Letters to the Editor
DCLaw1
Published Letters: 839 Editor's Choice: 2
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On protests
[Read the article: Lewis Libby owes his freedom to our corrupt political elite]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am of a mixed mind about street protests and rallies. In fall '02 to spring '03, I participated in two massive protests (DC and NYC), and several smaller ones. I even gave a speech at a well-attended rally on the overwhelming likelihood that there were no WMD in Iraq.
As a private citizen and organizer, I spoke to the local media and appeared on a newscast. I organized local efforts to peacefully hold vigils, marches, and rallies. I helped run bus trips to the bigger protests in DC and New York (I did not live in DC at the time). I engaged counter-protesters with reasoned debate, and in my daily life presented an intelligent and well-reasoned case against the war to advocates of the war. While participating in one vigil, I was assaulted by a drunk war supporter, who questioned my nationality and saw my peaceful opposition to a grossly over-marketed war of choice as an affront to America itself.
I remember being consistently crestfallen at the miserable coverage that even the massive rallies garnered. The media grossly under-reported the numbers, relegated the story of over 500,000 people protesting in the nation's capital to newspaper back pages and broadcast side notes. When they finally did cover a protest, they invariably fixated on "Dirty F-ing Hippies," socialist/communist groups, anarchists, giant puppets, and profane picket signs. Every time, my feelings of great purpose and significance - marching in a sea of thousands - succumbed to feelings of betrayal and unfairness by the only institutions that could take the protest messages and images to the broader public. Outside of the protest cities themselves, I was shocked at how few even realized there had been hundreds of thousands peacefully marching against the invasion of Iraq. Fewer still understood that the few altercations that erupted were caused almost wholly by overzealous policing, which I personally witnessed on more than one occasion.
The experience left me bitter, as I watched with increasing sadness and anger the government stomping toward war unimpeded, dragging manufactured public opinion behind them.
I learned a powerful lesson - that without healthy media institutions, a million protesters of all walks of life and political persuasions could not register their opinion in the national discussion. I realized that, in our new system of mass-market, unidirectional media communications, the tactics of yesteryear would not work. With the exception of a notable few national gadflies like Cindy Sheehan, grassroots protest is ineffective without sympathetic (or at least fair) media coverage.
This is why I now see blogs, film, books, and other traditional media alternatives as the new best hope for democratic citizen involvement. Gore's The Assault on Reason, Glenn's Unclaimed Territory and Tragic Legacy, films like An Inconvenient Truth and Sicko, and other examples abound. In the current climate of media consolidation and hierarchical control, mass persuasion and what I call "guerrilla-institutional maneuvering" are indeed more effective weapons than street action.
The Internet presents us with the unique and powerful ability to communicate textually and thoughtfully across geographical distances, and on a purely democratic basis. The influence of bloggers, as ridiculous as their moniker may sound, should not be underestimated - nor should other attempts by individuals to positively affect their country in their own particular ways, according to their talents, means, and stations in life.
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Prime Minister Brown
[Read the article: Lewis Libby owes his freedom to our corrupt political elite]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The news from Gordon Brown via sysprog is fantastic. What a Fourth of July!
How bitterly ironic is it that, on the eve of American Independence Day, the British seem to be doing more to check Executive power than the United States.
Is it too late to rejoin the British Empire?
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sunny miller
[Read the article: Lewis Libby owes his freedom to our corrupt political elite]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One way protests can work is to stop having them on weekends when everyone has gone out of town. A massive, week-long, highly inconvenient, disruptive, noisy protest that includes peaceful civil disobendience would be hard to ignore. Stop the endless speechifying by ANSWER et al.and add in some good protest worthy music. The coverage would surely be overwhelmingly negative, but what would be unusual about that?
Fantastic idea. Associate a political cause or point of view with taking a week off to cause traffic jams and other nuisances to ordinary working folk. If protest direct action is to have any positive effect, it has to hit the powerful, not the masses one needs for the cause.
If you really think the solution is to make media coverage of protest causes even more negative than it is now, perhaps you have no standing to chastise people for commenting on blogs, without having any capacity whatsoever to know whether they are in fact doing other things in their lives to make a real difference.
Fittingly, your comment is just as alienating to your natural allies as would be your suggested protest tactics.