First, gather together 35,000 people. Wait, no... first, gather together a few hundred or so. Ask them to be willing to share their skills, whatever those skills may be - writer, theologian, pediatrician, activist, comedian. Then have them meet over a period of days to talk about their thoughts, ideas, and interests, to share these interests, to have conversations with strangers. At this point you invite the 35,000 I mentioned to begin with.
Maybe you have them meet in a field? At the very least, have them meet somewhere neutral. Someplace that is neither "yours", nor "theirs." Or anyone else's, for that matter, at least in the most overt sense. A school is good. It's fairly easy to argue the point that a school is "ours." As are parks, mass-transit systems, courthouse steps, and the middle of rivers, between jurisdictions (as an enterprising, though oft-bothered by the cops, Madame did in my town of Portland, Oregon on the Willamette river in the late 1800's).
In inviting your 35,000, as well as when you solicit the assistance of your ad-hoc professors, state that this mass gathering for learning, this pedagogical fuck-fest, is an explicate act of defiance, against, say... capitalism? Nuclear arms? A war, or an un-just military act? Maybe war in all its forms? Couch your gathering firmly on the stance of "learning as protest."
From the 21st through the 23rd of May, 1965 this is what happened as a result of the organizing of an event called Vietnam Day, which took place in Berkeley, California.
Jerry Rubin, a recent UC Berkeley graduate school dropout, Stephen Smale, a UC Berkeley Mathematics professor and Field's Medal winner, and a good handful of others, organized Vietnam Day to take place on a playing field on the university campus. They invited many people to come and teach, including; Dr. Benjamin Spock; comedian/activist Dick Gregory; essayist/novelist Norman Mailer; then assemblymen, and future mayor of San Francisco, Willie Brown; philosopher and mathematician Betrand Russell (who sent a tape recording in his place from his home in England); poet, activist, and student of Eastern meditation Allen Ginsberg; satirist Paul Krassner; Buddhist philosopher Alan Watts; labor organizer, World War II conscientious objector, and future Chicago 7 defendant David Dellinger; then UC Berkeley professor and soon-to-be co-founding Yippie Stew Albert; and many others. All this as an act in direct opposition to the then war in Vietnam. All this to a war that, up till that point, was not really well paid attention to by the American public in general.
Vietnam Day spawned the Bay Area anti-war organization Vietnam Day Committee (VDC). With the momentum of the teach-in at theirs backs, the VDC staged some of the most spirited and inventive early anti-war protests of the 1960s. A handful of its founders went on to help organize the 1967 march on the Pentagon, as well as help found the Youth International Party (Yippie).
At the offices of the VDC the copier policy was as simple, inventive, and in the end, as pragmatic, as any of its street actions. The VDC offices, located on the Berkeley campus, always had a refrigerator full of beer, free to take. As well, its copier was available to all who wished to use it. Also free of charge. Anyone could come into the VDC offices to make fliers; for their lost cat, their "roommate wanted" flier, their bike for sale. The only catch was that each copy, before it left the office, was stamped with a VDC logo. In effect making every copy leaving the offices, no matter the subject, an anti-war poster by association.
The VDC Copy Center series will be inaugurated in Columbus, Ohio in February, 2008 with Franklin's VDC Copy Center; a collaboration with the Columbus College of Art & Design. This center, and each subsequent iterations aim, is to utilize the history of Vietnam Day and its harried promotion of free and expansive group learning, and the VDC's Free Copier Policy, more overtly, as its jumping-off point. Each Center will be a hub for the discussion of past and present radical social histories, with a leaning towards the regional histories of each specific location. Whether by focusing on the distant past or the immediate present, the programs, publications, and events, at each center will enthusiastically focus on how one might encounter pragmatic possibilities towards living a more thoughtful present through the investigation of inspiring stories of intrepid American visionaries, radicals, and so-called crazy people.
At heart, the VDC Copy Center's goal is the promotion of public discussion concerning our collective relationship to America's radical social past, and how often overlooked these types of histories are, even while they exist right in front of our eyes, at this very moment. Within our present national state of uneasiness, amnesia, and arrogance, we feel this to be vitally important. Open conversation, coupled with the practical application of socially minded initiatives - no matter how seemingly far-fetched or utopian - and the dissemination of the concerns and ideas brought forth within these types of environments, are a free and accessible approach towards facilitating forward thinking, inclusive, action. Each VDC Copy Center will lay these cards on the table.
