Milwaukee students protest CIA recruitment on campus (Fight Back! News/Staff)

Milwaukee, WI - On Oct. 29, students led by Youth Empowered in the Struggle (YES) and Progressive Students of Milwaukee (PSM) disrupted a CIA recruitment event held on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus.

The CIA is a defender of U.S. corporate interests against democratic people's movements. Protest organizers say that for more than 60 years, the CIA has assassinated foreign leaders and civilians around the globe, systematically tortured, trained assassins to kill both US and foreign civilians, facilitated weapons and drug trafficking by terrorists and paramilitaries, influenced foreign elections with money and murder, and lied to congress about its activities.

The students began by holding an informational picket outside the space where the event was to be held. As attendees arrived they were handed a flyer featuring a timeline of the CIA's activities, including overthrowing the democratically-elected governments of Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954, assassinating Patrice Lumumba of the Congo in 1961, illegally spying on over 7,000 US antiwar activists in 1967, assassinating Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973, and attempting to overthrow the government of Hugo Chávez of Venezuela in 2002. Several attendees thanked the students for providing them with a different perspective than the one offered by the event program itself.

After the event began, the students entered the room chanting, "CIA, go away!" Inside the event space, YES President Oscar Hernandez spoke about the CIA's history of overthrowing democratic governments and encouraged attendees to study the history of people's movements throughout the world.