Protest: Easy to mock, harder to take part in [View all]

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http://www.suntimes.com/news/steinberg/12587570-452/protest-easy-to-mock-harder-to-take-part-in.html

Protest: Easy to mock, harder to take part in

NEIL STEINBERG [e-mail] Twitter: @NeilSteinberg May 18, 2012 7:14AM

Protest is an unpopular habit. Few do it. Which makes it like voting. Americans are big on defending our freedoms; on actually exercising them, not so much.

Think about it — given all the woe in the world, the crimes committed, the ongoing wrongs, at home and abroad, have you ever made a sign, marched down a street, spent an hour voicing your opinion? Protest takes guts. snip

The general attitude seems to be a desire to not be bothered. Most just want to get to work. We crave normalcy and resent the idea that our commute might be affected. Which perhaps should give us pause, maybe more so than the protests themselves. Some fellow citizens feel strongly enough about this to take buses a thousand miles, and we’re concerned we might have to step around them on the way to the office. We must really like that office. Not a shameful thing, particularly in this economy. But nothing to be proud of either. I’m not saying that we need to get hot and bothered about the Alberta tar sands. But remember: all the evils in the world were committed while pliant populations put on their blinders and hotfooted to work. There are injustices out there, gathering environmental calamities, and given that some care about that a lot, I think it’s incumbent upon us, as Americans, to at least care about that a little, enough to glance at what they’re saying and try to extract whatever sense might lurk within. You might not feel the urge to march — most don’t — but would it really hurt to listen to what they’re saying, and think about it?