A friend and I attended the Conference yesterday. Loved the food (ha), got lifted from inspirational folks such as Julian Bond, Jeff Johnson, M-1, Jared Bell, and Keith Ellison.

Unfortunately though, I was incredibly disappointed in the girls. I arrived to the conference feeling inspired by how many kids were out here for the progressive movement and believed the turnout to be an indication of the direction and the state of this progress. But come 6:30,  when Ryan Gosling was supposed to take the stage, I realized just why it was that the 2008 National Conference was bigger this year than any other year. Crowds of girls were packed against the ballroom doors as they prepared to bring this dude onto the stage; when they opened the doors, they swarmed into the room in droves, stampeding towards the front tables so they could get the best live view of everyone's favorite star of "the Notebook." When Ryan came out, I saw dozens of cell phones and cameras fly into the air. I was especially ashamed when the John Prendergast, head of the ENOUGH campaign and main moderator of the discussion had to remind the crowd amid whistles and hollers that we were here to talk about genocide and war in Uganda and Sudan, but it was no use. Here we had two heroes of the cause on the stage who had worked their entire lives to rid their home countries of violence, and all any of these girls cared about was the guy who had only been working on it for a year or two. I'm not trying to bash Gosling; he tried his hardest to redirect the attention to these champions of the cause and make the audience aware that he doesn't know as much as they did. But it was no  use. After Gosling left the stage, about 30% of the crowd exited as well.

To Campus Progress:

I think you guys did a fantastic job; you brought incredible people to the stage and gave us all kinds of interesting and exciting things to talk about. Thank you for that.

To the rest of y'all:

All I gotta say is... damn.