School Students Against War (SSAW) is an active school students' anti-war group based in the UK. It was established in 2003 as a youth off-shoot of Stop the War Coalition, and is completely organised and maintained by School and FE College students.]
The organisation was involved in the wave of school student walk outs and protests against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which received considerable media attention. Since then it has organised and supported a number of significant protests, including a march against George W. Bush's visit to London in November 2003 and the UK G8 summit protests in July 2005. It has also campaigned against military recruitment in schools. Its campaign was featured in the Daily Express, backed by major teaching unions and was the subject of a More4 documentary.
SSAW has also been involved in anti-arms trade campaigns including Disarm Dsei, the campaign against climate change and the Stop Deporting Children campaign.
School Students Against War has received considerable media coverage on television and in the news. They have been featured on a Channel 4 documentary on political activism, various news programmes as well as the newspapers (The Guardian, The New Statesman, Times Educational supplement, Daily Mail, Independent, Socialist Worker, Morning Star).
The organisation had a dormant period since the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq and its last active campaigning period was towards the end of 2007. However recently a group of FE and School Students have decided to resurrect the organisation. It has been re-launched since August 2011
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Famous quotes containing the words school, students and/or war:
“Out of life’s school of war.—What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“We must continually remind students in the classroom that expression of different opinions and dissenting ideas affirms the intellectual process. We should forcefully explain that our role is not to teach them to think as we do but rather to teach them, by example, the importance of taking a stance that is rooted in rigorous engagement with the full range of ideas about a topic.”
—bell hooks (b. 1955)
“Come Vitus, are we men, or are we children? Of what use are all these melodramatic gestures? You say your soul was killed, and that you have been dead all these years. And what of me? Did we not both die here in Marmaros fifteen years ago? Are we any the less victims of the war than those whose bodies were torn asunder? Are we not both the living dead?”
—Peter Ruric, and Edgar G. Ulmer. Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff)