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Black
Students Protest Laura Bush
Threatened With Arrest, Students Refuse to Back
Down
Today hundreds of Howard University students
greeted Laura Bush with a militant protest against the war in
Iraq, the criminally negligent and racist conduct of the federal
government in response to Hurricane Katrina and cuts in
education.
Holding signs that read, "2000 Dead, End
Occupation: Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti…, Money for
Education Not War," the students began their demonstration
at 11am in advance of Laura Bush's arrival to the Howard
University campus.
The demonstration was called by Youth and
Student A.N.S.W.E.R. and Cimarrones, a progressive Black Student
Union of Caribbeans, Central and South Americans. The
demonstration was supported by various other campus
organizations such as Howard University Student Association (HUSA),
Howard Amnesty International and Ubiquity.
The demonstration turned into a confrontation
as university officials working with Secret Service and DC
Police threatening to arrest the students unless they moved.
"They are trying to force us to disperse or at least move
back 30 feet, but we in the Black community have been told to
move for 300 years," said Eugene Puryear, a coordinator of
Youth and Student A.N.S.W.E.R and Howard sophomore.
The Howard University demonstration was one
of hundreds that took place in cities, towns, college campuses
and high schools across the country.
As the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq
hits the 2,000 figure, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition members and
supporters and other organizations came out in local protests
against the illegal and criminal war and occupation in Iraq.
These local protests came on the heels of the September 24
demonstration, when more than 300,000 people surrounded the
White House in a sea of protest. On September 24, the
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition also held large-scale protests in San
Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle.
The gruesome number of U.S. war dead pales in
comparison to the loss of life suffered by Iraqis. Public
opinion in the United States has decisively turned against the
war in Iraq just as it turned against the war in Vietnam three
decades ago. U.S. troops should be brought out of Iraq
immediately. The people of Iraq should be paid reparations for
the wholesale destruction of their country and the staggering
loss of human life. Bush, Cheney and other officials in the Bush
administration should be held accountable for their criminal
conduct. Source: http://www.answercoalition.org/
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How Bush Visit Became the
Siege Of Howard U.
By Courtland Milloy (2 Nov. 2005)
It was Soul Food Thursday at Howard
University last week, and many students were looking forward to
their favorite meal: fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, collard
greens and cornbread. At lunchtime, however, students discovered
that much of the campus had been locked down and that the
school's cafeteria was off limits.
Apparently, many of them did not know that
President Bush and first lady Laura Bush had arrived for a
"youth summit" at the Blackburn Center, where the
dining hall is located. Stomachs began to growl, tempers flared,
and, eventually, a student protest ensued.
In case you missed the broadcast Friday on
Fox 5 WTTG-TV), reporter Robbie Chavez was at Howard trying to
interview protesting students when a campus security guard
showed up and tried to stop him.
Chavez: The university went to great lengths
. . .
Guard: I'm asking you to leave the campus
now.
Chavez: . . . to hide angry protesting
students . . .
Guard: I'm warning you, you don't do that.
Chavez: . . . a big effort to keep a lid on
the growing frustration.
During the protest, dozens of students locked
arms around a flagpole in the Quadrangle, a designated forbidden
zone at the center of the campus, and refused to move despite
warnings from campus security that Secret Service rooftop
snipers might open fire on them.
You'd have thought Howard had taken a page
right out of the Bush administration playbook on quashing First
Amendment freedoms. In a letter posted the day before on a
university Web site, President H. Patrick Swygert wrote that,
having notified the campus via e-mail in July, he was sending a
reminder of the Bush visit. But students complained that they
hadn't seen either message and criticized school officials and
the Bush administration for poor planning.
Chavez said: "This is what university
police and the Howard University administration did not want
publicized: students angry after being shut out of parts of
their own university."
What might have been a public relations coup
for Bush – a visit to a historically black college to show
concern for at-risk youths – ended up as another Katrina-like
moment, with the president appearing spaced-out, waving and
smiling for television cameras while students were trying to
break through campus security to get to the cordoned-off
cafeteria.
Of course, the episode was nothing compared
with all the other bad news Bush got last week, including the
indictment of White House aide I. Lewis Libby on perjury
charges. But what happened at Howard was illustrative
nonetheless of how a seemingly minor mess, easily avoided by a
more attentive White House, could have repercussions down the
road.
The Republican Party is trying hard to win
over black voters before the midterm elections, and Maryland Lt.
Gov. Michael Steele needs the support of black Democrats in his
bid to become the first black Republican in the U.S. Senate
since Howard alumnus Edward Brooke of Massachusetts (1967-1979).
So one thing Bush didn't want was a ruckus
during a visit to Howard.
All he had to do was drop in on Soul Food
Thursday, be seen sharing a wing and some collard greens with
students -- and score one for the GOP.
But the visit went from bad to worse. On a
day when the U.S. Senate passed a resolution paying tribute to
civil rights icon Rosa Parks, who died last week, campus
security guards were telling students that if they wanted to eat
they'd have to come back when the president and first lady were
gone, then go to a service door at the rear of the dining hall
and ask for a chicken plate to go. Never mind that a student
meal plan at Howard can cost as much as $2,500 a semester.
Howard is not some hotbed of political
activism. The biggest event of the year is homecoming, which
features two fashion shows, a step show and lots of hip-hop
celebrities. As the rapper Ludacris put it in his summer hit,
"Pimpin' All Over the World":
Jump in the car and ride for hours, Makin'
sure I don't miss the homecoming at Howard.
To set off a student protest at this school,
you'd have to be politically tone-deaf in the extreme, out of
touch and flying blind. And yet, Bush did it.
God help us in Iraq.
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Seeing as Milloy's message has been posted in
its entirety, I thought it would be appropriate to post the
response of H. Patrick Swygert, President of Howard University.
A link to his letter is Howard's homepage (www.hoard.edu).
Letter to the Editor
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20071-0070
Dear Sir:
I am writing in response to the outrageous
and ill-founded comments made by Courtland Milloy in his
Washington Post column on Sunday,
October 30. One certainly would expect Mr. Milloy to know better
than to form his opinions based on a second-hand source, the
broadcast that he apparently saw on Fox 5 (WTTG-TV) news. Beyond
that, the tone of his column with its appalling stereotyping of
the more than 10,000 students at Howard University is quite
shocking. And this at a time when the nation is honoring the
memory of Rosa Parks, who 50 years ago stood up for the dignity
of the African-American community.
It is quite ironic that even in the face of
the student protest that ensued, Mr. Milloy would seek to
characterize Howard University as a politically indifferent
party school. Further, to suggest that the driving motivation
behind the student protest was to "break through campus
security to get to the cordoned-off cafeteria" was both
inaccurate and a misrepresentation. Our students are extremely
aware and continue, in the finest tradition of the University,
to be at the forefront in the quest for social justice and
equality for our community. In recent times, for example, they
led the march to the Supreme Court in support of the University
of Michigan in Grutter vs. Bollinger. They serve in great
numbers as volunteers in the Washington, D.C., area; and they
continue to rally to the aid of victims of Hurricane Katrina by
welcoming and supporting the students from the disaster-area
colleges.
As it was in the post-Civil War period when
Howard University took on the challenge of educating the
children of ex-slaves, and in the civil rights era when we
fought to hold this nation true to its creed, Howard University
remains committed to providing a rich and varied cultural and
academic environment for all its students, informed by our
unrelenting commitment to civil and human rights.
I urge Mr. Milloy to acquaint himself with
the activities and accomplishments of our student body and our
University. Howard University is inviting him to visit our
campus and interact with our students, a move that we believe
would lead to a more balanced perspective than he has displayed
so far.
Sincerely,
H. Patrick Swygert
President
Howard University
posted 31 October 2005 / 3 November 2005 *
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updated 11
December 2007 |
