by Carmenita November 12 2001, Mon, 3:18pm
Why did the ISO lie to us all and bring us up here this weekend, only
to push and build and ISO coalition. if I wanted to be in the ISO i
would have joined the organiziation.
ey Conference Hijacked by the ISO
This weekend I attended the CSAW (California Schools Against War) Conference held in
Berkley. I go to school in Santa Barbara. I came to this meeting thinking that I was going to
work with other schools and help in regard of making solid plans to bring to our campus and
help to plan. I was looking for ideas, for suggestions, a bit of suggestion and also I wanted to
know where other students stood on the Anti-War stance.
What ended up happening was just this enormous and very upsetting event. The conference
started with a panel on Saturday morning. No other students from other schools spoke during
this time, mainly people from Berkley. Lunch was served.Workshops were held and I viewed
the workshops as the best thing that came out of my traumatizing weekend. The next day on
Sunday there was a delegation meeting. The Berkeley group without asking any other
schools had decided to only allow 5 delegates from each school to be involved in the voting
and decision making process during this conference. So 5 delegates from each school who
basically named themselves delegates were picked to make choices for their entire school
without even having a chance to speak with the other members from their school. From the
time the process of the delegation meeting started it was doomed to fail. In NO WAY was
there talk of process, all 190 people were basically TOLD that we would have to be in a
majority voting process without it EVER being discussed. We were just told this was how
things were going to be, no discussion was even held about this. Please remember that we
have 45 schools present at this conference, non of which were told that they had a choice
between consensus decision making process, majority voting, or other forms of decision
making. There was no access to a list server or phone conference calls by schools, we were
told that there were email list servers, I know my schools and a few others who tried
numerous times to contact The Berkley Stop the War Coalition but our emails went
unanswered. Nothing about the process and the format of this conference regarding how we
were going to make decisions were known, and there were many people there who were
very young, and this was their first event like this who expressed over and over they did not
understand the process and felt like they were shut down, glossed over or just plain ignored.
Back to the conference, they asked the schools to put forth proposals that we wanted to be
voted on. There were 25 proposals in all and we had from 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM to get
through them all. The first proposal was to establish a coordinating committee. So basically
we were asked to instead of having 5 delegates from each school which is already
undemocratic, we were now being asked to have only 1 delegate representing each school,
forming basically a body of government working within this coalition. How can that even
happen? how can we only have 1 representative from each school communicating and
bringing forth the entire schools anti-war perspective? is this right? well we didn't’t think so,
but that didn%27t’t matter since we were the minority by votes and the first proposal that
started our meeting was passed. Time ticked on and all types of proposals regarding Days
of Action, consumer boycott after Thanksgiving, March to DC, and various other “important”
proposals were passed or thrown aside… in the meantime people are raising their hand and
being told by the Facilitator/moderator that they don’t have time and they can’t talk. Dialogue
was being cut off, and discussions were told that they could not go on because we
didn%27t’t have time. Over and over they stopped taking stack and told people not to raise
their hands, over and over people stood up and asked for clarification, and asked to be
heard and they were shut down. A young man in the back stood up and said that this process
was undemocratic, and that people have even stopped voting, because they did not
understand what was going on, since everything was being cut off and stopped. People were
becoming frustrated and asking to be heard, at this point the facilitator looked confused and
sent everyone to lunch. During lunch groups started to gather and the words of confusion and
being upset were in the air, groups were talking about walk outs, and they were talking about
confronting this the minute they went back in.
Once we came back into he hall, hands went up and people wanted a Process Point, wanted
a stop to the voting so that certain things could be said, this AGAIN was ignored, glossed
over and the voting continued. As this was going on I watched a young lady with a few others
sitting in rows behind her stand up and walk out into the hall, about 15 minutest later they
came back and went towards the podium, and asked from a Process Point. An older middle
eastern man stood up and asked that the student groups please please involve more middle
eastern people and not ignore the things we want to say, and to please reach out to the
middle eastern groups in regards to organizing against the war. One womin went up and
asked that there please be more discussion before we vote so that we can all know what we
are voting for, so that we can all know what information to take back to our campus and
present to the groups we were supposed to be representing. She also asked for a more
democratic voting process, because she did not feel comfortable at all in the situation that
was going on. After her another young womin who was middle eastern spoke and basically
pleaded with the group to include more voice of the middle eastern people and to not please
leave them out, her voice was shaking as she was saying this, and she said that many of her
friends and comrades had felt very very isolated from the white/academia community and felt
like nobody was listening to them. After her 2 people from the conference organizing group
stood up who were middle eastern and said that there are many middle eastern groups that
are not against the war and that’s why they were not there. The Facilitator said that he
wanted to vote for us to either continue w/ the majority voting process or move towards a
consensus decision making process. A vote was actually taken for this, but nobody actually
explained what consensus or majority voting is, nobody said anything about it, and again
there were so many people there who had no idea what consensus even was, so how was
this a fair vote?
With a all this going on I watched as the two girls who made the process point, two women of
color I might add who had the guts to walk up in front of a huge group and ask for there to be
a voice. They walked out of the meeting, many people followed them, as the rest of the body
continued voting and deciding things. I was in shock basically, I have never in the few years I
have been trying to dedicate my life to organizing around issues such as these have I seen
such blatant disrespect and undemocratic process unfold.
I eneded up leaving the meeting, and outside in the hallway I heard from the groups that had
gathered that there was going to be holding a small meeting out on the steps of the Life
Science Hall, they invited anyone who was upset about the decision making process to
come join them and voice their concerns, since they were not being allowed to inside the
meeting.
I decided to go to that meeting, and I counted 59 other people who felt the way I did, and who
also had major concerns. Women spoke about how they the entire was so sexist, and that
they were cut off over and over when they tried to bring up issues, people of color spoke out
about how they did not feel included in this process from day one, other schools talked about
why have both these California conferences, just happen to end up in Berkley, why are they
not rotating? People from the Queer community talked about they felt like they did not have a
space or voice to talk. In general people talked about how they feared speaking up and did
not feel like they should, so they just bit their tongue and continued with the process. The
most interesting part was when about 5 people who were actually part of the group from
Berkley who organized this conference came to our meeting and told us that they had so
many problems also regarding these issues, and they had never fixed them. A group of them
continued speaking and told us that they felt like the presence of ISO members and ISO
regional coordinator a man named Todd was what was the breaking point of this
conference. New information was revealed that the facilitator name Snehal who has been
cutting people off left and right when they brought opposition views was an ISO member,
more was revealed when we found out the people making proposals and being put on head
of planning coordinating committees were all ISO people, that the people who wanted to
organize the march to DC were ISO members, the people in charge of the next conference
and coordinating committee were ISO members, that the contact person from the Southern
California Schools Against War a man I think named BJ was an ISO member, and he was
the only contact the Southern California schools had been able to have with Berkley because
the Berkley folks would not return the emails of others who were inquiring.
Personally I know we have all heard things about this group, but I don’t belong to any
affiliation, I consider myself a socialist actually, I have never felt the need to call them out or
point these issues out about them up until now because this was such a blatant
undemocratic tactic that was used by them. I have very personal politics Im able to
distinguish a time and a place to bring those personal political structural ideas forth. This
conference entirely failed to do that. Beneath a cloud of secrets, non-transparency,
non-communication, and blockade of involvement this conference was held as an ISO
platform related event disguised as an open Coalition of Schools organizing against the war
in Afghanistan. The entire platform and structure that was designed and reinforced by
forming these special committees and assigning one delegate from each school. The entire
fact that no communist, or anarchist views or speakers were allowed to join, be present or
speak on the panel, the very idea that the people organizing this thought that people were
too stupid to be able to make a choice between consensus and majority vote, so they made
that decision for them, they did not think that these group of students who are good enough
to outreach, organize and build a movement. But they are not good enough to be given the
choice of which democratic process they want to use in making decisions. Im very sad that I
even have to write this long essay, but the fact remains we are fighting a system right now,
we are fighting against a war. The US is using so many issues regarding Afghanistan to
justify their actions in bombing and killing the people in that region, they are lying to us, they
are hiding things from us, they think we are too stupid to figure it out and make a wise
decision ourselves. This is the same thing that happened this weekend as I watched it
unfold. I hate this bickering and name calling between groups as much as the next person,
but Im able to realize that we need to do this, we need to be able to see when this type of
racist, sexist domination is being done. When we are being told lies, and having a front
group being coordinated but behind the mask there is a political party, and a political
agenda. I never not once before this weekend have I attacked the ISO or had even one bad
thing to say about them, but this blatant cover up, this blatant lies and secrecy have no place
in our movement, they have no place in our lives. This group has proven to be wonderful
politician, but please try to remember it was the politicians who have brought us all to this
place, it was their lies and decent that have become all of our problems. Enough is enough,
stop the bull shit, if the ISO wanted a Anti War School Coalition, they should have called it the
ISO Anti War School Coalition, at least I would respect them for being honest in doing that,
stop the bull shit, you can only lie and try to trick people for so long. The “masses” as the ISO
calls them are NOT stupid.
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