Acorn

Audience members gathering for former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge's speech last night were first greeted by the collective voice of Students for a Democratic Society.

The SDS members read from a self-produced pamphlet calling for Ridge's accountability in-what the group feels-a criminal career in public service.

Although six days old and not an officially recognized chapter of SDS, its members had no trouble garnering support for yesterday evening's demonstration. According to senior Zack Hershman, a member of Drew's SDS, about 35 people responded to their posters calling out to any student interested in participating.

Planning the event included a group discussion of how SDS members felt about the state of national security today.

"We feel less safe," Hershman said. "Stricter laws and wiretaps have been made without [citizen] input. It's non-democratic." The meeting, held as a group teach-in, was moderated by Assistant English Professor and Special Assistant for Diversity Erec Smith.

The group's pamphlet, which was also passed out to Ridge's audience, was entitled "Accountability Now!" and provided facts about Ridge's legacy in American government. Some of the information listed on the flyer included Ridge's signing of 220 death warrants while governor of Pennsylvania-136 of whom were black. Pennsylvania has a black population of 10 percent, according to the flyer.

The flyer also mentioned discrepancies in Homeland Security-issued terrorism threat levels procured by false CIA intelligence. "$343 million [disappeared] in a contract between the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, an incident, according to SDS, that the Department of Homeland Security is quoted as having not remembered.

During the speech, the members stood and turned their backs to Ridge and asked two predetermined questions. All SDS members attending the speech stood together during the question-and answer session.

"It looked bad on the school," freshman Michael Chevinsky said about the protesting. "They didn't want answers to their questions. They just wanted to demonstrate their point."

Sophomore Slava Gomozov agreed that the SDS demonstration was not looking for answers from Ridge. "It's them expressing their opinions," he said. "But they should have done it in a civil manner."

The purpose of the demonstration was not to demean or embarrass Ridge, nor was it an effort to affect policy change, Hershman said. The real impetus for SDS's display of student activism yesterday was to inform the public of Ridge's record and "draw attention to these crimes against democracy." Records themselves will do the embarrassing, Hershman said.

Members of SDS felt the demonstration was a large success.

"We were able to distribute information to hundreds of people," Hershman said. Change in this country requires an educated public and people committed to educating, he said.

For SDS, success will be measured by its ability to sustain activism and make change. According to SDS, this is initially done at the community level.

This was SDS's second public demonstration. The first was on Columbus Day when members hung posters in Madison, reporting Columbus' record of slave trading and inhumane treatment of the indigenous people of the Americas.

Hershman said, after each demonstration, SDS gains the experience and courage to tackle future projects.

Article Tools