[Marxism] SDS in Canada

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Taking back the University: the SDS at UBC

Link: 
http://rabble.ca/news_full_story.shtml?sh_itm=7bbf04c1cc2c543f9803183f4944c523&rXn=1&;

by Jasmine Ramze Rezaee
March 3, 2008

The increasing militarization of education, lack of democracy, 
accountability and transparency in the university governance structure, 
and the gentrification of campus galvanized University of British 
Columbia (UBC) students in the summer of 2007 to form their very own 
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) – a consensus-based, open and 
inclusive collective that is unafraid to use direct-action to enact 
radical social change.

Since its inception, SDS has been a vociferous and active opponent of 
military recruitment on campus and employed several anti-military 
recruitment strategies to dissuade the military presence here. We've 
also helped host Ward Churchill, Malalai Joya, Obdullah Omeish, and Mark 
Weisbrot to speak on campus as well as co-organized panels in support of 
Venezuela and Shawn Brant.

A few SDS members recently ran for student government and won, thereby 
inserting themselves into the student governance structure to enact 
change from within. Other SDS activists are members of the Anti-Poverty 
Committee (APC), Students for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), editors 
and writers of The Knoll, and organizers of TrekPark – a direct action 
campaign to reclaim public space on campus. We are committed to being an 
active body and we are passionate about the possibility of creating a 
better university and, more generally, a better society.

One of the projects that we've spent the preponderance of this semester 
on is hosting a Week of Resistance at UBC. This week, March 3-7, is the 
first ever Week of Resistance. During this week we're hosting a 
conference, "Resisting the University," rebuilding TrekPark, and 
engaging in spontaneous and theatrical acts of resistance.

Resisting the University is about resisting the commodification and 
corporatization of education with an anti-militarization, 
anti-gentrification and direct-action bent. Our conference unites 
community activists, UBC professors and students and aims to create a 
dialogue about the nature of the University. We have two keynote 
speakers for this conference: David Noble, a radical professor at York 
University, and Denis Rancourt, an anarchist professor at the University 
of Ottawa. Moreover, we have panels everyday about issues that affect us 
as students and members of society but that aren't usually addressed in 
the classroom.

An important panel that we're hosting is about academic freedom and 
features Kevin Annett and former assistant professor Robert Fredricks, 
who was fired from UBC in 2003 because he allowed Kevin Annett to give a 
talk to his students – a talk about the genocidal history of Canada's 
past with reference to indigenous peoples. Another important issue that 
we're addressing is the rise in sessional teachers. Due to the 
increasing difficulty to obtain tenure, the role of professors as public 
servants has been undermined – more and more instructors are unwilling 
to take a critical stance on important issues because they fear being 
denied tenure or, as in the case of Robert Fredricks, they fear being 
fired outright.

To promote our Week of Resistance, SDS built a Mountain of Student Debt 
on Wednesday, February 27 in front of Brock Hall (one of the financial 
centres at UBC). Our mountain was made of garbage bags (which we filled 
with recyclable material) and symbolized student debt. According to the 
Canadian Federation of Students, the average student debt in BC is $27,000.

We, as students and members of SDS, believe that education is a right, 
not a privilege. Therefore we proudly shout, "Zero tuition!" We marched 
that day with a red megaphone, flutes, buckets and drums throughout the 
Student Union and Old Administration buildings and Brock Hall letting 
everyone know, especially the administration and their security hawks, 
that students are alive and kicking. Complacency, pessimism and 
passivism are our biggest enemies as activists; there is nothing more 
empowering than becoming aware of your agency through a nice protest.

After our Week of Resistance, we'll be organizing to commemorate Iraq's 
invasion and occupation by the U.S.-led imperialists. SDS at UBC plans 
to resist injustices so long as they exist. We place ourselves within 
UBC's radical history and the history of student activism across the globe.

-Jasmine Ramze Rezaee is a member of Students for a Democratic Society 
at UBC.

-To get more information about the group or the conference, visit 
www.sdsubc.ca or contact sds.ubc@xxxxxxxxxx

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