Article in the Daily Spectator covering a protest against John Ashcroft’s recent speaking engagement at Columbia University.
Excerpt from the article.
**Members of the group (WCW) also made their presence known inside the event, yelling out their objections to Ashcroft’s actions as attorney general during the question-and-answer session.
‘Every time anyone yelled out during the speech, I cringed,’ Flaxman said. ‘I knew everyone was going to associate that kind of disruption with [the Democrats], and that reflects negatively on us.’**
(Every time I hear comments like the one below I cringe because it disrupts half of humanity from being treated as human beings instead of incubators)
“Abortion..is a sad, even tragic choice.”
Democratic ( D-NY) Senator Hillary Clinton speaking in Albany
Students Fill Street in Protest of Speech
By Lee Zelmer
Columbia Daily Spectator
December 01, 2005
Democrats, Marxist revolutionaries, curious moderates, and everyone in between crowded the sidewalk at Broadway and 115th St. Wednesday night to draw attention to issues related to the arrival of former Attorney General John Ashcroft.
At the rally, campus leaders spoke alongside guests including New York Civil Liberties Union Director Donna Lieberman and Bobby Khan of the Coney Island Avenue Project. Students later marched through campus, shouting slogans to the organizers of the Ashcroft speech as they passed the glass walls of Lerner Hall.
Organized by the John Ashcroft Welcoming Committee(a coalition of multiple liberal campus groups formed by the Columbia College Democrats and the Columbia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union(the rally preceded a speech during which audience members posed several critical questions.
‘The whole point was to make sure tough questions were asked of Ashcroft,’ said College Democrats President Seth Flaxman, CC ’07. ‘That happened, and we definitely had a hand in it.’
Though the Welcoming Committee’s rally drew the largest number of students together, the most aggressive protests came from members of a group not affiliated with Columbia(Drive Out the Bush Regime. Dressed in orange jumpsuits with leashes, and faces covered to imitate photographs of abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib, members of the group were escorted off campus by Columbia Public Safety officers after loudly expressing their views inside Lerner Hall. Some left more peacefully than others; one member, Gary Robertson, fought and screamed as guards pulled him from campus.
Members of the group also made their presence known inside the event, yelling out their objections to Ashcroft’s actions as attorney general during the question-and-answer session.
‘Every time anyone yelled out during the speech, I cringed,’ Flaxman said. ‘I knew everyone was going to associate that kind of disruption with [the Democrats], and that reflects negatively on us.’
Not everyone sympathized with the rallyers’ goals. Twice, water flew out of Furnald windows onto the heads of the crowd.
After the event, some organizers of the Ashcroft speech expressed their distaste for the rally. ‘The things they were shouting are just silly,’ said Steven Macanka, CC ’06, a College Republicans board member. ‘They were out there demanding free speech, but we were in here allowing everyone to express their views. We had conservatives as well as people from the ACLU and the Dems talking and asking questions.’
Most rally participants left with smiles on their faces, whether they chose to watch Ashcroft speak or not.
‘It was really encouraging,’ said Bridget Splain, BC ’08, who attended the rally. ‘It’s the first time all the liberal campus groups have come together in years. We usually have no united left, so this was a really good opportunity for everybody to get together and focus on our common ideals.