Europe, has taken a lead role in combating fascism and racism on a regional scale. United is the biggest European anti-racist network of more than 380 organizations, with the largest participation from Central and Eastern Europe.
In commemoration of Krystallnacht in 1996, United organized an International Day Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism, “Stop the Violence Against Minorities” actions. Local groups in over 35 countries participated with rallies, candlelight marches and vigils, concerts, exhibitions, films, debates, and forums. Upcoming plans include a conference in Slovakia in January 1997, a European-wide week against racism in March, events in Amsterdam in June, an International Refugee Day in June, and events in November 1997 around Krystallnacht.
As can be learned from our European counterparts, media coverage, politicians, legislation and police forces cannot alone provide the resolutions to these problems, and may serve to fuel the fires, as much as to call the fire brigades. Ongoing community education programs, diverse coalitions, communications, fundraising, strategic cooperation and solidarity efforts are absolutely vital in stopping the spread of resurgent fascism.
US Anti-Fascist Organizing
Within the US, however, awareness of the increasing international neonazi movement remains low despite the leading role of US white supremacists internationally and spiraling violence within our borders. There are a few dozen highly effective local groups and a handful of regional and national organizations working to reverse this situation, but they are strapped with limited resources and overwhelming tasks. The role of the mainstream media has been to play up the sensationalism of specific acts of terror, and to largely understate the underlying strategies and larger implications of these right-wing, neo-nazi groups for U.S. society.
Developing Conceptual Foundations for Anti-Fascist Organizing
DC SCAR has developed plans for an anti-fascist network for the Mid-Atlantic region, which stresses information sharing about white supremacist organizing, college and high school educational workshops, and a public education campaign. This could be invaluable in preventing both attacks and membership recruitment by white supremacist organizations, and providing forums for college and high school students to work together in a common and pressing cause.
While white supremacist organizing and violence may be more visible in bordering states such as Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the level of organizing and presence is mounting significantly in Maryland and Virginia. While nation-wide, anti-Semitic violence has dropped, in Maryland anti-Semitic incidents jumped by 78% in 1994 alone. [Washington Post, Fall 1994] Many gatherings of teens in Maryland and Virginia can recount personal experiences of encounters with organized teen racists. Furthermore, this anti-fascist program will provide links with the existing anti-racist networks with which DC SCAR works, to foster greater awareness and solidarity with anti-racist organizers, particularly in areas such as Germany and Eastern Europe (where there is currently very little awareness or support for youth organizers.) Attendance at local, national and international conferences, activist exchanges, and information databases among various organizations could also be greatly increased.
Plans to formally establish this anti-fascist network have been on hold, primarily due to the lack of interest by potential funders, along with limited organizational capacity. However, the ongoing outreach, trainings and networking by DC SCAR in the Virginia-Maryland region continue building the foundation for this project.
DC SCAR Foundations & South Africa: A Brief Sketch of Solidarity & Struggles
By Doug Calvin, 1996
Southern Africa
DC SCARs’ formation in 1983 was prompted by anti-apartheid student organizers at Howard University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, John Hopkins University, and the University of Maryland at College Park. These student organizers formed a coalition of their campus progressive and anti-apartheid organizations to support and share resources regarding their work in solidarity with South African freedom organizations, and to coordinate university divestment of corporations doing business in South Africa. These actions included constructing “shanty-towns” at these campuses to bring attention to the plight of South Africans. These direct actions were highly controversial, and included 35 student protester arrests at Georgetown University, a firebombing attack on the shantytown at Johns Hopkins University (the perpetrator was a student who was later convicted of arson and assault), and twelve student protester arrests at the University of Maryland at College Park, when students rebuilt shanties destroyed by campus police. All the universities eventually divested.
During this time, DC SCAR meetings were held monthly, most often at the University of the District of Columbia or at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in Washington DC. Meetings generally attracted 30-40 people, including three or four students from each campus chapter, members of the All African Peoples’ Revolutionary Party, the Young Socialists’ Alliance, Frontline (a Communist Party youth organization), and often student activists from out of town, including Rutgers University, Columbia and other schools around the country. While the sectarian groups tried hard to recruit at the meetings, most of the students were generally oblivious to these efforts and stayed focused on the work of DC SCAR.
The divestment campaigns were part of a wide-spread movement, involving hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the US and internationally, to pressure the South African government to abolish the apartheid system. DC SCAR members were active beyond their own campuses in the anti-apartheid movement, often initiating and participating in protests at the South African Embassy, and attending conferences and meetings of student and community activists in the Mid-Atlantic, New England and the deep South.
As the Free South Africa Movement grew to include steady acts of non-violent civil disobedience at the South African Embassy, different constituencies planned different days to protest at the Embassy, including lawyers, clergy, and movement leaders. Students pressured to have a student day, that occurred on February 1, 1984, the anniversary of the birth of the student sit-in movement of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. DC SCAR mobilized throughout the city and 120 students were arrested; the most arrests in one day of any of the Embassy protests.
DC SCAR was instrumental in organizing a DC student contingent to the U.S. Student Association-sponsored 1985 Chicago summit addressing “Youth Solidarity with the Peoples’ Struggle in Southern Africa,” and establishing a national legislative alert network with the Washington Office on Africa and the U.S. Student Association.
Anti-Anti-Apartheid Strategies
By 1985, the South African Government was attempting to disrupt the U.S. anti-apartheid movement and launch its own counter-campaigns through hosting embassy tours for student government leaders. Students from American University were invited on one of these tours. When DC SCAR member, Dee Harris, could not dissuade the students to cancel, he decided to participate as well. Once inside the Embassy, Harris handcuffed himself to a desk and demanded to see the Ambassador. His request was not granted and he was arrested. No more Embassy tours were granted under the apartheid governments.
A major anti-anti-apartheid meeting was held in New York City in 1985, co-sponsored by the South African Government, the U.S. State Department, a national association of university administration lawyers and other groups. In this meeting they evaluated student organizing against apartheid that had spread to hundreds of college campuses, and many universities were divesting from corporations with holdings in South Africa. They realized that the threat of arrest records and legal punishment did not deter students from taking a moral stance. Some of the decisions from that meeting were exposed by the American Coalition on Africa, including suggestions to change university penal codes regarding political protests to threaten a student’s academic standing, a greater emphasis on police surveillance and increased force by campus security and state police. Over the next year, these changes were apparent on campuses across the country.
The Last Days of Apartheid
Many of the anti-apartheid organizations eventually split on many campuses, due to racial tensions within the anti-apartheid organizations themselves and misleading media coverage of South African news. This was prevented in DC SCAR largely due to the continued belief in having leadership of color in charge, and the commitment of all members to maintaining a principled, multi-racial and multi-ethnic organization with long-term goals and analysis.
DC SCAR continued to apply pressure on South Africa until apartheid was abolished. In 1990, DC SCAR was responsible for the only national mailings to student groups regarding sanctions on South Africa, and in 1993, held the last anti-apartheid demonstration at the South African Embassy, in response to the South African government-inspired massacres and assassinations that had taken place. The news media of the day covered these atrocities as “black on black” violence, but it was known within the movement and later proven through the South African Truth Commission that the violence was orchestrated by the apartheid government.
Social Paradigms of the Reagan Era
The 1980s were an era of intense social strife and upheaval around the world, including extensive organizing for social justice on the part of U.S. progressive activists. These movements were ignited by highly confrontational policies and personalities of Ronald Reagan and his allies, including South African President F.W. Botha, Angola’s Jonas Savimbi, the Contra Armies in Honduras and Costa Rica, Israeli Prime Minister Menacham Begin, English Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and a host of other hard-line right-wing despots and dictators. The Cold War heated up; wars in the Third World intensified, and within the U.S. there were concerted political and economic attacks on women, left-wing movements and the poor. Major corporations made record profits and mergers while undermining the stability and rights of working people. The adversaries of human rights and social justice were easily identified.
Many people in the U.S. responded to these affronts by organizing around a host of issues, often holding large demonstrations and acts of non-violent civil disobedience. The alternative press was prevalent in communities throughout the country, and national newspapers, such as the Guardian Independent Weekly, provided support and education around a host of issues. Youth in the early eighties often prevented or disrupted public relations attempts by Reagan Administration officials to speak at universities, such as U.N. Representative Jeannie Kirkpatrick, Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, causing their speaking engagements to be abandoned as a publicity strategy. These students also set in motion a momentum that was to involve their younger brothers and sisters in a decade of growing student activism.
Over the course of the 1980s, a diverse and widespread student movement grew, including leadership from black, white, gay, lesbian, Latino, Native American students from major universities, small community colleges and high schools around the nation. This movement made significant contributions to larger social causes, as well as confronting a host of student and educational issues although it was largely not recognized nor fully nourished by older organizers and society as a whole. Thus, an entire generation of activists became veterans of a youth movement that was hardly recognized and is largely forgotten in the 1990s.
Overview of DC SCAR Membership and Structure
For the past thirteen years, DC SCAR has been an evolving coalition of youth organizers from area schools, with participation ranging from elementary school children to college graduates, from a wide cross-section of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. DC SCAR is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic coalition of students and young people, with leadership by people of color, seeking to understand and struggle against racism and other forms of oppression in their communities and around the world. It is guided by the principles of the right to self-determination, equality and justice for all people.
Group Membership
As a coalition, DC SCAR has always had leadership of people of color, made decisions collectively, and has been open to all members of the community. Members have included African-American, African, European-American, European, Caribbean, Jewish, Palestinian, Latin American, Indigenous, Asian, gay, lesbian and bi-sexual student activists. Many young women, in particular, have contributed to the organization in leadership roles, including former members, Executive Director Marguerite Fletcher, General Secretary Desiree Arretez, Office Manager Joan Heckscher, intern Kasey Jones, Robin Templeton, Tracy Krumm, Deborah Robinson, GMU SCAR President Rahel Addamu, Wilson High School SCAR Co-Presidents Sameena Mulah and Lindsay Moore, and current staff member Wyannie Sajery.
Older organizers, including Dr. Sylvia Hill, Sondra Hill and Immani Countess, leaders of the South Africa Support Project, and members of the All African Peoples’ Revolutionary Party (AAPRP), played tremendously helpful roles in the formative years of DC SCAR. Other older organizers, including Howard University Professor Walda Katz-Fishman; South African poet Dennis Brutus; educator Abena Walker; George Mason University counselor Dr. Dennis Webster; and movement veterans Rosalinda Ramirez, a Taino Elder; Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez, an educator, author and filmmaker; Leonard Zeskind, a top-notch researcher on white supremacist movements; Gerry Gable, editor of Searchlight Magazine; Loretta Ross, a leader in human rights and womens’ organizing internationally, and others have been invaluable mentors, providing political analysis, insight and a wealth of experiences for members of DC SCAR.
Funding for DC SCAR has come from a variety of endeavors over the years, including foundation grants, student government associations, religious organizations, cultural programs, speaking engagements, workshops and trainings, and in-kind donations, such as printing, mailing and travel expenses.
Structural Models
As a youth and student organization, the structures and strategies for the organization have undergone changes with each generation of activists. Over the thirteen years, SCAR chapters have come and gone and at times reformed at many Washington DC colleges and high schools; holding monthly general meetings throughout most of that time. In many ways, DC SCAR has served as a proving ground for new activists to learn skills and gain leadership positions in movement campaigns and mobilizations. DC SCAR members have “graduated” into other realms of community organizing, including becoming union stewards, community organizers, an Amnesty International regional director of the Southeast, founders and leaders of new organizations, the founder of a graphic design company serving social justice causes, and much more. There has always been an emphasis on personal development and growth in building social change movements with a long-term perspective.
DC SCAR has always sought to make decisions democratically, achieving consensus on the vast majority of issues. In theory, ideas for events and campaigns are proposed at meetings, discussed within the organization and with key allies, and shaped into timelines and tasks. Many campaigns have been in response to solidarity requests from Southern Africa and around the world. This process may occur over the period of years, months, days or hours, depending on the urgency involved. In the founding years, consensus was taken very seriously and helped build trust among the group. In reality, during the period from 1991-- 1996, however, power was concentrated in fewer and fewer people, as organizational tensions and turnover affected recruitment of new members.
In the early 1990’s, the central organization and the chapters attempted to restructure themselves into a more cohesive coalition, with DC SCAR acting more as a resource center and clearinghouse for information. Turnovers in membership again changed this structure, with fewer chapters at high schools and only one college that operated mostly autonomously, and the resource center developing campaigns and programs around the far-right and prison issues in the DC metro area, as well as collaborating with sister groups nationally and internationally.
The Roots of DC SCAR: A Legacy of Struggle and Grassroots Youth Organizing
The origins of DC SCAR rest in a legacy of movements of resistance against repression for human rights and dignity that stretches back hundreds of years. As singer-songwriter Utah Phillips and others have said, the most radical thing in this country is a long memory. When approaching social change, it is important to understand the lessons and continuums of history, knowledge that is notoriously absent in much of the organizing in this country. Without such knowledge, movements constantly “reinvent the wheel,” and activists lose information and insights from valuable precedents and perspectives that have developed through the passage of time and could be utilized to better evaluate their own effectiveness.
There is a continuity through time that links organizers of any generation to a rich legacy of struggle, each generation in turn adding its own experiences from which others may learn and draw inspiration and strategies. The origins of the Underground Railroad, for example, stretch directly back to Indigenous populations in the Caribbean freeing African slaves. The origins of the 1950s and 60s Civil Rights Movement rest in the Abolitionist Movement of the 19th Century. The 1960s anti-Vietnam War Movement and Free Speech Movement stem directly from the Civil Rights Movement, as young organizers gained experience and consciousness through working in the deep South. These movements, in turn, gave rise to the womens’ movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the American Indian Movement, and many other movements that took shape in the 1970s. Members of the Black Panther Party called themselves the “sons of Malcom X”, and they, in turn, inspired the formation of black studies and student centers on campuses across the country. The Central America Solidarity Movement of the 1980s had roots in the 1960s “butter and bullets” counter-insurgency efforts during the Kennedy Administration, when thousands of liberal young U.S. citizens volunteered for Peace Corps duty in Latin America, and saw firsthand the poverty and political and economic struggles that had become entrenched in these countries for generations.
The Growth of a U.S. Student Movement
The mid-to-late 1980s were characterized by a mass upsurge in student activism covering a wide range of issues, including apartheid, racism, Central America, anti-CIA, Palestinian-Israeli conflicts, womens’ rights, gay and lesbian struggles, AIDS, and access to education. Around the country, students traveled from campus to campus and hosted conferences to learn from one another and plan strategies. DC SCAR members played a central role in many of these gatherings, as keynote speakers, workshop leaders and participants, often attending out-of-town events with a van or a bus full of DC students. At a poorly planned radical student gathering of over 700 students at Rutgers University in 1987, members of DC SCAR and the ad hoc people of color caucus stopped the conference from forming an organization due to the minimal representation and presence of students of color, who had been left out of the organizing and recruiting for the conference. It is significant to note that while the entire conference hung in the balance between utter collapse and forward motion, organizer Christine Kelley held the large group together by an unaccompanied song.
This was also a period of mass demonstrations and formidable coalitions, often centered in Washington DC. Most major peace and justice campaigns and mobilizations in recent years have been characterized by short-term, political objectives to influence legislation and policy-makers, led by a powerful coalition of “movement leaders” who determine the objectives and tactics, often to the detriment of ongoing local organizing efforts. Although students would typically mobilize one-third to one-half of the participants, they were often marginalized by the more established baby-boom leadership who were in charge of the mobilizations. Taking their own initiative, the students would generally organize a sub-coalition of youth organizations, allowing for coordination, organizing and influence in the mobilizations.
In one example, the 1987 March for Freedom in Southern Africa and Central America, students not only hosted a youth meeting of over 400 participants, but also changed the planned civil disobedience site from the White House to the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. In another example, the 1988 March for Housing Now, had not involved students in the national planning, but members of DC SCAR and others made large student banners, hosted a youth networking party, and formed an impressive student contingent during the march.
Forming a Student United Front
The exponentially increasing student activism across the country and ongoing collaboration in the mid-1980s led to an informal ongoing alliance of a few of the most important student organizations, and parent organizations with student organizers. The primary organizations in this alliance included DC SCAR, the Progressive Student Network (PSN -- consisting of dozens of college campus chapters, mainly concentrated in the Midwest), the Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, CISPES (which had a national student organizer, six regional student organizers and over fifty college chapters and another 250 school organizations that participated in campaigns), the U.S. Student Association (consisting of student government representatives throughout the nation), the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), and varying participation from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Young Communist League (YCL). This informal grouping was pragmatically based in the overlap of interests and the principles of solidarity with each others’ work and networks. Some examples of cooperation included working together to recruit more organized student turnouts for major demonstrations and mobilizations, such as womens’ reproductive and human rights, and the massive student response to the FMLN offensive in El Salvador in 1989.
In 1990, two important acts of collaboration, demonstrating the cooperation of PSN, CISPES and DC SCAR were organized. The first, in late March was a protest of US policies in El Salvador, initiated by CISPES, which included a march and act of civil disobedience at the White House. Students not only participated in numbers at these actions, but gathered the day before and organized a demonstration at the U.S. Department of Education, followed by a networking meeting and another protest at the Salvadoran Embassy to support the University of El Salvador and political prisoners. DC SCAR’s Executive Director Ray Davis and CISPES National Student Organizer Doug Calvin also gathered a statement of support from campus religious leaders throughout the country to support this demonstration and DC SCARs’ Days of Anti-Racist Action, which were held in February.
The second event, initiated by PSN was held at Kent State University in Ohio. It was a student activist conference and commemoration of the 1970 Kent and Jackson State anti-war demonstrations, where students had been shot by government troops. The collaborating organizations worked together in conceptualizing these events, publicizing and recruiting for them, and fully involving each other in the programs and events.
Probably the most significant benefits of this informal alliance was the dissemination of information regarding radical student organizing to other student organizers throughout the country, promoting coalition-building and solidarity in a very diverse, widespread and unconsolidated student movement. The members of these groups were also closely linked with other movements that were equally promoted, including a resurgent movement of MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Atzlan) chapters in the Southwest, black student initiatives from the Southeast, and emerging student organizations, such as the Student Environmental Action Coalition and Education for the People. Contact lists of student organizers from many issue areas were compiled, widely published and distributed, encouraging greater communications and a sense of identity in a national progressive student movement, which crossed issue, race, class and geographic divisions.
This mutual promotion provided a basis for strong student involvement in the anti-war mobilizations during the Gulf War, including a February 22nd DC SCAR-sponsored protest at the FBI headquarters in protest of harassment of Arab students and anti-war protesters. DC SCAR also helped distribute educational materials to student activists regarding government harassment of political activists and the need for basic security measures to lessen the impact of government harassment, as well as an organizational statement entitled, “The War is at Home” that addressed institutional racism and anti-democratic FBI and Bush Administration policies. All members of DC SCAR participated in these endeavors in response to the crisis provoked by the escalations in the Middle East.
The End of an Era
However, the Gulf War also signaled the end of the era that had begun with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. The broad popular anti-war sentiment across the country was fraught with “national leadership” ego-battles and political divisions that affected progressive organizing nationally. Even within student coalitioning, the great many new activists did not share the political foundations and approaches to coalition-building of veteran organizers -- most of whom were not in the Washington DC area where movement power was concentrated.
Equally significant was that parent groups that had student organizers were threatened by the multi-issue coalition approach to student organizing that had grown over the previous decade. As a result, student organizing programs and staff positions were terminated. This was particularly critical with the disbandment of the CISPES student program in 1990, as it alone had more staff, resources and chapters around the country than any of the other organizations.
Other major weaknesses during the late 1980s within the student movement were the lack of consistent communications between organizers on different campuses, media coverage that tended to promote 1960s nostalgia and obscure current issues, and a narrow focus on single issues, such as abortion rights, environmental issues, or foreign policy issues, by many campus organizations. The role of the far-right wing, corporate and government strategies and programs cannot be overlooked either. Right-wing collaborative strategies that had been developed in the 1970s were implemented in the 1980s, including funding rabidly right-wing newspapers at scores of college campuses and concerted efforts to disrupt and defund student left-wing groups and radical faculty. These forces invested huge sums of money and resources to counter and undermine progressive activism in general, and youth activism in particular.
Foundations of DC SCAR
DC SCAR itself is modeled on many of the founding ideals of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which played a central role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. SNCC embraced the ideals of black-leadership, multi-racial youth leadership in community organizing and in its larger movement for social change. However, the differences are also significant.
SNCC was primarily a voting rights organization throughout most of its history, DC SCAR has always addressed multiple issues, such as apartheid, domestic racism, womens’ rights, and the far-right wing. SNCC had tremendous organizational capacity and structure, but was beset by bitter internal political, racial and gender struggles. SNCC was largely a black organization, with participation of white students and Latina member, Elizabeth Martinez. By the late 1960s, racial tensions split the organization; white members were expelled, and the organization took an increasingly black nationalist stance. The extreme sexism within SNCC denied recognition and power sharing for the women, many of whom were to become leaders in the womens’ movement, along with women who had suffered similiar treatment in other radical youth organizations in the 1950s and 60s.
DC SCAR, on the other hand, has never been very strong organizationally; with no fulltime staff members. More often than not, it follows an ad hoc approach to structural issues. Despite these problems, the political clarity and integrity of DC SCAR have remained consistent throughout its history, drawing upon the strength and integrity of members.
DC SCAR has been a highly successful model of a multi-racial, multi-ethnic anti-racist youth organization. The heavy racial tensions that were prevalent in some anti-apartheid organizations and destroyed many altogether, were never stumbling blocks within DC SCAR. Often these tensions grew from white students trying to “recruit” black students into structures that were established without their involvement, or by white students taking control of multi-racial groups.
At DC SCARs’ inception in 1983, student organizers from different universities came together from the greater Washington DC area as equals to form a coordinated response to oppose apartheid as resistance to government repression grew in South Africa. These included leaders from black student unions and white progressive student unions. No one person or group took absolute leadership of the coalition; they shared credit for the successes and worked on a basis of mutual respect.
In the early meetings, older members of the black-nationalist All African Peoples’ Revolutionary Party talked a lot about the importance of black students needing to lead the coalition. Founding member, Marty Ellington, a student at Georgetown University, patiently and without anger addressed these issues further: the black community did not need white students to tell them about racism; white students needed to talk to other white students and their parents, and each ethnic group needed to work within its own community. These discussions were highly productive and established people of color leadership in DC SCAR, a concept that was written into its constitution.
At its inception in 1983, DC SCAR was a close-knit coalition of college campus organizations, some of which had already existed, such as the Georgetown Progressive Student Union, and others that had recently formed to oppose apartheid in South Africa, support liberation movements throughout Southern Africa, and oppose racism around the world. Later, DC SCAR itself worked as a separate organization, focusing primarily on racism in education, with chapters operating completely autonomously, with little coordination as a coalition.
Founding member Paul Strauss, now the elected DC Senator in the U.S. Senate (a non-voting position) reflects, “In the early ‘80s several of us had formed a city-wide student coalition to fight against a hike in the legal drinking age, which we viewed as a civil rights issue. Through this effort we got to know a lot of activists in student governments and student organizations. In 1983, several of us from area colleges and the U.S. Student Association formed DC SCAR to tackle the issue of South African Apartheid. Marty Ellington was the main leader, and Keith Jennings from USSA brought a wealth of organizing experience to the group. "The first year was very discouraging and the coalition kind of died for a while. We were considered extreme left-wing to even be addressing a foreign policy issue, especially one that was almost invisible in the U.S. media. Then in ‘84 we found ourselves together again, actually as a splinter from another coalition. That formation was called “Students for Azania,” and it split after a stormy meeting at the University of the District of Columbia. There were a lot of problems, including lots of differing ideological agendas and some anti-Semitism. So we just decided to revive DC SCAR."
“It started up again with a bang as divestment struggles began to get popular across the country. We wanted to bring attention to the struggles in South Africa and keep it there, but not hide the fact that racism is very present in the U.S. as well. The divestment issue brought it home -- it was relevant to students -- and it became part of a whole international movement that was ultimately successful in toppling apartheid.
“We were committed to fighting racism, but this also meant that we were also equally committed to fighting anti-Semitism. We also addressed Palestinian issues as a link to anti-Jewish sentiment and as a human rights issue. It was hard; we were all middle-class kids and we had to educate ourselves on the issues and do our own sensitizing around gender, racial, class issues, and so on. There were no institutional curriculums or organized frameworks to do that kind of thing; we had to work through it ourselves. There were a lot of issues but we worked through them. We worked by consensus; not always unaminity, but not by simple majority either. If two or three members had a different viewpoint, we had to struggle through it. We learned to work together and trust each other. The friendships endure to this day.
“I remember one meeting we listened to Gil Scott Heron’s song, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” and talked about it for a long while. We stayed true to our ideals. We never did bureaucratize it; we never developed a treasury or even paid much attention to fundraising. Campus student government support provided office space, phone lines and printing for us. It was never highly efficient but it wouldn’t have been the same if we had been. If you just wanted to get press attention on South Africa, you would go ahead and do it and not moralize about the role of the media and all. We did a lot of in-depth soul searching.
“DC SCAR profoundly influenced me -- I wouldn’t have stayed here and become so committed to the people of Washington DC if it weren’t for SCAR. It’s ironic that now South African blacks have more democratic rights than the people of Washington, DC. It taught me to appreciate other cultures and embrace diversity as an important goal that made for better decision-making. Organizational dynamics are better when they include the experiences and perspectives from different backgrounds. I became more sensitive to feminist issues and gender relations -- no small challenge for a nineteen year-old college kid. I was taught to be more objective, and it may sound contradictory, but it made me more hopeful and cynical at the same time. We thought that we could change the world and in some ways we did. I’m astonished and very happy that DC SCAR is still around.” [December 1996 interview]
DC SCAR IN THE 90s