Current music:

The Beatles - Revolution

001. You Say You Want A Revolution, Well, You Know, We All Want to Change the World

[Hexed Private]

Lately, I have taken to reading a lot more history books than I usually do, magical and otherwise. (Amazing, all this time I have freed up by not being able to sleep. I had another one of those nightmares again, where they decide to start tagging and subsequently putting down magical beasts... Either the other blokes don't notice, or they have the good graces not to say anything, though I would be mildly surprised if they had good graces. In either case, I am immensely grateful.) I was reading a book the other day about peaceful protests, particularly in the United States during the Vietnam War, which came to a conclusion only recently.

Sometimes, I wonder if, perhaps, people shouldn't protest like they do. It is not that I don't agree with what they are saying, and it isn't that I do not believe in everything they do, but sometimes, I worry that it will just exacerbate things. For instance, a fair few people died peacefully protesting during the Vietnam war in America, where that is supposedly legal.

Protests against the brutality and stupidity of the war in Vietnam, started slowly, beginning in Berkeley,
California in 1965. By 1968, there were massive anti-Vietnam war marches, protests, sit-ins and student strikes
in major cities and on college and university campuses across the country. A turning point was in on May 4,
1970, when four peaceful student demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio were murdered by Ohio National
Guardsmen during a noon-time campus anti-war rally. Nine other students were injured by being shot by Ohio
National Guardsmen on May 4th. After that, things got very nasty across the country as thousands of students
took to the streets, outraged at the shedding of blood in America by government agents. Anti-war protests
became increasingly violent in tone; some college campuses became virtual war zones, with arson and bombings as
well as low-level vandalism, such as spray-painting and window-breaking......................................................

It seems like all the great reformers, the civilly disobedient, were killed for doing what they were doing. Ghandi, who fought for equality in India regardless of caste, was assassinated. Martin Luther King, who fought for civil rights in the United States, was assassinated. Even Thoreau, the (at times inattentive) father of civil disobedience, was jailed for his beliefs. Rosa Parks, too. And in Africa, where they protest against the Apartheid regime as we speak, all their peaceful protests came to was the Sharpeville massacre.

In northeastern South Africa, a protest organized by the PAC on March 21, a group of between 5,000
and 7,000 people converged on the local police station, offering themselves up for arrest for not carrying
their pass books. According to the Times newspaper, there was random shooting in the morning of the day on
which the massacre happened, and this later prompted crowds to stone the police vehicles, at which point the
police fired on them...................................................................................................................................

Sixty-nine people were killed including 8 women and 10 children, and over 180 injured, including 31 women and
19 children. It is debated whether or not the police attack was provoked. Many of those killed and injured were
women and children; the photographs taken at various places in Sharpeville at the time of the massacre show no
sign of any weapon which might cause the police to open fire on the protestors. The statements of Lieutenant
Colonel Pienaar show that the mere gathering of blacks was taken as a provocation:.......................................

"The Native mentality does not allow them to gather for a peaceful demonstration. For them to gather means violence."

Not even the bloody farmers at Larzac have gotten what they wanted, and their requests are reasonable. Things are still more or less entirely unresolved. The French won't budge, and the farmers won't budge. Everyone is just... stuck.

In 1971, the French government announced their intention to extend the military camp on the Larzac plateau,
an arid area in southern France where they claimed that "almost nobody lived". Local farmers strongly disagreed
with this assessment and, inspired by the example of Lanza del Vasto (a philosopher and follower of Mahatma
Gandhi who had gone on hunger strike for two weeks in their support), they embarked on a campaign of
non-violent resistance..............................................................................................................................

I'm at a bit of a loss for what I think about the whole lot of it. I worry that nothing will come of it. I worry that it will be a lot of trouble and a lot of friction that doesn't end up helping, anyway... even if the posters are lovely.

But then, I remember what happened in Germany when no one was ready to fight changes such as these, and I know we cannot stand for it, either. If we do, one day we will wake up and we won't know when everything changed, but nothing will be the same. We will all be too busy denying that something like this can be happening to us to do anything about it, and then it will be too late.

You know, there were times when protests were successful, as during the American Civil Rights movement, which resulted in considerable advancements for the marginalized and disenfranchised. Now, it seems they are often violent and ineffectual. Perhaps it isn't a problem with protesting, perhaps it is just a problem with the scale of the protest. The smaller it is, the fewer involved, the easier it is to ignore. Public unrest can be powerful - as evidenced by the French Revolution - as long as it doesn't get out of hand. Then you find, as the peasants did, that what you have now is just as bad as what you had then, but now it's your own fault.

Things that seem this clear-cut should actually go about being clear-cut. It would make life much simpler for those of us who still like to think that they care.

[/Private]


Those posters someone has posted about are very interesting. The content as well as the composition, which strikes a cord similar to that of the work of Ellsworth Kelly. Just a thought, you know. I sort of wonder who posted them, but I suppose that probably doesn't much matter, as the idea remains the same, regardless.

On an unrelated note, if anyone has come across a somewhat ratty green wool sweater with R. J. Lupin written on the inside collar in black laundry pen, I would greatly appreciate its safe return. I am perfectly content, by the way, to assume that there was some sort of mistake in the wash resulting in its current status as lost, even though I don't remember asking to have it washed, as even magical washing tends to shrink the wool, and I was relatively certain that it was folded up in my trunk. Stranger things have happened. In any case, I would really like to have it back, as it's right drafty around here even in fairest weather, and that happens to be my favorite sweater. Thank you.

- Remus J. Lupin