What We Think

           The winning of the strike of twenty-two Sorrell Cafeteria workers by the students of Brooklyn College is a significant fact in American student history.

           The demands of the workers were accepted by Sorrell after two days of picketing and campaigning by members of the union and by students. The victory shows those students who were in sympathy with the strike but did not think that it was the place of students to picket, that it is necessary for students to participate in workers' struggles. The Food Workers Industrial Union told those student organizations that had been active in the strike that they and not the workers had won it the strike.

           If we were able to perform such a substantial service for a group of workers who, we felt, were justified in striking, can those student [sic] who object to student pickets still object? The strike is all over; the workers are back, earning two dollars a week more; the students are back in school, realizing that they have accomplished something that a dozen courses in economics t could not.

           The tremendous sympathy of the non-students in the vicinity is illustrated by the patience of the crowd that listened for three hours last Thursday afternoon to speakers. Only the student speakers were scheduled, but outsiders approached the chairman and asked to be allowed to speak. There were two from trade unions, one Negro who spoke on the conditions of Negro students, one unemployed father of a City College student. There were others who said they were just workers.

           The most concrete sign of the mutual cooperation between workers and students, (who are workers to be) is the news that the Food Workers Industrial Union sent a telegram to President Robinson demanding the reinstatement of the twenty-seven suspended City College students.

           On November ninth students all over the United States will hold Armistice Day anti-war meetings. Students, workers and professionals all over the world will hold these meetings to build such a strong anti-war movement that it will be impossible for another 1914 to occur.

           Sixteen years after November 11, 1918 the world is ready at any moment to plunge into another war. Our own government has spent over two billion dollars on war preparations. Unemployed youth are being given military training by the CCC camps, which Assistant Secretary of War Woodring called "the first real test of the army's plans for war mobilization under the National Defense Act as amended in 1920." (Liberty Magazine, January 6, 1934.).

           We as students have even less to gain from another war than our fellow students who fought in 1914. There is only one way to combat war preparations now, by organization. Support the Anti-war League and the November 9 meeting which is being supported by many clubs and organizations in the school.

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May 20, 2004