{"id":5651,"date":"2013-01-23T09:02:05","date_gmt":"2013-01-23T17:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=5651"},"modified":"2013-01-23T09:02:05","modified_gmt":"2013-01-23T17:02:05","slug":"open-space-rethinking-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2013\/01\/23\/open-space-rethinking-protests\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Space<\/em>: Rethinking Protests"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first time I went to a protest on the lawn of the parliament buildings was a waste of time.<\/p>\n

My first real act of civil disobedience, I fully expected to be pepper sprayed, sucker-punched, and arrested by truncheon-wielding cops. I even had a 50\/50 mix of Maalox and water in a spray bottle for when things got ugly. When absolutely nothing happened, with the exception of funny looks from the groundskeeper, I was disappointed.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why it was a waste: since parliament was not in session, we were screaming slogans and irritatingly repetitive chants at an empty building. The media wasn\u2019t present: with our so-called \u201cdecentralized leadership,\u201d no one had bothered to contact them. (Not that they would have shown up anyway: I think there was a cat stuck in a tree somewhere in Oak Bay that day, so they were all busy.) The weirdest part of that protest, though, was that nobody participating seemed to have any clear ideas of what, specifically, it was that we were protesting.<\/p>\n

There are many causes worth fighting for. In fact, there are so many injustices, abuses of power, and generally illegal actions by our government that activists like me could stage a protest every day of the year for a different cause and never repeat ourselves. This is, arguably, the problem.<\/p>\n

People can only take so much consciousness-raising and awareness before they become overwhelmed and apathetic. If you watch television, when was the last time you had any reaction at all to images of starving, emaciated children on the latest \u201cfeed a poor kid gruel, thereby perpetuating the generational perpetuation of global poverty\u201d ad?<\/p>\n

All I\u2019m trying to say is that if we really want to change the world, can\u2019t we come up with something a little more creative, something that might actually work? I don\u2019t want to live in a world where nobody protests anything, but I desperately want to see that rage and energy channelled into projects that will make this planet more than the misery-ridden sphere that a higher education has taught me exists.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t just be angry robots, be effective ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first time I went to a protest on the lawn of the parliament buildings was a waste of time. My first real act of civil disobedience, I fully expected to be pepper sprayed, sucker-punched, and arrested by truncheon-wielding cops. I even had a 50\/50 mix of Maalox and water in a spray bottle for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-views","category-january-23-1013"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t