Sunday, January 03, 2016

I haven't done a protest in a while.



Honestly, my reserve nerve has been dead for a while. So, I didn't even have one brain cell that would find any of this entertaining. Which I kinda used to before it was so real. But a couple of days ago I noticed our local news was advertising a protest. Which I thought was really odd. Well, mostly. I'll explain later. I wasn't willing to go to San Fransisco for this crap like I have in the past, but I will go to San Jose.

I had sort of suspected that NBC had encouraged this protest. The news van was there pretty much before anyone even arrived. We went early and got burgers at The Counter. Our local news will cover the most minuscule protest as long as it's about how Merica sucks.  Really, there could be one person protesting and the local news would be there. Where sometimes people get killed in my city and no coverage at all. Also the usual places you find information about protests didn't have this particular one. Nothing on twitter. Nothing on indybay. Anyway.



To my surprise the usual instigators were not in attendance. No ANSWER INTERNATIONAL. Or any of the RevCom people. Usually every protest is a mishmash of stupidity. This group was manly protesting that Imam getting executed and the repressive regime of Saudi Arabia. A lot of the signs said Saudi Arabia = ISIS. I think there are a lot more pressing issues than the Saudi's right about now. But that is me.










It wasn't until I got to this guy that he actually engaged with me. Which has never happened before. I'm really happy to walk the shadows. I'm not about getting into a protest fight. He said " I hope you really understand what this means".  My thought bubble was saying a bunch of nasty stuff about other repressive regimes in the region, but I basically said - you tell me. Because I'm at a point where I have a lot of issues with the Middle East, but it never hurts trying to know what stupid circular logic protesters are using these days.

My basic agenda starting out was - say, I completely agree with you.  How would you solve this problem? Knowing the whole time whatever this guy says is likely a lie. This whole culture knows we don't understand them well, so they can say anything.

He went on about the repressive regime of Saudi Arabia. Which I told him I greed with. But I didn't understand why they didn't protest about other repressive regimes from the same region. Most of the conversation was diversionary. I would say. He thought free college was a great thing which had nothing to do with anything. Then a girl decided to take over the free college torch. Whatever. It was odd how much social benefits filled the conversation though. The only thing I could really get out of them was they wanted the government to stop calling Saudi Arabia an ally. That apparently would solve everything. And from the signs they wanted sanctions which IMO never do anything.



They did manage to squeeze out about a hundred people though. The more interesting part though is - I didn't want to walk the gauntlet to get back to the car. So we walked down the block and crossed the street. When we got back about in line with the protesters on the other side of the street was one of those sign guys. As we got close to him he took out his ear buds and asked us what we thought of this. Mr. S. said he wasn't sure and relayed what the protesters told us. We asked him what he thought of it because his job was to spin a sign on the other side of the road. All he has was time to watch. He said he wasn't sure either but he seemed miffed that Obama was siding with the Muslims. Which was freaky because this guy was black. A part of my heart grew two sizes bigger. He was the unicorn! I guess prison left him a little unhappy with the Muslim faith. Yeah. People will literally tell me anything.



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