To the Editor:
 
            Your editorial on the St. Patrick's Day 7 case of October 30 asks: "Can't we just drop it?" We can but the Gazette can't. Your out-of-town owners still don't get it. It's the Bill of Rights, dummy! The editorial repeats again the fictionalist account of that day:

1. "We were not innocent."
2. "We turned a non-political event into an anti-war protest."
3. We lusted after "fame," "posing as victims of police brutality and First Amendment rights violations."
4. The "Fighting Irish" of Notre Dame were somehow to blame.
   

I was there and the Gazette wasn't. We were all innocent unless proclaiming peace is now a crime. There was NO planned protest! Peace is not political, it is the faith, hope and love that are the biblical imperatives for a war-torn world and the first concern of human beings. There was excessive force used by the police over-reacting to inaccurate hearsay information from the parade marshals. And as for our rights, let's never forget, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence: "Governments are instituted to secure these rights." As for the slur at Notre Dame, one of my alma maters, there are some things worth fighting for nonviolently, and perhaps one of them should be an effort to bring a home-grown, home-owned, open-minded daily newspaper to Colorado Springs so that fact rather than fiction will become the mandate of the media here.
 
Sincerely,
   
Bill Durland
Colorado Springs, CO