four points on fixing protest.

1a) pick a battle. by this i mean several things, but i think an example is in order. have any of you attended a protest recently? i did not too long ago (i think canice was taking pictures) and i couldn't tell you what it was about. there were signs and speeches on everything from palestinian apartheid, to genocide in darfur, and i think i remember conversation about islam, somalia, and probably foreign aid. all of these are important problems with the modern world, and there is no real arguing that. but at the same time, if protest is to be at all useful, you can be generalists on dissent. if someone comes up to you, and asks 'what is it about the world that you are trying to change?' your answer needs to be short enough that there is a chance they will listen. pick a battle. fight like hell for your one battle.

1b) pick a battle. there is no place in this world, sad though it is, where you will be able to both challenge the acceptability standards for appearance, and the workings of governance. i am sorry. this is unfair, it's discriminatory, and it is undeniably true. if you desperately need to drive home the point that you can look however you want and still be successful and smart, then your appearance is your cause. you are sacrificing many things to that altar, and one of them is the ability to have controversial opinions taken seriously by mass groups of people. this isn't some kind of pro-conservative dress rant. but if the people whose minds you are attempting to change dismiss you out of hand, it doesn't matter if they are wrong. it only matters that they have stopped listening.

2) don't be a fucking child. do you want to know what killed the anti-globalisation movement? the battle of seattle. not because the sheer power of the activist mindset so scared the foolish capitalist that they went crazy with security, but because the entire movement was discredited with every smashed window, and every store that was closed afterwards. it got harder for protesters to show up to summits, because the police were waiting with teargas and riot gear. reading press from the time, the activist explanation was that they had done so much already, that they had the bad guys running scared. wrong. they had the completely harmless people, the ones they might have convinced, horrified that the anti-globalisation movement was really just a bunch of young, militant psychos who were going to trash their mini-mall. if you throw your fucking tantrum, if you attack goods and services in a misplaced outrage at CEOs, the people are going to see you, rightfully, as a threat. if the counterargument is that non-violent protest isn't working, then refer to the first sentence of this point. only children resort to violence against those who are merely ignoring them, not acting directly against them.

3) pick a battle you can win. you will not eliminate capitalism in north america, and then worldwide. you won't. impressive goal, i see your reasons, i've read naomi klein too, i get it. but it isn't going to happen, at least not by your hand, for many reasons. first, you haven't presented a good alternative yet. if ethical capitalism (yes, it IS possible) isn't an option for you, if all capitalism is evil, than you need to start your own society, because you are asking for the dissolution of this one. when you try to change something that has become intrinsic (i am not saying natural) to the state of the world, you are essentially asking everyone who is on the working side of the equation, to throw away the system they know and work within, for no guaranteed gain. i understand fears of being co-opted by those in power, and why working within the system is ideologically abhorrent to many. regardless. if you want to change things, you need people on your side. if you are going to try to win them over with the promise to tear down their house, without any blueprints for a rebuild, they aren't going to listen.

4) don't do it for you. i don't mean to suggest that protest is inherently selfish. i'm just making the point that almost every protest is designed in a way that appeals to those who agree, and further alienates everyone who doesn't. if your numbers were so great that you didn't DESPERATELY NEED to bring those on the boundary into the fold, the would would be the way you want it. don't throw a protest that, at best, serves to recruit more people who are either identical in ideology to you, or, at worst, a mass of idiot teens who are rebelling simply for the temporary buzz of stepping outside the mainstream. the design of an act of protest is usually why most people walk by with half a glance and a chuckle at the one last true believer from the vietnam era, shaking his ponytail as he screams into the 11th grade masses.

i would be more than happy to work with someone to create a more viable, and less self-defeating plan for an act of organised dissent, if and when anyone contacts me to do so. i respect ethics and hard work aimed at a desire for a better world. i don't respect the way protest has become a dead horse race.