Marching to a Different Drummer
Yesterday, I drove up the Granville Street hill and passed the public protest against China and in support of Tibet.
Maybe one day I will be proven wrong and all these protests will turn the tide.
Maybe if people had marched with placards in 1943, fewer Jews would have been murdered in camps in Europe.
Maybe the marching is the important thing and the result is secondary.
But in my heart, I don't believe any of this.
I think it is easy to yell and scream and wear a cardboard sign around your neck about conditions many thousands of miles away. I think it is stupid to go to a foreign sovereign state and hang banners from beloved monuments.
I think it is far braver and more to the point to work diligently at small, local problems in our own back yard.
6 comments:
No sillier David than the warm and fuzzy people that sport a "Free Tibet" bumper sticker. Which accomplishes, what? On a slightly different vein, another equally silly bumper sticker is:"Animals are our friends. Don't eat your friends". My response to that nonsense is, if we were not intended to eat "animals", why are they made out of meat?
Why then is China so worried about these protests, so far away from home? Why is China so worried about the Falun Gong protestors in Vancouver and why does our Mayor want to get into lock step with China's concerns (oh yes, the bottom line)? Tourism?
Word on the street in Islamabad/Rawalpindi is that over a thousand people were killed in the protest at the Red Mosque, not the hundred or so that was reported. Why is the press not reporting this? Is it not credible? This sounds much like Tianamen Square. Governments are very threatened by protests and for that reason alone, we should protest. Here we risk nothing to protest, perhaps that is unless we originate from somewhere else and still have family back home.
excellent comments, both of you...many thanks...
solve the small problems first, before they become enourmous ones like the RCMP?
My fellow Canadians always seem to enjoy seeing some of us going to other countries to embarass them by pointing out their failures. Can you imagine the hue and cry that would follow should some Chinese people come here and hang a giant banner from the Lions Gate Bridge proclaiming "Vive Le Quebec Libre"?
While I know you're just using Quebec as an example, Quebec doesn't affect China, what China does affects the world greatly. Besides their human rigts abuses, China also relies on the world to purchase their often sub-standard and, as we are now learning, sometimes very dangerous, products. They invite our interest.
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