Who Are the Santa Cruz Students Against War?(Welcome, fellow
Michelle Malkin readers!)
Michelle Malkin
has a post on their latest "action". Apparently a group of them rode around on 10-speeds last night, slashing tires and vandalizing SUVs. [Inserted correction: Kalkin in the comments points out that there is nothing in the story to connect this vandalism to the SAW contingent. It may symbolize the general moonbattery of Santa Cruz lefties, but it's far from established that there is any connection to SAW, and I apologize for implying otherwise.] At the end of the story she notes that she's been criticized for posting "personal" information on the SAW group, although it came from the anti-war kooks themselves.
There are three names listed on the SAW PR sheet. As it happens, none of them is a "Sam Jones" or similar common name so I thought I'd spend a little time Googling them.
David Zlutnick is a rebel with many causes:
Protesting
increased tuition and fees.
UCSC students Ryan Wadsworth and David Zlutnick were escorted from the room for speaking out of turn.
Zlutnick, a member of the Student Worker Coalition, said he works 20 hours a week busing tables to pay for rent, leaving him less time to study. Protesting the
"selling-out" of the revolution:
The word “revolution” is used so often it makes me wanna puke. The term is being thrown around so much it’s losing significance and credibility. Radio stations owned by Clear Channel playing “alternative” music refer to themselves as the “new rock revolution.” Car companies call their new lines of SUVs a “revolution.” Video games now have “revolution” in their title. As do laptops. And MP3 players. And motorhomes. And speedboats. And energy drinks. And… well you get the idea. Is it a good thing that revolution is used to sell products? And products that, for the most part, only the well-off can afford? I don’t know about you, but any revolution that I wanna see happen does not include SUVs, motorhomes, and most definitely not “alternative” music.Here he admits that
gays in the military is not the issue for him:
Protestors claim that the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell policy,’ which requires gay men and women to hide their sexual orientation, violates campus discrimination policy. Although this is only one part of the protest platform, third-year UCSC student and SAW member David Zlutnick said, “The bottom line is if queers are included in the military we’d still be anti-military…[discrimination] is definitely part of the bigger picture.”Here he does his
impression of Juan Cole:
Word on the street is that Iraq is headed toward civil war. Every day we hear about it from the mainstream media, telling us that the sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims are turning bloodier and bloodier by the day. Fears jumped when the Al Askari Mosque in Samarra, a Shia holy site, was bombed on February 24th and reprisals began against Sunnis. Over 50 Sunni mosques were damaged and three Imams (religious leaders) were killed following the initial attack. The question now is whether or not this is just the beginning of a larger conflict that has the potential of engulfing the entire nation.Here's a
digital project he did at UCSC. I'm guessing that he's not interested in pursuing law enforcement as a career.
Sam Aranke is apparently a female. Here's
some discussion of the recent ouster of the military recruiters:
Aranke expressed doubt that a member of SAW would throw a rock, though she noted that the group had no control over who participates in events.
By protesting military recruitment, Aranke said, the students resisted both the war in Iraq and what Aranke called a war at home.
The tendency of the military to recruit among low-income communities amounted to a “back door poverty draft” whereby recruiters draw from populations who might think of the military as their only opportunity to escape poverty, she said.Janine Carmona pops up here with some
poetry for us:
The streets crack open
beneath dissent
spilling
through cracks
it pools
in black-lined eyes
the whirlwind of shouts
is concentrated bliss
before it stretches and splits
cut by the roar of police bikes
toothed tires eager to rip flesh
inches behind
gobbling up freedom
swallowing
the only way
out
Autum Ashante, she's not!
She's part of the
Gay Pride movement at UCSC. She's also
active in the theatre, appearing in Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues.
Update: See also
John Hawkins:
Let me just say that there was absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with Michelle posting the phone numbers and email addresses of the SAW people on her website. Nothing.
While I have condemned posting private home addresses and phone numbers publicly, when you put a phone number or email address on a press release, as far as I'm concerned, you have no standing to complain about it being publicized. After all, that's the whole point of the press release.Mr Ugly American
has more coverage.
