Today’s flash blog topic got me thinking, not about voting, but about protest and how rarely it accomplishes its aims. When I lived in Chicago, there was always a protest of some sort- taking place. One of the biggest protests I can remember was in October of 2007. The college campus was all abuzz with various students loudly wearing their causes on banners or backpacks. It was strange to me, the charged element in the air, and the excited expressions on the student’s faces as they descended the school steps and charged out onto State Street to join the other dissenters.
All of it seemed wrong.
The protest seemed to be nothing more than a reason for people to let go of their inhibitions and become rowdy. Some people were making out in the streets-others held signs that protested an issue as unfairly and violently as the original issue they were protesting against. To top it all off, the speed of the protest was determined by Chicago’s finest whom all walked laboriously slow. The expression on their faces said it all-“This is a joke. See how we control the breadth of your objections?”
That night the el ride home was charged with excitement too. Everyone was chattering away with his or her new best friend as if something really had changed. It seemed the societal spell of Chicago solitude had been broken with slogans and banners. But the next day nothing had changed, not even the banners left behind on the subway.
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3 comments:
Protest may never make immediate changes, but I don't think it has to. It's about being a part of something and knowing that the people around you agree that there is a problem to solve. It may just be a symbolic act, but the world needs its symbols.
I've done a little bit of protesting and for me it's about having a voice. There is the added bonus of at least bringing attention to the issue.
I went to the University of Maryland before FGCU, its located about 15 minutes from the Washington Monument. Needless to say there were always huge protests going on there, notably save Darfur about two years ago (George Clooney and a lot of big celebs came down). Anyhow, it got the media, students, teachers, just about everyone talking and a lot of people involved. Has Darfur been saved? No. But a diffrence was made: people who knew nothing of the situation became informed, Darfur recceived increased media coverage, and it became a topic that people talked about. Sometimes one of the best things protests can do is to bring a major issue out from behind the pages of celebrity gossip into daily discourse.
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