Protesting is dead

President Bush is in town today and tomorrow (April 21 & 22)
I found this out because of this flyer I received on campus last week and then again today. So today we headed downtown to see what we could see.

Although it was nice to get off campus the results were underwhelming. We found the 9 blocks enclosing Lafayette Square (between Magazine, Poydras, Carondolet, and Girod) had been blocked off . The NOPD, who really only excel at crowd control anyways, need not have bothered to come out in the numbers they did: they were hardly 5 protesters (ie: people with signs) and mostly they just milled around with the press and the cops behind multiple barriers.

Who in this city really has the resolve to protest anyway? Anybody actually making a comeback in this city by now knows not to depend on the help of any of the local, state, or federal governments for help. So what would be the use in wasting ones energy anyways to gripe at President who only excels at ignoring criticism?

I sound cynical writing this but I believe less in less in the traditional methods of protests today. Ever since the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, the images I've seen in newspapers and magazines of "protests" have been the same shot of a dude (or dudette) with dreads and drums and riot police with tear gas.

I would like to see and hear new methods people have come up with to have their frustrations seen and heard and acted upon. Get at me please.

- Bud R.


"The South, the nation, and the world are in dire need of creative extremists."
-Martin Luther King Jr. (A Letter from a Birmingham Jail)