...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Friday, March 21, 2003
      ( 1:16 PM )
 
What Would You Rather?
I believe that my 10-month old Kid could understand what was going on last night as we watched the lovely ballet played out on the streets of Portland. Why don't grown adults understand? I was frankly relieved to have something to watch besides just all the cable news war porn going on... and it was good to see the actual SUCCESS of a protest. Yes, that's what I said. So many people seem to think that there was no point to what happened, and that the people out on the streets were simply delinquents and had nothing better to do with their time. In fact, the point of DIRECT ACTION is to affect the infrastructure or general ability for your government to operate in its usual method. Anyone ever heard of the Boston Tea Party? (Probably people were saying when that happened "what a waste of good tea!")

The protesters last night in Portland and New York and Seattle and San Francisco actually did accomplish what they set out to do: they disrupted the infrastructure of their local governments. If you think it's pointless to sit down in the middle of an intersection or on a highway and cause - maybe you could think about it this way: Would you rather live in a country where people have the right to protest non-violently this way and express their grievances to the government by blocking traffic, or would you rather have to live in a country where people have to resort to this (which, by the way, I support).

In fact, while most people seemed to be angry or disgusted with the movements of protesters last night, at my house, we quite enjoyed watching as the protesters surged up onto the bridge to confront the cops, the cops, wanting to hold them back and keep the bridge open, formed up about 8 lines of combat troops and then proceeded themselves to block and close the bridge for hours while the protesters had already retreated back the way they came...this repeated itself over and over again in various locales.

Protesting takes on various forms: you can hold a sign, chant, march, write your legislator - or you can participate in direct action. I wonder if a few more people, or even a few of our own legislators themselves had taken direct action BEFORE the administration started down this slippery slope, would our troops even be in the midst of this right now?

Also, I'm issuing a general notice of disgust at this (minus the part about supporting the troops). And this (come on, John, do you have to drool that much over what the white house gives you?).

And a notice of happiness over this.


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