Rally Draws International Press
Saturday’s Anti-War Rally Draws Crowds And Press
by Tobias Smith

Last Saturday, hundreds of Oberlin students, faculty members and town residents gathered in Tappan Square for a rally against the growing retaliatory and racist sentiments that have surfaced in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Roughly 500 community members, carrying signs and chanting, marched three blocks to Martin Luther King Jr. Park, where demonstrations continued. With bull horns in hand, the procession was led by members of the Lyricistas, a student spoken word group. The chanting crowd merged with a drumming circle.
“From what I hear, it was the biggest rally that people have seen [at Oberlin] in the last 15 years,” first year rally organizer Christine Harley said.
Saturday’s event brought together a diverse group of people under a common cause. At one point, the Rev. Malcolm Cash encouraged everyone to join in prayer. Hundreds clasped hands and bowed heads. At other points a more fervid mood prevailed, as when senior Yvonne Etaghene, a member of the Lyricistas, sang out, “a bomb over Afghanistan is a bomb over us.”
In a scene reminiscent of 1960’s peace movements, the demonstrators joined hands in a circle, with rhythmic phrases such as “1-2-3-4, we don’t want your racist war,” and “2-4-6-8, stop the war, stop the hate,” filling the grassy park. As dusk fell, the crowd thinned and students helped themselves to a buffet of the standard fare of the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association (OSCA), including fresh bread and other co-op specialties. OSCA donated the dinner in support of the growing peace movement.

Students seemed to feel that the rally was a success.

“I think the message of peace was spread to a lot of people who would not have heard of it if it were not for the rally,” first-year Dana Cohen said. Others agreed, noting the level of community and harmony felt at the event.
The rally managed to get international news coverage. A reporter from The Guardian, one of England’s largest newspapers, was present at the event, and the story appeared in the paper’s Monday edition. The rally also received coverage from NPR.

“I’m here to ask...where peoples’ heads are [about the draft],” NPR reporter and Oberlin resident Karen Schaefer said. Schaefer, who described going to college during the infamous Kent State protests, is not the only one who sees similarities to Vietnam.

Guardian reporter Mathew Engel also noted the resemblance between the Oberlin rally and anti-Vietnam protests. Younger protestors, however, seemed less concerned with drawing historical parallels.
“We saw that there was a rally, and we stand in opposition to imperialism and to capitalist motives at home,” Gershom Brown, a member of the Spartacists, a Chicago Socialist organization, said.
Student peace-keepers, clad in clearly identifiable yellow shirts, worked to maintain safety at the rally.
“We had gotten threats of violence, but we knew that most likely it was nothing,” T. J. Vandermolen, a first year peace-keeper, said. “ And even if it was nothing, we had campus security and Oberlin city police coming. Our role as peace-keepers was more to keep everything in order.”
Two city police were also stationed at the event, although there was no violence.
Roughly 30 students from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, made the three-hour drive to the rally.

“We drove here to show support for what Oberlin is doing and to start networking. The more colleges that get in contact with each other, the stronger the movement’s gonna be,” Matt, an Antioch student who refused to give his last name, said.
The rally was organized by Campaign Against Racism And War
(CARAW), a student run coalition that brings together members of Socialist Alternative, Asian/American Alliance, Middle Eastern Students Association and Oberlin Peace Activists League, among other campus organizations.
The group, which had a Monday meeting head count of more than 70 Students and Tuesday meeting count of 150, shows no signs of slowing down. It is currently in the process of organizing a delegation to participate in this weekend’s anti-war rally in Washington, D.C.