Protestors to demonstrate at Bush Library Opening

[lwjr]

These people really need to move on with their lives.

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairp ... nstrat.php

Protesters Planning Demonstration at George W. Bush Presidential Center Opening
By Eric Nicholson Tue., Mar. 5 2013 at 12:15 PM 22 Comments
Categories: Events, News




The People's Response
Some, if not all, of these individual will attend the April 25 rally against the Bush Center.
The George W. Bush Presidential Center, construction of which has clogged up the eastern part of the SMU campus for years now, will be christened at a private ceremony on April 25. The former president will be there, as will wife Laura and an unspecified numbers of alumni from the Bush-Cheney administration.
"With world leaders invited to join President and Mrs. Bush for this historic day," the center's website boasts, "the event is expected to enjoy internationally-televised coverage."

In other words, it's the perfect stage for a protest. That's what a coalition of local human rights-oriented groups are planning to do. They're organizing what they're calling "The People's Response" to speak out against Bush administration policies.

But Bush left office more than four years ago, you might point out. Why not move on, let bygones be bygones? The Bush Center is, after all, a pretty unobjectionable place, what with a presidential library, museum, rose garden and think tank.

For the same reason that the groups planning the April 25 demonstration, including CODEPINK, Veterans for Peace, the Dallas Peace Center and others, have been fighting the Bush Center's placement at SMU since the beginning: because it would "cast a veneer of legitimacy on the Bush administration and its policies," according to The People's Response website.

As Leslie Harris of CODEPINK Greater Dallas, who is helping organize the event, puts it, "The illegal invasion of a sovereign nation was declared a 'supreme crime' at the Nuremberg trials. That Bush and his advisers walk free today is unconscionable; there must be accountability so history won't repeat itself."

The Reverend Bill McElvaney, a professor emeritus at SMU's Perkins School of Theology argues merely that the invasion of Iraq and the practice of torture violates Methodism's principles and therefore places SMU "in contradiction to its own heritage as an institution of the United Methodist Church."

Organizers aren't limiting themselves to a single protest, however, but are organizing a full week of workshops, teach-ins, art, music, creative direct action, internationally known speakers, and -- of course -- a dance party for peace!

[PK]

These people really need to move on with their lives.

No [deleted]. Geez.

[PonyKai]

I had a friend cover the protest when they broke ground on the Library. It was hilarious. One bus load of people demanding to be let on to campus to protest at the actual library b/c it was public land. That was when the kind officers informed that this was not in fact public land, and the school was courteous enough to provide them with a designated protest zone.

[Ikus]

Who cares? They have the right to protest, and they're exercising that right.

It will be a peaceful demonstration, they'll be put somewhere far enough away from the library that nobody going to it will see them anyway, they'll be virtually ignored and life will go on.

[Mustangsabu]

The last sentence undoes all their high-minded ideals, and shows an absolute lack of journalistic impartiality.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2

[EastStang]

Reminds me when Iranians were staging a hunger strike while they kept our folks hostage across from the White House. There were roving pizza parties on Lafayette Square by Americans who wanted to just tick them off.

[CenTXpony]

Man people really are bored these days....

[gostangs]

i think a spot on the south end of the bairds site right next to highland park will be a nice spot for these folks.

[BigT3x]

The last sentence undoes all their high-minded ideals, and shows an absolute lack of journalistic impartiality.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2

It's the Dallas Observer blog.

Also, who cares? Let them protest. You guys are way too thin skinned. I realize this is an older crowd, but there is a big wide world of people out there who disagreed with many Bush policies... many of them young people. They're not going to disrupt the event at all (SMU PD and the Secret Service will see to that) so what exactly is the harm?

[lwjr]

I saw it from a humorus stand point, not being thin skinned. Humorous that five years after Mr Bush left office these losers, that is what they are, are still protesting. They do have a right to protest and we all recognize that but I think they are making fools of themselves more than anything.

[PonyPride]

Plenty of other boards out there to argue political ideology.
Thanks.