Enough. I’ve become completely sick of hearing people say, “those demonstrators hurt their own cause when they…” broke the law, shouted too loudly, acted outrageously, left a mess, didn’t shower beforehand…

Now I have to rant (loudly, of course) about it.

Have you heard these types of comment before, too? It seems every news report, opinion column or letter to the editor about any unusual public protest always includes some witness, journalist or political opponent sagely pointing out how terribly improper it all was.

Those people doing a tree-sit to prevent a parkway near Bear Mountain were littering the forest!

Those activists blocking traffic made me late — they certainly won’t get my support any more!

Those students were blocking the pathway to the military recruiters — how disrespectful!

It’s like we’re all a bunch of snooty-nosed, delicate folk who find it insufferable when the filthy chimney-sweep walks through our tea party.

Here’s a 9-1-1 to the snoots: There’s a war going on out there. People are dying in our streets. People are dying from pollutants. Our soldiers are killing people. There’s nothing polite about any of that and, if you’re going to fight it, chances are, you might occasionally have to be a bit impolite yourself.

I’m not justifying assassinations and firebombings. But simple impoliteness or token hypocrisies (e.g. handing out paper leaflets against over-logging) do not, by definition, render a protest inappropriate, invalid or ineffective. In fact, it’s the criticisms on such grounds that usually have hypocritical underpinnings, often emerging from worldviews which fail to reasonably balance issues of rights and power.

Consider the recent anti-war protest by UVic students. Many were upset the students, exercising free speech rights, overwhelmed the area and didn’t show enough respect for the military recruiters’ own rights to speak freely at the job fair.

In these critics’ minds, apparently, freedom of speech rights in Canada are ordinarily on a level platform, absolutely inalienable and equal for all, while these students grossly skewed that balance in their direction to the detriment of democracy.

But the last time I checked, those recruiters were part of an institutional military machine with a budget reaching $15 billion annually, and with virtually unlimited ability to broadcast their messages through news media and ubiquitous advertising. Were a handful of (probably debt-ridden) loud-talking students even close to being on equal footing?
Meanwhile, if the students should dare try to get even one anti-military ad onto prime time TV? Good luck. Adbusters has for years almost always been turned away trying to buy air time for even much more benign ads criticizing cars or television.

It’s acutely ironic that some professional journalists in particular censured the students on such grounds. Journalists should know better than anyone how radical, unpopular or anti-establishment viewpoints are only very restrictively permitted access into major media. (The Green Party isn’t even allowed into our televised leader debates!) Besides, journalists also know both they and most leaders usually pay a lot of attention ONLY IF protests are impolite or outrageous. When has anyone covered my protests, for example? Seen any front page headlines lately screaming, “WRITER SENSIBLY QUESTIONS IN HIS COLUMN DUBIOUS ASSUMPTIONS BEHIND POLITICAL DECISIONS”, followed by prominent leaders weighing in (politely of course) on my appropriately-placed and diplomatically articulated public protest? But balaclava-clad men, riots, and celebrities wearing bleeding fur coats make juicy top-of-the-hour stories.

But here’s something crucial about most protests we should never forget: They emerge from relative disempowerment. Few people actually like to do them, so group protests typically surface under pressure like erupting lava. You might feel the whole legal system is stacked against you and the political system only serves certain interests; that’s often the case. You might rightly feel you have no adequate means of expression through our media. And under these kinds of difficult, cornered-animal conditions, reactions understandably may spew out awkwardly, desperately or outrageously.

And lest we forget, protests have historically grabbed attention and caused change usually in direct proportion to how socially disruptive they’ve been. Ghandi, King, Hoffman, Hoffa and the Suffragettes were not a deferential bunch.
Now, just because you tie yourself to trees or bike naked doesn’t automatically make you right. There are still issues to be weighed. But in this kind of context, politeness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Yes, reasonable decorum can be helpful when we’re trying to dialogue. But let’s face it; if the discussion is leading towards establishing that I’m WRONG and maybe even that I’m BEING STUPID, at some point no matter how diplomatically you frame it you’ll probably seem cruelly impolite to me.

That’s why demanding politeness at all times can have insidious effects. Politeness is not to be equated with human decency; politeness is a cultural expression of the current institutionalization of power. If a high-ranking boss at a business meeting gently issues you an order, that’s a politely accepted part of your job. If you gently counter, “No, do it yourself”, that’s impolite, improper, maybe even offensive.

Then, if the boss steps on your bare toe, how do you feel if he keeps stepping on it mainly because he thinks you’re not asking him to get off it in a polite enough way?

Human decency is something we rediscover by disposing of any need for politeness. So I say, give us more truckloads of toxic waste dumped on CEO’s lawns! More fake-blood-smeared bodies outside stores! More pies in premiers’ faces!
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Originally published in Focus, March 2008.