Carolinian

Issue date: 8/15/05 Section: Opinions

It is literally impossible to live on campus for one week without seeing them: bright-colored flyers attacking the Bush administration and/or proclaiming workers' rights. At the bottom of these flyers is a black logo, a dark silhouette of a fist pumping in the air. Beside this graphic is the demand to attend a meeting of the Greensboro chapter of the International Socialist Organization.

I remember seeing these flyers when I first arrived at UNCG in the fall of 2003. I was shy, friendless and alone. I had no intention of ever attending one of these meetings until something interesting happened to me in the middle of my second week.

Out of the blue, a stranger walked up to me with a small stack of newspapers and asked, "What do you think about Bush?"

I assumed this person was talking about our current president, and told him I thought he was the epitome of human evil.

While the person shared my sentiment that Bush was a bad man, my comment spurred a debate on the nature of evil. The person with the newspapers thought that evil was a hollow Judeo-Christian concept that didn't exist. I disagreed.

During the course of our exchange, the person gave me a complimentary copy of the newspapers he was selling. He also invited me to what would be my first International Socialist Organization (ISO) meeting.

The meeting began well enough. Three different members from the ISO delivered passionate, well-prepared speeches on the ills of the world and how these could all be cured by joining their club. The room was filled to capacity with would-be members that the ISO had recruited during the week.

The name of the presentation was something like, "Why Should I Join the ISO?" My response to this was, "Why not?" A few members had made crazy and sometimes treasonous statements during the Q and A session that followed, but for the most part, the ISO seemed right on.

After the meeting ended, I filled out a membership card and was invited to join the group for dinner at Ham's. I remember feeling stoked - I thought I had found my crew, my team of liberal rollers I could hang with.

Then the group treasurer asked me for my bank account number.

The treasurer told me that dues were twenty dollars a month minimum (they would be more if I actually had a salary), and that it would be easier for her if they could be zipped straight from my checking account. I am not sure if this is a current policy of the Greensboro chapter of the ISO or the organization as a whole, but at the time I was taken aback. Religious cults at least have the tact to extensively brainwash new members before requesting power of attorney.

I politely declined the treasurer's request. Fortunately I was not excommunicated from the group for making this decision. I say fortunately because had I been barred from the organization, I would not have had the chance to learn more about them.

As I continued talking to various ISO members, I started to notice a tendency by the group to try and whittle away some of my minor beliefs that conflicted with the mandates from their group leaders in Chicago. I felt constantly under siege and I wasn't alone.

A vegan I went to high school with told me the group tried to convince her to eat meat, telling her that animal rights were less important than human rights (something she didn't agree with). For reasons never explained, one of the recruits who joined the organization with me was asked to abandon his boycott of Wal-Mart.

When a discussion I was having with one of the ISO members moved from heated to boiling, I tried to end the pointless debate. I told the member that we must agree to disagree. In response to this statement, the ISO member shouted, "THAT'S BULLSHIT!"

I paused for a brief moment and then asked, "What's bullshit, the marketplace of ideas?"

The breaking point came shortly afterwards, when the ISO decided to pimp out its newest recruits and make us sell their shoddy newspapers in the street. We were near the corner of Walker and Elon in front of the laundry mat. The older members told us to ask random strangers, "What do you think about Bush?"

'Wait a minute,' I thought. 'That's the same line they used on me.'

I complied with the older members' orders, and when I asked some people what they thought of the president, some of them said they thought he was a good guy. I responded to these people respectfully by saying, "That's good, we are all entitled to our own beliefs."

Suddenly, an older member reprimanded me. She scolded, "Stop telling people that it's good if they think Bush is a good person. No one is entitled to that belief!"

There was never a time in my life where I felt like more of a tool than I did that evening. It didn't take long for me to realize that these were the people George Orwell had warned us about in 1984. If they had it their way, the entire world would be made up of re-educated automatons that marched to the tune of the ISO leaders in Chicago.

When I got back to campus that night, I told the fellow recruit who was with me at the time that I was going to quit. The recruit didn't understand why I was leaving the organization, only to follow suit a few months later.

The ISO will no doubt write a letter to the editor to complain that someone has said something negative about them. They always do. Who knows, they may try to turn this article into a rallying cry to attract new members. They have done that before as well. They may even try to smear me with typical ISO nicknames like "red-baiter" or "petty bourgeois," but no matter what, I am sure that the ISO will disagree with me. However, unlike the ISO, I actually believe people have the right to hold differing opinions.


Joe Scott is News Director for WUAG 103.1, UNCG's student-run radio station. You can contact him at jbscott@uncg.edu.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools