dissent

A few days ago I was in the break room at work and someone was talking about the May Day March that took place in various cities around the country on Tuesday. Portland, protest capital, of course joined in again. I think this is the 4th or 5th year, but I don't remember for sure.

The first year it was a huge blowup and a bunch of anarchist wannabes infiltrated and the police swat team had to spend the whole night rounding up rioters and getting them off the freeways that ring downtown. I was working at a Starbucks downtown at the time, and my store happened to be around the corner from the precinct office that is headquarters for the swat team and traffic patrol. It was intense as they came through in waves that night and talked about the things they were encountering. Maybe it was hearing them that night, and watching on the news how much worse it got later, that turned me into a "protest hater", as I mentioned in a recent post about politics.

Anyway, someone was talking about it and I said that I hate protest, that they're a waste of public funds, don't change anything and pull the wacko trouble makers out of the woodwork. The person I was talking to is someone who thinks that all civil authority is evil, and that reaction to "The Man" (he calls it that...even though he's white!) is the only way to change. He thinks that all things conservative are evil and that Christians are the root of that evil. (I'm not making it up - just paraphrasing things he's said himself.)

When I said I hated protests he asked me, "what about the civil rights marches in the 60's? Do you really think those didn't change anything?", which stumped me, because that's the first place I'd go if I had a time machine and could go back and participate in history. I told him that was different, and even though I couldn't put my finger on why, I just knew it wasn't the same. And, of course, my entire walk home I was thinking, "Am I just a hypocrite about this one, or is the Portland's protest propensity really different than what went on in the civil rights movement?" I decided that I wasn't a hypocrite, and that it came down to the difference between a demonstration and a protest. So I looked them up on Wikipedia, which said...

Demonstration:
A demonstration is the public display of the common opinion of an activist group, often economically, political, or socially, by gathering in a crowd, usually at a symbolic place or date, associated with that opinion. The purpose of a demonstration is to show that a significant amount of people are for or against a certain issue, person, law, etc.

Protest:
Protest expresses relatively overt reaction to events or situations: sometimes in favour, more often opposed. Protesters may organize a protest as a way of publicly and forcefully making their opinions heard in an attempt to influence public opinion or government policy, or may undertake direct action to attempt to directly enact desired changes themselves.

So it seems that a demonstration is a show of a common opinion, where a protest is a corporate vocalization/enactment of rebellion. The word demonstrate indicates showing, where the word protest indicates dissent, and in the definition above is a reaction.

Can I just admit...at the very word "reaction" in this context something stubborn rises up in me. I don't even have words to express how disgusting I find it. So many votes are cast in this fair city out of reaction, trying to get someone or something changed simply for the sake of change, but with no thought that the change they propose could just possibly make things worse in the end.

I say go ahead and demonstrate. Show the common opinion, but do it with your brain, not with reaction. Write to your congressperson. Join your neighborhood association or become a precinct committeeperson. Read up on both sides of an issue or situation, and don't just take the media or public opinion's word for it -whatever direction you lean politically. Then don't react; think, decide then respond in obedience to your concience.