Fort Benning Protests, Told you so.

In the golden promise of getting fatter in the celebration of Thanksgiving, I forgot to check what happened with the Protests at Fort Benning. I made a post about it a week before the event and some of the things did happen.

But really the only people that really win are the people that rent parking spaces and sell food near the Victory Drive area.

But that is not even the case as listed in a story for New York Times.

The protest has brought the city as much as $2.2 million in business, more than twice what the annual Jehovah’s Witness convention did, said Peter Bowden, president of the Columbus Convention & Visitors Bureau.

But…

But the times, they are a changing. This year’s protest, the 20th, drew its smallest crowd ever over the weekend. Both the police and organizers agree that fewer than 5,000 people showed up.

Signs of its decline were everywhere. At the Masonic lodge near the protest site, a local military family had hoped for a lucrative weekend selling hot dogs and drinks. They packed in 15 cases of water, but by Saturday afternoon only a dozen bottles had sold. They did not even bother on Sunday.

Some other signs as well.

Last year, more than 500 signed up to attend, mostly students from Catholic high schools and colleges. This year, only 128 were bused on base for the 90-minute session.

The small crowd at the gates of Fort Benning disappointed Sheri Hosek, 39, who traveled from Dubuque, Iowa. She had heard about the event through her work with Franciscan nuns.

“There was a lot of hype about it, but it feels like a much smaller presentation than I had expected,” Ms. Hosek said. “It feels more like a summer festival, a very liberal one of course.”

But of course that it is not because people think what they are doing at Fort Benning is moronic but for other reasons.

Others wondered if Latin America politics just are not capturing the attention of American youths as they once did.

“My generation is all over the place,” said Ben Johnson, 28, of Athens, Ga., who was grabbing a coffee in a hotel lobby near the base. “They are completely apathetic, or they’ve completely devoted their entire life to change.”

But I like this line the best and will close out with it.

On the anniversary the following year, a small group led by the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest, held a water-only fast at the gates. He has since become an internationally known peace advocate and still lives in a small apartment near the gate.

“Most of the young people in the crowd don’t even know who he is,” said Liz Loescher, 68, an eight-time veteran of the protest who runs the Georgia Conflict Center in Athens.

Yep time to turnout the lights, the party is over.

Category: Antiwar crowd, I hate hippies