Dear protestors...

[friend_of_tofu]

...who threw shit (including possibly a fire extinguisher) off the roof of 30 Millbank...

...please go die in a fire, you fucking knobjockeys, and stop diverting attention from a serious and important issue by doing stupid, dangerous crap which could injure or kill people.

This entry was originally posted at http://nanaya.dreamwidth.org/350682.

Comments

[alextiefling]

I think it's important to recognise that the reporting follows the violence. I attended a peaceful protest outside both Conservative and Lib Dem HQs back in May, and we got extremely favourable coverage from the BBC - and a favourable response from at least some of the politicians we were addressing. If we'd thrown and broken stuff, we'd not have got that response - and then the BBC coverage would have been different. That's journalism - man bites dog is news.

[alextiefling]

We were calling on both participating parties in the coalition negotiations to pay attention to the demands of the public for a more representative voting system. We managed to get Nick Clegg to come out and talk to us in person. (Conservative HQ seemed deserted, so we left there after a bit.) As there's a referendum forthcoming next year offering the possibility of Alternative Vote rather than First Past the Post, we did all right. Time will tell whether that translates into real lasting political change, but you can't change the world overnight.

[beingjdc]

I have to confess to being somewhat entertained by a protest which has to claim as a mark of success the ability to speak to a man whose political power would be immeasurably increased by the measure for which that protest is calling. I dare say if a crowd formed under my window chanting "What do we want? You to be more important! When do we want it? As soon as you sell out all your other promises!" I might also go and talk to them. The AV campaign isn't progressive politics, it's Stockholm syndrome.

[friend_of_tofu]

None of it stopped some rent-a-banner people from tagging along with a 'Capitalism Isn't Working' banner. Even as someone who, you know, isn't actually a big fan of capitalism, I (and quite a number of other people there) were really rather pissed off by their complete obliviousness and hijacking of the event. That's not what we were there for, you wankers.

We did protest outside 30 Millbank and got on the news though, without needing to break anything.

[friend_of_tofu]

Mm, I've attended quite a lot of protests over the years and I've been lucky in that I've never been subjected to especial state oppression (eg police brutality). Actually, as a rule, I've spent plenty of time having laconic chats with eyebrow-raising police officers - on one occasion (Protest outside Stonewall's V & A event), our protest group was complimented by the police as being extremely well-behaved!

Maybe that's because we didn't throw or break anything.

I've always believed that it's really very pragmatic for activists to try and maintain the moral high ground for as long as possible, because the public memory is a strange thing.

[friend_of_tofu]

I'm not sure what you mean by my implication. In case it wasn't clear, in my example above, we were told what well-behaved protesters we were, but not why. I speculated that it might have been because we didn't throw or break anything - which those officers might (or might not) have experienced in the past

[friend_of_tofu]

Sorry, that was not the interpretation I intended to suggest - I was attempting to consider why the police officers thought, and said, that we were particularly well-behaved protesters, since I don't know what prompted them to do that. Such a suggestion would obviously be nonsense, since many many people *have* been beaten and arrested in just such circumstances, including poor Ian Tomlinson as previously mentioned. That said, I would imagine doing such things might well increase one's chance of arrest/beating, but not necessarily.

[friend_of_tofu]

I don't blame the BBC; they're reporting on stuff which is news. Everyone with any sense knows that violence at protests overshadows everything else, it *always* does and that's what they become remembered for years afterwards. What are the famous images & concepts of the miners' strike in the collective public consciousness now? Showdowns with riot police and Hancock & Shankland, of which this could easily have been a repeat if someone had been hit by an extinguisher thrown from the top of the building. G20? Killig of Ian Tomlinson and showdowns with riot police.

IMHO, not only is putting one's own political interests before other people's lives and health absolutely disgusting behaviour, it is also absolutely counter-productive. Violence at protests gives the state the perfect excuse to crack down, restrict protest, get the riot police out and then do what they were going to do anywayDo police forces harass and abuse protesters? Yes, of course, it definitely happens. But so far I've heard nothing reputable to suggest that that was

[friend_of_tofu]

For all I know, they were actually undercover cops inciting the violence. Well, in that link the BBC had a quote from a named female student from Manchester who got on the roof, giving her reasons for being up there and the people there behaving as they had. Yes, they might have completely made it up and she might be fuming right now at how she's being misrepresented, but I've got no evidence of that. I also think different media sources behave differently, and different protests are reported differently, so each has to be assessed on the facts of its own case

[friend_of_tofu]

I wouldn't classify destruction of property as violence, not at all; I regard placing property on a par with living beings in such a way to be an abhorrent feature of capital-orientated thinking