Protests and the things that make or break them
I value the idea of protest, but I have always had an anxious relationship with protests. Attending one for me is always an exercise in the suspension of any sense of self-consciousness–participating does in a sense require being melded into the crowd. Otherwise you can’t help but feel like a moron with all the chants and those around you with whom you probably do not agree, but must produce an image to the contrary. In this sense I have always been a greater fan of group consciousness than of group identity. The former allows empathy without assimilation, while the latter requires a sacrifice of the self, an inseparability of the individual from the group.
So, when it became apparent last weekend that I had unwittingly thrust myself into the position of a “protest organizer,” I had to consider all these issues and reconcile them with myself. In retrospect there are a number of things I regret about the protest organizationally. The message advertising it failed to reach a large number of people who would have attended had they known the circumstances leading up to it. I blame this on a number of different things, besides my own ineptitude and inexperience: [Read more →]
