Remy Soni recently wrote an editorial in the DI that suggested that the groups that protested the CIA should not have “disrupted the informational process.”

First of all the protesters did not disrupt anything. The CIA recruiter canceled when the Daily Illini reporter came in order to keep a low profile in the media and national consciousness because their operations are controversial.

They were not going to tell the applicants about the next coup, Iran-Contra, Watergate, Central America, or Suharto.

Remy also mentioned that not everyone that was at the “information session” wanted to be a secret assassin.

Probably not, but I am opposed to CIA support employment as well. All positions in the institution are essential to the CIA mission, and that mission in the past has included assassinations, coups, and other immoral activity.

The applicants will find work. There are more important things in life besides money.

Remy also writes that the CIA deserves our respect for protecting us. They are not protecting me, or you. Torturing people in Abu Ghraib, trying to overthrow Hugo Chavez, arming the Taliban and selling missiles to Iran do not make me safe, just the opposite.

Will protesting the establishment of the CIA scare away otherwise liberal sympathizers? Maybe. Public protest is one of many strategies we use to change things.

It takes a lot of protesting to make a difference. The day before Martin Luther King Jr. was shot his approval rating was 30%, only slightly higher inside the Black community.

People were upset because they perceived his protests to be ineffective. No one would dare criticize his protests now. MLK warned us that Militarism was one of the three main problems plaguing American society.

Indeed, it was a problem then and it is now. The CIA spreads shameful militarism.

Jacob Crawford

senior in LAS