On Mon, 2002-09-30 at 09:20, Owen Byrne wrote:
> In my experience, this is classic "American" behaviour, and I don't
> think its on the increase outside of the US of A.
In my experience, this protest behavior is really only an issue in
"ultra-liberal" coastal cities, which is where I normally live.  It is
part of the culture and that behavior is viewed as acceptable.
For comparison, contrast this with the character of the arguably more
serious protests against Federal government abuse in the inter-mountain
West.  They have a very different idea of what constitutes acceptable
protest practice.  Those protests remain largely civil and polite, if
heated and aggressive, and those involve a far greater percentage of the
local population.  And unlike 99% of the liberal coastal city protests
I've seen, the people protesting in the inter-mountain West are actually
facing immediate dire consequences from the activities they are
protesting and are strongly motivated to protest in a manner that gets
results.  Some of their tactics, such as the practice of many businesses
and restaurants in northern Nevada to not give service to anyone known
to be in the employ of the BLM and related agencies, have been very
effective at forcing dialog.  I don't recall anyone characterizing their
protests as impolite, rude, or violent, but then they have more to lose.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com

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Re: Re[4]: A moment of silence for the First Amendment (fwd)
From fork-admin@xent.com  Mon Sep 30 19:59:02 2002