Community Protests Condoleezza Rice Speech

ALYSSA BLUHM
MURPHY NEWS SERVICE

A couple hundred students and community members gathered on the front plaza of Northrop Auditorium on the University of Minnesota campus on April 17 to protest a speech being delivered inside the building by Condoleezza Rice.

The protestors gathered in opposition to Rice, whom many consider a war criminal for her actions as U.S. Secretary of State and National Security advisor during the George W. Bush administration. Rice, now a professor of political science at Stanford University, was invited to the university by the Humphrey School of Public Affairs to give a speech as part of a lecture series celebrating the 50th anniversary of the civil rights movement.

“Condoleezza was an architect of war torture, and she lied to the American public about it,” Bjorn Johnson of Inver Grove Heights said. “We’re protesting because she shouldn’t be the only one with the microphone.” Johnson was among a few protestors, dressed in orange jumpsuits with a black hood over their heads and faces to represent those tortured at Guantanamo Bay, who sat in the audience as Rice delivered her speech.

Campus group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organized the protest, and were joined by community groups including Veterans for Peace and the Anti-War Committee, and student groups including Whose Diversity?, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the local chapter of Amnesty International.

“She’s infamous for saying there were no weapons of mass destruction during the war,” Kent Mori, a member of the Anti-War Committee, said. “I doubt she would be here if they weren’t paying her.” Rice was paid $150,000 in private donations to speak at the university.

Mori held a large, red flag that said, “Say no to war, say no to Condi.” Other protest signs read, “Condoleezza is a paid professional liar,” and “War criminals can be feminine and even be good pianists.”

In early April, SDS presented a resolution to the University Senate to rescind Rice’s invitation to the university. Although over 200 faculty members signed a petition supporting the resolution, it was ultimately rejected.

Between chants of protest phrases like, “No justice, no peace,” protestors including U of M sociology professor David Pellow delivered small speeches against Rice’s presence on campus.

Inside Northrop, Rice did not apologize for her actions during the Bush administration, the Star Tribune reported. “We kept the nation safe,” she said.

The protest lasted a little over an hour, and ended with the protestors marching around Northrop to the doors where attendees of Rice’s speech would exit, chanting, “This is what democracy looks like—Rice is what hypocrisy looks like.”

Alyssa Bluhm is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.           

 

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