{"id":21368,"date":"2010-12-01T03:35:06","date_gmt":"2010-12-01T07:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=21368"},"modified":"2010-12-01T03:35:06","modified_gmt":"2010-12-01T07:35:06","slug":"fort-benning-protests-told-you-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=21368","title":{"rendered":"Fort Benning Protests, Told you so."},"content":{"rendered":"

In the golden promise of getting fatter in the celebration of Thanksgiving, I forgot to check what happened with the Protests at Fort Benning<\/a>. I made a post about it a week before the event and some of the things did happen. <\/p>\n

But really the only people that really win are the people that rent parking spaces and sell food near the Victory Drive area. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But that is not even the case as listed in a story for New York Times<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\nThe protest has brought the city as much as $2.2 million in business, more than twice what the annual Jehovah\u2019s Witness convention did, said Peter Bowden, president of the Columbus Convention & Visitors Bureau. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But…<\/p>\n

But the times, they are a changing. This year\u2019s protest, the 20th, drew its smallest crowd ever over the weekend. Both the police and organizers agree that fewer than 5,000 people showed up.<\/p>\n

Signs of its decline were everywhere. At the Masonic lodge near the protest site, a local military family had hoped for a lucrative weekend selling hot dogs and drinks. They packed in 15 cases of water, but by Saturday afternoon only a dozen bottles had sold. They did not even bother on Sunday.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some other signs as well.<\/p>\n

\nLast year, more than 500 signed up to attend, mostly students from Catholic high schools and colleges. This year, only 128 were bused on base for the 90-minute session.<\/p>\n

The small crowd at the gates of Fort Benning disappointed Sheri Hosek, 39, who traveled from Dubuque, Iowa. She had heard about the event through her work with Franciscan nuns.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a lot of hype about it, but it feels like a much smaller presentation than I had expected,\u201d Ms. Hosek said. \u201cIt feels more like a summer festival, a very liberal one of course.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But of course that it is not because people think what they are doing at Fort Benning is moronic but for other reasons. <\/p>\n

Others wondered if Latin America politics just are not capturing the attention of American youths as they once did.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy generation is all over the place,\u201d said Ben Johnson, 28, of Athens, Ga., who was grabbing a coffee in a hotel lobby near the base. \u201cThey are completely apathetic, or they\u2019ve completely devoted their entire life to change.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But I like this line the best and will close out with it. <\/p>\n

On the anniversary the following year, a small group led by the Rev. Roy Bourgeois,<\/strong> a Catholic priest, held a water-only fast at the gates. He has since become an internationally known peace advocate and still lives in a small apartment near the gate.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the young people in the crowd don\u2019t even know who he is<\/strong>,\u201d said Liz Loescher, 68, an eight-time veteran of the protest who runs the Georgia Conflict Center in Athens. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yep time to turnout the lights, the party is over. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the golden promise of getting fatter in the celebration of Thanksgiving, I forgot to check … Fort Benning Protests, Told you so.<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antiwar-crowd","category-i-hate-hippies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}