About 300 people came to protest the escalation Obama announced, more than we ever had protesting at West Point during the Bush era. Over and over, people talked about having voted for Obama, but now being disillusioned, and really "heart broken" as Matthis Chiroux, the Iraq war resister put it. The protest, by the way, was quite intense, as the group marched silently to the main gate of West Point. Once there, we chanted STOP THIS WAR NOW!
Reports on protests at here.
Matthis, Elaine Brower and 16 others sat down in front of the gate for an hour, as drums and a sax, and a lot more chanting lited the intensity of the evening. Just after 8:00, when we knew the speech had begun, six of those "sitting in" moved to the active part of the gate, sat down again, and were immediately arrested for disorderly conduct. They were released to us about an hour later.
Is this more of the hope and change we wanted? Barack Obama outlined his plans tonight to raise the level of regular US troops to 100,000 now, on top of the military contractors already occupying Afghanistan. People are being killed in the thousands and truly, the richest country in the world is destroying one of the poorest.
Others were protesting in front of the White House, and Cindy Sheehan was in Nevada at the Creech Air Force Base (one of the military’s centers that deploys drones that kill people in Afghanistan and Pakistan). Protests continue. Find one near you!
Outside of West Point, I found people who were angry and disillusioned. The anti-war movement as a whole collapsed in the wake of Obama’s presidency. Some of our movement has a bad case of the blues over this, and I was with some people tonight who are waking up to our responsibility to stop this — no matter who the president is.
Now is the time to sound the alarm and shake those who had been on the sidelines back into motion. The occupation of Iraq continues, and this surge of troops in Afghanistan definitely means more death and destruction.