Quietly Protesting

I'm worried about the police showing up. But even if The Man did break up this protest it won't be over the vociferous anti-establishment and anti-war views being expressed in this little space at Tropicana Avenue and Industrial Road. There's an unattended beer keg next to the table with the free revolutionary literature and some of the protestors who are getting a buzz on look like that have yet to spend 21 years alive in this country that they're so concerned about.

The banners, flyers and newsletters make clear the six bands and one keg are here to protest the war in Iraq. Julia Hennessy, 21, is one of the founders of Organize for Change, the group sponsoring this night's affair. In addition to an immediate withdrawal of the troops in Iraq, the group is demanding that the United States begin paying reparations to the Iraqi people. Before the first band played, as she swayed to DJ music and held a beer, I asked her why she was opposed to the war. "How can you even ask? I'm a thinking person. We are all thinking people. That is education. The more you think about it the more illogical it is."

"A lot of people support the war," I reply.

"They do, but that's usually for personal and familial reasons. They were brought up thinking that war is great. They think that's patriotism."

Arriving a few minutes before the start of the protest, though it is only early evening, the campus is already dark, closed and deserted. It is chilly standing outside UNLV's campus. A few minutes later a couple dozen people on bicycles turn up. I had thought bikes were sort of a random, odd form of protest, but Organize for Change member Jesse Fitts explained that this was a "critical mass"—a form of protest started in San Francisco in 1992 in which cyclists take over the road in large numbers. So, where are they biking to?

"A lot of critical masses don't work out the route because you tell someone where you are going and then the cops will turn out and know exactly where you are going," Jesse says.

But this protest hasn't even drawn a single campus police officer. In fact, it just looks like a bunch of friends going for a bike ride. Pete Reilly, 26, another founder of Organize for Change had this spin: "If they don't want to give us resistance to building our movement, more power to us."

Alma Castro is the co-president of the newly reconstituted student chapter of the National Organization for Women at UNLV. The campus feminists have been among the strongest supporters of Organize for Change's efforts and Castro thinks the reason is obvious:

"Everything is a vagina issue. You can't leave women out of anything. Women are being affected by the war. Women have an opinion about the war. It is almost common sense to say the Iraq war is a feminist issue."

Before they ride off I ask Fitts about the tiny size of the protest: "It's all leading up to tomorrow." The group has called for a class walkout at noon and Jesse says that he is hoping 200 people will be there for the rally. "MySpace has helped us organize so much. You can get every UNLV student on MySpace and we just sat there for hours upon hours sending everyone a message personally saying please come to the event."

I thought it would be a miracle if a hundred students showed up. After the group biked off I was laughing a bit too hard and too condescendingly at Organize for Change's youthful naiveté when a woman hanging at the fringe, who I had not noticed earlier, came over to me.

JoAnne Willson, 58, is from South Dakota and came to Las Vegas only to visit her son. She didn't expect to wind up at a protest. "But I saw something about it in the paper and even though I don't have a bike, I said 'I want to go.' During the Vietnam War I did not protest the war and I should have. We lost 55,000 soldiers in that war and that cannot happen again."

It is a chilly but otherwise bright afternoon for a protest at UNLV. The feminists have a table that Alma and others sit at. There's a collage of Vegas advertising showing surgically enhanced and photo-shopped babes labeled "Fantasy" and then shots of Alma and others having fun and hanging out labeled "Reality." I get the point. But I feel like the same thing could be said about a frozen dinner contrasting the package photo with the look of the real thing you take out of the microwave. Yes, advertising leads us to have unrealistic expectations about appearance but also about everything else.

Not that all advertising works. Take, for example, all of the effort to get UNLV students to participate in a "student walkout to oppose the occupation of Iraq and tuition increases." The connection is, of course, that the money spent on Iraq could be used for education. Despite the unpopularity of the president, the low approval numbers on the war, and the likelihood of tuition increases, only about 50 protestors show up. In fact, the UNLV student television crew tries in vain to find even one student who walked out of class. The cameraman offers that he cut a class to film the protest. But that apparently doesn't count. Once again no campus security is visible, there will be no tear gas, no reprise of the wild 1960s. In fact, a class change floods the quad with so many students that the protest briefly vanishes in a moment that reminds you there really are a lot of people at school here, they just aren't protesting.

The revolution may not be well-attended but it is definitely televised. Four TV news crews are covering the protest as well as at least three print reporters. The Organize for Change team of Julia, Pete and Jesse are being interviewed. Afterwards I ask Jesse what he thought of the experience, and what the next move will be for Organize for Change.

"This entire experience was really rewarding, and it's small now but it will grow. The war has been going on for three years. Three years into Vietnam no one was protesting. So, we are already moving quicker than back then to mobilize. I hope the next thing we do is another critical mass, because that really was a lot of fun."