Saturday, November 3, 2018

College Hosts "Protesting 101" Workshop


                The University of California-Santa Cruz recently held a “Practical Activism” conference featuring a “Protesting 101” workshop to teach students “tips and methods” for “organizing, mobilizing and participating” in protests.
                Is this really needed? Why not a workshop to teach fish how to swim or rabbits how to mate? Or maybe a conference to offer tips and methods for politicians to talk without really saying anything? Protesting and social-justice-warring is all college students do, now. There’s no time left over for learning about the history of governments, reading classical literature, pondering the great Greek and Roman philosophers, or learning a trade.
                As you might have imagined, there were other workshops available for the edification of attendees, including one titled “Intersectional Perspectives on #MeToo,” which focused on “undocumented women, indigenous women and students of color,” according to thecollegefix.com. What about undocumented indigenous women of color? Isn’t that “a thing?” Another, called “Showing Up for the Transgender Community: Allyship in a transphobic Society,” was designed to “educate cisgender people about the complex intricacies of allyship to the transgender community,” in order to “counter and dismantle transphobic language, policies, and structures.”  Yet another workshop offered to students was “DACA and TPS in the Trump Era.” This balanced and nuanced symposium instructed conference goers how to be an “ally to the undocumented community” at a time when the Trump administration has used DACA and TPS to “wage a war on immigration.”
                The online description for the “Protesting 101” seminar promised to teach students how to become a “driving force for social change.” If the young scholars really wanted to be a “driving force for social change” they’d be protesting those who prevent conservatives from speaking—or appearing—on college campuses across the fruited plain. If they were truly courageous, they would protest in favor of traditional values. If they want to be cutting-edge, even outrĂ©, they could hold a “Pride!” celebration for heterosexual marriage.
                But, of course, they won’t. They couldn’t. Conservatives get chased off college campuses and out of restaurants, while social justice workshops are continuously held on every college campus in America, in churches and synagogues, and in public spaces from sea to shining sea.
                We hear continual talk of the undocumented “community,” the LGBTQ “community,” the transgender “community,” etc. No one ever speaks of the conservative “community.” The progressives just say “deplorables.”
                Gay marriage is the law of the land. Transgender bathrooms abound. There are more “undocumented” people in the country then ever before. The media-giant corporation-entertainment complex is almost entirely comprised of “woke” radicals. Academia, especially at the college level, is virtually an incubator for socialism.
You can’t be a “driving force for social change” when you are advocating for already ubiquitous ideas. If you want to be a “driving force for social change,” if you want to highlight your virtue, if you purport to be courageously fighting “the man” or “the system” or “entrenched orthodoxy” or “prevailing social mores,” then you should step into the arena and fight for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and traditional mores.  
College students do not need to be taught how to protest or how to fight back against institutional discrimination and bigotry.
That kind of instruction would, however, be useful for conservatives.

Trump has tried to teach them, but many are too effete to learn the lesson.



               


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