Worst Protest Ever.

I arrived at the Historic Landmark’s Commission Monday meeting about changing the “Made in Oregon” sign and squeezed into one of the few available chairs. On my seat was this yellow flier. “Oh! A helpful handout!” I thought naively. No! The flier turned out to be the most confusing and unnecessarily provocative protest flier ever photocopied, courtesy of PSU’s Progressive Student Union. I took it back to the office and pinned it right next to the vanity photos of Matt Davis and Brent Barton.

WTF PSU-PSU? Doesn’t PSU, of all places, offer a liberal propaganda creative writing class? Anyway, look, Progressive Students, I want to like you. Really! I hate sweatshops, too. But not as much as I hate random capitalization of words like Boycott and hijacking other peoples’ meetings for your poorly articulated cause. The Portland city Historic Landmarks Commission is many things to many people, but it is NOT THE PLACE to seek socialist solidarity. Thanks to whack campaigns like yours I can’t talk in public about shit like sweatshops and terrorists without feeling like I’ll be labeled a paranoid, ranting uber-lefty.

Sigh. I wish anti-establishment student activism could be as relevant and powerful and downright sexy these days as it was back when SNCC started up. Man, look at these kids. They were so cool. I would totally try to be friends with them.