Off-Topic: Marches & Protests

This will not happen often, if ever again, and I want to preface this by saying I am not homophobic, racist, a bigot, a chauvinist, or any of these tags one may wish to brand upon reading this piece.

The Women’s March yesterday in Seattle, WA, was terrifying to behold. This is not purely about the Women’s March that took place in protest of Trump’s inauguration, but rather a reflection of marches everywhere, in every country, and my hatred of them.

I won’t bore you with the details of how my day started or finished, but suffice to say, it was bisected by the aforementioned march.

My first interaction with members of this march came at the monorail station. I really couldn’t care less if there was a march going on, but I made a couple of unfortunate observations… Kids. Kids are great, aren’t they? Ok… so you’re bringing them to a march. Fair enough. You’re making your two 5-year-olds wave signs plastered with pictures of Trump and slanderous comments? Not so great. Openly talking about how great your parenting skills are? Debatable. This is true, ladies and gents; two small kids, easily 5 years of age, waving crudely worded signs around regarding Trump. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am by no means a supporter of Trump – but what are you teaching your kids? That protesting is commonplace? That smearing a President is acceptable? That vulgar language is tolerable? Smashing. The second observation was what someone was wearing – a sandwich-sign claiming “I march for the missing murdered natives“, wait, what? If they’re missing, then they can’t have been murdered. If they’re murdered, then they’re not missing… harsh but true. I honestly wanted to ask this person what exactly their sign meant, and who they were marching for (specifically, not just a repeat of the sign…) but I convinced myself not to, and boarded the monorail.

Now then… the city center. If the people surrounding me were exercising their right to protest, fair enough but I would like to exercise my right to walk around town unopposed and spend the money I have been earning while not protesting. There was a group I had (unfortunately) seen around town before that were protesting abortions – I’m not commenting on this particular subject either way – but the way they did it was horrifyingly graphic. I understand they did this to prove their point, but walking around town with gigantic signs covered in pictures of what I can only describe as mangled corpses of unborn babies in a procession of over 100,000 people which, may I remind you, contained a regrettable number of children…. no. Just no.

Next in line, a (seemingly) lovely old lady holding a sign that looked like it might have tipped her over if a stiff breeze passed by, plastered with the words “Protect women’s right to vote“, I’m sorry, what? No-one’s trying to take it away from you, dear… and no, before anyone says anything, this was not to do with the recent voter’s registration debacle – completely different topic.

Lastly, as I don’t want to ramble specifically about the multitude of confusing and inappropriate signs and slogans that were scattered around, was a gentleman wearing a brightly-colored sandwich-board stating “Over 600 children were jailed in Turkey last year” – ok. What is this one sign in this one protest going to do? Yes, I know you can say that about every sign in every protest (which I actually do…) but this is not only a lesson in futility but, for lacking of a better word, isolationism. In history, isolationism has never really gone well, the one country that does it so perfectly is Sweden – and they do it to this day. They very rarely get involved in foreign affairs. People need to understand that we are not responsible for foreign governments, affairs, policies or anything else like this. We did not create these problems, so we should not be taking upon ourselves to dictate what is outrageous and punishable. How many atrocities go unnoticed in our world? Countless. Yet one person who feels one event or incident is not a good one thinks protesting about it is going to change something? Look to your homes, look to your communities, and look to your country before getting involved in others.

Ok, enough about signage.

Protests in themselves are inherently chaotic – they’re an anathema to peace. ‘Peaceful Protests’ I hear you cry? Nay! There is no such thing as a peaceful protest.

Everyone who protests, rallies and marches goes with the knowledge that there are people who will oppose your ideals, and they could (as they are apparently allowed to by their rights) become vocal about it. How many peaceful protests have ended as peacefully as they began? A handful. A paltry few.

Using the march this weekend as an example – it was loud, disruptive, and in many cases threatening. If you get a large amount of people in one place at one time for ideals they feel so passionately about confidence rises, tempers flare and it’s a veritable smörgåsbord of potential conflicts. Nothing happened large-scale during this march through Seattle (likely helped by a shared dislike of Trump from all walks of life), but this is not true for all marches, and definitely on a smaller-scale these marchers felt they were superior as I tried to go about my day, crossing a road to reach some shops (I was not waiting for 100,000+ people to pass…) when I began to get pushed, shouted at and bullied across the street by some people I had genuinely no interest in bothering.

Again, I just want to reinforce that this is not a rant specifically at the Women’s March, rather marches in general and, again… this is all my opinion. I don’t mean to offend anyone, rather just give a point of view. Call it my ‘right to freedom of speech’.

Thanks for listening,

-Wheldrake.