The protests at colleges and universities continue. 

            Commencement ceremonies are now the target with several being interrupted over the past week at schools of higher learning in Michigan, Indiana, and others. Some of them included student walk-outs.

            Arrests at events have shown that not all the protestors are students or faculty members but professional protestors with multiple arrests at other events for other causes throughout the years.

            At the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, officials are trying to reach an agreement that would see the protestors move from their Gaza Solidarity encampment on school grounds before commencement ceremonies there.  The demands of the protestors are almost the same as most others – disclose and divest from companies profiting from the conflict in Gaza.

            Now, it has spread.

            Blocked by police from getting through to a major fund-raising event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the protestors took their activities to nearby Central Park.

            Most folks wouldn't have cared if the protestors picketed, carried their signs, and chanted their slogans in front of the Met Gala.  But, what if they had stormed the event?  That action could have broken laws and may have led to injuries.  And, most assuredly, some arrests.

            Who would take that chance?

            Blocked by police barricades and unable to get to the Met Gala, the protestors marched a few blocks to Central Park where they set up their demonstration, including defacing a memorial to WWI soldiers of the 107th Infantry who died in the conflict.  They also burned "Old Glory" in front of the monument.  They went on to deface a Civil War statue in the park.

            I guess we know what their actual intentions were had they been allowed to march to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Good decision.

            I don't know what the WWI and Civil War memorials have to do with pro-Palestinian protestors other than giving them the satisfaction that they destroyed something.

            The irony is that those who sacrificed and paid the ultimate price in those conflicts to protect the freedoms of those who burn flags and vandalize these monuments would sacrifice and die again to protect them

            It is making it hard, or nearly impossible, to gather sympathy for the protestors.