Pittsburgh does surprise, it is true, for beyond his yuppie appearance, it is a hub for culture, higher education and top research. However, the yuppie appearance is rooted in a much deeper reality for your average "Picsburgher" had lived in the area for generations and is a little bigot, racially biased and dwells on the border between a moderate conservative and a moderate liberal. Not to mention that his average age is above the average US age and that it is still has, among all cities of its size, the lowest immigrant population. Thus big demonstrations and organized protests are quite uncommon for this city, and the protesters that the G-20 summit brought along are quite a reason to worry for the locals. as one of my co-workers noted" If they could not handle the Super Bowl , why did they imagine that they could handle a G-20 summit"?
So, on one side the city has to allow protestants -though a few Greenpeace members are already in jail- and on the other side it is totally unprepared to face the protests. And I do not mean logistics, I mean mentality.
for as my Earthwalking friend notes:
"the only protests left in this tamed and polymerized world are full of crazy anarchists and undercover policemen , disguised as members of the left. But, among them, there are serious resolute activists taking big chances. The protesting groups represent a diversity of opinions, including those belonging to Thomas Merton, the most peaceful among Americans, the ones who organized the 2005 protest against the war in Irak.[...]
Leftists from all over the world are hosted nowadays in your average american home , some of them are even sleeping in churches, in sleeping bags"
I spoke about her post with two of my neighbors and they did agree that some of the protesters are very serious and they do have a point to make, however their attitudes are no less panicky. On one side, they do not have the experience of such events. On the other side, they are just expressing the worries of the average American, worries voiced during a school discussion on the impact of the Patriot Act on the average citizen's right to privacy. We do voice our freedom, but we are also scared that the most unreasonable among us are free as well.Many more people seemed more scared of losing their lives than they were of losing their freedom, not knowing that to lose your freedom can be worse than losing your life...
The issue raised by the need to deal with Factions, especially the most violent among them, is as old as the United States itself, maybe older. In his 1787 article (the Federalist #10), James Madison stresses the importance of factions for democracy. "Liberty is to faction what air is to fire". Beautiful metaphor -- Factions , like fire, are as necessary to our life as liberty or air is. For fire is the source of progress and we could not imagine our life without . But fire can also be a source of pain, destruction and death. And so are factions-they stand for our individuality, for our beliefs , our passions that move us forward but also push us to destruction.
9 comments:
I don't think there will be much destruction as a result of a few demonstrations at the G-20. There will be an awful lot of destruction if the gap between rich and poor gets much wider, if the climate change reduces the amount of arable land by half and so on. The right of the average person to protest is so valuable that just in asserting that right, the protestors are doing us all a favour.
Paul,
I tend to think that the city is acting paranoid too- though I do not mind to get two days off without wasting any vacation time.
And I agree that pollution will do more damage than the Greenpeace banner. Much more damage...(I added the link btw.)
However, "factions" in the end does refer to suicide bombers and terrorist attacks as well.If you read the article in the federalist , you will note that Madison warns about the danger of denying protesters the right to express themselves for fear of vandals or terrorists and not only ...
Hi Paul! It is nice to read a comment like yours.
today around the campuses there were so many helicopters, police bikers, and i felt like telling them all: don't worry, the students are so quiet. they are so quiet indeed! no posters, no flyers. the action is somewhere else.
Earthwalker,
for now it looks like there is more police than protesters...I wonder if Obama knew that if he organizes the summit here , protesters will have less local support than in other cities?
:)
yes he did
I take back what I said about the students! There were many students at the protests today.
about the destruction . one man job.
All the "destruction" amounted to a few broken windows. I have to admit that both protesters and police showed restrain, with a few exceptions...
Unlike you I had been a coward, I did not made it past the river -I stayed on the south sore which was eerily quiet. And as Paul noted , I have to thank you for doing me a favor...
with pleasure! next time you will be there, too!
there was another romanian there, a PhD student from CMU. I put her pics on the blog! I didn't even meet her at the protests, she showed me the pics afterwards. Take a look!
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