Where have all the protests gone? US students in limbo
Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | November 16, 2009 | Michael Mathes
Posted on Monday, November 16, 2009 7:53:02 AM by Schnucki
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When Hemnecher Amen, a student, joined a protest outside the White House recently, it was the latest visible opposition here to US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hardly anyone took any notice.
"There's a lot of apathy and a growing disconnectedness to what's going on in world affairs," the frustrated Howard University junior said as around 200 people, including a handful of students, gathered for the march.
"Students are more interested in trying to get a job and make money."
With the US military several years into two faraway wars, American students like Amen are taking to the streets less often - and to less effect - than their Vietnam-era predecessors who were the vanguard of the anti-war movement in the 1960s and early 1970s.
The economic and academic pressures on today's youth, intimidation by the authorities, online distractions and conflicted views about the "good" war in Afghanistan, not to mention other causes such as health care and slashed school budgets clawing for attention, have conspired to snuff out anti-war activism on campus, experts and students say.
They acknowledge, too, that paradoxically President Barack Obama has hampered the movement because many of the largely leftist protest groups have not wanted to openly oppose him so early in his first term.
"There's this trust that he's going to fix it all," said Shara Esbenshade, 19, a sophomore at Stanford University and member of Stanford Says No To War.
She says there are no anti-war marches on her campus, only vigils, educational events and occasional protests against Condoleezza Rice, who has returned to Stanford after serving as George W Bush's secretary of state.
"We'd really like to start doing more about Afghanistan," she added. "But students here rising up? I really don't see that happening."
At Kent State University, where in 1970
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More evidence that the commie left was never against war, just against George Bush.
Where were the protests against Clinton bombing Serbia? Oh that's right . . . . . .
