by Crimethinc. Workers' Collective
Available in 284 free installments
Owner:
go to a local college radio station,
act like you work there, and tape
whatever records you want.
For free cassettes, you can write to
Christian evangelical groups asking
for listening material.
Classroom Takeover
At the beginning of the semester, a socialist professor of political science (the sole representative of "radicalism" at the university here) whom we had befriended over the last few years gave us a call. He told us that he was in France and wouldn't be back for the first two weeks of class. He asked if we would handle his classes for the time that he was gone, and hand out syllabi. We agreed?and it was on. Instantly we had three classes, six class periods, and something like 400 students to lead astray.
None of us knew exactly what we were going to do, though we agreed simply passing out the syllabus wouldn't suffice. We had nebulous notions of distributing propaganda through the classes, so we pulled out all our pamphlets, 'zines, and posters, and went about producing a "reader." Teachers often pass these out: they usually consist of photocopied excerpts from boring-as-hell intellectuals. Our reader was a wonderful thirty-six-page packet including selections from Fighting for Our Lives, Days of War, Nights of Love, Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, the Situationist pamphlet On the Poverty of Student Life, and similar works. We hurriedly compiled this packet in the hours leading up to our first class. Over a hundred were produced and distributed during our litde experiment, and they seemed to go over very well.
The first few classes we taught were somewhat sketchy. Our propaganda distribution went very well, but our lesson plan was?^well, almost nonexistent. It all came together in our fourth class, though. This was a three-hour-long evening Introduction to Civics class hosting 150 students, many of whom were freshmen, so we knew we could prepare a lot of material. The original plan called for one of our number?we'll call him Ted?to give a lecture on the connections between the CIA, drug importing, and the Bush family, then show the video Breaking the Spell, and end with a discussion session. As the class started, it occurred to us that the VCRs and projectors were all either locked or required a code. This problem was easily solved when we realized that there was a big sticker on the phone reading, "Call X8105 for assistance with the multimedia devices." So, we called.
Us: "Uh, We're filling in for our professor tonight, and he asked us to show a video, but we don't have the keys. Can you corae unlock it?"
Tech Guy: "Okay, do you have the code for the control box?"
Us: "Uh, no."
Him: "Argh, damn professor didn't prepare you at all. . . I'll be right over."
Within ten minutes, the multimedia problems were solved.
As it turned out, Ted was late, so we showed the video first. Now, when I say that, what 1 mean is we walked into the room without saying a word to the class, put in the video, and played it. For those who have not seen Breaking the Spell, it should be said that it is a militant anarchist account of the Seattle WTO protests. Within about five minutes, cops were cracking skulls and anarchists were breaking windows, and in the classroom there were about loo unsuspecting students with their jaws on the floor. The gasps heard through the next hour as protesters were viciously beaten on screen made it clear to me that we were getting our point across.
The movie ended and the class seemed in shock. Ted had arrived by this point and promptly assiuned his very natural role of discussion moderator and social lubricant. He told the class that anyone who wanted to leave should {a very smart thing to do) and some did, but many stayed. Then we asked the class what they thought of the movie. Then someone asked, "What was the point of showing the movie?" I was about to respond with some sort of polarizing and cliched rant about the inherent violence of capitalist systems and the need to disassemble them, when Ted saved me from myself "Why do you think we showed it?" he responded. This sparked an hour and a half of some of the best classroom discussion I had ever been a party to.
It should be mentioned here that the success of this discussion had a great deal to do with the dynamics of the group we had "teaching" class that night. There were four of us there that evening. One of our number sat in the audience and acted in a capacity that
The first week of college classes, you can hold a "radical rush," in which activists maintain a constant public presence on and around campus, informing students of all the options they have for participating in liberating or subversive activities.
