Peace, War, and a Side of Collards
(as seen in the April issue of BoUNCe, UNC's lowly humor magazine)

        Banging on plastic five-gallon buckets seems to be the generally-agreed-upon mode of protest among the dissatisfied in Chapel Hill.  Last Saturday night, a bunch of youngsters with signs about war and  peace congregated in front of the post office on Franklin Street to pound on five-gallon buckets and yell stuff.
         Using stout twigs and what looked like wooden relay-race batons, they pounded out their impromptu tunes of angst from the time I went into the bar on Saturday evening until I emerged in the wee hours of Sunday morning.  I had little or no opinion of their activities when I entered the bar, but when I found them still at it hours later, I couldn't help but take heart and join their cause.  As they relentlessly pounded their plastic, I proudly stood alongside shouting "we hate buckets" and chanting "5 gallon receptacle, switch to metrical; 5 gallon receptacle, switch to metrical."
         The undergrad from our lab found an unattended wooden baton and began helping a young lady bang on a large Rubbermaid bin.  I immediately understood what they were trying to express and declared, "Rubbermaid is an oppressor:  RUBBER should not be made to serve as a maid for PEOPLE.  Yey, we must FREE the rubber maid from her maid status just as we have freed Aunt Jemima from her handkerchief."
         At that point some hippie guy came over and asked if I knew how drunk I was and then wanted to know why, out of all the protestors, our lab's undergrad and I had chosen to confront a female.  I tackled his two-part question in two parts.  First, I was moderately intoxicated, but mostly just kind of bored.  Second, our lab's undergrad had chosen to approach a female because he was rallying in support of a cause which was in his pants.  Using language that he could understand, I assured the snaggle-bearded young man that it was not our intent to "hassle" anyone and that our undergrad was just "rapping with" the female in question.
         The hippie then stated that he felt that he and the other protestors were being "very American" by questioning authority and exercising their right to free speech.  I countered his argument by astutely pointing out that I was going to go get a chicken biscuit.  "You SHOULD go get a chicken biscuit," he said.  After briefly considering not going to get a chicken biscuit just to spite that hippie, I went and got a chicken biscuit.
Matt Purdy reports from the Chapel Hill Carrborro peace rally war protest at UNC.
Keywords:  Peace rally, Carborro, Carrborro, NC, Chapel Hill, UNC, Iraq
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