By Campus Community

I think the turnout was fantastic. I think there’s a lot of protest culture [at Macalester] but I would like to see that turn from a protest culture to an action culture, which I think is considerably more important.

—Brendan Rogers ’10″I think the turnout was nice to see. The protest culture is good, to question things, but sometimes it can be self-aggrandizing. It seems like it’s important not to lose sight of the issue in terms of personal sexiness, although I endorse sexiness and I think it is important as well.”

—Jake Seltzer ’07

“I think that our country has been led astray and I think we need to get the troops out as soon as possible. I don’t know about immediately because I don’t know if that’s reality, but I would like to see all the troops out very soon. I think this is a really unnecessary war. I think it’s great that so many people showed up today…There were a lot of people here and it’s good to see this many people out. I hope we can build the movement on campus and make progress in the anti-war community.”

—Daniel Balogh ’10

“One of the things that was brought up was that we’re all here, we’re all gathered, but we don’t really know what to do next. I think we have to sort of identify in ourselves what we have to offer, which is, in the end, just our bodies and our voices, and how we can use them to create change. And that comes from all sorts of backgrounds, I think, and all sorts of trainings to bring that out.”

—Anne Zander ’07

“I thought it was cheesy at first. I was very moved by Paul Dosh’s spoken word poem. I thought it really hit upon some feeling maybe that I’ve had, but haven’t had the words to express, and it connected a lot of ideas, emotional and also ideological, that I’ve had about the war.”

—Jeremy Sorkin ’10

“This is protest number two today. Ours was just as small as this one. It seems like it gets smaller every year, but then if it’s big the press will just say, ‘Oh, all those liberals had nothing better to do, they had all this time on their hands.” If it’s small they’ll say, ‘Oh, look how small the protest is compared to all the years before, things must be pretty bad if this is all they could get.”

—Russell Rosen, community member

“I’m absolutely thrilled because I thought the young women and men who spoke were absolutely eloquent. They know something. They’re passionate about what they know. I say that the students who are coming in to the movement now don’t know a great deal about the history of dissent, but they learn quickly. I say come in, and come in for a lifetime, and come fast because we’re getting old. The problem, of course, is it’s the system out of which the war comes and we have to look at the nature of the system. Who has power? Who exercises it? How do they do that? How can we decentralize that power and make the first American Revolution? We never had one. The next generation, I think, will be more radical than the ones that preceded it.”

—Marv Davidov, Macalester student from 1950-53, activist for over 50 years

“I feel that what happened here today was a really excellent step in the right direction, one of what I hope are many. I think getting the movement revitalized, getting people actually out and doing this, involved and having some level of participation, whatever that may be, is really important. I feel like for the first time in a long time, I am realizing that this change is being recognized by people across the board. I’m happy to see a whole bunch of people out here today.”

—Matt Ecklund ’09

Compiled by Kayla Burchuck