Hunting The Muse

Defending The Streets

I experienced two interpretations of Portland's Thursday-night protests, the one that Tamara wrote about - an experience of empowerment and rediscovered optimism through finding new faith in the strength of the masses - and the one reported in the local media focusing on vandalism and arrests. My personal stance on protests so far is that I haven't yet attended one, out of several concerns I have, but I might attend one soon... guardedly.

Update: Tamara has a follow-up with a long thought-out entry.

Update: Here's the comment I had left in response to what Tamara responded to.

Hrm. Personally, I'd agree that vandalism is counterproductive. I wouldn't lump rage in with that, though. This is a hugely complicated subject anyway. Like, would the press report it all the people that were at the protest simply wrote their congresscritters. Even the way the protests are reported messes things up a bit. "Massive protests in San Francisco; 1400 people arrested". Which focuses on the violent aspects and the 1.4% of the protesters that got out of hand, at the expense of the passion of the 98.6% of other protesters who feel their views are being ignored.

I think protests can affect public opinion for better or for worse. If they get larger or attract more people who wouldn't originally have protested, it has a viral societal impact, which can ultimately impact how we are governed. Or if they are presented as too far out of the mainstream, then it just reduces everyone else's credibility. Yet the public opinion is managed by how those two groups are presented by others (media). Really the protesters need good P.R. managers to control distribution of their footage. ;-)

Posted by Curt at March 23, 2003 12:46 AM