whitebeard

Don't curse the darkness, light a candle.

Seven students

November 30, 2005

Dear Friend,

Seven students at Hampton University face possible expulsion in a
hearing this Friday for peaceful political protest on campus.

Join Howard Zinn, Michael Eric Dyson and Katha Pollitt in signing a
statement in their defense (below).

Also, please call the HU Dean of Men at 757-727-5303 and the HU Dean of
Women at 757-727-5486 to demand that these students NOT be expelled.

A bit of background:

On November 2nd, protests were held in over 70 cities with
participation from more than 200 schools. These were initiated by The World Can't
Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime (worldcantwait.org) which has been
endorsed by Harold Pinter, Russell Banks, Cindy Sheehan, Studs Terkel, Gore
Vidal, Cornel West, Howard Zinn, Michael Eric Dyson and many others.

Students at Hampton gathered in the Student Union on November 2nd to
hold a gathering of poetry and speeches, but the event was shut down by
Hampton Police.  Students' IDs were taken, their faces were video-taped
without their consent, and later several of these students received
disciplinary letters. The Hampton Administration has accused students of
breaking several codes of conduct, including a rule about cajoling or
proselytizing students, "distribution of unauthorized materials" and "the
policy on student demonstrations."

Press coverage of this can be viewed at:
Daily Press, local Virginia Newspaper, November 23:
 
http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-26621sy0nov23,0,6983144.story?track=mostemailedlink
Inside Higher Ed website:
  http://insidehighered.com/news/2005/11/30/hampton
Revolution Newspaper:
  http://rwor.org/a/025/defend-hampton-university-7.htm
Daily Press, local Virginia Newspaper, November 28:
 
http://www.dailypress.com/dp-27586cm0nov27,0,6886291.column?track=mostemailedlink

A statement from two of the students facing charges is available at:
 
http://worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=437&Itemid=5

Sincerely,
Sunsara Taylor
Co-Initiator of World Can't Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime


STATEMENT - To add your name, email: youth_students@worldcantwait.org
and specify how you would like to be identified.

Drop the Charges and Stop the Harassment of the Hampton University
Students Against the Bush Regime!

Students who act to Drive Out the Bush Regime, especially when they
remain firm in the face of police and administrative threats, are heroic.
They must be defended. Their example must be followed.

Students at Hampton University participated in nation-wide outpourings
in over 70 places and 200 schools on November 2nd to launch of a
movement to drive out the Bush regime. In the course of organizing, they were
followed by campus police, targeted by video surveillance, and forced
to turn over their ID's for the simple act of distributing literature.
That these students were targeted for the content of their activities is
demonstrated by the fact that other students routinely post
unauthorized flyers (often with scantily clad women advertising parties) without
harassment.

On Friday, November 18th, three student organizers were issued summons
for a hearing regarding possible expulsion the following Monday
morning, giving them no time during the working week to contact lawyers,
parents, or campus administrators. After hundreds of phone-calls from around
the country to the Dean's Office, their hearing was postponed. Days
later, four more students were issued summons and campus police shut down
an interview being filmed by the local media, attempting to prevent the
student's story from getting out.

The attacks on the student organizers at Hampton University, a
historically black college with a mostly Republican administration, is an ugly
harbinger of the "dissent-free" future the Bush regime is trying to
lock into place. These attacks are part of a pattern of repression against
high school and college students nation-wide on November 2nd that
disproportionately targeted black, Latino and other oppressed students.

A standard cannot be set where the President of the United States can
stay on vacation as a major city's poor and black people are left for
five days without food or water, where influential friends of this
President are allowed to float out genocidal notions of aborting all black
babies to bring crime rates down, and where the President's policies of
"abstinence-only" in the face of an international AIDS pandemic threaten
millions of lives, but where students who dare to act to end this are
silenced and expelled from school.

As it says in the Call for The World Can't Wait - Drive Out the Bush
Regime: "This will not be easy. If we speak the truth, they will try to
silence us. If we act, they will to try to stop us. But we speak for the
majority, here and around the world, and as we get this going we are
going to reach out to the people who have been so badly fooled by Bush
and we are NOT going to stop."

We, the undersigned, demand that the Hampton University administration
to drop all charges against, cease their political harassment of, and
to apologize to these students. These students must not be expelled! We
also call on students at campuses nation-wide to send statements of
support, and to join, strengthen and support the movement to Drive Out the
Bush Regime because the World Can't Wait!

Signed:

Electa Arenal, Professor Emerita, Ph.D. Program in Hispanic &
Luso-Brazilian Literatures & Women's Studies Certificate Program, CUNY/Graduate
Center*
Eleanor J. Bader, adjunct Kingsborough Community College & Pratt
Institute, Brooklyn, NY*
Jennifer Baumgardner, author, Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the
Future
Rosalyn Baxandall, Distinguished Teaching Professor, SUNY Old Westbury*
Edget Betru, Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative - Center for
Constitutional Rights*
Susan Bordo, University of Kentucky*
Eileen Boris, University of California, Santa Barbara*
Joan C. Callahan, Professor, Department of Philosophy & Director,
Women's Studies Program, University of Kentucky*
Carl Dix, National Spokesperson, Revolutionary Communist Party
Michael Eric Dyson, author, Is Bill Cosby Right?
Beva Eastman, Associate Professor, William Paterson University and New
Jersey City University*
Judith Ezekiel, Universite de Toulouse le Mirail*
Joan L. Griscom, Ph.D. Lexington, MA
Barb Josephs, SUNY Old Westbury*
Carole Joffe, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Davis*
Bea Kreloff, director, Art Workshop International*
Allen Lang, National Student Organizer, The World Can't Wait - Drive
Out the Bush Regime!
Judith Mitchell, former counselor, Columbia University*
Efia Nwangaza, Executive Director, African American Institute for
Policy Studies & Planning
Stephen Orvis, Professor of Government, Hamilton College*
Katha Pollitt, writer The Nation*
Nancy S. Rabinowitz, Margaret Bundy Scott Professor, Hamilton College*
Sonia Jaffe Robbins, freelance writer and editor
Alix Kates Shulman, writer
Paul C. Taylor, Morehouse, '89 Chair of Philosophy at Temple
University*
Sunsara Taylor, writer for Revolution, Co-Initiator of The World Can't
Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime!
Barrie Thorne, University of California, Berkeley*
Lise Vogel, Professor Emerita, Rider University*
Lawrence Weschler, director, New York Institute for the Humanities at
NYU*
Barbara Winslow, Brooklyn College*
Laura X, Women's History Library*
Howard Zinn, Historian and Author
*affiliations for identification purposes only

Demand that the 7 students facing expulsion be cleared of any
disciplinary measures and that the intimidation and punishment for student
protest stop!
Call the Dean of Men (Woodson Hopewell Jr.) at 757-727-5303, the Dean
of Women at 757-727-5486.

To add your name, email: youth_students@worldcantwait.org and specify
how you would like to be identified.

posted by: Whitebeard at 09:49 | link | comments |
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