Steve Gilliard, 1964-2007

It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog, passed away June 2, 2007. He was 42.

To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.

Please keep Steve's friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.

Steve meant so much to us.

We will miss him terribly.

A new movement

As the bulk of war protesters chanted "this is what democracy looks like" on the Mall yesterday, a few hundred gathered separately on the south edge of the Mall.

Members of the College Democrats of America mingled with the more radical Students for a Democratic Society and the Communist Youth Movement. Many held signs proclaiming themselves "another future leader against the war." Some danced. Some clapped. Others passed around a joint. Disparate in their affiliations, they were united in their chants: "College, not combat."

Since the war began nearly four years ago, many Vietnam-era antiwar activists have publicly lamented what they see as apathy among today's college students. They wonder whether the absence of a draft and a culture of pop music and reality television have distracted young people from civic responsibilities.

But among the hundreds of students on the Mall yesterday, dozens of whom drove all night to get to Washington for the protest, the prevailing sentiment was that their generation had been unfairly maligned and that the antiwar movement is growing stronger every day.

"I do think we're misrepresented as being lazy, ignorant and unaware of current events," said Sarah Searle, 19, a sophomore at the University of Virginia. "There's no huge movement going on like during Vietnam, but that doesn't mean we're apathetic."

The students at yesterday's protest noted that their efforts have not had the iconic touchstones of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when shootings at Kent State and the student takeover at Columbia University stirred U.S. consciousness. Still, there are signs, they said, of a building resistance to the war in Iraq and other U.S. foreign policy initiatives.

Labels: protest, washington