We have yet ANOTHER controversy emerging from the University of Missouri. A student, Tim Tai, was engaged by a media organization to take photographs of the protester’s tent city on the main quad. He was confronted by the protesters, who denied him the right to take photographs. Eventually they pushed him away. Another photographer video recorded the whole scene, then made his own attempt to approach the tent city, where he was confronted by a professor who shouted out to the group “We need some muscle here!” The story is told in more detail, along with the video, here:
www.theatlantic.com/…
I consider the behavior of the protesters to be shameful. They had absolutely no case; they were on public property making a public political statement, yet they asserted ownership of that public space. They insisted that their privacy be respected — in the middle of the central public square of the campus!
If you read some of my other diaries, you’ll see that I am most emphatically not sympathetic to most conservative positions, but on this particular case, I think that the demonstrators have greatly shamed the left and tainted their movement. Even during the most intensely emotional protests following the invasion of Cambodia in the Vietnam War, none of the protesters did anything as outrageous as this.
I am curious, though, to sample the mood of the Kossacks. Do you share my disgust with the behavior of the protesters, or do you think that the actions shown in the video (NOT their other actions!) were justified?