Monday’s Emerald had a picture of a war protester wearing a big, stupid-looking grin on his face as he was led away by the Eugene Police Department to be charged with criminal trespassing (“Nonviolent Iraq War protesters arrested on University campus,” ODE, Nov. 21). This fellow was one of seven people arrested at a protest outside the University’s Military Science building on Friday morning. Four more from the same group were arrested at another demonstration later that day.
As I look at the picture of the protester being led away, I can’t figure out what he’s grinning about because this has got to be one of the lamest little protests I’ve ever heard of. In a community with more than 190,000 people, this protest had a grand total of about 50. Of those, 11 volunteered to commit a crime as a publicity stunt to bring attention to their little tea party.
I’m a huge fan of the First Amendment. I think it’s great that people are allowed to express all sorts of ideas in all sorts of ways. Having said that, I’m going to use my First Amendment right to discuss just why this protest registers an 11 out of 10 on my lame-o-meter.
First, the message of this protest was poorly planned. By protesting first in front of an ROTC building and then later in front of a military recruiting station, these protesters were a world away from the policy makers who actually make the decisions they’re protesting. ROTC cadets do not make policy decisions – they don’t decide when and where to go to war. ROTC cadets are merely college students who are training their bodies and minds in order to serve their country when the time comes.
Ever since the disgraceful displays of the Vietnam era, the cardinal rule of war protesting has been to protest the policy decisions, not the troops. By protesting in front of these facilities, though, the protesters have broken that rule. They’re no longer protesting a decision made by a group of politicians in Washington; they’re protesting the decisions made by the brave men and women who choose the defense of freedom as their profession.
While there are many Americans who disagree with our nation’s current foreign entanglements, there are hardly any who think the finest among us should be discouraged from enlisting or seeking commissioning in our armed forces. These protesters are putting out a muddled message that simply will not resonate with many Americans.
This brings me to my second point about the lameness of Friday’s protest: The melodramatic rhetoric was laughably out of proportion to the actual effect of the protest. “It was time to take a stronger stand – this does make a statement to the public about what we’re willing to risk,” protester Karla Cohen told the Emerald.
What the community sees is that a group of people too small to fill a school bus were willing to stand in the cold for a couple of hours on a weekday morning. I’ve put more effort than that into getting tickets to a football game.
Moreover, 11 retirees and college kids were willing give up their lunch hour in order to get a small citation. Big deal. I’ve seen bigger police crackdowns targeted at a handful of freshmen carrying a case of Mike’s Hard Lemonade.
This protest was barely a ripple in the ocean, but those involved talk about it like Ghandi himself made the fliers.
Protest organizer Peter Chabarek was quoted as saying, “We are openly breaking the law in order to bring attention to the much greater injustice of the Iraq war.” What bunk.
The bottom line is the stakes are just too small in this protest. This is not like the civil rights movement, where there was an absolute right or wrong being debated. The civil rights movement was led by philosophers and a minister who were fighting for a fundamental and absolute sense of justice – trying to preserve the God-given dignity in every person that some people were trying to steal. That was a high-stakes moral issue that shook a whole country to its core. It was an epic and historic struggle that continues to this day.
So you’ll forgive me if I laugh at the Michael Moore book club when it tries to use the same tactics and rhetoric to tell a group of young people that they disagree with their career choices.
This protest was not anti-war; it was anti-military. And if there had been any significant support at all for such a demonstration, it would be sad. However, the “little protest that couldn’t” had so few people and such a small effect that it’s just plain funny to me. I look at the picture of the protester grinning while he’s led away. It seems to me that the joke is on him.
You call this a protest?
Daily Emerald
November 21, 2005
Gabe Bradley The writing on the wall
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