Protests are a call to action

If you have ever attended a raucous protest, like the one that occurred at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh this past week, you know the reasons protests occur and why they are numerous and sometimes insipid. Everyone has their grievances but the common artery in this heart of darkness is dissatisfaction with the government. Unfortunately, the amount of stupidity that protestors generate is almost always greater than any political gain they might accumulate.

Let’s take a look at what happened: G-20 arrives in full fanfare in Pittsburgh on Monday, Sept. 21. The leaders, ambassadors and financial officers of the top 20 economies of the world have a week of discussions about financial reform. The most prominent meeting place was, according the G-20 Pittsburgh hosting Web site, the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. This building is the largest designated “green building” in the United States, according to the leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards.

Nations talk about climate change, environmentally safe economic growth, trade and a host of other important topical issues. Meanwhile three to four thousand protestors from various organizations arrive to protest the convention later in the week. The Thomas Merton Center, a Pittsburgh peace group, sponsors a legal peace walk and protest on Friday just outside the convention center. Groups protest about every considerable topic: bank bailouts, Tibetan freedom, war in the Middle East, nuclear proliferation, etc. By and by these protests go well, and the majority of the crowd disperses after voicing their concerns.

So why did the city of Pittsburgh spend up to, or perhaps even above $19 million on insurance, terrorism protection and thousands of riot police? On Thursday, an illegal protest began outside of the convention meeting places. According to the New York Times, what was estimated to be 400 protestors dressed in black began to hurl rocks, light Dumpsters on fire and push said Dumpsters into police lines. Obviously the police weren’t going to reply to that sort of behavior with hugs and kisses.

Police responded with pepper spray, rubber bullets and friendly beatings. By Thursday’s end, the Pittsburgh mayor’s office reported 66 arrests from the riot, casting a shadow on Friday’s planned actions. By the close of Friday, even though most protest groups remained civil and orderly, another 100 arrests were made when student protestors decided to carry on past the specified protest time.

While I encourage political speech, these kids are a bunch of morons. The top 20 economies in the world show up in Pittsburgh to talk about billions of dollars worth of initiatives and they think a few hundred anarchists and riled-up college students are going to threaten them enough to satisfy their demands? Get real.

The only protests that have ever worked required hundreds of thousands of people, all acting as one for a single cause. Even then, if they are disorganized or their cause is not valid enough, they still won’t gain any public approval. There were perhaps 4,000 people acting in individual cells at the summit, the police to protestor ratio was practically 1:1. If anarchists and students were truly serious about political action, they wouldn’t have started what amounted to a temper tantrum just to get arrested and ruin the civility of a peaceful event.

Governments crackdown on dissidence-not dissent. Believe me, if two million people showed up in Washington D.C. demanding that banking executives who were getting paid exorbitant bonuses return that money, the government would comply. It requires conviction, planning and above all intelligence to effectively hold the government responsible.

A protest is a call to action. If you want the governments of the world to listen, you have to use an alarm they will actually care to hear.