Annotated 24-22
My views on political protest have… evolved a bit in my lifetime, and I’m sure others could say the same. When I visited DC as a kid, we saw people carrying signs so frequently that I just came to understand them as part of the scenery, like taxis in New York or kudzu in Mississippi and worth about as much consideration.
I got more progressive in high school and college, but I still was pretty tongue-in-cheek about the whole idea of carrying signs when Gisele Lagace and I started up Penny and Aggie in (jesus) 2006. Aggie, as we presented her, had causes worth fighting for but often went after them in ways guaranteed to alienate her peers.
In the 2005 inauguration, I hung out with a group of protestors for a bit but took off when it became clear they were looking to pick a fight with the police. In 2009, when GA was just gearing up, Phil and I fenced about how much weight we should throw behind Occupy Wall Street, even though economic inequality was a theme of ours from day one. “We support the same causes, but I’m not really… with them,” Syr’Nj could say here, and that was pretty much me about any angry, shouty movement on my side of the political aisle, when this page came out in 2013. As a child, I was embarrassed by a stutter and a hair-trigger temper; as an adult, I would value patient, slow, reasoned speech over such… street theater.
Then 2016 happened.
(Concluded tomorrow.)
My personal support of protests was lost when one I attended ignored the local issue that it was supposed to be about to go after generic global stuff. I didn’t disagree, but it wasn’t what I’d come out for. I still try to speak up when I see wrongs, but I’m not willing to throw in with a crowd and let them decide the direction of my voice any more.
Now, now, Admiral.
Those are GASTONIA’s Peace-Makers. They’re all of ours!
Protests have their uses, but people are deluding themselves if they think they’ll change things on their own. A protest can bring some visibility to your issue (although, not necessarily; small protests are commonplace in big cities and easy to ignore). They can give a sense of camaraderie, of belonging, that you can build upon for later. But you have to build upon them. You have to use the momentum gained with a successful protest (successful in that people showed up for it) and plan for the next action. You use the protest as a recruiting venue. You train for the next action, something nonviolent but harder to ignore than a protest. Use that action to recruit more people. Lather rinse repeat. And then, when you have the numbers, you plan a large scale action that is impossible to ignore, and makes it costlier for the Powers That Be to refuse your demands than acceding to them.
And then you make a guild.
Technically they are Ardaic’s Peace-makers. Syr’Nj is just an ex(?) member who lives(?) with some of them
She isn’t just an ex member who lives with them, she is the official leader of the group after they all got Byron’d in Souff Koural… or however trollands was named.
2016 happened to a lot of things
My edgy take on protests is that you don’t need them if you have a real democracy like Switzerland. If a majority of Swiss voters want to change a law they can just have a referendum in the next few months. No need for the Spanish abortion law protests where supposedly 80% of the population opposed the law but had no formal recourse.
Of course there’s still minorities trying to get attention for their issue, so I know my edgy take isn’t comprehensive.
Your worry on the last page about the pages not working together can have a simple explanation, that Syr’Nj was told about the protest but not who would be leading from the front.
Or the particulars of their signage
Glad to hear the 2016’d bit. Angry, shouty movements have a tendency to actually accomplish something that quiet whining doesn’t share. Slow, reasoned speech only functions from a pulpit and it’s angry shouting that earns that pulpit.
Dr. Tran: I’m not a macodity!
Love the Father Ted sign. Careful now
I remember being in the break room shortly after 2016… happened, with a co-worker who I previously had no idea was on the other side of the aisle, politically.
We had on the news – I forget whether it was local or not, but it was covering a protest I had attended over the weekend. His only reaction to the broadcast was “get over it” – targeting no one in the room, spoken as if it was just an opinion that every sane person on Earth should have, and uttered almost reflexively, as if it didn’t require any actual thought or consideration.
Elections, and protests contesting their validity, apparently did not require any critical thought on the part of an observer, after their occurrence, in his mind – even nation-wide ones.
It was at that moment I decided the man wasn’t operating intellectually anywhere near his pay grade (my thoughts at the time were, it seems, pretty classist), and that he wasn’t worth any more of my time to associate with. He’d become numb to the idea that the political process mattered, which was strange, because he very clearly considered economics to be a part of it (“vote with your dollar” was his common response to the suggestion we needed better policies) and was very concerned with that idea in our day to day passing conversations.
Since then, I’ve reflected on that moment frequently. He is still, to my knowledge, working at that grocery store, doing work he’s in no physical condition to carry on with safely. I’ve held four leisurely-difficult, very safe desk jobs in that time, all of which paid substantially more – and I know for a fact he has more people to support than I do, so my work is carrying me farther.
It would be really easy for me to reach the conclusion that his choices in life led to him being overworked, underpaid, and struggling to make ends meet – and that his choices in the election directly reinforced that.
But to be honest, that feels really judgemental, and I was always a bit at odds with my own reasoning – not that my conclusions were entirely wrong, but that my assessment of responsibility was ultimately offest to the wrong individual.
I hadn’t recognized the behavior of a man who had consigned himself to despair, at being neglected in the political process, who therefore reasoned that the results of it were never to be questioned because his own past attempts had been ultimately fruitless.
Experience informs perspective, after all.
But I am convinced this man had no deeply held convictions to speak of. Because, having been on the other side of that experience, now, for several years, it’s my own conviction that being that man is no better than being dead.
That was darkly beautiful.
“He’d become numb to the idea that the political process mattered”
What? You think it actually does? Set aside the rhetoric for a bit and look at what either major political party in this country actually *does*. Neither side actually wants to help you. Were they to actually solve your problems you’d be less likely to give them your votes or your money. No, they merely want to appear to be “doing something” about your problems so that you will support them, while making as little actual progress as possible and siphoning as much taxpayer money into their own or their cronies pockets as possible. One side or the other may offer you a small percentage of the take depending on who you are, but both want to rob you blind and keep you subservient.
And so there are two classes of thoughtful people who will give a “get over it” response when they see protests about the outcome of elections:
There are those who see it from a partisan perspective, and it’s really quite reasonable from a moral point of view. If you’re full in favor of expropriating people’s resources and handing them out to whatever “special causes” you personally favor, well, your personal causes aren’t actually special, and you have no right to complain when the shoe is on the other foot. So get over it.
And there are those who see it from a human rights perspective. We’re talking about an organization that has stolen roughly 98% of the economic output of the United States since 1900 and used the proceeds to slaughter millions of people and to fund the boots that keep “the 1%” on top of the pile by kicking everyone else off the ladder… And people are out protesting the choice of leadership over comparatively trivial disparities regarding the distribution of a tiny, tiny fraction of the stolen wealth and whether it’s better to blow foreigners to bits or to starve them to death… Well… Get over it. You’re arguing about whether our cyanide-laced fruit-drink should be grape or cherry when there’s a far more important question that you really should be asking…
“Vote with your dollar” is good advice. See, the market has this inconvenient habit of providing people with more of what they actually *choose* rather than what they merely *say* they want. I see it all the time. People *say* they want to lower vehicle emissions… But then go buy an SUV instead of a subcompact. People *say* they want easily repaired consumer electronics… But then go buy the slimmest, lightest, cheapest device instead of the bulkier, heavier, more expensive one that can be repaired… There are costs to every choice. You always have to give something up. Being the change you want to see in the world works better than trying to change things at gunpoint.
So there are some logical, well-reasoned thought patterns that could have led to this gentleman’s behaviour. You didn’t take the time to determine if he was, in fact, sane and intelligent. You just assumed that because his opinion differed from yours that he must be of sub-par intelligence or crazy. That is sad, but not surprising. Keeping the two halves of the electorate from realising that they have more in common than not and uniting to throw off their overlords is the majority of the motivation behind all the political theater these days. Tribal leaders who care more about their own status and power vying desperately for attention and to stir up conflict so that you don’t have time to stop and think…
And realise that you don’t really need them any more…