{"id":31,"date":"2010-11-18T16:02:43","date_gmt":"2010-11-18T16:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/criticalmassfilm.com\/blog\/?p=31"},"modified":"2011-04-28T16:03:09","modified_gmt":"2011-04-28T16:03:09","slug":"a-year-in-protest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/criticalmassfilm.com\/blog\/a-year-in-protest\/","title":{"rendered":"A Year in Protest"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw this article<\/a> showing an incredible photo catalogue of protests worldwide.\u00a0 I find it amazingly inspiring because it chronicles the actions of thousands of individuals, acting together or alone, all moved to action by what they see as unacceptable.\u00a0 Some protest in defence of an ideal or privilege they don’t want to lose, others in favour of a change they see as necessary – it gives me huge joy to see such passionate expression.<\/p>\n

What I find disturbing is the fact that there is a need to protest.\u00a0 This is the 21st century, as we’re often reminded, an age of comfort, security and technological optimism.\u00a0 Mankind has conquered the planet, claiming the dominion the Bible supposedly grants him over the beasts and birds, over the planet itself.\u00a0 But going through these pictures, the protests are for the most basic of rights:<\/p>\n

– to protest and assemble<\/p>\n

– to speak, live and act freely<\/p>\n

– to be represented by a government that puts its citizens first beyond all other considerations<\/p>\n

– to promote equality for women as well as lesbian, gay and transgender people<\/p>\n

– to end barbaric punishment for crimes against religious orthodoxy<\/p>\n

– to stop the brutalising of journalists and free thinkers<\/p>\n

– to free the wrongfully imprisoned<\/p>\n

– to recognise the rights of people to have a country of their own<\/p>\n

Anyone reading the above would think that these are in fact the bases of our culture as we understand it.\u00a0 By our culture, I mean Western culture, but in an increasingly global world, these values are worn at the cuff by governments of all stripes.\u00a0 What nation does not promote all or most of these values?\u00a0 What government does not use the violation of these rights as an excuse for hard talk, sanctions or even violent action against others?\u00a0 What human being does not believe, beneath any indoctrination or relativism, in the fundamental importance of these things?<\/p>\n

So why do people have to storm buildings, burn cars, gather in the streets, be beaten, tear gassed, water cannoned, injured and even killed, all for the sake of fighting for things we all agree on?\u00a0 That disturbs me.\u00a0 It also speaks volumes about the broad-based sense of unease and dissatisfaction among the populace of the world, that these actions are becoming more common, more angry, more desperate to make an impact.<\/p>\n

We all have a sense of time passing, of ourselves as a species and a civilisation moving towards something else.\u00a0 We sense a change.\u00a0 We see hard times and are told that they are temporary.\u00a0 We have reason to question the way things are done and we’re told that it is only the work of a few bad apples which undermined our confidence and stability.\u00a0 We’re told that the solution is in a return to the way, not the seeking of a new way.<\/p>\n

These pictures tell us that the old way is no longer enough.\u00a0 Our confidence cannot be restored – it can only be earned, anew, through the building of a more equal, more representative world.\u00a0 We recognise, perhaps only intuitively right now, that apples do not go bad in the social or political sense – they are bad from inception because they feed on toxic soil.\u00a0 Whether we are on the right or the left, religious or atheist, gay or straight or in between, we all know that something has to be done, not just to uproot and replant but to alter the composition of the soil itself, perhaps even right down to the bedrock.\u00a0 How we will do it is another question for another day.\u00a0 These pictures inspire me to redouble my own efforts.\u00a0 They also shake my sense of complacency that all must be well because I cannot smell the burning from my apartment.\u00a0 The “we” I believe in is not European or white or religious or sexually aligned – the “we” I see in these pictures is a unified majority of this planet’s people who know that something has to be done.\u00a0 We are in control.\u00a0 We can make this work.\u00a0 We just need to keep going until all doubt is swept away.<\/p>\n

For a musical accompaniment to the photographs, try this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw this article<\/a> showing an incredible photo catalogue of protests worldwide.\u00a0 I find it amazingly inspiring because it chronicles the actions of thousands of individuals, acting together or alone, all moved to action by what they see as unacceptable.\u00a0 Some protest in defence of an ideal or privilege they don’t want to lose, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5,9,10,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","category-politics","category-snafu","category-the-new-us","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/criticalmassfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/criticalmassfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/criticalmassfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/criticalmassfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/criticalmassfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/criticalmassfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37,"href":"https:\/\/criticalmassfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/criticalmassfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/criticalmassfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/criticalmassfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}