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Demo at Columbia
I was up at Columbia University this afternoon—a perfectly beautiful September afternoon—for the anti-Johnnie protest. It was not very large, and was very tightly contained by police. Broadway was blocked off, so to get to the demonstration you had to leave Broadway and walk down to Riverside Drive, then up Riverside Drive to 116th Street, then back up to Broadway. The demonstration was on the sidewalk extending from slightly south of 116th Street on the west side of Broadway to slightly north of 116th Street. Most of the people were standing in 116th Street, but even a major part of that area was then cordoned off by police. Despite the tight quarters, it was worth it to be there with people holding signs denouncing Columbia for giving this enemy a forum. One pleasant surprise was a contingent of young men from the Society for Tradition, Family, and Property, a traditionalist Catholic group, protesting Johnnie’s presence at Columbia. I ran into Rocco di Pippo, a FrontPage Magazine contributor who came back from Iraq three months ago after eight months there working for a construction contractor. Also, there were as many pro-Iran and pro-Johnnie protesters in the crowd as anti, some leftist, some Muslim. The worst was two young men, dressed in Muslim outfits but not Middle Eastern looking, holding placards, one that wished for a mushroom cloud over Israel, the other that wished for “peace” in the Mideast, along with the message that Israel must be wiped off the map. Isn’t it lovely that Columbia invited a foreign leader who has called for a sovereign country to be wiped off the map, giving Muslim true believers the opportunity to echo his genocidal message on the streets of New York, a message now tacitly legitimized by Columbia University in the act of inviting Johnnie? The group I just mentioned has a website, where there is a picture of the Statue of Liberty with an axe being driven into it. Columbia University, which I attended as an undergraduate long ago, has been going down and down, but this is the worst ever. What do the Columbia Board of Trustees think about all this? Do they actively agree with President Bollinger’s repulsive actions, are they just going along, or are they asleep? I don’t know. The only way to find out would be to write personally to some of the trustees with one’s complaints and see how they respond. They will probably turn out to be thoroughly leftist. Bollinger is a disgrace and should be fired. But how much chance is there of that?
Also, Hot Air has links to the full text of the CBS interview with Johnnie. Email entry |