Protesting Ward Churchill and Discrimination at Depaul University

Aaaaaaaah, the sound of banners blowing in the breeze and people in heated debate! God Bless America!

WHERE: Depaul University, Chicago
WHEN: Last night
WHY: To protest the university paying charlatan & University of Colorado-Boulder professor Ward Churchill to speak while trampling the rights of Depaul Republicans

I'll get my pictures posted over the weekend -- meanwhile, check out John's pics over at Marathon Pundit. We enjoyed meeting our fellow blogger at the protest, along with filmmaker Andrew Marcus.

A good crowd turned out to protest Churchill and support the students whose rights were trampled. Read more in my previous post here.

Some thoughts/stories:

Why on earth did the folks from World Can't Wait show up to counter-protest? They are all about kicking Bush and his administration out of office. We were protesting a speaker and an institution of higher learning's discrimination against a group of Republican students. Hmmmm. Wait a minute. Could it be that they, too, think that everyone except Republicans should be able to voice their opinions?

I was answering the questions of a group of students who approached me to ask what was going on outside the Cultural Center when a woman steps in front of me, interrupts my sentence, and softly but angrily starts talking about "these right-wingers" and blah, blah, blah, you can fill in the rest. One of the students turned back to me and said, "You were saying?" The woman starts talking again, and hands one of the girls some sort of Socialist/worker newspaper, then informs her it costs 50 cents. The girl handed it back to her and said she didn't have 50 cents, her friends quickly offering that they didn't have 50 cents either. The woman then walked away, and I was able to finish my discussion with the students. Let me see -- interrupting, name-calling, then trying to sell you something. Who'd have ever guessed she was a rabid leftie?

None of the students I talked to had heard anything about the ways that the Republicans were mistreated by Depaul. Rules about who was "invited" to today's workshop with Churchill were changed after the Republican group applied to attend so that they were excluded, and when they submitted posters for approval to post they were denied because they were "propaganda." (Interesting note: the posters consisted of Ward Churchill quotes, providing, I'm sure, an unintended confirmation that the university used students' money to pay for -- say it with me -- PROPAGANDA!) Opinions varied on whether or not Churchill should have been invited to speak, but almost every student agreed that the Republicans had been treated unfairly and were disappointed in the university's handling of the situation.