![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nwhikerI was watching video from the protests in Berlin, in France, in Amsterdam, all peaceful. People from the rest of the world protesting human rights abuses in the US.
I remember marching, while I was living in France, against South Africa.
It's a sobering thought. We're now the country people protest against.
I haven't been to any of the protests. I've been to many over the years, some big, some small, and taken the kids (Perry wasn't even a month old at his first one), but after my near miss at WTO, I'm very careful about which ones I go to, and which ones I take the kids to. These, now? Not for me. The probability of things going wrong is too high.
My WTO/Battle of Seattle story: it was 1999, AC was about 2. I was planning on going to the WTO protests with a friend, we were going to be marching with, iirc, a local environmental group she volunteered with (I think it was somehow affiliated with the Sierra Club, I don't remember.) We weren't supposed to go with the big event, it was just supposed to be a stand around with signs at a local park near the main planned protest area. I was driving across the bridge, Anne-Chloe was whiny and fussy, and it was the day we usually went to the indoor gym with all the cool riding toys she loved. It was cold out. And here's the funny thing: I'm not sure this next part is true: over the years I've always said I'd made the decision to bail while listening to a report on my local NPR station that talked about start of disturbances. I just do not remember that at all, but that's how I recount the event, even if I have no direct memory of listening to the radio. Maybe I was just lazy. Anyhow, regardless of why, at the UW exit, I turned the car around and went back to Redmond. Called my friend from an OMG pay phone, she hadn't left yet, but she eventually decided to give it a miss (I wonder what happened to her. She moved to Austin early 2000, to work with a company working on Y2K stuff and I completely lost touch with her. And her name is so generic, I'm not sure I could track her down).
All that to say that I feel I should march in support, but I just have no desire to end up in the middle of a riot with tear gas etc. BTDT with the tear gas (in France, not the US), and it's ZERO fun.
I remember marching, while I was living in France, against South Africa.
It's a sobering thought. We're now the country people protest against.
I haven't been to any of the protests. I've been to many over the years, some big, some small, and taken the kids (Perry wasn't even a month old at his first one), but after my near miss at WTO, I'm very careful about which ones I go to, and which ones I take the kids to. These, now? Not for me. The probability of things going wrong is too high.
My WTO/Battle of Seattle story: it was 1999, AC was about 2. I was planning on going to the WTO protests with a friend, we were going to be marching with, iirc, a local environmental group she volunteered with (I think it was somehow affiliated with the Sierra Club, I don't remember.) We weren't supposed to go with the big event, it was just supposed to be a stand around with signs at a local park near the main planned protest area. I was driving across the bridge, Anne-Chloe was whiny and fussy, and it was the day we usually went to the indoor gym with all the cool riding toys she loved. It was cold out. And here's the funny thing: I'm not sure this next part is true: over the years I've always said I'd made the decision to bail while listening to a report on my local NPR station that talked about start of disturbances. I just do not remember that at all, but that's how I recount the event, even if I have no direct memory of listening to the radio. Maybe I was just lazy. Anyhow, regardless of why, at the UW exit, I turned the car around and went back to Redmond. Called my friend from an OMG pay phone, she hadn't left yet, but she eventually decided to give it a miss (I wonder what happened to her. She moved to Austin early 2000, to work with a company working on Y2K stuff and I completely lost touch with her. And her name is so generic, I'm not sure I could track her down).
All that to say that I feel I should march in support, but I just have no desire to end up in the middle of a riot with tear gas etc. BTDT with the tear gas (in France, not the US), and it's ZERO fun.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}