Dear Editor,
Since Ms. Nunan is feeling a little down at an apathetic campus in the way of no new letters being written, I thought I’d write in and tell everyone what I personally have done to fight apathy this weekend.
I went to the WorldCan’tWait.org protest this weekend in Washington, D.C., and had a great time. While I can’t really talk aloud right now because I’m still recovering – my voice, as well as 2,500 other voices from all over the United States, were heard all over Washington, D.C., from the Capitol, to the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, to K Street.
Even though we were rained on for six straight hours, we managed to get some 2,500 odd people into the streets protesting what people are unwilling, or afraid, to acknowledge.
The president has bogged down our fighting men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is now asking the Congress for as much as $120 billion more for increased operations in those countries, as well as rumors about “preemptively striking” Iran.
At some point, Americans have to ask ourselves … how much war do we really want? Can we really afford the price of attacking Iran? Because Bush is going to say we can! And we must!
Can we as Americans keep this up and expand military operations given how all is going? The Bush administration is now covering up, destroying and deleting documents that allege that Bush was secretly planning with Britian to attack Al-Jazeera, the Arab news network in the Downing Street Memo.
What happens when governments literally start attacking news organizations that disagree with them?
It is vitally important that we as a campus, as a nation, tell our president and Congress that we don’t want a war anymore.
We are ready to stop torturing and killing innocent people. And it is high time that we also tell our government that it isn’t OK to use illegal authority to spy on Americans; those that claim that we won’t be spied on if we aren’t doing anything wrong are only safe as long as they stay complicit; or apathetic.
I know that it takes an investment to fight for a cause, and the risk of losing that investment is what makes some people stay quiet. But I sacrificed my voice, my energy, and about $100, and I got an unbelievable weekend that allowed me to go speak out with many friends, an ability to mingle and meet with many people in our nation’s capital, free tickets to the Washington Monument and a few museums, and finally, the hope that the anti-war movement is not a hopeless cause.
One person CAN make a difference – I am living proof.
Brooks Lastinger

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