UC Nuclear Free: Activists Under Surveillance by Pentagon Include UCSC Students

An MSNBC story on Pentagon surveillance of counter-recruitment activists is causing major waves in the national anti-war movement today. One of the groups known to have been surveilled by the Pentagon is UCSC Students Against War (SAW), a large and very active student group.

MSNBC came out with an alarming but not entirely surprising story on Pentagon surveillance of activists today. Click >here to read the story.

Only eight pages of the 400-page document detailing the surveillance have been released publicly as of this writing. The additional pages are likely to become available in the near future.

This document will probably only be a small glimpse into the US government's massive and growing surveillance apparatus. The known bureacratic and technical capabilities of the other agencies charged with keeping a big eye on us, such as the Homeland Security Department and the FBI, would imply that we are essentially living in a surveillance society.

Surveillance of UC student activists is known to have been extremely pervasive in the '60s and '70s, particularly with respect to Berkeley students. For example, the FBI closely monitored and sought to "neutralize" Free Speech Movement activist Mario Savio, and saw Ronald Reagan's election as governor of California in 1967 as "an opportunity to . . . thwart the ever increasing agitation by subversive elements" on the campus.

The FBI also monitored student members of the Black Student Union at UCSB in the late-'60s and early-'70s, following the organization's extremely effective takeover a campus administration building in 1968, to call for greater civil rights in campus administrative policies.

In perhaps the most ugly instance of repression caused by surveillance at a UC campus, two Black Panther Party leaders of the Southern California Chapter, John Huggins and Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter, were murdered at UCLA by FBI paid assassins in February 1969. To term the killers "FBI paid assassins" is not an exaggeration. The incident has been very well-documented. The Black Panthers were considered a major "national security" threat at the time.

Some quick Googling will turn up a fair amount of information on all of these incidents.

Below is a press release put out by Students Against War (SAW) today. SAW's Demilitarize UCSC sub-group is a partner organization of UC Nuclear Free. SAW members are encouraging everyone who reads the press release to send it to local press contacts. Doing so would be an important first step in combatting the aforementioned surveillance society.

CONTACT: Students Against War's ad-hoc press team:
Jen Low - jlow@ucsc.edu
Josh Sonnenfeld - josh_lizard@yahoo.com
Kot Hordynski - khordyns@ucsc.edu

Students Denounce Pentagon Surveillance of Counter-Recruitment Activities
DoD Actions Part of a Wave of Repression Against Students

SANTA CRUZ, CA - According to a document obtained by NBC News, the Pentagon has been spying on 1,500 "suspicious" incidents, including anti-war and counter-recruitment meetings and actions throughout the nation over the past 10-month period. Among the first pages of more than 400 released, 10 college anti-war protests were listed, including UC Santa Cruz Students Against War (SAW)'s counter-recruitment protest of April 5, 2005, which was the only one to be labeled both credible and a "threat."

Despite having dealt with both undercover police and university agents involved in the acts of surveillance and repression, the news came as a little shock to many SAW members, reaffirming long-held beliefs about the nature of the U.S. military. 3rd year student Jen Low noted the hypocrisy of the government's messaging, reminding us that, "the notion of the Pentagon spying on peaceful protesters is a major threat to the freedoms that they claim to protect."

While the Department of Defense has not commented on the allegations, student activists assert that the rising unpopularity of the Iraq War and the inability of military recruiters to meet their quotas make the counter-recruitment movement a strong candidate for repression by a "homeland security" apparatus run amok.

This repression does not end with the surveillance from the Federal government. In fact, local officials and college campuses have also been monitoring and repressing anti-war and counter-recruitment activities. In August, community members of the Pennsylvania Organizing Group (POG) peacefully protesting at a military recruiting center near the University of Pittsburgh were violently attacked by police. Most recently, at Hampton University in Virginia, students disseminating information against military recruiters on campus were threatened with expulsion. Other schools that have witnessed incidents of extreme repression against student activists include the University of Wisconsin � Madison, Kent State, Harold Washington College, Holyoke Community College, George Mason University, San Francisco State University, City College of New York, and Seattle Central Community College.

UC Santa Cruz is widely known to have one of the largest antiwar and counter-recruitment movements in the country. On April 5, 2005 over 300 students marched into a campus job fair, occupying the building and holding a teach-in until all military recruiters left. On October 18, 2005, over 200 students rallied outside of another job fair, while two dozen UCSC students blocked recruiters on the inside by engaging in a "Queer Kiss-In" to protest discriminatory military recruitment.

Sources:
12/13/05 - Is the Pentagon spying on Americans?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/

12/13/05 - Department of Defense database listing domestic "threats"
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/DODAntiWarProtestDatabaseTracker.pdf

12/10/05 - Hampton University Students Punished for Protesting War
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_2318.shtml

12/03/05 - Students Not Expelled! But Fight Not Over
http://www.campusantiwar.net/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=134

11/18/05 � POG Returns to Oakland Recruiting Station
http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/news/2005/11/21658.php

10/18/05 - Rally, Queer Kiss-in Greet Military Recruiters at UCSC
http://santacruz.indymedia.org/feature/display/17213/index.php

04/05/05 - UCSC Students Kick Military Recruiters Off Campus
http://santacruz.indymedia.org/feature/display/17073/index.php

Activists Under Surveillance by Pentagon Include UCSC Students

TrackBack

Comments

Post a comment