In email:
My request is that you actually tell people what G20 is actually about. If you want people to send you over there, it’s only fair. It’s not just a trip to London they’re nominating you for. (Maybe, given that you are generally pretty pro-labor, you could talk about how the Labour Representation Committee are strongly opposed to G20. Or you could talk about how G20 protesters have been systematically targeted for violence and unlawful arrest.)(/soapbox)
I’m pro-labour, but that’s different from being for the Labour Representation Committee, who are real honest-to-god hardcore socialists (as opposed to American “socialists”) in the old-school “ideology before practicality” mold.
Honestly, G20 protestation – much like WTO protestation – is frequently ridiculous because it’s so undefined. One of my great dislikes about liberal activism is cause-collation, or as people commonly recognize it, “when Free Mumia signs show up at a gay rights rally.” G20 and WTO protests, in my experience (and I’ve seen/attended a few) inevitably end up being colossal wankfests because they’re not really about anything, they’re just a giant chorus of “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG” and while that’s not untrue it’s also completely unhelpful.
I know I am going all Toby from West Wing here, but if you’re going to protest labour policies or climate change policies or poverty policies, great, but pick one at a time because the inevitable message class just gives the appearance of a group of disorganized, clueless hippies and/or “in it for the experience” protestors. (Go figure that a campaign to go in-city camping to protest carbon trading regulation would be considered unserious!)
And why I want to go to G20? From their site:
We are inviting 50 influential and knowledgeable bloggers to attend the G20 Summit on April 2nd in London, UK, where they will get unprecedented access to world leaders and thinkers and the chance to ask questions about the issues important to them. 20 of those bloggers will be nominated by you.
I’ve had the chance to put questions to Jim Flaherty and Stephane Dion already, so I consider that practice for something such as this. Rest assured, if I go, the questions I’ll be asking will be about international climate change policy – and I’ll have consulted with several of the leading environmental law and international law professors in Canada before I go because I’ll want to do it right. (Also, the whole Jon Stewart “only the court jester can really ask such of the king” sort of deal.)
Addendum: those of you following me on Twitter, feel free to direct a tweet to “G20Voice,” because they have decided to make themselves accessible via Twitter because, I dunno, politicians love Twitter now for some reason, and talk me up.
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You try to wow me with your TV-Series knowledge? Oh, please. Everyone knows Toby from West Wing is just a shaved Vartox in a suit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCWdIRgPXsg
For those unfamiliar.
On one hand, I admire and respect protesting as a way of airing social grievances. I’ve been to some very well organized protests in Cleveland and there isn’t anyone in my immediately family who hasn’t participated in one. On the other hand, yeah… there’s way too many dumbshits out there. Maybe I’ve been one on occasion. I like to think not, but I’ve learned never to underestimate myself.
I think there’s a sense of generational anxiety to blame. People want to feel like they’re doing something, but they really can’t figure out what to do. What most people don’t appreciate is that the peace movements, the civil rights movements, homosexual rights movements, and the feminist rights movements were all responding, in one way or another, to attacks (real and perceived) on their or their community’s well-being. They had direct issues and used protests as an organized tool to call down public attention on them. It’s not like they didn’t have to deal with their dumbshits, either — idiots in the crowd with no agenda and lots of anger have always been an organizer’s bane — but they had demands instead of mere desires.
Forty-five or so years later, the whole mess has been lost in this haze of hero-worship and middle-class anxiety (“holy shit, we might actually have to admit we’re effectively rich!”). So you get a lot of intellectuals trying to find their identity in myths about the past.
Or maybe I’m just bitter I never got in the pants of that one girl who was in the Radical-Left Cheerleaders, back in college. Yeah. Maybe that was it.
I think you’re coming down too hard on such protesters, similar (and with lots of whiffs of the nineties overall intelectual culture demonizing such groups and efforts) to the common notion that they’re usually a bunch of vague hippies, bums and students that have no Rage Against the Machine show that week.
From my experience (mostly vaguely connected through labor organizations and unions) they’re quite articulate in what they’re opposing. How one can oppose is usually the hard part (and also part of the reason for the protests – one is also protesting against how there is no possibility in entrance and participation on what will shape their lives. Much is undefined, compared to the deals themselves, because too much of what they oppose is undefined to the public – something also protested against – and one can’t even begin a dialogue since they’re usually just treated as “anti-globalization” and “anti-jobs” and so on).