G20 Protests

Yay! My home thread. Perhaps I should have just stayed here rather than get all het up and argumental in that other thread.

Interesting that the general tone on this thread is in favour of peaceful protest. I'm tempted to go trawling for previous threads about the yearly G20 protest - my hunch is that in previous years the tone might be more weighted toward the "soap dodging hippy scum" tone.

Democracy is not a feckin spectator sport people. I don't care if I agree with you or not, if you have the cahoonies to get of your **** and do something for your beliefs, whether that be through the ballot box, through lobbying your elected representatives, or through peaceful protest then I am behind you 100 percent.

And naturally I do rally against "it won't make a difference" sentiment, especially when that's coupled with "so I won't bother". Aside from the important bit being "I tried" (perhaps none of us are likely to change the world, but if none of us try...) - sometimes it does work, and if previous generations had not engaged in peaceful protest then.... India would still be a subjugated country, apartheid would still be active in South Africa, women would not have the vote in the UK, blacks would not have the vote across the whole of the USA, and the poll tax would be in place in the UK. It's scary how recent all this is too - of the five examples I've just given, two are in my lifetime (34), a further one is in my parents' lifetime, one is within my grandparents lifetime and the remainder is within my great grandparents lifetime.

Now each of these five I've listed had violent episodes, but they were principally rooted in peace. Whether you agree with these protests or not (and I hope to God that the only one people may or may not agree with is poll tax) no-one can deny that peaceful protest did make a difference and did change the world.

Oh and SK - I have to take exception on your interpretation of the Iraq protests, whilst I can't speak for anyone other than myself I see a difference between protesting going to war in Iraq and continuing to have forces in Iraq. Tens of thousands of men, women and children are now dead, men, women and children who had the same right to life as me, you, your family and my family, these people are now dead, they will never accomplish their potential, they will never see another sunset. They're dead and their blood is on the hands of those who took us to war. And my personal view is that if we did this for the longer term greater good, then we damn well have a moral responsibility to see that through and not just jump ship and leave a fecked country in our wake. Unfortunately, I'm fully aware that this responsibility will (or would) doubtless be paid for in more blood.

So many politicians with so much blood on their hands - damn right I'm going to protest that.

[SoulKiss]

Originally Posted by MiniMatt

Oh and SK - I have to take exception on your interpretation of the Iraq protests, whilst I can't speak for anyone other than myself I see a difference between protesting going to war in Iraq and continuing to have forces in Iraq. Tens of thousands of men, women and children are now dead, men, women and children who had the same right to life as me, you, your family and my family, these people are now dead, they will never accomplish their potential, they will never see another sunset. They're dead and their blood is on the hands of those who took us to war. And my personal view is that if we did this for the longer term greater good, then we damn well have a moral responsibility to see that through and not just jump ship and leave a fecked country in our wake. Unfortunately, I'm fully aware that this responsibility will (or would) doubtless be paid for in more blood.

So many politicians with so much blood on their hands - damn right I'm going to protest that.

I agree with you about all of the above, we should never have gone in there to begin with.

What I am saying is why protest over something that nothing can, or will ever be done about.

Other than not voting for this bunch at the next General Election that is.

They went in against the guidlines of the UN, which as I see it, is the only body that could possibly bring sanctions/consequences for the act to bear, and haven't so far.

Originally Posted by SoulKiss

I agree with you about all of the above, we should never have gone in there to begin with.

What I am saying is why protest over something that nothing can, or will ever be done about.

Other than not voting for this bunch at the next General Election that is.

They went in against the guidlines of the UN, which as I see it, is the only body that could possibly bring sanctions/consequences for the act to bear, and haven't so far.

+1. If we hadn't gone piggy back with america, then at least our country wouldn't be tarnished with the same blood from the same brush painting america. But we cant leave now....if you start something, you have to finish it properly. Its like getting out all the lego, spending all day playing, then leaving it for someone else to clear up (well, sort of...its alot worse than that).

I hope the protests don't become violent (my dad has been having visions of it turning into something that the french would be proud of!), because that just makes a mess for everyone to deal with. But then, there are always hooligans who like to disrupte things

Originally Posted by SoulKiss

What I am saying is why protest over something that nothing can, or will ever be done about.

Other than not voting for this bunch at the next General Election that is.

The general public are notoriously fickle with short memories, and the media holds such sway over public opinion. Sometimes I don't think it hurts to remind people of the part I've quoted.

I don't think that these protests will make any difference to the opinions/stances of the world leaders in London.

The reason for this is that there it's not a single group of protesters with a message but many disparate voices with differing goals. The one thing that the protesters can get out of this is that their message *may* leak out into the media where it may get a bit more awareness. Of course the media seems more interested with the antics of the laptop hooligans rather than the messages from the protest groups.

Originally Posted by Kinvig

I don't think that these protests will make any difference to the opinions/stances of the world leaders in London.

The reason for this is that there it's not a single group of protesters with a message but many disparate voices with differing goals.

+1 to this - there are all sorts of different protests mixed in, from what I read/saw - climate change, anti-war/occupation of Iraq, anti-bank, to name a few. I think some of the protests didn't make sense (climate change at RBS?) and were just used to jump on the G20 bandwagon so to speak.

Originally Posted by muffles

+1 to this - there are all sorts of different protests mixed in, from what I read/saw - climate change, anti-war/occupation of Iraq, anti-bank, to name a few. I think some of the protests didn't make sense (climate change at RBS?) and were just used to jump on the G20 bandwagon so to speak.

Speak to riot police and they'll all tell you the same thing; you see the same faces at all the protests (irrespective of the subject) where there is trouble and this is especially true of the troublemakers. This results in some hilarious alliances of diametrically opposed people, like a white middle class liberal campaigning for gay rights next to a lunatic who wants to be a Martyr for Islam. People involved with it recognise this and even refer to the collective movement (of all protests) as the 'protest scene' or 'protest circuit'. The protest's subject matter is a decidedly secondary consideration.

Having myself been invited to a protest to, "...mash up some police, I don't know what the protest is about", I don't agree that these are people who are driven to these violent actions as a last resort. That might wash if you're in some third world backwater when the you get fed up of the Junta kick down your door in the middle of the night and stealing your children and feel your only option to effect change is to storm the palace and kill the ruling class. In modern day Britain, however, it does not. The a lot of the troublemakers are childish malcontents who never grew out of teenage angst. Even if we lived in some sort of utopia they'd be getting their knickers in a twist about something. The violence of many of them is about as 'political' as two lads having a punch up outside a pub on a Friday night.

I wouldn't even class things like the recent Westminster motorcycle protest as remotely related to your typical protests. It's almost as if there should be a different word to distinguish the two.

[yorkie_chris]

I was listening about it on the radio, do they have any particular point? All the people who appeared on the radio seemed to be annoyed at ... er ...

Originally Posted by alexs

Bloke looks like a disarranged rapper, "yeah...WHAT". Can never be as gangsta as Keithy D-to-the-Izzle, WERD.

Tag them on facebook

For those that think the police are wrong for their actions over protests, I will say this...

Russia has an economy crisis at the moment too.