by Atticus Christensen, ‘15 + Dan Walls, Graduate Student
Stanford Says No To War recently voted to change its name to Students For Alternatives to Militarism. Since its inception in 2008, Stanford Says No To War has worked to counteract the violence, oppression, and crimes it sees in the continual applications of various forms of war, particularly by the United States. We have organized educational events in the forms of talks and panels to build awareness about such issues as the environmental costs of war and the civilian effects of drone strikes. Furthermore, we have actively protested the perpetrators of the various crimes against humanity that have been waged predominantly in the name of the American people, most recently protesting General Petraeus. In the idea of creating alternatives to war, Stanford Says No To War also has been pushing to create a peace and justice program at Stanford, through which students can study peaceful ways of resistance and effective alternatives to violence in its many forms.
Through all our efforts, Stanford Says No To War has always been opposed to war in the unfortunately many forms in which it incarnates itself. This has always meant that we not only opposed the overt American wars such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq, but we have also opposed abroad drone strikes and the American support for oppressive rulers around the world, and at home we have been opposed to the wars that the United States has been waging against its own citizens, for example in the form of the NSA invasions of privacy or in the continuing racist war on drugs.
However, despite the scope of our group and even the scope of what the word “war” can mean today, we felt our name as a group was not adequately capturing all that our group hoped that it would. We feared firstly that the scope of the goals of our group would be interpreted as being narrower that they actually are, given the more restrictive, more rigidly literal, interpretations of the word “war”. Furthermore, we wished our group name to demonstrate the positive, constructive nature we wish our group to have: we hope to actively create a world without war (though, we continue to believe that we are, and one can be, against war). It is for these reasons that we have decided to change our name to “Students for Alternatives to Militarism” (SAM for short). While, in general, this is synonymous with being opposed to war, we felt it better to explicitly use in our name the word “militarism”, which by definition is “the tendency to regard military efficiency as the supreme ideal of the state and to subordinate all other interests to those of the military.”[1] This, then, captures that the scope of our group extends beyond the domain of solely antiwar initiatives in a literal sense and into the realm of social justice; militarization of police and country borders; military- and prison-industrial complexes; “wars” on drugs and immigration; de-funding of social programs to support military expenditures; and various other facets where military trumps social interests. We also wish to remind the Stanford community that while militarism and military are related, militarism refers to the cultural influence of the military which often is negative. We feel that this name change more accurately represents our cause to the public and will serve us well in the future.
Despite the change of name, the group’s current goals and initiatives remain the same. However, as always, into the future, given more perspective and experience, the group will continue to try new things to fight militarism and actively create alternatives to its negative consequences. We feel that this process is helped by the addition of new voices, faces, and opinions. If you believe that militarism does not deserve its place in society and if you want to help confront its countless crimes and aggressions, come to our weekly meetings held at 7pm every Thursday in the conference room of Women’s Community Center and visit our webpage, antiwar.stanford.edu. Together we may fight for a world without war or aggression.
[1] “militarism.” Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 06 Apr. 2014. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/militarism>.
Atticus Christensen is a junior studying mathematics, and Dan Walls is a graduate student in Chemical Engineering. Both are members of Students for Alternatives to Militarism. Come to our meetings at 7pm on Thursdays in the conference room of the Women’s Community Center.
