5 mar 2003
Protest today: it was awesome. I wish it wasn't necessary, but given the situation it was great.
A large percentage of the people there were MHS kids. I'm so so so proud of Maggie T. & Mike J. & co. for organizing that: I know how hard it is to get kids who can't even vote yet to care about democracy, or anything outside the highschool realm (sidenote, maggie & jordan & co ruled the crowd screaming. I guess those years of MHS swim team cheering paid off). The highschool crowd was marvellous: I like seeing familiar faces. Marvellous, too, but weird, was when I realized i do know a bunch of the young liberals here on campus: how did that happen? when did that happen?
So a premise of the protest was "the federal government spends 5% of its budget on education and 22% of its budget on the military"--lots of people get riled up over this: books not bombs! wait till the day the military must hold a bake sale! blah blah blah. Who says they're above rhetoric? But it's the state governments that are supposed to pay for education; that's part of the reason we have states. The feds are supposed to pay for defense; that's what makes our states united. So while this factoid is true, it's a falicy of argument: putting blame were it don't belong (colloquial me! yah!) But that's certainly not the only thing the protest was about: that's just what some people locally choose to emphasize.
In my Spanish class (blah on that class!) today I got in a debate about the protest; what's his face boy was all, why bother protesting now? Bush is gonna declare war anytime now: it's inevitable. Silly college students in the midwest ain't gonna be noticed, ain't gonna change anything.
well, this is my argument (pick apart at your leisure):
1) I'm an optimist. Maybe the rich white guy in the big white house will change his mind.
2) There is more debate and deviation now then there was in 1965: i.e. the year we began in earnest to attack northern Vietnam. When we (my generation) thinks about the sixties, we see protests & john lennon sunglasses & hippys doing tha peace thang. But in the early/mid sixties, they were protesting for equality & sexual freedom, not against the war. It was a few years into the war before mass amounts of people thought that war may not be such a hot idea. And protesters then did end up making a difference, or at least got noticed.
3) The protest today wasn't just one or two liberal schools in the midwest. It was national. I don't know the numbers at all yet, but it was probably big. I'll try to get back to ya'll here.
4) well, I dunno how else to make change happen. Ideas? Mr. oh so smart spanish boy had none. To me, leaving things for others to deal with is weak. And ignoring things is worse.
So okay, lots of people do see the war as inevitable now. In the event there's already a protest planned for the day afterward. The day Bush declares war will be known as Day X, and the following day, there will be a vigil. ¶ 18:03
A large percentage of the people there were MHS kids. I'm so so so proud of Maggie T. & Mike J. & co. for organizing that: I know how hard it is to get kids who can't even vote yet to care about democracy, or anything outside the highschool realm (sidenote, maggie & jordan & co ruled the crowd screaming. I guess those years of MHS swim team cheering paid off). The highschool crowd was marvellous: I like seeing familiar faces. Marvellous, too, but weird, was when I realized i do know a bunch of the young liberals here on campus: how did that happen? when did that happen?
So a premise of the protest was "the federal government spends 5% of its budget on education and 22% of its budget on the military"--lots of people get riled up over this: books not bombs! wait till the day the military must hold a bake sale! blah blah blah. Who says they're above rhetoric? But it's the state governments that are supposed to pay for education; that's part of the reason we have states. The feds are supposed to pay for defense; that's what makes our states united. So while this factoid is true, it's a falicy of argument: putting blame were it don't belong (colloquial me! yah!) But that's certainly not the only thing the protest was about: that's just what some people locally choose to emphasize.
In my Spanish class (blah on that class!) today I got in a debate about the protest; what's his face boy was all, why bother protesting now? Bush is gonna declare war anytime now: it's inevitable. Silly college students in the midwest ain't gonna be noticed, ain't gonna change anything.
well, this is my argument (pick apart at your leisure):
1) I'm an optimist. Maybe the rich white guy in the big white house will change his mind.
2) There is more debate and deviation now then there was in 1965: i.e. the year we began in earnest to attack northern Vietnam. When we (my generation) thinks about the sixties, we see protests & john lennon sunglasses & hippys doing tha peace thang. But in the early/mid sixties, they were protesting for equality & sexual freedom, not against the war. It was a few years into the war before mass amounts of people thought that war may not be such a hot idea. And protesters then did end up making a difference, or at least got noticed.
3) The protest today wasn't just one or two liberal schools in the midwest. It was national. I don't know the numbers at all yet, but it was probably big. I'll try to get back to ya'll here.
4) well, I dunno how else to make change happen. Ideas? Mr. oh so smart spanish boy had none. To me, leaving things for others to deal with is weak. And ignoring things is worse.
So okay, lots of people do see the war as inevitable now. In the event there's already a protest planned for the day afterward. The day Bush declares war will be known as Day X, and the following day, there will be a vigil. ¶ 18:03
