Activists do more than protest at Johnson Hall
Thank you, Jeremy Lang, for producing a mostly balanced update of the issues surrounding last year’s protest [“ Old issues, new strategies,” ODE, April 4]. Yet I am compelled to remark that the Emerald, resembling most University students I have encountered, still lacks much more than a “Mason West-ian” understanding of activism (see West’s column in the April 11, 2000, Emerald).
By focusing only on the most visible and radical activists, you deny the prolonged, behind-the-scenes work of those who use different tactics in different situations. Hundreds of students, faculty and staff on this campus have been working for years to make the University more diverse, to stop racism, to end sexism, to win fair contracts, to make the campus safer, to hold our representatives responsible, to register people to vote, and many other underreported efforts. So please don’t say “activism has been in a slump since last year.”
This is not to excuse the countless students on the political left who have verbally bludgeoned me and others for the tactics we used. I won’t apologize for the events of last year. Without the Human Rights Alliance there would have been no discussion of sweatshops on this campus — bottom line.
All of us working against oppression and exploitation need to work together to create a better society. “Divide and conquer” is an old and very effective strategy. Those who seek to oppress and exploit now only have to focus on the latter; we divide ourselves.
Chad Sullivan
senior
history/jazz studies