The price of protest - Shawn Loughlin editorial
Not many people could be accused of lumping together the ideas of privilege and protest, but there are some ways in which the two intersect if you really stop and think about it. In this day and age, it takes a certain amount of privilege to protest something for a prolonged period of time.
Watching the documentary This Place Rules recently, the brainchild of YouTube-based journalist Andrew Callaghan (who has had his own problems as of late), he documented life in the United States in the months leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C. He visited people in the poorer regions of the country, while attending rallies and protests largely supporting far right wing causes, like those supporting Donald Trump and his “Stop the Steal” movement - a debunked theory that the 2020 election had been stolen from him, the rightful winner, through various means.
That juxtaposition, he said, showed him that most people - repressed, opposed or not - just didn’t have the time or money to protest anything, as they were more focused on making enough money to pay their bills and get to the next week with food on the table, a roof over their heads and heat coming through the vents. People driving or flying from all over the country to attend Trump rallies, he made the case, lived lives of a certain degree of privilege to be able to uproot, travel and stay for several days, weeks, etc., all in an effort to demonstrate how oppressed they are.
I hadn’t thought about it that way before, but it makes a lot of sense. And we had a perfect example of this here in Canada when hundreds of people drove 18-wheeled trucks from one end of the country to the other (at a time when gas prices were as high as they had been just about ever), to whine about having a lack of freedom, unencumbered by counter-protest or official opposition. Furthermore, upon arrival in Ottawa, the protests would last for just over a month, meaning some people stayed there for weeks (again, because they had no freedom whatsoever) seemingly knowing they would eventually return to a heated home with food in the fridge and a nice bed to sleep in.
Hotels were overrun during the protests (in case you haven’t stayed in a hotel in a while, they aren’t cheap either) and people would also parachute in or out to the protests as their schedule allowed, with many from this area making the seven-hour trip.
I sure know that if I took an unscheduled one-month vacation it’s unlikely that my job would be here waiting for me when I returned and it’s unlikely that anyone would have paid my bills for me while I was gone.
Certainly a stop-and-think-about it moment when you, you know, stop and think about it.
Going back to Trump and his “Stop the Steal” cronies, they made their way to Washington, D.C., stopping their lives in their tracks, from all over the country to do his bidding. They so believed his lies that it soon became the most important thing in their lives that they travel to their nation’s capital and protest a problem that doesn’t exist (outside of the spun tales in their own minds). They flew, they drove, they stayed in hotels and they dined out, all to spend a few days with like-minded individuals and commiserate over how horrible their lives were since Joe Biden had been elected President of the United States.
Meanwhile, political leanings aside, most people couldn’t afford (financially or otherwise) to make such a trip because they were busy supporting families, putting food on the table and ensuring they didn’t lose their homes. Ah yes, the pricey life of protest.