Monthly Manifesto

Wesunity workers of the world unite!

by Roger Smith

We're on a Mission From God
     Wesunity is an Wesleyan-based activist organization dedicated to linking Wesleyan's activist groups with a larger student movement. Wesunity accomplishes this by giving Wesleyan's various progressive groups' members the ability to communicate with networks of activists through e-mail and the World Wide Web. Our challenge is that it often seems that Wesunity has to invent a larger movement to unite all the different groups. That's what's wrong with today's activism. People at Wesleyan look back at the sixties (or at least the myth of those days) either wistfully or scornfully, but agree on one thing: activism was more alive and the issues were more urgent then than they are today. Even without Vietnam or the Civil Rights Movement to rally around, the issues we currently face are pressing and do affect students. What we need is a sense of mission, not just to know that our actions are useful, but to believe they are essential to change the current state of the world. We can do this by utilizing and combining our collective energy. We need to engage in our local campaigns with an eye to the state and national level. When a crisis arises, student groups, local organizations, state groups, and national interest groups should all fight the big battles collectively. We need a network to keep us informed and to respond to new developments at a moment's notice. That's the dream, and Wesunity is making progress forming and expanding networks of activists in New England. So far we've established contacts at MIT, UMASS Amherst, the New England Anti-Vivisection Society, and the Animal Defense League. This year's focus is on E3, Wesleyan's environmental group. We are active in all four subcommittees of the National Issues branch of E3. All we need are more activists-more Wesunity members to find contacts, to continue communications with these contacts, and to then use these contacts to strengthen activism at Wesleyan.

My Struggle
     How did I get involved in all of this? Did I grow up in a commune, diapered in a Soviet Flag, educated in Cuba, and trained at the School of the Americas? Hardly. I'm from a Middletown-sized (pop. 50,000) suburb with a large Irish and Italian Catholic population. Hardly a hotbed for revolution. My "activism" began in high school, when my friends and I formed a Marxist militia and named it the Workers' Army. We dressed up in Soviet and East German military uniforms and went door to door through the richest neighborhoods in the area trying to recruit new members for our fight against subversives, infidels, and the public school system (Editor's note: We know this isn't textbook socialism). During our long march, an obviously stoned gentleman offered us money to leave without destroying his house. This sort of serious grassroots organizing makes union recruitment seem as easy as sneaking across the Canadian border. For our grand finale, the Workers' Army conned its way into the local township pride parade, where we unfurled our Soviet flag and "Workers Unite" banner to the consternation of the crowd ("Were you at Oklahoma City?" shouted hecklers) and the local police. It also catapulted us into the Philadelphia Inquirer. That ended my "activism" until college. I was looking to follow up with something more meaningful and less fraudulent.
     My first semester here, I was too wrapped up in work and time-wasting to bother to join any campus groups. Meetings always seemed to conflict with meals and naptime, and I didn't see how I could make a difference anyway. One day, while doing research in the library, a book just seemed to leap from the shelf and into my hands. I picked it up, rubbed it three times, and read its title, Soon to be a Major Motion Picture, by Abbie Hoffman. I read this autobiography and loved the fact that he did crazy things to make people smile about a serious cause. This was a complete change from my view of activism as a heroic tragedy, with activists futilely chipping away at the grotesque, growing wall of evil looming over all of us. Why not make the world better while having fun? Why must the two be separate? Also, what happened to media coverage of activism on a national scale? What happened to the national scale of activist efforts? I then joined every campus group I could, to see if any of what Hoffman did could still be relevant. In the past few months I've learned that the issues confronting students are still huge (the environmental and labor movements are hardly local phenomena), but I also noticed than many of our groups, with notable exceptions, begin and end their campaigns at Wesleyan. Some campaigns deal with state-wide issues, but our connections with other like-minded groups in the state are either tenuous or non-existent. No one seems to have time to create and maintain a network, because the campaigns themselves are time-consuming and involvement in these groups at Wesleyan is underwhelming. Wesunity is a solution. We don't want to create some top-heavy bureaucratic coordinating group. Wesunity just provides these groups with new members who are able and devoted to bringing Wesleyan activism to a larger stage. In order to do this Wesunity needs more members. Did I mention that every membership in Wesunity comes with free computer training to help members communicate efficiently? That the level of time commitment is up to the individual member? That talking to people at other schools is fun?
Heed Abbie's advice and "go out and make tomorrow bettah than today."

For more information, email wesunity@wesleyan.edu or visit the Wesunity website.
    

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