Mark Stefanos started many of his Friday nights in high school in typical fashion: piling into a car with some friends and heading into town.
It’s what he’d do once he got there that wasn’t so typical.
During the run-up to the war in Iraq, Stefanos ““ now a fourth-year political science student ““ and his friends spent their Friday nights leading pro-war demonstrations along one of the busiest thoroughfares in their native Long Beach.
“My friend’s truck seated six, so it was like the six of us and we put the signs in the back,” he said.
His small group eventually grew to about 30-strong.
“You’d have your typical kind of Long Beach, Sublime-type surfer drive by in his truck and maybe honk his horn and give you a fist in support. Then you’d have the same type of guy come by and say, “˜You’re crazy, you’re just a warmonger.'”
Taking on the war in a city as politically diverse as Long Beach, home to many military families, as well as a strong liberal presence, became Stefanos’ first real taste of political activism.
Just an hour’s drive north, in La Crescenta, another political science student-to-be saw the run-up to war from a very different perspective.
Babken DerGrigorian, now a fifth-year, considered the imminent invasion of Iraq so unjust he could not sit idly by.
So he organized a walk-out at his high school so big school administrators were forced to cancel classes for the day.
“Everyone was going crazy, and to see that a war was about to happen over something that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, I just couldn’t sit around,” he said.
The students’ two stories offer a stark picture of how political ideologies are incubated, and how college-aged Americans, who have so much else in common, can stake claim to such varied stances on the war.
“I can see their perspective. It would only take a fraction of a percent of my ideology to change before I can say, “˜Well, I can see the other side, I see why this isn’t worth it,” Stefanos said.
“There’s very little difference between what I know and what that other person knows as far as why we define ourselves a certain way.”
DerGrigorian, now a leader of Students for a Democratic Society, a radical progressive group on campus, said his perspective on the war is influenced most by his upbringing in an Armenian household.
“I was raised in a household where Armenian activism is very big, I mean I knew about the (Armenian Genocide) before I even knew what a genocide was,” he said. “And to feel that kind of injustice done to your people has given me the ability to seek commonality with other injustices that are happening in the world.”
Stefanos, the son of Christian Egyptian immigrants, another historically persecuted group, says his family’s background was also a great influence, but for him to support the war.
“For me, having foreign parents, I knew the value of what being American is. And there’s a lot of responsibility involved,” he said.
“(My father) really instilled the values of standing up for your country and your values in me.”
Stefanos is now a part of Bruin Republicans and editor of the conservative campus publication The Bruin Standard.
Dwindling support for the war ““ especially on college campuses ““ has not hampered Stefanos’ commitment to the pro-war cause.
“Being on the side of the minority who still supports the war, I don’t feel like I’m not encouraged,” he said. “I feel like being on a college campus where most people don’t support something and I do is just a way of me defining myself.”
DerGrigorian ““ who’s organized die-ins and other anti-war demonstrations on campus ““ agrees that his political activism has too defined his time in college.
“I think when I look back at my college years, my involvement in activism is going to be where I got my best education. It’s not going to be in the classroom,” he said. “It’s going to be all the skill development, all the leadership development, the ability to have the space to think critically and radically about things.”
Looking forward
Like many college-aged Americans, both Stefanos and DerGrigorian got their first look at a war that has lasted for most of their young adulthood from a television screen in a high school classroom.
The U.S. military’s overwhelming bombing from air and sea evoked night-and-day reactions from the two.
“Shock and Awe was like a nightmare,” DerGrigorian said. “I literally remember watching it in class as if it was a movie or something.”
For Stefanos, the strike on Baghdad and elsewhere was more of a victory, the successful end to a cause he had protested in favor of for months. He remembers a buddy in a band turning to him and commenting that “Shock and Awe” would be a great title for a hard rock song.
“It was what I wanted to see which is a military showing its might and the United States showing the world that we were able to stand up in the face of adversity,” he said. “It was a good thing to see that we were still capable of making such a grand media spectacle. I felt a lot of that South Park-style patriotism at the time.”
Five years later, both have had their understandings of the war bolstered by their political science coursework and years of activism. Still, they stick staunchly to their original stances.
“Things aren’t going to be perfect. They’re not going to be as nice as we were told they’re going to be. But are generations to come going to look at this and say this was the biggest failure of the 21st century? I doubt that,” Stefanos said. “As long as there’s a hope then I’m still in support.”