How ASU Works
The Activist Student Union is a registered student group at DePaul University. We reject hierarchies in our structure, focusing instead on reaching consensus on what we want to do as a group. The school requires us to list a president, but we don't have one person that tells others what to do.
DePaul Stuents Against the War Manifesto
DSAW was founded immediately after 9/11 in opposition to the war in Afghanistan. The name DePaul Students Against the War specifies that we are focused on the current need to end the war in Iraq and to address issues of the war in Afghanistan, yet we are opposed to all U.S.-led military action. We see U.S. military presence on the globe as working in the interest of corporations and imperialism, and not in the interest of any form of human rights; as long as this continues to be so, we will oppose any U.S. Led military action, military training, military aid, and military alliance with other countries.
Militarization affects all aspects of our lives that are not directly connected with the military. It compromises our civil liberties through increased police repression, surveillance of society and political organizations, racist attacks on immigrants and people of color, and privatization of space. Increasingly, media and entertainment has conditioned the U.S. public to accept militarism and to promote hyper-patriotic sentiments and abandon critical thinking.
We are anti-imperialist. The U.S. military is one force of the global imperial order that dominates third world countries economically, militarily, and culturally, and utilizes systems of racial, gender, class, and sexual oppression globally and within the U.S. to maintain power of the white supremacist patriarchal ruling class. We view the United States as an Empire, not of the making of any individual President, but as a country which has been guided by an imperial mindset from its founding.
We respect the sovereignty of other countries and believe that our role is to support the progressive political and social movements of other societies and provide human resources instead of enforcing our system of beliefs through military or other means. We do not feel that our focus, as students within the most powerful Empire in world history, should ever be on the crimes of smaller nations that are not directly the fault of our own country. We believe that the crimes of our country are our first responsibility.
We are a feminist organization. We acknowledge that militarism disproportionately affects women who are often given the burden of maintaining and reconstructing society during and after military action. Women's bodies are used as pawns during war and in military service through rape and sexual violence and women's issues are manipulated for political means; furthermore we recognize that women have been on the forefront of anti-war organizing and resistance movements in many places.
We are non-sectarian; we do not uniformly subscribe to a political party or agenda. We work with all who agree with our points of unity, regardless of their political affiliations. Our members identify with a range of political descriptions, such as socialist, anarchist, communist, Democrat, pacifist, etc. We are proud of a tradition of pluralism amongst our membership that allows some to advocate pacifism and others to endorse armed resistance to invasion and occupation. We also attempt to establish alliances and good relations with our counterparts at schools in other parts of the United States, and around the world.
As college students, we are outraged with how massive military spending takes away from much-needed funding for education and how increasingly academia is being militarized through pro-war propaganda, military recruiting, and through research programs for the military.
We are outraged that instead of putting resources into universal healthcare, they are being put into the destruction of people's health. Furthermore, the military is one of the primary sources of pollutants in the environment, and the corporations that produce weapons and other military supplies are guilty of deforestation, strip-mining, mountain-top removal, destructive, radioactive and toxic testing practices and other environmental crimes. We stand in defense of the earth, animals, food sources, and natural biodiversity.
The military is in part the international police force of corporate globalization and capitalism. It enforces the policies and vision of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and other institutions that promote neo-liberalism, free trade, and third-world debt. We support the workers who organize resistance to the sweatshops and repressive forces of corporate globalization.
We work with people of faith against the war. We respect the diversity of religious, spiritual, and other beliefs of our members, although we do not promote any specific religious view. We condemn the use of religion as a justification for war.
We are a pro-LGBTQ equal rights organization, and we are against heterosexism and homophobia. We respect the diversity of sexual identities within our group. We stand in opposition to the homophobic military practices of discrimination against LGBTQ individuals.
We are an anti-racist organization. Racism has manifested itself in the military through targeting people of color for recruitment, assigning people of color to more dangerous missions, and through racist rhetoric used to justify war efforts. We support multi-cultural and multi-ethnic diversity within DePaul Students Against the War. We also remember that the violence of our country has been used at its worst against Black people in slavery and Indigenous peoples through genocide and displacement, and history is never to be forgotten.
We as members of DSAW recognize our class privilege based upon the fact that we are university students regardless of our families' backgrounds. Furthermore, we support an end to discrimination against individuals on the basis of class and the creation of an economic structure in which all people's basic needs are fulfilled. We stand against the military taking advantage of those individuals who are in a lower socio-economic status. War disproportionately affects the poor and creates the conditions for poverty.
We oppose discrimination against people who are disabled. Many people are disabled by military violence, and the military does not adequately care for those who are injured by war. We strive to make accommodations for people with different disabilities.
DSAW functions as a collective and we reject hierarchical organizing of our group and of members of society. We respect the autonomy of our members to act separate from this group. In a group setting, we strive to reach consensus in our decision-making processes. We recognize that many other student organizations share our goals for equality and peace, and we work in coalitions with our allies.
We are incensed by the various ways DePaul University is violating its Catholic and Vincentian values by collaborating with the military. We oppose the Reserve Officer Training Corp (ROTC) program and the Military Sciences minor. We also believe that The DePaulia is in violation of the Vincentian nature of our university by running advertisements for the military, and we reject the Career Center's offer of the military as a career option. We oppose the violation of Iraq's sovereignty through the International Human Rights Law Institute's (IHRLI) ?Raising the Bar? initiative. We oppose all other military connections to our university.
We demand the following:
-the immediate withdrawal of U.S. military forces from every foreign country including but not limited to: Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, the Philippines, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia.
-the end of U.S. military aid to all foreign countries, including but not limited to: Israel, Colombia, Egypt, Pakistan.
-the slashing of the military budget to pay for universal health care and universal education up to the collegiate level and to eradicate hunger and homelessness.
-that DePaul cut all ties to the military, including but not limited to ending the ROTC program, Military Sciences minor, advertising for the military in The DePaulia, offering military service in the Career Center, and IHRLI's initiative.
-that DePaul provide or arrange for alternative financial support for ROTC cadets to replace the financial support received from ROTC.
-the enlargement of the Peace Studies minor