Volume CXXXIII, Number 15 February 8, 2002 f

Protestors do more harm than good
PATRICK ROCKEFELLER

The best news of the week has to be the fizzled protests in New York City. What was expected by some to be a Seattle/Genoa-esque protest was thankfully reduced to a relatively small handful of disorganized banner-wavers.

Whether it was the recent tragedy that quelled enthusiasm for breaking Starbucks windows, or the strong but respectful police presence, or just bad weather, a protest was not what New York needed last weekend.

And while the protestors are dead wrong in the vast majority of their insurrectionary, anti-capitalist, anti-globalization, anti-McDonald's, Corporate Oppression, Nader For President, Anarchist, I Hate America, The-War-in-Afghanistan-is-Racist antics, the real reason they will never change anyone's mind is simple. People outside college don't identify with them.

People support the police, enjoy law and order, and want to go about their daily lives and provide for their families without being yelled at to support an End to This, or a Coalition for That. Middle America does not like what it sees in the protestors. As Rod Dreher writes in the National Review Online, "If objecting to the globalists means standing shoulder-to-shoulder with pierced-and-tattooed ambisexual wackos yelling hate-America slogans and cursing the president, well, fuggedaboutit."

While one can't seem to keep track of the myriad of groups vying for attention, they all seem to coalesce under the guise of anti-globalization. The great irony, of course, is that the anti-globalization movement is about as globalized as it gets, using the Internet, pagers, and cell phones to coordinate protests across the world.

Thankfully, New York did not get a reenactment of Genoa, where a supposedly small number of violent anarchists were able to turn crowds against police, resulting in one death. I've seen the pictures, and contrary to what all the supporters say, it looked like more than a few protestors were bent on violence that week.

Modern-day protestors lack the unifying force of the Vietnam generation. And while not everyone protested in the 1960s, wide support existed for those who did. There was a general consensus that they had moral right on their side. While some may wish to make legitimate grievances known in a peaceful and non-disruptive manner, too many of their fellow protestors aren't interested in real conversation.

The result is a loosely knit group of disrespectful, largely ignorant people bent more on disruption than achievement. Not that their true motives would matter anyway, for as long as protests continue in the manner seen in Seattle and Genoa, the protestors will do more harm for their cause than good.