The Columbia Spectator reports:
About a dozen undergraduates who protested last week's speech by Minutemen founder Jim Gilchrist convened at a press conference with representatives from the National Lawyer's Guild outside Columbia's W. 115th Street and Broadway gates late Tuesday morning.
The students, many of them members of the Chicano Caucus and the International Socialist Organization who participated in Wednesday's protest, defended their actions as the controversy surrounding last week's clash between supporters and protesters of Gilchrist entered into its sixth day.
Gilchrist was speaking in Roone Arledge Auditorium last Wednesday night at the invitation of the Columbia University College Republicans, when a crowd of students and outside demonstrators rushed the stage in protest of his speech, bringing the event to an abrupt halt.
Karina Garcia, CC '07 and Chicano Caucus political chair, said Monday that she and the other protesters had not intended to stop Gilchrist from speaking when they unfurled a pair of banners onstage, but she defended their actions.
"We are sure that if the Ku Klux Klan came to campus, African Americans would be there to protest," Garcia said. "So would we."
We have a few comments.It takes a certain sense of style for the Columbia students to hook up with the
National Lawyer's Guild.The National Lawyer's Guild was described by the House Un-American Activities Committee :
"as demonstrated conclusively by its activities, . . . are not specified in its constitution or statement of avowed purpose. In order to attract non-Communists to serve as a cover for its actual purpose as an appendage to the Communist Party, the National Lawyers Guild poses benevolently as 'a professional organization which shall function as an effective social force in the service of the people.'"
Karina Garcia doesn't believe in the free market for speech or the free market for goods and services.But,she calls the Minutemen "extremists".Why should the federal government subsidize Columbia students?
