Why I Heckled Tony Blair, War Criminal, at Colby College Graduation
BY LISA SAVAGE
If you woke on a beautiful spring Sunday in May on a pond in Maine, what would you do? A canoe ride on water as smooth as glass, and breakfast on the deck, perhaps — followed by disrupting international war criminal Tony Blair at Colby College graduation in Waterville!
Who knew our protest would lead news coverage of the ceremony? (Washington Post, WGME, Houston Chronicle, and Daily Mail, to name a few.)
With the BLAIR IS A WAR CRIMINAL sign I scrawled hastily in pink lipstick, we approached the back row of the outdoor ceremony where the former British PM, who lied about WMDs in Iraq and has the blood on his hands of thousands of innocent civilians, was to speak.
Before we even made it off the street we were approached by a man from Vermont who said, “Thank you for being here. I was disgusted that Colby would invite such a slimy speaker for graduation this year.” (More of the disgusted were heard from in Op-Ed News and the local newspapers.)
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As we left the campus I saw an acquaintance who works at Colby, in a pretty dress, standing obediently off to one side.
I feel that the passivity and complicity of US citizens in the dirty dealings of NATO and its member nations, blindly paying federal taxes every year to fund the slaughter of innocents, afraid to protest, afraid to rock the boat for fear of job loss or being seen as impolite, is actually the biggest threat to global security.
And that's why, as my compatriots were protesting the disgusting spectacle of the NATO summit in Chicago this weekend, I disrupted Colby College's graduation ceremony.
Phi Beta Iota: The unasked questions pertain to the judgment and moral vacuum of the university leadership that invited Blair in the first place, and the empty heads of the graduates that did not think to question the invitation. We are running short of good people with both intelligence and integrity. Evil is assuredly in the ascent.
