Chico State anti-war rally Chico State Progressive Student Union call for end to Gulf War A crowd of approximately 150 students, faculty and staff gathered last Thursday to protest United States involvement in the Middle East at a rally reminiscent in spirit of Vietnam era demonstrations. The rally's theme was "No War for Oil".
The speakers contended that a war waged in the Middle East by the United States would merely be fought to insure the profits of multinational oil companies and American military arms producers, while domestic problems are left by the wayside. Chico State University professors George Wright and Chuck Harvey and Progressive Student Union member Jeff Pilch compared current public sentiment to that of the 1960s, when people were just beginning to become aware of and protest the Vietnam War. Harvey and Wright gave their political and historical interpretations of the Gulf crisis to the modest crowd.

"This particular crisis is beginning on the scale that the Vietnam crisis began," said Wright, who participated in an anti-Vietnam war rally at Chico State in 1964. Wright said he was not discouraged by Thursday's turnout; only 12 people showed up for the rally in 1964. The speakers' solution to the Gulf situation included negotiation facilitated by the United Nations. Negotiation was seen as the key response to remedy the crisis. "There seems to be only one way out: for the Bush administration, and others involved, along with Saddam Hussein, to negotiate this crisis," Wright said.
"It's only been in the last 10 days that the media have begun to shift (their) immediate attention away from the Gulf crisis," he said. "(They) put up a mask for a lot of very serious political issues that needed to be debated publicly, but passed by quickly." Wright said the U.S. government needs to focus its attention on AIDS, drug abuse and a slumping economy instead of a Persian Gulf war. He added that the media hype over the crisis has allowed a lot of domestic issues to die with minimum debate in the public forum. The savings and loan crisis, severe budget cuts and the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter were cited as examples.

Alternative energy forms were proposed as the answer to the global problems related to the "war for oil". Demonstrators claimed many environmental problems such as the 'greenhouse effect' and ozone depletion result from the use of oil. Associated Students President Tim Bousquet urged student activism by burning a selective service registration form with a Chico State lighter. Bousquet claimed the crisis really hasn't hit home in the minds of many. "I guess it's not immediate enough," he said. "When the bodies come home; is that when it's going to be immediate.?"


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