Radikal Anarchist Youth's Manual

Content:

  1. Know your rights.
  2. Student Organisation.
  3. Liberate your mind, fuck present day school system.

First: You Should Learn Your Rights

 This was found at WVRights. I copied it here to make it easier to read the whole manual.

"Here You Will Find The Answers To These Questions:

WHAT DOES DUE PROCESS MEAN?
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees everyone in the United States something called "due process of law," which means you have the right to be treated fairly by people who are in positions of authority -- teachers, school administrators, -- and the police.
Let's say a teacher or school official accuses you of having done something wrong and wants to suspend you. Well, they can't just throw you out! You have a right to a hearing so you can tell your side of the story. This right was established by the U.S. Supreme Court way back in 1975 when it decided a case called Goss v. Lopez that involved some high school students who had been suspended without a hearing.
Another thing: if you're found guilt of something, the punishment can't be more serious than the misconduct was. So your school can't suspend you for just a minor violation. Or for something other kids did and only got detention for.
If you go to a private school, your due process rights may be different, because private schools are not required to obey the Constitution. Some state laws, however, may give you some due process protection in school. Contact your local ACLU chapter or affiliate to find out the laws in your state.
WHAT ARE MY RIGHTS IF I'M ABOUT TO BE SUSPENDED?
No matter how long the suspension, you have a right to notice of the charges against you -- that means being told exactly what you did that was wrong. You also have the right to a hearing before a person or people who are impartial, meaning they don't have anything to do with the incident, and they don't have any attitude towards you one way or the other.
If you deny the charges, the school officials have to tell you what evidence they have, and give you the chance to tell your side of the story. And if you're facing serious punishment, like suspension for more than 10 days, you have the right to be represented by a lawyer who can call witnesses. You also have the right to question or cross-examine your accusers and the witnesses against you. And you have the right to ask that a record be made of everything that happens at the hearing. You can use this record if you decide to appeal the decision.
But you don't have the right to a hearing for a minor punishment, such as being made to sit at the back of the class or detention.
The only way you school can suspend or expel a student without notice or a hearing is if they think the student is a danger to other students or to school property. But even then, they're obligated by law to give the student notice and a hearing as soon as possible after the expulsion.
WHAT CAN MY SCHOOL SUSPEND ME FOR?
Each year, more than 1.5 million students miss a day or more of school due to being suspended. Most suspensions are for offenses such as cigarette smoking or truancy. What your school can suspend you for depends on which state you live in.
Most school officials consider that suspension is an extreme punishment, and they use it only as a last resort. Often, they don't suspend unless a student does something illegal, dangerous, or disruptive. The same thing goes for expulsion, although in a lot of states, expelling someone is illegal because everyone has the right to an education.
And schools don't have the right to punish you if you broke a rule you had no reason to know even existed.
CAN I BE PUNISHED FOR WHAT I DO OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL?
It mostly depends on whether the behavior impacts your conduct in school. In some states, schools have authority over students' activities on school grounds, at school-sponsored events, and during recess and on the way to and from the school or school activities. While in some states, the courts have given schools authority to suspend students who commit serious criminal acts off school grounds, your school would be violating your due process rights if it automatically suspended you without giving you a hearing.
DO SCHOOLS EVER DISCIPLINE STUDENTS DISCRIMINATORILY?
Students of color have been suspended at much higher rates than white students, according to Federal Office of Civil Rights statistics, and students have been discriminated against based on their religion, national origins, gender, and other factors. THIS IS ILLEGAL.
If you think your school's rules discriminate, you should contact local civil rights groups to get your school to adopt fairer procedures. The National Coalition of Advocates for Students (100 Boylston Street, Suite 737, Boston, MA 02216) can give you your school district's recent suspension data. Your local ACLU also can help you find other groups.
HOW CAN WE MAKE OUR SCHOOL RULES FAIR?
The Michigan State Board of Education's guidelines for school rules is a good model for a fair school rule policy.
It states that: School policies have to clearly say what is allowed and what is not School rules can't be so complicated the average student won't understand them Rules have to be related to valid educational purposes. Rules can't restrict activities that are constitutionally protected. School policies have to tell you what the punishment is for breaking the rules. The punishment can't be more serious than the misconduct, nor harsher than what the school district itself is authorized to do. A copy of the rules and procedures must be made available to all students.
If you think your school's disciplinary rules are unfair, you and other students can try to create a task force with parents, teachers and school administrators to improve them.
IS A TEACHER ALLOWED TO HIT ME?
In at least 21 states corporal punishment is banned. Some states allow it, but only under certain circumstances, and only if the physical punishment isn't "unreasonable and unnecessary" or "excessive." If a teacher actually hurts you, contact your local ACLU. A lot of people and organizations are working hard to get corporal punishment banned nationwide. Hitting's no way to make a kid learn.
"The Fourteenth Amendment protects the citizen against the state itself and all of its creatures -- Boards of Education not excepted." – U.S. Supreme Court, West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 1943
We spend a big part of our life in school, so let's make a difference. Join the student government! Attend school meetings! Petition your school administration! Talk about your rights with your friends! It's up to us!"

Student Organisation.

  1. Before anything else.
  2. Who has the power in the union?
  3. Tactics.

Before anything else.
Before making your own group, ask around in your school or campus if there isn't any yet around. There might be one. You can ask students that are interested in student movement, maybe even some teachers, look in the student board...

Who has the power in the union?

If you find any, talk to them and try and see if you would like to join. In case that you dislike their attitude, program or that you prefer anarcho group, you can set "your" own. I say your own between brackets because in anarchist unions we don't have a (or a group of) leader(s), we are all as powerful as the others. This will mantain the union as truly democratic as it must be. Also the more ideas are heard the better it is to go forward.

This can work easily when you have a small group. But anarchist principles can work when the group has reached an important number of members. As your group grows you will have more tasks. For example you might have someone to take care of the newspaper, someone to mantain your website, someone to take care of the internal organisation...But all of that is possible, and works better within an anarcho-syndicalist student union.

In all anarchist groups, true democracy is the key word. They are organized with an assembly composed of all its members and each one has the right to a vote and to say what they want. However, as the number of students and the amount of task grows, the union have to subdivide itself. Therefore for every task, an assembly delegate will be chosen. These elected people are "the union comittee". They are not leaders mind you! They are simply working for the assembly, the latter is the one with the most power. Their power is limited.

"These limitations guarantee that every officer acts without self-interest. It is a barrier to avoid the growth of a bureaucracy, and to limit to the maximum possible the development of leaders, dictators and authority in the heart of the union."
Basic Anarcho-syndicalism.

Union Comittee has no power to decide the fate of the whole group.

The only decision-making is the assembly, where all its member vote and have the right to express themselves. If the comitteee members had taken a decision without the assembly's approval during an emergency, the assembly will have to judge if they were right or not.

Comittee members are serving the assembly.

Comittee members are not leaders. If their acting goes against the assembly's opinion, they are to resign, if the assembly decides they have to. This can happen any time. This will allow the rule of all the members.
Comittee members have to keep the assembly informed of their work whenever it is needed, weekly or monthly...If the assembly at any time asks for information they should get it rigth a way.

Comittee members are not paid.

Just in case someone in your group said they should be paid: DON'T DO THAT! This would lead to have fake people asking to "work" for the assembly when in fact they work for pocket money.

Tactics

After studying more or less internal organisation of an anarchist student group, we should look at some tactics. They are different in each school since each school is different, but we can deduce common methods, where yours can be based on, some special cases...
But before choosing your tactics it is important to know what you are fighting for and against.

The ideal school system.

We are obviously working for an ideal school system. This means that we would like to eliminate everything that stops our liberty as students, only liberty lets us develop our true and needed capacities. These can be:
  • Biased education.
  • Useless represive actions from the school. (Suspension...)
  • Head of schools that use school for business.

I talked about the first point in my critic against present day education system.

The second point needs to be abolished because they are most of the times used by the head of the school to punish students that the heads dislike. Examples of this you can find in your own school. In my ex high school, a friend of mine who never got any absentees letter home, got in a argument with a teacher because her mobile rang in class and the teacher wanted to confiscate it and she stood up to the teacher. The next day she received an absentees letter and punition from school supposedly on the fact "that she missed too many lessons". The truth is that they wanted to stop her from facing the school authority.

The third point is especially true for private education but it is still valid for public education. The head of school, the teacher's boss, get a higher salary than the latter and actually do less and their work can be taken up by an aanrchist assembly of teachers and of the students. Therefore their presence is useless and they are only there to get more money. If we use the anarchist approach to education, we can create an assembly reuniting teachers and students. No more useless heads of school.

To solve this we create the school assembly.

The school assembly (teacher and student) section. The comittee will rule the school with the autonomity system with all the other schools of the anarchist society. Decisions will be taken by the school assembly, which will ellect the school comittee, which would take over the ex-school "chief"'s post. But this will only take place when anarchism will be the social system. Until then, the student movement has a lot to do.

"What do we fight for and against?" summary.

To summarize the very last part of this essay, we struggle against those that stops our freedom which is the main factor of physical and spiritual development and growth. No more head of school, no more useless and biased repression... Let's struggle for the establishment of Anarchism and the taking over of schools of students and teachers by creating the school assembly once the heads are kicked out.

This will take a long time to be achieved but still we can fight for our rigths and limit the school leader's and the teacher's. We can fight to be truly represented and not mislead with "class delegates" that actually do nothing and only look to be elected to have a good record.

Let your voice be heard!!!

Once you have created and organize your anarchist group, you should let others hear your voice. This can be done easily on the web or like a normal newspaper. Yes! create your own newsletter. It can be underground, this means your identity will be protected and its distribution limited, or it can be open. Take a look at the links below for more info.

This site has also a page to help those of you who want to create their own sites and make their newspaper online. If you want to make it underground remember if you give a link to your email, to have one that hides your identity. Having it online is good to help others see your work and get inspired. It is cheaper than having it publish but publishing is ok. You can try to get as many mail addresses of students in your school and create a mailing list. All this will be explained in a another page.

If you (also) decide to publish it, you can either hand them out to your fellow students or leave them on the tables before the classes start, on the student board or on tables where people often go to on breaks. Also remember to let the lectors to contact you.
Other sites with Anarchist student newspapers:

Tactic #1

Remember that you can count on your parents for back-up. When you think something is not good in your school, tell your parents about it and ask them to talk to the heads of school and teachers. Put pressure on the school also by convencing others to do the same.

Tactic #2

I pretty much like the idea of keeping the group kind of "secret". But in some cases, it is better to make it more open. Either way, you can raise other's awareness by making graffitis, or just using markers in the toilet and the walls of your school. Always remember, a short, straigth forward message is better than an illisible phrase. Make schetches and have fun!

Also as being an anarcho-syndicalist group, you should try to let others know what you believe in. Excellent introductory sites on the web are www.infoshop.org, www.anarchyfaq.org, www.anarchosyndicalism.org ...army_of_the_ppl.tripod.com I recomend you write in the walls anarchist quotes with links to it.
Some Anarchist quotes. Also make your own.

Also investigate whether or not the internet room is under censorship for anarchist sites. Many school censor communist and anarchist sites. If they do, put it in the walls and give the link so others will check for themselves.

All those taggings will cost the school a fortune and will wake people up to things that they can't see. But be careful and don't get caugth.

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