Student Activism (1094 hits)
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Submitted by Iago <staccers.at.hotmail.com> (View user info) at 2004-11-13 14:51:51 EST
It is in the Sixties that really mark the beginning of a historic upsurgence of student dissident. With the social climate in the West being what it was then, students for the first time became more organised, more political and prepared to stand up and do battle for social and civil rights.
Whilst no means the first county to experience student unrest, the campaigns and marches in America's cities and campuses during the mid-to-late Sixties, showed the rest of the world what a powerful force students can be. Mixed with the civil rights movement, race protests, hippy counterculture and Black Panthers, students helped spearhead fierce demonstrations all over the US, not least in protest against the war in Vietnam, where men their own age were being sent to their slaughter in the name of a war that most of the country didn't understand or care about. The government responded savagely to these uprisings, and in 1968 state troopers opened fire and killed several students on the Kent State University campus to quell an anti-Vietnam war protest.
In the same year in France, their Parisian counterparts decided to take things one more step further and challenge the whole of French society, rising to fight long and bloody pitched street battles with the police, in protestation over the quality of modern life in France. Such was the size and strength of this uprising that De Gaulle's government came perilously close to being overthrown, but was rescued by the support of Trade Unions and Communist Party.
Also around the same time Czechoslovakia (then under the icy cold grip of post-war communism) experienced a similar uprising, where, for a while student-led artistic groups bravely challenged the dread force of Communist cultural control before the tanks rolled in and quashed all hopes of revolution.
And on the subject of tanks, let's not forget the events in China in the Eighties. In 1986 students around the country began holding hunger strikes, demanding increased freedom of speech and greater democracy. By 1989, hundreds of thousands of Chinese people led by the students chose to challenge the oppressive regime of the government by peacefully occupying Tiananmen Square in the capital Beijing. Many wrote their wills knowing what brutality their government was capable of. On June 3rd, troops and tanks were sent in to clear out the students and over two and a half thousand people were killed, with over sixty thousand people injured.
But what of the UK?
Well, as you'd expect, student radicalism here has been earnest, largely non-violent and perhaps a bit shabby in comparison; but we've had our movements. In the Sixties, Nuclear Disarmament became high on the political agenda and if you didn't have a C.N.D. badge on your duffel coat back then, you weren't a student. In the seventies it was the turn of Women's Liberation and Women's Groups on campuses to take the message of equal rights for women to a wider population. Bras were burned. Men wondered how this was a punishment. In was in the Eighties however, that brought the ultimate student hate figure; Margaret Thatcher. Like a right-wing version of Hitler, she seemed to distrust all things academic and intellectual and decided to make the academics bow to her as she had quelled the Unions and the miners previously. Funding was cut, benefits were outlawed, Christmas was banned and small puppies were needlessly poked with sticks. This woman was a monster.
Life for UK students got tougher and tougher throughout the Eighties as grants were cut, and housing benefit and dole in the summer abolished. This led to many student marches, protests and sit-ins, this time not about something else that was happening 'out there', but actually about the brass tacks of education. What is really depressing is that since overthrowing the Tories in 1997 Labour has continued to do exactly the same. And with the very real worry of huge debts, the power of the union weakened and the two major parties occupying the same anodyne political middle ground, it is harder to know exactly how to fight back and who to trust. Consequently, demos and marches are a shadow of the past. It would be easy to think therefore, that's students are now apolitical creatures, concerned more with their prospects, money problems and watching Hollyoaks than the affairs of the world, but this is not true.
Many students, ever one step ahead, have already realised that political change in the UK is relatively meaningless, as much of the world's real power is now in the hands of trans-global corporations and an illiterate baboon called George Bush, and as a consequence, student activism has been shifted towards single issue campaigning. Free Tibet, the Environment, Third World Debt and anti-globalisation are all very popular student causes and do from time to time still mobilise large numbers of students. In fact, the anti-globalisation demonstrations in Genoa in 2001 showed that students are still prepared to take an active stance against corporate greed and political negligence. And yet again, the government was left with blood on its hands.
User Reviews
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2007-04-26 19:33:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwKeF-1abbw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEC3YLZ1ees
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cyzxad7jA8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1rkOeCfS-s
Submitted by The_Cyst_Master (user info) at 2006-03-10 13:13:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
WINNER! http://www.ubersite.com/m/84913
Submitted by Stabkill (user info) at 2004-11-28 05:15:57 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
Lying sack of shit stealing material bastard.
Submitted by zakalwe (user info) at 2004-11-15 18:00:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
http://www.ubersite.com/m/51672
How about an apology?
Submitted by mikethescottish (user info) at 2004-11-13 17:04:17 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Enough of fighting for other people's rights, it's about time the student population became active about itself, and the way they're devalued and shat upon by a government hell-bent on cramming everyone they can into overcrowded and underfunded universities. It's times like this i'm thankful for the few saving graces of the Scottish eductional system.
On a totally unrelated note, i've just spilt coffee on my crotch. Buggeration.
Submitted by Feijuada (user info) at 2004-11-13 16:24:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Sad.
Submitted by Davros (user info) at 2004-11-13 15:30:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
While long past being a student all I can say is AMEN.
Is it any coincidence that slight relaxation of drugs laws have come about in this time?
I think not.
Keep the student population stoned and playing playstation and away from the real world as much as possible.
Oh yes, and crippled with debt.
-Davros
Submitted by stevendurel (user info) at 2004-11-13 15:00:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Okay, maybe it's not identical, but there are a lot of similarities for two back-to-back posts.
Submitted by stevendurel (user info) at 2004-11-13 14:57:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I can't believe that we just posted the same article at the same time (READ THE POST BELOW THIS ON THE MAIN PAGE)