Speaking Time to Power

May 4, 2024

Johnson City, TN

East Tennessee State University has not seen the violent protests and encampments that have embroiled other American college campuses. There have been small demonstrations involving students who are protesting conditions in Gaza, but these have mostly diminished as the time for final exams has come to this small Appalachian university nestled in the foothills of Eastern Tennessee. On most days there are fewer than twenty protesters, and those go back to their dorms after nightfall.

However, on the quad outside of the D.P. Culp Student Center sophomore James French maintains a lonely vigil. Armed with handmade signs and with a Buzz Lightyear sleeping bag rolled up at his feet. French has been protesting for two weeks, subsisting mostly on sports drinks and granola bars. To French’s telling he is following in the long protest tradition of Kropotkin and Princip, and “Speaking Time to Power.” “The Eastern Time Zone is a Settler-Colonialist construct,” maintains French. “We are on the same time as Boston,” says French pointing to a battered Casio on his wrist. “Boston, Miami? What do we have in common with these places? Certainly not sunrises and sunsets.”

“Pyongyang threw off the legacy of Japanese imperialism and established its own time, a half hour off. India and Myanmar rejected British colonial oppression the same way. Venezuela doesn’t let its kids go to school in the dark. Nepal does its own mountain thing, man.” French stops to take a sip of his zero-calorie grape Powerade. “We shouldn’t be beholden to Boston brahmins. When I look at our campus clock tower the Republic of Franklin should be half-hour behind those time-privileged colonialists.”

When asked what sort of response other students have given his protest, French is thoughtful. “Some just don’t get it. “So what,’ they say. ‘Who cares?’ One guy always puts his fingers into an ‘L’ on his forehead and says something like ‘zero SEC championships’. We are in the SoCon, so duh.” On the subject of his protest’s efficacy French acknowledges that it has not gone as planned. “I thought finals would be canceled if the protest got large enough. I don’t want to have to study for Statistics. I guess that I will have to, or I will lose my scholarship.”

French lets out an audible sigh as several students walk past on their way to the other protest. “They always get the crowds,” French laments. Answering why he doesn’t join the more popular protest, French shrugged, “I guess that I don’t hate Jews.”