SMOKE: Let's Protest

Originally published: 29 November 2004

I had a dream. Note: I had a dream. I no longer have it. Which is good, because it was actually a little bit crap and not particularly clever anyway.

I used to dream of staging a protest with a bunch of protesters in Adderley Street or maybe outside parliament. I wanted to gather a throng of people and give them posters and placards and banners with slogans like "No More!" and "We shall overcome!" and "Say no!"

We would sing songs of solidarity, link arms and occasionally spit violently on the pavement. Clearly a bunch of fed up people who are not going to tolerate any more of this bullshit.

I can't remember why I used to dream of doing that but I think the idea came to me in my student days, and being filled with the unbearable lightness of being and discovering the joys of hallucinogenics and doing everything I could to stick it to the imaginary man - it was obviously my protest against protests.

I don't know why anyone would want to protest against protests, but maybe it's because I'm just sick to death of them. Everyone seems to have a cause they need to protest about but I'm not a hundred percent convinced that anyone ever listens to protesters.

My mother just came back from New York where she was attending my sister's debut at Carnegie Hall, and she said that Times Square and the rest of NYC is stuffed to the rafters with people on soap boxes, from Chinese dissidents protesting the anti-Falugong movement to someone who had a problem with Dick Cheney and thought everyone should hear about it.

Just a few months ago I was driving past my local bakery and was astounded to see the doors closed and the entire staff dancing on the pavement outside, protesting low wages. In the middle of suburbia.

It's spiralling out of control.

Thing is, though - I have no idea whether protests actually have the desired effect. Sometimes they do - particularly if there is media coverage of the cause - but there are just so many people protesting so many things I wonder if the effect isn't dampened somewhat.

For example - how big an effect did the protests in the United States and Europe have on the war on Iraq? You may remember those pictures of hundreds of thousands of people thronging the major US cities - it reached a critical mass at one stage and I can't remember the outcome of it all. I think the war simply ended and then they had nothing to do, so they all pissed off home.

I would think those protests must have had some sort of effect on the decision-makers in the war, as the best way to shut them up was simply to end the war and make some promises about upholding human rights and helping the victims rebuild their society.

But would the war have taken any longer had there not been protesters? It took many, many years of intense and often violent protest before the Vietnam war ended, but could you argue that the war would have dragged on had nobody minded the fact that their sons and fathers and husbands were being butchered in a foreign country for a foreign cause?

Or was it the protests that became too overwhelming?

The biggest successful protest in our country's history was the Struggle and that took half a century to reap rewards.

But you could argue that the government of the time had all the necessary firepower and resources to control the insurgent threat and that protests or not they could have carried on indefinitely, or until a foreign nation intervened with military might (which was clearly never going to happen - where was the UN during apartheid, I wonder?)

I suppose firepower alone is not enough to control those who have been oppressed, and if there had been no '76 uprisings or political assassinations or incarcerations of martyrs for the cause the government wouldn't have had much reason to change the status quo.

I'm arguing against myself now - that's what a high school diploma will do for you, if one of your subjects is History. Remember those essays? Justify both points of view, but ultimately take a stance. I spent every exam arguing with myself and simply choosing whichever point of view was easiest to justify.

Not the intention of the exercise, I don't think.

Nonetheless.


Political protest is powerful because politicians stake their careers on the various stances they take and thus don't want to piss anyone off (which is why nobody will ever legalise marijuana in this country - not in my lifetime, anyway), but industrial protest is a different story.

There are lots of rights for strikers and protesters within the constitution which is probably why we see so many protests.

I suppose the real question is: why are there so many protests and strikes? Are people genuinely being hard done by or is complacency and greed the order of the day?

It's certainly in the best interests of worker's unions to get the best possible wages for their members, and if workers are genuinely getting screwed then a protest is a noisy and legal way of getting some attention.

I can't remember one specific single protest rally or march during the apartheid years (obviously - most of it was censored), but I did have an overall impression that there was a consolidated effort to change an entire society.

I had that impression based on years and years of news about terrorists, the Struggle, solidarity in London, isolation - all of those things were constantly being drummed into us and it had the desired effect.

So maybe we should be looking at the noise of protests not as single entities but as a whole - a whole which suggests that either we've become a country of whiners and moaners and handout-seekers, or we've got some serious problems with the way we do business.

I would suggest it's the latter, because I've been a part of the corporate chain of command and I've seen more flaws in it than I know what to do with, from the imbalance of wages between staff and management to the lack of job satisfaction. There are definitely problems.

So I think I should rekindle my dream of holding a protest, only this time the motivation will be slightly different. I won't be protesting against protests - I'll be adding my voice to the growing crescendo of dissent.

"No more, we say!" "Never again!" "Remember!" "Forget!"

Someone's bound to do something.

All Smoked Out,
Luke Tagg