On Democracy

[deborahw37]

The right to peaceful protest is enshrined in democracy. It's one way of getting your voice heard and reminding the government that they were elected to govern all, not just those who voted for them. Having been part of many a peaceful protest myself I have often been infuriated when news coverage ignored the thousands of us who were protesting

Comments

[pondhopper]

Perfectly stated, Deb. I have had to back away from FB and make a list of only a select few to read as I was seeing far too many vicious comments and anrticles about how violent the "sore losers" are being. Nothing further from the truth. There are always those who will take advantage of peaceful protest to create violence and sadly quite often those of the opposing opinion to the protesters are involved in the violent actions. This week has left me weary in mind and body though I am trying to shake off the doomsday feeling. Thank you for this statement.

[deborahw37]

Often people latch onto a demonstration for the sheer fun of it and cause mischief and small things cause violence. Last night I intervened in a brawl in a station capark.. two men with bruised and bloody faces, one woman ostensibly *calming her husband down* but really egging him on. I walked over and quietly asked what earth they were doing, what had started this? It turned out that one car had parked too close to the other , the occupants had got off the train tired and cold to find they couldn't get into their car. The other driver returned and angry words turned into thrown punches. It was that simple and that stupid and that easily fixed by standing between the two men, asking the woman to go back to her car and then saying that though I could call the police surely it would be better if everyone just went quietly home.

[pondhopper]

Well. That was rather brave of you. You might have come away with a black eye or two. Or worse. But go you for being calm and for defusing the situation. I'm glad it worked out.

What you say about people latching onto a demonstration is totally true. I have seen it happen in person back in my youth and even more recently.

[deborahw37]

*g* no danger. I'm Home Office trained in control and restraint and I teach conflict resolution and management of challenging behaviour so I'd be a pretty poor teacher if I couldn't use the techniques I teach . I'd risk assessed what was going on and would not have intervened had there been any danger to myself.

And yes , people seem to love to join in some chaos. We ate a strange race.

[pondhopper]

I know you are trained and what your job is but still...seeing any sort of violence makes *me* automatically nervous so it's my own instinct speaking here. I'm glad you can hang on to your knowledge when necessary.
:)