Support the "Hampton Seven".

I don't usually "spam" DU with this sort of thing, but I thought you might want to have a look...



From time to time, the Not In Our Name (NION) Statement of Conscience sends you
information on actions and activities conducted by other groups that advocate
the spirit of the NION statements. We do not give your contact information to
other organizations. We felt it was urgent that you have information below.
From the Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience National Office


November 30, 2005

Dear Friend,

Seven students at Hampton University face possible expulsion in a hearing this
Friday for peaceful political protest on campus.

Join Howard Zinn, Michael Eric Dyson and Katha Pollitt in signing a statement in
their defense (below).

Also, please call the HU Dean of Men at 757-727-5303 and the HU Dean of Women at
757-727-5486 to demand that these students NOT be expelled.

A bit of background:

On November 2nd, protests were held in over 70 cities with participation from
more than 200 schools. These were initiated by The World Can't Wait - Drive Out
the Bush Regime (worldcantwait.org) which has been endorsed by Harold Pinter,
Russell Banks, Cindy Sheehan, Studs Terkel, Gore Vidal, Cornel West, Howard
Zinn, Michael Eric Dyson and many others.

Students at Hampton gathered in the Student Union on November 2nd to hold a
gathering of poetry and speeches, but the event was shut down by Hampton Police.
Students' IDs were taken, their faces were video-taped without their consent,
and later several of these students received disciplinary letters. The Hampton
Administration has accused students of breaking several codes of conduct,
including a rule about cajoling or proselytizing students, "distribution of
unauthorized materials" and "the policy on student demonstrations."

Press coverage of this can be viewed at:
Daily Press, local Virginia Newspaper, November 23:

http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-26621sy0nov23,0,6983144.story?track=mostemailedlink
Inside Higher Ed website:
http://insidehighered.com/news/2005/11/30/hampton
Revolution Newspaper:
http://rwor.org/a/025/defend-hampton-university-7.htm
Daily Press, local Virginia Newspaper, November 28:

http://www.dailypress.com/dp-27586cm0nov27,0,6886291.column?track=mostemailedlink

A statement from two of the students facing charges is available at:

http://worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=437&Itemid=5

Sincerely,
Sunsara Taylor
Co-Initiator of World Can't Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime


STATEMENT - To add your name, email: youth_students@worldcantwait.org and
specify how you would like to be identified.

Drop the Charges and Stop the Harassment of the Hampton University Students
Against the Bush Regime!

Students who act to Drive Out the Bush Regime, especially when they remain firm
in the face of police and administrative threats, are heroic. They must be
defended. Their example must be followed.

Students at Hampton University participated in nation-wide outpourings in over
70 places and 200 schools on November 2nd to launch of a movement to drive out
the Bush regime. In the course of organizing, they were followed by campus
police, targeted by video surveillance, and forced to turn over their ID's for
the simple act of distributing literature. That these students were targeted for
the content of their activities is demonstrated by the fact that other students
routinely post unauthorized flyers (often with scantily clad women advertising
parties) without harassment.

On Friday, November 18th, three student organizers were issued summons for a
hearing regarding possible expulsion the following Monday morning, giving them
no time during the working week to contact lawyers, parents, or campus
administrators. After hundreds of phone-calls from around the country to the
Dean's Office, their hearing was postponed. Days later, four more students were
issued summons and campus police shut down an interview being filmed by the
local media, attempting to prevent the student's story from getting out.

The attacks on the student organizers at Hampton University, a historically
black college with a mostly Republican administration, is an ugly harbinger of
the "dissent-free" future the Bush regime is trying to lock into place. These
attacks are part of a pattern of repression against high school and college
students nation-wide on November 2nd that disproportionately targeted black,
Latino and other oppressed students.

A standard cannot be set where the President of the United States can stay on
vacation as a major city's poor and black people are left for five days without
food or water, where influential friends of this President are allowed to float
out genocidal notions of aborting all black babies to bring crime rates down,
and where the President's policies of "abstinence-only" in the face of an
international AIDS pandemic threaten millions of lives, but where students who
dare to act to end this are silenced and expelled from school.

As it says in the Call for The World Can't Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime:
"This will not be easy. If we speak the truth, they will try to silence us. If
we act, they will to try to stop us. But we speak for the majority, here and
around the world, and as we get this going we are going to reach out to the
people who have been so badly fooled by Bush and we are NOT going to stop."

We, the undersigned, demand that the Hampton University administration to drop
all charges against, cease their political harassment of, and to apologize to
these students. These students must not be expelled! We also call on students at
campuses nation-wide to send statements of support, and to join, strengthen and
support the movement to Drive Out the Bush Regime because the World Can't Wait!

Signed:

Electa Arenal, Professor Emerita, Ph.D. Program in Hispanic & Luso-Brazilian
Literatures & Women's Studies Certificate Program, CUNY/Graduate Center*
Eleanor J. Bader, adjunct Kingsborough Community College & Pratt Institute,
Brooklyn, NY*
Jennifer Baumgardner, author, Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future
Rosalyn Baxandall, Distinguished Teaching Professor, SUNY Old Westbury*
Edget Betru, Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative - Center for Constitutional
Rights*
Susan Bordo, University of Kentucky*
Eileen Boris, University of California, Santa Barbara*
Joan C. Callahan, Professor, Department of Philosophy & Director, Women's
Studies Program, University of Kentucky*
Carl Dix, National Spokesperson, Revolutionary Communist Party
Michael Eric Dyson, author, Is Bill Cosby Right?
Beva Eastman, Associate Professor, William Paterson University and New Jersey
City University*
Judith Ezekiel, Universite de Toulouse le Mirail*
Joan L. Griscom, Ph.D. Lexington, MA
Barb Josephs, SUNY Old Westbury*
Carole Joffe, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Davis*
Bea Kreloff, director, Art Workshop International*
Allen Lang, National Student Organizer, The World Can't Wait - Drive Out the
Bush Regime!
Judith Mitchell, former counselor, Columbia University*
Efia Nwangaza, Executive Director, African American Institute for Policy Studies
& Planning
Stephen Orvis, Professor of Government, Hamilton College*
Katha Pollitt, writer The Nation*
Nancy S. Rabinowitz, Margaret Bundy Scott Professor, Hamilton College*
Sonia Jaffe Robbins, freelance writer and editor
Alix Kates Shulman, writer
Paul C. Taylor, Morehouse, '89 Chair of Philosophy at Temple University*
Sunsara Taylor, writer for Revolution, Co-Initiator of The World Can't Wait -
Drive Out the Bush Regime!
Barrie Thorne, University of California, Berkeley*
Lise Vogel, Professor Emerita, Rider University*
Lawrence Weschler, director, New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU*
Barbara Winslow, Brooklyn College*
Laura X, Women's History Library*
Howard Zinn, Historian and Author
*affiliations for identification purposes only

Demand that the 7 students facing expulsion be cleared of any disciplinary
measures and that the intimidation and punishment for student protest stop!
Call the Dean of Men (Woodson Hopewell Jr.) at 757-727-5303, the Dean of Women
at 757-727-5486.

To add your name, email: youth_students@worldcantwait.org and specify how you
would like to be identified.