New Orleans, LA — On February 23, around 35 protesters came together to protest a CIA recruitment event at Tulane. The rally, organized by Together United Louisiana Students for a Democratic Society (TUL SDS) took place on Freret Street, an intersection at the heart of Tulane’s campus.

Some students went into the event to disrupt it. During the CIA agent’s speech, students displayed signs with messages such as “The CIA tortures civilians” and chanted for more than five minutes before being removed by Tulane police. Once outside, they joined the rally, where demonstrators continued chanting, “ICE, KKK, CIA, they’re all the same!”

After being removed from the event, Navya Prakash of TUL SDS addressed the crowd outside saying, “We are the students, we’re the ones who pay to be here. This is our campus, not the CIA’s.”

“For those students who are marginalized—including myself as a Black trans woman—a CIA presence on campus creates a chilling effect for those who speak out, for those who believe in progressive causes, for those who believe in liberation,” said Rosalina Victorian-Framboise, a Loyola student and member of SDS.

Passing drivers honked in support, some raising their fists in solidarity as they drove by.

“The CIA has been welcomed with open arms by the Tulane administration to recruit a new generation of white collar war criminals,” said Charlie Schully of Freedom Road Socialist Organization. “Ever since its founding the CIA has really only had one goal in mind: to make the world safer for monopoly capitalists. Not for you or me.”

While Tulane welcomed the CIA, it erected barricades ahead of the student rally. Tulane University Police monitored the action.

#NewOrleansLA #LA #StudentMovement #SDS #AntiWarMovement #CIA

New York, NY – On February 12, the New York University Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) held a picket outside of the NYU Kimmel Center to protest the presence of the Central Intelligence Agency at a school career fair.

Students and others picketed in front of the building for two hours chanting, “CIA off our campus! No platform for state violence!” and “Brick by brick! Wall by wall! The CIA will fall!”

Shortly before the picket, NYU SDS, in collaboration with several student and community organizations, launched a petition that demanded NYU remove the CIA from the career fair and end all collaboration with the agency. The petition had over 80 signatures by the time the career fair started.

The CIA did not show up to the school career fair, with NYU setting up an empty table where the agency was supposed to be. NYU SDS wrote in a press release statement after the picket, stating, “Today, when the career fair took place, the CIA did not show up, leaving the table empty and unused. This represents a win not just for SDS, but NYU’s student body as whole.”

NYU SDS has also scared off companies from attending previous career fairs. In their last semester, the student organization scared away military company General Dynamics, which has provided weapons to Israel to enact its genocide and occupation of Palestine, and mining company Glenncore, which has ties to human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

NYU SDS reaffirmed their commitment to call out NYU’s hypocrisy in collaborating with these violent institutions and companies and to take action against their presence. In their press release, the organization says, “As we celebrate our win at the career fair, SDS reaffirms our demand that NYU hold itself to a higher ethical standard, stop platforming these war criminal organizations, and protect student activists. SDS will continue to act until these demands are met.”

#NewYorkNY #NY #StudentMovement #AntiWarMovement #CIA #SDS

Chicago, IL – On the afternoon of August 28, members of Students for a Democratic Society and AnakBayan Chicago, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, passed out flyers on the quad to oppose the partnership that the university has with the CIA. SDS members held a banner reading “CIA off campus,” the slogan that has been used in past decades by student activists around the country in similar campaigns. Protesters held signs each detailing a different CIA operation and the number of deaths it caused.

In February 2018, the UIC announced that they had become a CIA Signature School. Only three months later, Gina Haspel was named the director of the Agency. Haspel has a long history of running torture operations across the globe.

The CIA Signature School program aims to recruit students, particularly international students, into their ranks. Student activists are opposed to the partnership because of issues of privacy, a troubling history of how the CIA interacts with international students on university campuses, and because the CIA is an tool of U.S. imperialism.

UIC is the fourth university to enter into this partnership, coming after the City University of New York Baruch Campus, the University of New Mexico, and Florida International University. All these universities were targeted because of their large populations of students of color and international students. Student and faculty activists at CUNY Baruch College forced their university to release the memorandum of understanding with the CIA in 2018, which includes the statement that one of the purposes of the partnership is to “push a diversity and inclusion brand.”

“Partnerships like this normalize imperialism, and that’s something we have to stand against whenever it shows up,” said one SDS member.

UIC student activists held two CIA Off Campus events during the Spring 2019 semester, but this is their first action as a newly-formed chapter of SDS. AnakBayan Chicago is also starting a student chapter at UIC. “CIA Off Campus” is an ongoing campaign at UIC.

#ChicagoIL #AntiwarMovement #PeoplesStruggles #ANAKBAYAN #CIA #UICSDS

Philadelphia, PA – CIA Director John Brennan came to the University of Pennsylvania, April 1, for a talk on “modern foreign policy issues, national security, and the future of the global fight against terrorism.” Firmly drawing the line against Brennan’s warmongering, a group of Philadelphia activists and organizers, led by the UPenn chapter of Students for Democratic Society (SDS), decided to disrupt his speech.

Students rallied outside the building while several small groups of student protesters disrupted

inside the program. Students chanted anti-war slogans like “Drones kill kids,” and “No justice, no peace, U.S. out of the Middle East,” interrupting Brennan every ten minutes.

UPenn SDS member Lucas Lipatti said, “We also chanted ‘Black lives matter’ to connect the struggle against imperialism and neocolonialism at home and abroad.”

The students carried Palestinian flags as well as banners reading, “Drone strikes breed terrorism,” and “CIA = terrorist organization.”

Each time protesters rose and disrupted, Secret Service agents rushed over to forcibly remove the students. Ex-CIA Director Brennan exited the stage after being disrupted for the third time, expecting more disruptions to come.

As an organization that stands firmly against U.S. wars and occupations, UPenn SDS decided to confront Brennan and challenge the University of Pennsylvania for offering a platform to justify war crimes and perpetuate the narrative that the CIA is a benevolent force in the world.

#PhiladelphiaPA #AntiwarMovement #StudentMovement #StudentsForADemocraticSociety #PeoplesStruggles #CIA #Pennsylvania

On December 21, 2013, the Washington Post published a report about the latest covert action by the CIA, the NSA and the Pentagon, that is, of the United States of America, in Colombia's internal armed conflict. This involves decisions and authorizations by at least the last three governments of that country.

Interesting revelation, that shows many incredulous people that the interest of the US government is one of the main triggers of the long war Colombians are going through. More ambitious studies could easily show that the same thing has happened since the days of Operation Marquetalia in 1964, which was publicly recognized in Colombia. However, whenever the nature of the conflict is being studied, this fact is silenced with astonishing irresponsibility.

According to the report, the covert action program has helped the Colombian Army to kill at least two dozen rebel leaders, according to interviews with more than 30 serving or retired officers in the United States and Colombia. At the same time, the National Security Agency was carrying out electronic eavesdropping and wiretaps. All these operations were financed with a secret budget of billions of dollars, additionally to the nine billion dollars aid from Plan Colombia.

President Santos, according to the same report, tried to downplay the issue when he was interviewed by that North American newspaper. Minister Pinzón (Defense), on the contrary, had no qualms about openly recognizing it in the media and abate it as part of the traditional military agreements between the two countries. It is clear that neither of them feel the slightest appreciation for Colombian sovereignty, since gringo impositions on drugs and terrorism are more important to them than any consideration of national interest. Not to speak about Colombian General and Admirals; their knees are calloused.

It is not that we didn't know or didn't have any idea about it, but some things do become clearer with the report of the US newspaper. For example, that the columnist Oscar Collazos is completely right when he suggests that the greatest contradiction that generates debate between former Colombian presidents, is about showing which of them is responsible for the major part of killings of their citizens. This debate is also reproduced with clear interest by the Colombian media, which are always so prone to publish and enhance the crimes of the guerrilla, as they are called by such nefarious individuals. We could now parody Senator Piedad Córdoba, when she said that Colombia was a huge mass grave. saying that with the consent of recent governments, Colombia is a victim of the most blatant and unpunished wiretapping on behalf of the intelligence services of a foreign power.

Similarly, the cited report includes disclosures that give the shivers. The article states that according to President Santos “part of the experience and the efficiency of our operations and our special operations were the product of better training and knowledge we have acquired from many countries, including the United States”. This endorses what the report states about the transfer of the American experience in Afghanistan and the struggle against Al Qaeda to the Colombian conflict, ie intelligence procedures including bribery, illegal arrests, disappearances, torture and illegal pressure on people who are expected to give information.

This makes clear that the ongoing degradation of the methods used by Colombian military, police and security forces originates in the instruction and advice given by the Americans. The government of Juan Manuel Santos is aware of the kidnappings, blackmail, death threats and attacks employed by the Colombian intelligence service to obtain, through the families of the guerrilla commanders and fighters, the location of these in order to kill them. Methods that have even been employed against the families of the FARC-EP members of the Peace Delegation in Havana. He also knows perfectly well, because of his time as defense minister under Álvaro Uribe, the true story of the military intelligence that led to the gruesome murder and mutilation of Comrade Iván Ríos.

The analysis of the report also mentions the opportunistic and unilateral interpretations of international law by successive U.S. governments, submissively accepted by Colombian leaders. Mr. Reagan authorized military intervention on behalf of his country in any nation under the pretext of combating drug trafficking; Mr. Clinton authorized the interventions to secure his country's control of strategic resources located anywhere in the world; Mr. Bush acted the same way, under the pretext of preventing what his government qualified as the terrorist threat. All this was enough for the notions of independence, sovereignty and self-determination of people to be put in the museum of history, next to the corpse of the fundamental rights of human beings.

Only such a brazen reign of arbitrariness, born out of brute force, can explain, as corroborated by the report, the aggression of the Colombian military against the sovereignty of Ecuador on March 1, 2008, and the subsequent treacherous murders of Colombian guerrilla comandantes outside of combat, through the use of the cynically called “smart bombs” or the actions of the special forces. The report reveals the efforts of the CIA and the Pentagon to get the reprehensible legal interpretations, with which these crimes are perpetrated. It also exposes the wickedness of the American law schools in which all these new legal theories are cooked and which are responsible for legitimizing terror as a respectable method of political action.

It is true that more brainy scholars may draw many more implications from this report, but in addition to what is already said, we should ask ourselves now, when the discussion on the issue of illicit crops is coming up: What is the true role this oligarchy of vendepatrias (nation-sellers) grants to the peace talks with the FARC-EP, or possible talks with the ELN, when the interests that produce an intensification of the conflict in our country are exposed on national and international level? This report leaves many doubts about the desire for peace by the Colombian state and its imperial boss. Which confirms our idea that a true peace in our country can only be achieved with the massive and decisive participation of the millions of Colombian victims of this regime, who have just suffered one more mockery with the ridicule increase of the minimum wage while the military budget grows geometrically to crush their dissatisfaction.

SECRETARIAT OF THE CENTRAL HIGH COMMAND OF THE FARC-EP Colombian jungle, January 2014, year of the 50th anniversary of our uprising

#Colombia #FARCEP #CIA #NSA #Americas

Observers have known for many years that covert ‘signals intelligence’ gleaned by U.S. spy agencies plays an important part in keeping Colombia’s death squad government in power.

The Post article states, “The secret assistance, which also includes substantial eavesdropping help from the National Security Agency, is funded through a multibillion-dollar black budget. It is not a part of the public $9 billion package of mostly U.S. military aid called Plan Colombia, which began in 2000.”

The article says of the targeted killings, “The covert program in Colombia provides two essential services to the nation’s battle against the FARC and a smaller insurgent group, the National Liberation Army (ELN): Real-time intelligence that allows Colombian forces to hunt down individual FARC leaders and, beginning in 2006, one particularly effective tool with which to kill them. That weapon is a $30,000 GPS guidance kit that transforms a less-than-accurate 500-pound gravity bomb into a highly accurate smart bomb.”

The article states that the outstanding Colombia revolutionary, Raul Reyes, was targeted in these attacks.

In the face of harsh repression by U.S. government and its Colombian puppets, the FARC has continued to hold its own, forcing the Colombian government to join a new round of peace talks in Havana.

#WashingtonDC #InJusticeSystem #FARCEP #Colombia #CIA #NSA #Americas

Clarksville, TN – On Sept. 26, students, including members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), joined parents, anti-war veterans and alumni of Austin Peay State University to resist Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recruitment on campus. Students petitioned the Office of Career Services, which invited the CIA to campus. The protesters were removed by force by the Clarksville Police Department as they questioned the CIA about their activities.

Speakers at the rally included U.S. Army veteran and concerned parent Lara Davis who said, “The CIA is responsible for or complicit in the killing of U.S. citizens, assassinations, torture, kidnapping, drug trafficking, overthrowing democratically elected governments and propping up military dictatorships and puppet governments.” Protesters surrounding the speakers held signs saying, “CIA off campus!”, “CIA, how many kids did you kill today?”, “CIA=Cocaine Importing Agency” and “Money for education, not for war!”

Another U.S. Army veteran and student, David Jennings said, “We stand in solidarity with Syrians in their struggle against CIA-trained and funded terrorists that compose the so-called ‘Free Syrian Army’.” The rally was part of a nationwide week of actions in solidarity with the anti-war and international solidarity activists raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury two years ago this week.

After addressing the crowd opposing CIA crimes, protesters marched on the Office of Career Services and delivered a petition with over 125 signatures. The petition urged the university administration to uphold the student code of conduct – specifically that the university not allow any organization that routinely violates international law, commits human rights abuses, and/or operates in contradiction with the high standards outlined in the student code of conduct, to organize or recruit students on the Austin Peay State University campus.

Later, several people from the rally went into the CIA recruitment event and attempted to question the CIA representatives directly about their involvement in torture, assassinations, overthrowing democratically elected governments and other crimes. The CIA offered no response to these questions. Students handed out flyers with a timeline detailing the CIA’s nefarious actions since its establishment. The flyers called for an end to repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists. Then, members of the Clarksville police department forcibly dragged an SDS member out of the room, snatched the flyers out of his hands, and threatened to arrest everyone if they continued to hand out flyers, question the CIA, or otherwise exercise free speech and free assembly in the student union.

#ClarksvilleTN #AntiwarMovement #StudentMovement #StudentsForADemocraticSocietySDS #CIA #antiimperialism #AntiWar23 #AustinPeayStateUniversity

After being questioned about overthrowing the Shah in Iran and murdering Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, the CIA representative responded “you have your history books and we have ours.” The CIA was recently exposed for working covert operations in Libya, where destabilization could open up the largest oil reserves in Africa to U.S. and British corporations.

Several SDS members continued to speak up, confronting blatant lies in the CIA presentation, such as their denial that the CIA has killed U.S. citizens. The students also handed out fliers with a CIA time-line that included just part of the CIA’s countless atrocities.

One of those events was Operation CHAOS, which illegally spied on some 7000 anti-war activists in the United States during the Vietnam War. The SDS flier demanded that the U.S. government stop the repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists that continues today under the FBI.

In addition to the CIA targeting anti-war activists in the U.S., they have also targeted their own recruits. Over 40 international students, who were recruited by the CIA at U.S. colleges, have committed suicide after being threatened with exposure if they left the organization.

Milwaukee SDS is committed to preventing fellow students from the same fate as those who are coerced and targeted by the government for dissent.

#MilwaukeeWI #AntiwarMovement #StudentsForADemocraticSociety #UniversityOfWisconsinMilwaukee #CIA