Doth Thou protest enough?
I don’t believe you have to attend a protest to be an activist, or an ally. I don’t believe you have to share your beliefs on social media to be politically engaged. I don’t believe you can judge a book by its cover and be accurate in your judgement.
I don’t believe cancel culture is healthy. I do believe toxic positivity and tone policing exists. (Bore off with your ‘sugar and spice and all things nice’)
I think there’s a place for slogans printed in beautiful typefaces, and it’s reductive to assume they are made purely for performative reasons. I believe that hyperbole can be as cathartic as it is inflammatory.
There’s nuance in all situations, just as there is in our responses to them.
But, I also believe that when we do choose to physically protest, add our voices and bodies into the fray, that we are making a declarative statement about what we value. I find protests both exciting, and unnerving, because they are revealing a groundswell of dissatisfaction and are demonstrating our democratic right to highlight it. Sometimes it’s heartening to see what plights we support, sometimes it’s the opposite.
I have been to two proper protest marches in my life, one against the UK’s intention to invade Iraq, and the other to urge Theresa May not to host Donald Trump. The fuel was simple, it just seemed outrageous to me, on both counts, that our government felt they were representing the citizens of the country by taking those actions. Both the war in Iraq and the indulgence of Trump meant a direct acceptance and support for violating the human rights of certain people. Something I find intolerable.
In 2020 and the early part of 2021, there were a lot of protests. Extinction Rebellion had organised itself and were calling for action in regards to the climate crisis. BLM, and Women’s Rights protests both drew attention to institutional and cultural iniquities. I didn’t go to any. I didn’t want to. It was partly as some were occurring during the pandemic, but it was also that I didn’t have the drive to. I didn’t see the point.
In my mind, the police in the USA had been killing black people pretty indiscriminately for a long time, and I’ve been aware of it. Since before I even hit puberty, I was also aware women were objectified and had to work harder than men to be taken seriously. To me, these things are so monstrous, and have such an insidious daily impact on people, I feel like it’s not as simple as having a single set demand to march with… This sort of change requires a commitment to a complete overhaul and renegotiation of society, power structures, and capitalism. It doesn’t mean I didn’t wholeheartedly support the people who chose to.
I didn’t march. But I did research, which took far longer than being in attendance at a protest would have. I did donate directly to grassroot causes in the USA to support bail funds for black protestors; I signed petitions, spoke to family/friends/colleagues about it at length and challenged the ‘all lives matter’ rhetoric. I’ve been uplifting marginalised voices, writing extended pieces to address my thoughts publicly, I have a Patreon subscription to my favourite Instagram educator, I also subscribe to Bitch Media and support intersectional feminist outlets with my money. I spent a long time looking at the proposals of the potential police commissioners for Wales, and researching my political candidates. I voted. I raged. I felt empty, and like it’s all futile, and disgusted and dispirited and then carried on carrying on.
I am comfortable in my decision not to march, or show up at a protest. One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to engaging with social justice. Plus, there’s very few chants I actually like. “Refugees are welcome here” ranks well, and I liked the whole White Stripes beat for bellowing “Jeremy Corbyn” at clubs, pubs, gigs and rallies. But I am not comfortable chanting “fuck the police” and not because it involves swearing, but because it’s not reflective of my complicated views on policing. I’m all for defunding police, but only in terms of streamlining funds to go in other directions to help combat things that frequently end up on the doorstep of the police station. Addiction for example. But also I think of the Manchester bombings, how valiant the efforts were of the police to organise a panic stricken crowd…
I don’t believe in mob mentality. Think for yourself.
Many protests have speakers, like the recent ones in Cardiff about the death, and potential murder, of 24 year old Mohamud Mohammed Hassan who was arrested for breach of the peace and died a few hours after being taken into custody, and was said to be covered in injuries sustained at the hands of the police. The speakers made their stage outside the police station that had held him, it’s a powerful statement. Protests should disrupt like that, challenge business as normal.
This sort of protesting takes a lot of organisation, it also often involves personal risk, it’s far more than a social media post naming a time and place to shout stuff with your mates and film it all for likes. I’m passionate about lending our ears to the lived experiences of others, or those with a greater education than us in the area we are hoping to see change in.
Having said all this, and being clear that I think protesting is a healthy part of democracy, I couldn’t help but feel a white hot rage at people protesting last weekend about wearing masks, and the Covid-vaccines. A lot of those people are also angrily sharing their desire to travel without being vaccinated. The reason for my reaction is simple, it was the same weekend people were protesting the slaughter of Palestinians. And let’s be really clear, the toll Covid is playing on individual freedoms is nothing in comparison to the drawn out segregation and degradation the Palestinians are being subjected to, and have been since before many people at the anti-mask protest were even born. The lack of self awareness just made me sick to my stomach.
Going back to my previous point, there’s nuance, sure, but there’s also some hard truths cutting through the motivation of a bulk of those protesters… They care and have mobilised because it directly affects them. They want to go and get a tan abroad, fuck the locals and whether they’ve had access to vaccines or not. They want to be able to have freedom to shop, drink and be comfortable, fuck the vulnerable “they can stay home” they say, or “they’ve all been vaccinated”. The complete stupidity of those statements is staggering, as it shows that a bunch of entitled loud mouths have actively refused to listen to any scientific evidence at all… The vaccine isn’t 100% effective, not all vulnerable people have had their second dose, it’s unknown how effective it is for people with certain conditions anyway. But yeah, hard life for you having to wear a mask.
There’s people up in arms about a vaccine that simultaneously pump their faces full of fillers for cosmetic reasons while thinking the pharmaceutical industry is lying for profit, because obviously in contrast the beauty industry is there to help humanity. There’s people who love recreational drugs, shouting about how they won’t put unknown stuff in their bodies. It’s pure fuckery.
I believe in body autonomy, and the right to choose whether or not to have the vaccine. Even if I don’t like the choice someone makes, I think it should be theirs to make. I don’t believe in people protesting about it, simply because they have not been treated unfairly by being offered it for free! I don’t believe in the idea that just because you’re “entitled to an opinion“ that you should stage a protest. Especially if you are not actually being oppressed!
Pro-Palestine protesters effectively shut down a drone factory in Leicester this week, disrupting production that they believe might lead to the deaths of innocent civilians. They chained themselves to the gates. Hearing this made me feel proud of my fellow man. Their protests will be unlikely to directly benefit them, they also run the risk of facing legal action from the company, much higher stakes than marching about on a high street.
It’s a matter of opinion, but to my mind, a protest is needed when vulnerable groups are at risk or being oppressed. A protest is needed when human life is being valued below the health of the economy. A protest is needed when democracy is failing.
Ultimately, in the last year when we’ve had allyship and activism talked about on the daily, if you still only ‘show up’ (whether physically, or with financial support, or via educating yourself) when you’re directly affected by something, I think that’s pretty shoddy. If lockdown has taught me anything, it’s that we can make the time and space to lean into learning about the experience of others, or we can lean into our own experience further and get tunnel vision.
The more you engage in listening to the nuance of what looks like our shared experience, the less you’re capable of summing up your activism in a meme though, so clicktivists beware!
If you think this is unfair, ask yourself what actions you’ve taken for causes where you aren’t specifically affected, if the answer is none, maybe you’re just being defensive.
A brief list of things just here in the UK that you could have campaigned for/against:
The way many landlords didn’t pass on mortgage holidays to their tenants during the pandemic and the government did nothing to regulate this.
The government giving contracts worth millions of pounds to their associates, friends and donors.
The free school meals debacle.
The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, trying to shut down safe legal routes for refugees; for example, the family reunification of unaccompanied child refugees.
When the government scrapped reforms to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) which would have allowed trans people to self-identify.
The fact people in certain care homes had blanket ‘do not resuscitate’ orders placed on them during the start of the pandemic, without being consulted.
The fact the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill wanted to reduce the right to peaceful protest.
