External Political Groups Maintain Campus Presence

As controversial events and speakers have dominated the campus calendar in the last semester, political groups that are not affiliated with the University have maintained a near-constant presence on campus.

The World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime, the Spartacus Youth Club, and the Coalition to Preserve Community­—all outside groups organizing against the war in Iraq or Columbia’s Manhattanville expansion—often appear at, and, in some cases, help to organize campus rallies.

Some groups have organized directly with students, such as the Act Now to Stop War & End Racism Coalition, who Karina Garcia, CC ’08, said worked with the Chicano Caucus regarding immigrants’ rights protests in 2005. ANSWER organized logistics and advertising for the protests, giving students a “connection to the outside world,” Garcia said. “It got us off campus and allowed us to really maximize the time we spent trying to make change,” she said.

The World Can’t Wait has also collaborated with student groups to form protests, David Judd, SEAS ’08 and a member of the Columbia Coalition Against the War, said, citing a rally against David Horowitz, who spoke on campus on Oct. 26. Julie Schneyer, BC ’08 and president of the Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification, said she often organizes with the Coalition to Preserve Community and said she considers “their opinion integral to what we’re saying.”

The World Can’t Wait often uses “confrontational tactics like die-ins and having people in orange suits,” Judd said. “To kind of think that the problem is too many people are apathetic and then they need to be shocked out of their apathy—I think that’s a mistake. I think they need to engage people who aren’t just apathetic, they have political disagreements of various kinds and need to be engaged on those terms,” he said.

“I don’t think polarization is always a bad thing,” said Jack Orleans, a member of the Revolution club, part of the national Revolutionary Communist Party, and a frequent attendee of Columbia rallies. “If it weren’t for things that created a certain polarization among young people, we’d be living in a really different world and a much worse one.”

Many students have criticized the Spartacus Youth Club for its practices at student rallies and unwillingness to participate in organizing them. “They’re solely destructive,” Judd said. “They never help organize or publicize protests, they just show up and they denounce everybody there as reformists who are selling out the working class.”

At the Horowitz rally, a member of the Spartacus Youth Club made a speech, claiming that America is “founded on the ruthless exploitation of blacks here in America, and yet there’s a prevailing myth that there is some wing of the imperialist Democratic party that can be pressured to serve the interests of humanity.”

Members of the Spartacus Youth Club could not be reached for comment. The Columbia University College Democrats and the Columbia University College Republicans also declined to comment for this article.

Some groups use rallies as a platform for their own agendas, Schneyer added. “I do think it’s important that they ... really are connecting—that an outside group is contributing and not just co-opting our message or forwarding their own agenda,” she said, speaking generally.

But rally speeches should include “how people think the world ought to be,” Orleans said. “It can strengthen the dialogue people are having about what it is they’re ultimately fighting for in fact, when they take part in something like a hunger strike or protest against the appearance of David Horowitz.”

Dan Amzallag can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com.