GO BANANA SLUGS!

The University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) may not have a national champion in football or basketball, but this school (my alma mater) has been in the nation's top 10 for political activism since the 60s. GO BANANA SLUGS!

Here's a good article about the Pentagon's surveillance and labeling of a UCSC protest by Students Against the War against military recruiters at a job fair on campus as a "credible threat."

The protest at...

"...the sunny campus long known for surfing, mountain biking and leftist political activity, drew about 300 of the university's 15,000 students, organizers said. (Students surmise that, these days, they are out-agitating their famed anti-establishment peers at the University of California, Berkeley, campus, 65 miles northwest of here.) "This is the war at home," said Jennifer Low, 20, a member of the antiwar group. "So many of us were so discouraged and demoralized by the war, a lot of us said this is the way we can stop it."

...And about the Pentagon calling the protest a "credible threat":

Representative Sam Farr, a Democrat whose district includes Santa Cruz, was one of several who sent letters to the Bush administration. "This is a joke," Mr. Farr said in an interview. "There is a protest du jour at Santa Cruz."

"Santa Cruz is not a terrorist town," he added. "It's an activist town. It's essentially Berkeley on the coast."

This article is also by Sarah Kershaw. Is she my new favourite writer at the Times or what? Here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/14/national/14santacruz.html

You may need to register at The New York Times site before being able to read this article. Don't worry it's not difficult. This process is necessary so that the Times can track the readers of this anti-war article and, as stipulated by the U.S. Patriot Act, submit the list of readers to surveillance officials at the Pentagon. The list of readers will then be compared to lists of suspected plotters and evil doers that the government has collected. You have no worries if your name does not appear as a "person of interest." There is no cost for reading this article or registering with The New York Times. It's all about freedom.