Hai Binh Nguyen

Template:TOCnestleft Hai Binh Thi Nguyen was a Georgetown University Law School, J.D. Candidate).

Stanford

B.A., Asian American Studies 04/05.

• Timmy Hang Lu (with honors)
• Hai Binh Thi Nguyen
• Eric Chien-Yu Shih (honors with distinction; English minor)

Anti-Iraq War demo

Hundreds of chanting students marched noisily but peacefully across campus on March 5 2003, then gathered on the east side of the Main Quad for a day-long strike of thousands of students who demonstrated nationally against a possible war on Iraq and the effects a military campaign would have on federal spending for education and social services.

The National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, which organized the "Books Not Bombs" strike, estimated that 30,000 to 50,000 students at 400 to 500 colleges walked out on classes Wednesday. At Stanford, Public Events Director Elaine Enos judged the crowd to be less than 500 at its peak.

Ahmad Dallal, associate professor of history, spoke to a group of students at the teach-in on the Main Quad during the national student strike on Wednesday, March 5.

"We're taking back our campus in various forms throughout the day," student Angad Bhalla announced to cheers. "As students who are here to learn and to get an education, this is the most powerful statement we can make," said student Clara Webb, an organizer. More than two dozen student groups sponsored and helped organize Wednesday's strike and teach-ins.

E-mail messages were sent to all faculty before the strike to ask for their support and explain the reason students were skipping class, said Stanford Asian American Activism Coalition co-chair Hai Binh Nguyen. As of Tuesday night, 26 professors had canceled class on Wednesday and 64 professors had pledged their support, said student Eric Shih.

"This is history repeating itself," said poet and playwright Cherrie Moraga, an artist-in-residence at the Drama Department, who read a statement early on the day of the strike. "The U.S. is determined to become a global empire and it's happening on a scale that makes Vietnam look pitiful."

Along with green armbands, students passed out printed instructions on the South African tradition of toyi-toyi, a protest dance used in the struggle against apartheid. Protesters had reclaimed the right to occupy public space and to participate in civil society by keeping their bodies in motion and participating in a call-and-response chant, the instructions explained. Students on Wednesday led others in the movement with a "books not bombs" chant.

Shahid Buttar, a third-year law student, didn't use a microphone when he performed a spoken word piece in the late afternoon because it would reduce his intimacy with the crowd, not because of the restrictions placed on amplified sound, he said.

Approximately 20 professors were scheduled to lead teach-ins on the Main Quad Wednesday on topics ranging from the regional repercussions of war in the Mideast, presented by Ahmad Dallal, associate professor of history, to a discussion of what has historically constituted a just war, led by Rega Wood, professor of philosophy.

In a presentation called "Views from Iraq," Carol Delaney, associate professor of cultural and social anthropology, and Kathleen Namphy, a retired lecturer in English, talked about their experiences visiting the Middle Eastern country. They said the Iraqis are a proud, sophisticated people in despair about their future. "Our government has never wanted to talk to people it doesn't like," Delaney said. "We need to include people in negotiations instead of treating them as barbarians. We've got to learn to include everybody at the table and spread the wealth."

So many students -- about 150 -- gathered for a presentation on the evolution of aggression and warfare given by Robert Sapolsky, professor of biological sciences, that organizers brought the soft-spoken professor two successively larger megaphones so he could be heard.

"The faculty support of the strike is key," said Hilary Spencer, a symbolic systems major from New York, who had attended two classes on Wednesday and planned to go to another. Spencer initially had been concerned that a strike would undermine support for education, "but this has worked out well," she said. She'd learned from the teach-ins, she said. "I'm a technical major, so my courses don't cover these topics."

"I think it's amazing," said Katherine KelmanLink title, a sophomore who attended one class and two teach-ins on Wednesday. "Any expression of public awareness is important, even if it doesn't have a direct effect. And this is not just walking around in a circle," she said, looking around the Quad.

The strike "is astonishingly well organized," said Robert Siegel, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology who came to the Quad when a Swahili class he is auditing was canceled. Siegel got a surprise -- he spotted his son, a student at Jordan Middle School, who had come to the strike with a group of about 20 other students.

"This isn't sanctioned by dad -- or the school," Siegel said.

Books Not Bombs II

In the campus' first major antiwar demonstration of the 2004 academic year, community members gathered in White Plaza for "Books Not Bombs II,"a smaller version of last year's student strike. An hour of cheers and speeches — most of them focused on criticizing the foreign and domestic policies of President George W. Bush — was followed by a march to Hoover Tower and alternative classes led by Stanford faculty and scholars. "This is about holding Bush accountable," said demonstration organizer Sofia Lee, a senior. "I mean, he's trying to feed us the idea that this federal marriage amendment is the central issue of this election. That's not what this election is about. It's about all the people who have died in Iraq. It's about remembering the 2000 election and all the Florida voters who got disenfranchised."

Organizers emphasized that one of the event's main goals was simply to remind students of what they describe as the injustices of the past two years — a theme driven home at a poetry reading during the candlelight vigil, which featured chants of "We refuse to forget." The rally opened with performances by the Stanford Mariachi Band and spoken-word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph. Psychology Prof. Philip Zimbardo gave a speech depicting the Bush administration as waging a campaign of fear against U.S. citizens and using the threat of terrorism to push through the legislation that it wants. When Stanford janitor Doroteo Garcia spoke to the crowd, Lee translated his words from Spanish. Garcia argued that the war in Iraq has harmed the lives of local workers. "Last year, we were negotiated a new contract, and the big companies used the pretext of hard economic times because of the war to prevent us from getting a raise," Garcia said.

Alumn Kuusela Hilo, Class of '03, gave a speech describing her work for the on Human Rights in the Philippines; she attributed the misery in that country to U.S. imperialism. Citing an earlier successful campaign by Stanford students to convince the University to divest from the Coca-Cola Company because of its support for the apartheid government in South Africa, Hilo said, "1 got the hell out of here last year, but I'm back to remind you that Stanford students have a legacy of protecting and liberating people." Sophomore Linda Tran, the event's MC, ended the rally with a denunciation of Stanford's Hoover Institution and the involvement of Hoover Fellows in planning Bush's foreign policy. Many of the demonstrators marched to Hoover Tower, where they gathered in a circle and shouted chants such as, "Whose war? Hoover's war!" Junior Hai Binh Nguyen urged the demonstrators on, shouting into a bullhorn, "Say it loud! They gotta hear you upstairs!" While many passersby simply stared at the marching crowd, a Marguerite driver waved and yelled. "Hey! No more war!" The march was followed by a set of alternative classes taught in the Main Quad. Faculty teaching alternative lessons included History Prof. Joel Beinin, History Frof. Estelle Freedman,Japan Studies postdoctoral fellow Adrienne Hurley, English Lecturer Emeritus Kathleen Namphy and Cultural and Social Anthropology Prof. Sylvia Yanagisako.

Now What? Defying Trump and the Left's Way Forward

Now What? Defying Trump and the Left's Way Forward was a phone in webinar organized by Freedom Road Socialist Organization in the wake of the 2016 election.

Now what? We’re all asking ourselves that question in the wake of Trump’s victory. We’ve got urgent strategizing and work to do, together. Join Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson of the Movement for Black Lives and Freedom Road, Calvin Cheung-Miaw, Jodeen Olguin-Taylor of Mijente and WFP, Joe Schwartz of the Democratic Socialists of America, and Sendolo Diaminah of Freedom Road for a discussion of what happened, and what we should be doing to build mass defiance. And above all, how do we build the Left in this, which we know is the only solution to the crises we face?

This event will take place Tuesday November 15, 2016 at 9pm Eastern/8pm Central/6pm Pacific.

Those invited, on Facebook included Hai Binh Nguyen.

References

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