Eyewitness Account and Lessons from Hunter College Arrests

On Tuesday, Oct. 18, Hunter College, a popular liberal arts college in Manhattan, was buzzing about the question of torture. Five youth from the NYC chapter of The World Can’t Wait and the NYC Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade dressed in orange jump suits and put black hoods over their heads, and knelt in a cluster in the hallway right outside the cafeteria - where several buildings intersect and hundreds can congregate within minutes. It was a startling and powerful sight - the anonymous, faceless men we’ve seen in photos for two years were now right in front of us, asking us, if we don’t like the fact that our country tortures, why do we accept it through our silence and inaction. One of the ‘victims’ would walk around, asking people to grab the dog leash that was around his neck - telling them, “George Bush says I’m a bad guy. Do you believe him? Do you feel better that I’m in Guantanamo? Do you want to be holding the leash? Because, as long as you do nothing, you’re holding the leash. They’re raping me and torturing me! What are you going to do?!” The idea was to challenge people with what it means to people, in real terms, to say, “we can/must wait three more years” - it means, “we can tolerate these horrific, dehumanizing actions of our government”.

We had done this twice before at this same campus, but this time was very different. As the security guards came to stop the youth, one of them grabbed the leashes of three of the guys, and pulled them together - causing some students to laugh, and others to cringe. The room was sharply divided - with some saying we were interrupting their day, and others - the majority, in fact - who were stunned and felt confronted and challenged, in a good way - and then others who verbally supported us. As the guards attempted to arrest people, and the crowd saw that people protesting torture were themselves being physically assaulted -with the guards picking people up by their arms, trying to drag people, threatening to break one youth’s arms - and as they saw that the youths themselves were not going to go quietly - it became clear that the crowd of 200-300 were upset and wanted to do something, but were unsure what.

WCW organizers in the crowd were calling on people to intervene, and a chant went up of, “Let them go!” and “Torturers!” - especially after one of the guards, very visibly, punched one of the youths in the groin - while he was handcuffed with his hands behind his back and being carried out! People in the crowd were crying, they were so upset. One young woman, who had at first, was like, “Who? Me? Do something?” was particularly outraged and filed a complaint with the school, documenting the sexual nature of the abuse. Once they had all been dragged out, a portion of the crowd stayed around debating what had just happened, and whether they should be “dropping out of school” to do “what’s right”. We also learned the next day, when we approached professors, that they had already heard about it from students who came to class wanting to discuss it.

The youths were all charged with misdemeanors - though two were singled out and charged with felonies at first, and the action was covered by the Associated Press, whose story was picked up by Newsday, 1010 WINS (the radio station with the largest audience), CBS, NBC, and the free Metro - and all kinds of people were saying they had heard about it, and had heard about Nov 2!

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11 Days until Nov.2; the Beginning of the End of the Bush Regime. We can not rest content with the explosive actions at Hunter and allow them to subside into the margins. We must forge what we have tapped into with these bold actions into an organized resistance movement with crews of students going all- out day and night making Nov.2nd a burning question at school and transforming the political terrain on campuses; but for what? Why? TO DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME.