The discomfort of protest
When Black Lives Matter Toronto staged its protest at this year’s Pride parade, it brought everything to a halt. The parade started moving again only after Pride’s executive director met with the group and signed a document agreeing to its demands.
If the sit-in lasted thirty minutes, the virtual response was even faster.
That much of the reaction to the protest was negative shouldn’t come as a surprise. In recent years, Pride has come to be seen by some as a largely festive, rather than political, event. Some complained that the protest inconvenienced others, causing a long, hot delay. Others questioned the effectiveness and timing of the protest.
What surprised me was my own very negative reaction to the protest. As I read through social media and some of the coverage in the press, I found my initial feelings affirmed. I agreed with those that said a militant group had held a city (or at least one million of us) hostage.
I went to work the next day in a grumpy mood and was surprised to find that my colleagues did not share my anger. Instead, they supported the protest, how it was staged and what it achieved. Slowly, as I listened to their arguments, my anger disappeared and I started to look at why I felt uncomfortable in the first place.
We’ve probably all been part of one protest or another. Whether it’s protesting the lack of affordable housing by supporting the setup of a tent city, the cancellation of health care for refugees or the weak enforcement of labour laws, the list of worthy causes is long. They call for housing solutions for people who are now homeless, highlight human rights violations, or point to the need for better protection of the most vulnerable in our society.
Protests by their very nature make us feel uncomfortable. Protesters want to convince us that our current society is not good enough. They want us to change. And change usually requires some kind of provocation.
In this case, Black Lives Matter Toronto is calling for change to a system that allows for – or perpetuates – anti-black racism. Although we may not see ourselves as creating the system, the truth is that we are all part of it. It is uncomfortable to admit that the system exists, that we allow it to continue without doing something about it. We want to reject the idea that we should be held responsible.
Our first reaction will be to push back. We will try to ignore what we’re hearing. But what happens next? As a communications professional, I’m particularly interested in how our communications methods have changed how we engage with each other.
A decade or two ago, technology didn’t allow us to engage immediately. Our first reaction was more private. Yes, we could have been loud – but our audience would have been small. Our closest friends would have gotten an earful. At most, our anger might have led to a letter to the editor or, for a privileged few, an op-ed in a daily paper – both written after a period of reflection and probably edited more than once. We would have had time to think about our response and become more aware of our language and the impact it would have on others.
Today, we can comment in an instant. We can send our outbursts of anger into the world while standing in line at the grocery store – literally without even sitting down to think. While these new tools give more of us the opportunity to broadcast our thoughts, they have also diminished our capacity to think before we act.
As a result, we engage in a discourse that allows no time for learning, understanding or listening. As James Hoggan shows in his excellent book, I’m Right and You’re an Idiot: The Toxic State of Public Discourse and How to Clean It Up, we no longer attempt to have better conversations with those who disagree with us.
The way we talk with and about each other matters. The choice of our words matters. When columnists use words such as “hijack,” “bullies,” and “hostage” to comment on the Black Lives Matter Toronto protest, they paint a picture of a movement that can be linked to criminals out to destroy our way of life.
Of course, protest movements such as Black Lives Matter often use very strong language themselves. But that is their purpose. Sometimes we must forgo subtlety and politeness to highlight injustice. Only by being blunt, direct and loud can protesters raise awareness of an issue that is so strongly embedded in the system that many fail to even see it.
Protesting is not meant to make us feel comfortable. We actually need to sit with our discomfort to deepen our understanding of the issue. That will allow us to move past our unease to begin a dialogue about what brought about the protest in the first place. And that won’t happen by fighting a war of 140 characters or less. It will only happen by engaging each other with open minds and thoughtful discussion.