A youth and student convergence on Saturday at St. Mark’s Church attracted over 600 participants from around the country. [photos] The event, “Books not Bombs,†was organized by the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, a network of youth organizations including the United Students Against Sweatshops, Young Communist League and Campus Greens. The event included panel discussions, strategy and vision workshops and skills training. Many of the participants went on to march in the United for Peace and Justice protest the following day as part of the youth and student contingent.

The event began with an opening plenary session, for which I was not present. Please post an account if you were there.

Arts and performance programming was offered throughout the day at the Theater for the New City. Billionaires for Bush described their methods of street theatre and the Beehive Design Collective presented their detailed hand-drawn banners. Information on the Theater of the Oppressed as a method for organization and mobilization was given, and Climbing Poetree hosted a multimedia performance on the drug war, Colombia and the prison-industrial complex.

Workshops began with a time for community education. Topics included public education policy, immigration, militarization and the implications for students and youth, the prison-industrial complex, civil liberties and historically marginalized communities, and the intersections of youth and labor issues.

The interrelationships of each of the issues were laid bare in many of the workshops. New York City has a population in which one in four are under the poverty line, said Ejeris Dixon, an organizer with Families United for Racial and Economic Equality. Forty percent of people of color are underemployed or unemployed, and there are more than 350,000 homeless individuals. David Tomo of the Fabulous Independent Education Radicals for Community Empowerment then spoke about the ways in which low-income queer youth were being pushed out of safe havens in the West Villiage in an effort to make the neighborhood more acceptable to some wealthy residents. The effects were especially acute for queer youth of color and trans youth, who were often marginalized in many other parts of their lives.

It was no surprise then that regardless of their background or niche in organizing, presenters talked about an opposition to the entire set of systemic problems, whether they termed them the “Bush agenda,†capitalism or racism. Solidarity between groups became apparent — and necessary — when the causes of each group began to so clearly intertwine. And more often than not, it was the oppressed groups themselves who most effectively organized, whether they were low-income communities highlighting the effects of the war on domestic policies for mainstream anti-war groups, or radical queer and trans youth challenging the upper-middle-class and white gay rights and feminist organizations.

By far the most well-attended discussion in the “strategy and vision†section was an intergenerational panel with former and current activists involved in Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panther Party and the United Auto Workers.

After recounting their stories of organizing, the panelists took questions, most of which revolved around the protests at the RNC and the “state of the movement.†Miriam Thompson of the UAW argued that no social movement has ever succeeded without visible protest and “making the power uncomfortable.â€

Tom Hayden, an SDS founder, pointed to the historical constructions that fears of protesters scaring voters toward Bush belie. The history of radical movements and individuals “has been forgotten,†he said, replaced with stories more acceptable to the power-holders. And so Harriet Tubman and John Brown are replaced by “the Great Emancipator†Abraham Lincoln, whose Proclamation freed no slaves; communists are purged from the history of the social welfare programs in favor of FDR’s New Deal; and radical black organizing is made antiseptic by, for example, repeating only the most general slogans of Martin Luther King.

The workshop sessions ended with a panoply of trainings, including legal, nonviolence and media training, the role of art and poetry in organizing, and working with coalitions, get-out-the-vote organizers and high school administrations.

A closing plenary brought together the many diverse facets of youth and student organizing. Labor activism, anti-racism and anti-oppression, queer activism, feminism, anti-war and anti-militarism organizing were all touched upon. The convergence ended with a call to come together again as a youth and student contingent in Sunday’s march on the RNC — and the next morning, hundreds of young activists showed up.

Were you there? Post your own accounts of the workshops, speakers and networking that took place. Photos and multimedia would also be appreciated.