Like most people I get turned off by the antics of the current crop of protesters. Their tactics of glueing themselves to the road, among other things, to disrupt traffic in the heart of cities like Brisbane, have certainly earned the ire of conservative commentators.
Some of them are frothing at the mouth in their calls to jail these protesters.
But what they are really doing is falling into the trap of going way over the top.
Some of these commentators would be the same ones condemning China and its heavy handed response to what’s going on in Hong Kong.
I don’t know what sort of a brain fade this is, but at the same time they are calling on authorities here to get tough on our protesters.
So, if I’m getting this right, these commentators want to blast China for being a communist dictatorship while at the same time asking a democratic state like Australia to act like a communist dictatorship.
It’s having your cake and wanting to eat it, too.
A democracy means many things, including the right to protest.
And just because a protest is disruptive doesn’t make it any less a democratic right.
It’s called civil disobedience and it’s one of the things that make democracy great.
It was employed by freedom fighters like Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela and it included challenging some laws as part of their protest marches.
But the essence of their protests was that they were non violent.
This is what Martin Luther King said in that great I have a dream speech in 1963:
“But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.’’
So let’s remember that nobody’s taken arms against the state, calm down and let the protesters protest.
Spot on Eric.
In a democracy, protest is part of the process, along with petitions, letters to politicians and of course, elections (all of which have failed).
It is their future at stake and this particular baby-boomer supports the right of the young people in the extinction rebellion to express their dismay. Protest is all they have left when the politicians have failed them.
I just hope they don’t lose sight of their principle aim, which is to gain support, not lose it.