Sitting in class you hear a rumbling outside; a sharp slap on the window startles you before the door is thrown open and a crowd tumbles into the classroom. Chanting comes from the mob outside as the man with the bullhorn encourages you to join them. Soon enough they leave, peace returns and your professor goes back to his lecture – it’s May Day and Students For Justice is protesting again.
“The word radical comes from the word root, so the idea of being a radical is a person who gets to the root of things,” says SFJ adviser Cynthia Kaufman. “To me radical means someone who wants to get to the root of problems, and not just treat the symptoms.”
De Anza College is an internationally, ethnically and economically diverse school; many of its students are passionate about social justice issues. One outlet for those voices and opinions is SFJ, which was created by a student interested in protesting an affirmative action ballot initiative in 1994. Kaufman encouraged him to create a broad foundation for the club. This way the fighting for causes could change with the current pressing issues affecting students. This fundamental principle explains why the club remains such an active member of the De Anza community today.
Because of its politically oriented goals some of SFJ’s actions are controversial. “My feeling is that I don’t mind if things are strong in certain ways as long as they are productive,” says Kaufman. De Anza’s SFJ is about more than just making noise.
“We are students that feel that our society has flaws. We feel that it is important to acknowledge these flaws and work towards fixing them. We are fighting against any and all social injustice,” says the SFJ Web site. The club accomplishes its goals through protests, educational lectures and enlightening film screenings.
Being a member of SFJ is not only about increasing awareness of social inequities.
“The students who are involved in the process get a lot of organizing skills and through working together and participating in all the activities, they get a pretty deep sense of the world, what the injustices are, what causes them and how to change them,” says Kaufman.