The "Great Rutgers Walk Out" of 2007 (X., Tim) by X.

In a short few weeks leading up to fourth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq a small coalition organized an antiwar walkout at Rutgers University. (1) On March 20, 2007, between 400 and 500 students walked out of class and joined an antiwar rally. Some 300 then marched to a local recruitment station and temporarily took over a major highway. The Rutgers antiwar organizers pulled off this protest –one of the largest on any US campus this year- without any support from any national organization and with very limited resources. Their revolutionary democratic approach to the protest tactic dramatically improved the turnout, diversity, boldness and outcome of the event.

Going to the Students & Addressing Everyone

The walk out organizers engaged a large section of the university community through active outreach (handbilling, dormstorming) rather than passive outreach (tabling, flyering). They distributed thousands of handbills directly to the students announcing the upcoming walkout. They crafted different messages to address the various concerns of different segments of the university, alternately focusing on the need to bring the troops home, on the cost of the war, on the massive killings of Iraqi civilians, on the illegality of the war, on the impact of budget shortfalls on higher education, etc. A special appeal was made to all students to consider their responsibility to get their peers out of Iraq (many of whom had to join the army to get ahead in life). The entire focus of the mobilization effort was to assume mass support and to call on the overwhelming majority of the university community join the walkout on their own terms, not just to reach out to the usual suspects in the “activist” community.

Assuming Support

With the protest still a month away, a handful of organizers decided to start creating antiwar armbands for distribution on the day of the event. The purpose? Many expected that their peers would not walk out of class. Therefore they could “participate” by wearing an antiwar armband! Several assumptions were made here, but the most important being the assumption that on the date of the walkout, students would not walk out of class. As the date approached however, organizers realized that instead of assuming hostility of the student body, they should assume support.

On the day of the rally, the crowd was told to contact people wearing red armbands if they encountered any problems. Since the armbands had already been haphazardly distributed, there was no way to know who all had received one. By putting armband-wearers in positions of responsibility (even if they had no formal link to the organizers of the rally), these supporters were invited to take a more proactive role in the success of the rally, and to make it theirs in a much more real sense. Thus the tactic of creating armbands was thus shifted from “resistance mode” to a revolutionary democratic organizing tool.

Diverse Coalition & Unity of Action

The walkout coalition was small but diverse: It included student groups from a variety of communities (Middle-Eastern, Latino, African-American, “white” Left, hippies, pirates, etc.) A number of these groups had previously worked together (on such issues as immigrant rights, university democracy, etc.) and had held joint cultural events, building an important foundation of trust. Additionally, off-campus alumni and antiwar community activists participated (mostly in an advisory and support capacity) and added to the experience of the group.

The coalition was new and its goal ambitious. The organizers had to quickly establish a rudimentary communications and decision-making process in order to maintain unity despite real differences of opinions. Despite the inevitable flaws in this ad hoc process, a firm commitment to the success of the action, to open discussion and to respect for democratic decisions kept the group together at critical times.

Building up Momentum & Claiming Space

As the date of the walkout approached, the organizers stepped up their activity: They spread word of the walkout door-to-door throughout the dorms and made announcements in dozens of classrooms (before class or during class if they had the support of the professor). Individual initiatives were welcomed: When a new organizer proposed to hang a pro-walkout banner from her dorm room window, the group quickly adopted the idea and produced dozens of antiwar banners to hang from the windows of friends and sympathizers and even on the trees leading up to the classroom buildings.

The organizers chose a key location for the walkout rally (the largest concentration of class buildings at the university) and began to claim it as an antiwar space way ahead of the day of the walkout. For weeks, thousands of students going to class got used to a constant presence of antiwar organizers handing out handbills, unfurling large banners and wallpapering buildings with flers.

The university grounds were claimed visually and physically but also educationally and culturally: When isolated reactionaries criticized the walkout in the student newspaper as being counterproductive to learning, the antiwar organizers responded that the walkout was a revolutionary and democratic form of education sorely missing from the standard curriculum. Creative cultural approaches played an important role in winning hearts and minds among students and professors: One organizer announced the walkout in a Shakespeare class by reciting one of the legendary bard’s classic antiwar sonnets to great applause. (2)

Numerous letters to the editor and a full-page ad in the student newspaper put a final touch on the peaking momentum in the days leading up to the walkout. A collective sense of anticipation could be felt throughout the campus. Unlike many isolated antiwar actions that had been ignored or dismissed by the majority of students in the previous couple of years, the walkout became a fact to be acknowledged before it even happened. Posters all over campus counted down the days until the action and students everywhere began to talk with their friends about what they planned to do on March 20.

Asserting Dual Power & Democratizing Protest

The three dozen or so active organizers in the antiwar coalition managed to temporarily change the character of the university by creating a dual power situation through their revolutionary democratic mobilization efforts. Day by day, they gathered the support, sympathy and/or friendly neutrality of the vast majority of the faculty, staff and students. They built a loose yet enormous antiwar social network that forced the administration and local police to think twice about trying to stop or curtail the walkout. In fact, a number of sympathizers within those system forces ended up giving their tacit support to the action (the dual power situation emboldened them to oppose the system even in small ways). Because the coalition succeeded in drawing on the social power of masses of people (as opposed to the minor social power of a few activists), the authorities were unable to pick out specific targets for arrest or suspension.

The palpable sense of rising momentum in turn emboldened the organizers to plan, prepare and run the walkout boldly and powerfully. During the final couple weeks of organizing, they discussed previous walkout experiences at Rutgers and elsewhere (including watching the movie Walkout about the 1968 Latino high school walkouts in Los Angeles). The antiwar coalition debated, defined and visualized what the walkout event should accomplish - agreeing when they could, and otherwise agreeing to disagree.

On the day of the walkout, the organizers refused to be intimidated or distracted by a small group of reactionary provocateurs, wagering that encouraging their fellow students to ignore counter-protestors isolate these elements more effectively than arguing with them or exchanging insults. Organizers went into classes to help their fellow students gather their resolve to join them (starting with friendly classes with supportive students and/or professors). The rally kept speakers rolling (without interminable lectures), emphasizing students and peers as speakers (no “talking heads”), and offered a wide range of informative and engaging perspectives that kept the crowd involved with innovative call-and-response techniques.

The organizers further infused democratic content into the protest format by asking the crowd to decide where to march next and whether or not to take the highway, making sure to keep the best communications possible between key organizers from all the groups in the coalition. The assumption of mass support proved to be a successful gambit, and a learning experience, as many “activists” were surprised to see construction workers on the highway flashing peace signs and pumping their fists in support.

Following Through & Building the Movement

The walkout, rally and march turned out great; marchers returned to their starting point having closed down a major highway and (thanks to the mass number of participants) suffered no arrests. The students felt a real sense of accomplishment and empowerment, having pulled off the largest walkout at Rutgers in at least 20 years.

Organizers wanted to ensure that the enthusiasm of the crowd was not wasted when everyone went home and that participants would be given the opportunity to begin deciding the next step of the movement immediately; when the march ended, dozens of students signed up with the coalition. Coalition events had been scheduled in advance so that students signing up were all reached with one mass email announcing all the different groups, projects, etc. which they could join (not just being told to come to the next protest!). As a result, all groups in the coalition got to grow. The revolutionary democratic approach of the organizers helped the movement move away from the individualistic militancy typical of activism, and towards building the mass militancy of an organized movement.

Of course, the student organizers identified a number of shortcomings: There should have been more preparation of students in the classes ahead of the walkout, media coverage should have been better organized, the process of coalition democracy needed improvement, etc. But the overall success of the event left the entire antiwar coalition eager to plan for a bigger and better walkout next year.

The Rutgers walkout turned out to be a skillful use of the protest as a tactic within a movement-building strategy. Such success could not happen if you protested every week as a ritual– the point is to use the tactic at the right time, at the right place and to do it strategically: Organize large numbers of people, engage them in the building of (temporary) dual power, and use the action not merely as an end in itself, but as an opportunity to grow the movement. (3)
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(1) The original call for the Walk Out at Rutgers was issued by the student group Rutgers Against the War (RAW). RAW was soon joined by Students for Belief, Awareness, Knowledge, and Activism (BAKA), Tent State University, the Student and Education Workers Union, the Latino Student Council, the United Black Council and others.

(2) “But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a
heavy reckoning to make when all those legs and arms and heads,
chopp'd off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day
and cry all 'We died at such a place'- some swearing, some crying
for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some
upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I
am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how
can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their
argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black
matter for the King that led them to it; who to disobey were
against all proportion of subjection.” (Shakespeare, Henri V)

(3) One of the definitions of a successful action is that it leaves the movement stronger than it was before the action.