Why protesting makes me uncomfortable GlobeDebate
for blocking Toronto’s Bloor Viaduct. I volunteered at the Toronto protest, carrying a first-aid kit as well as several bottles of Milk of Magnesia and water – for washing out people’s eyes in case the police used pepper spray.I genuinely hate protesting. I’m a writer, and we are not known for our joiner mentality. “I don’t do activism because I find chanting slogans and carrying signs deeply dehumanizing,” a writer friend texted me recently.
Why is protesting such an uncomfortable enterprise? It may be because a protest is a perfect storm of social awkwardness: It’s where the tidal waves of conformity and nonconformism smash into each other. A certain type of stylized group behaviour is expected – you are supposed to wave signs and chant slogans with the others. There are logos and emblems you are supposed to wear.
Environmental activism doesn’t appeal to some people because it has tended to be very white and upper-class and often elides the contributions of Indigenous movements. As a subculture, it has a further embedded paradox: It’s alienating in its familiarity because it draws so heavily on protest music of the 1960s.
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