[extropy-chat] darfur

[Martin Striz]

On 5/3/06, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:

> I am old enough (barely) to have attended a few Vietnam era
> marches.   I wasn't bored and there weren't that many heads broken.
> It is not about being "sentimental".  It is often about wanting to
> take more of a stand than sending letters to unresponsive Congress
> critters, sending money to this or that cause, writing letters to the
> editor and voting when there really isn't a fit choice.   Getting on
> your feet and into the street doesn't get you a lot more but it is a
> bit more active and beats sitting at home griping.

Not to mention that, unlike the way that protesters have been
characterized on this list, most of them genuinely want and expect
their rallies to promulgate some kind of change, mostly by making the
powers that be aware of where the public stands.  They may be wrong in
that belief, but that doesn't make them poseurs.  I know a few people
who attended the Darfur protest in DC who are trying to get an email
campaign to the President started.

The protests against the Iraq War may not have worked, but the
immigrant protests, as well as the Darfur protests, are going to have
a material impact on policy.

It's also unrealistic to demand that protesters join the military or
shut up.  Many of them have families, and there are already people who
have volunteered for military work, who are ready and willing to take
on important causes.  It's just a matter of making their leaders aware
of where the military is needed.

> > Countless hippies who don't remember or were born later don't
> > realize that for every person who danced in the sunshine at
> > Woodstock there was another who was shivering in the mud; they tend
> > to remember the good times and forget the negative. Point is, the
> > counterculture in general-- many of whom participate at protests--
> > are backward looking. Far too many of the protesters are
> > participating out of nostalgia for a mythologized past, and this is
> > the very thing I've spent decades trying to get away from.

Markos Moulitsas takes this position in _Crashing the Gate_, that
protests are vestiges of a by-gone era and that direct marketing
(door-to-door and especially online) is the way to organize for change
now.  But a protest is a nice way to get free national advertising, as
long as the media covers you.

Martin