State Government - Assignment 4

Under what circumstances would you participate in protest activity? Are there any forms of protest that you would refuse to use? If so, why?

When I was growing up it seemed like everyone in my family was anti-protest and none of my peers would even consider being involved politically. In high school the only issue that I would have considered picketing against was abortion, but there wasn’t a clinic anywhere near our humble little town, so it wasn’t exactly practical. As I grew older and began to attend college my view of protests gradually changed. In history class we read about Martin Luther King, Jr. We talked about these issues in my American Government and English classes, as I recall, as well. I began to watch some more serious movie, and saw Roots, Malcolm X, Ghandi, and some other historical films. One of my history professors even gave a lecture once about what it was like for him to go to college during Vietnam.

Something that I was always aware of growing up is the fact that my great-grandfather had been a member of the KKK. I didn’t know many black kids growing up, in fact there was only one family in our town for a couple of years, and everyone else was Caucasian or Mexican-American or Native American, with the exception of one Asian family that ran the town’s Chinese food restaurant. I was in band with one girl from that African American family for a couple of weeks (before she quit), and she was always disrupting class, ignoring the teacher’s instructions, and there was one day that I got so mad that I called her the N-word. I’ve always regretted that, I don’t know if I ever saw her again, and I know I never told her I was sorry.

As a child I always felt stigmatized because the only time I knew of white people protesting was when they were holding on to segregation or anti-War, and neither of those takes on those issues have ever applied to me (my father served in Desert Storm and our family is very pro-military). I have gradually become more anti-War but would not protest the war in Iraq. I no longer support it, but at the time it began I did: when everyone just knew that they had nuclear weapons and Hussein was acting like Hitler, I supported it, but now I feel like the U.S. needs to just get out of everyone else’s business and worry about things at home. I believe in protecting our borders but at this point I’m content to let the world blow itself up as long as it doesn’t blow us up. Who are we to get involved in other countries’ issues?

I will not protest gay marriage. I doubt I will ever protest at an abortion clinics. I most definitely would never lynch anyone or burn anything on someone’s lawn. A sit down, that I would do, a march, almost definitely, but it feels like no one cares about anything to protest anymore. People march for different things now, like finding the cure for cancer, birth defects, etc. I used to be very interested politically and now I am just tired. I can think of no issue that I care about enough to protest. My biggest form of protest at the moment is going to be not voting Republican: I haven’t even changed my party affiliation yet.

I feel like the country that I grew up loving is falling apart and I don’t know how to fix it, what to protest, but it’s like the smell of death is hanging over my head. I cannot put this fear into words, I cannot yet give voice to it, but I feel it every time I turn on the news or read the newspaper. I wish that I knew how to protest this, I wish that I knew what I could do, but all I can come up with is joining a militia. That’s so extreme, so anti-peace, and I don’t want to do this. But I am no Ghandi and have no idea how to bring about change. I feel small and insignificant and cut off. My only form of protest is my blog, and I don’t even have the time or energy to devote to that, it just takes it out of me. I refuse to burn the flag and I refuse to blow things up, but I’m afraid that those forms of protest are coming anyway.