Protesting

I feel a certain amount of shame for spending the day reading about complex systems, eating chinese food and chain smoking while others are in London protesting about the occupation in Iraq. What makes it worse is that barely 25,000 people (as reported by the Guardian) showed up for the march in comparison with the hundreds of thousands of last year. Do people care less than they did last year? Or have we learnt that protesting doesn't get anything done? Perhaps that is one of the government's real victories, by ignoring the people Tony Blair removed one of the only modes that people had to fight back, the protest. And we have let him.

But, at the same time, I know that protesting doesn't do anything. I marched in enough rallies last year to realise that all it ever does is make a statement, and if that statement is ignored then other means must be looked for to fight against the current powers. A protest does little but make alot of noise, what needs to be done is to attack the very system, to cut one of the lines of power, to turn discourse on it's head, and a protest will never do that. Capitalism, with all its flux and change, can simply assimilate the statement into itself; as long as surplus value is accumulated, the Capitalist System, and it's Liberal Democracy, will simply remain as it is.

I accept that there are times when a statement must be made, when people need to show their anger or anguish but this remains a statement, albeit a powerful one. When we are ignored we must make ourselves heard, protests fall upon deaf ears so we must make a louder noise, even if that noise is in silence.

It makes me think that perhaps I am better at home reading about complex systems. At least if I understand the system I will be able to do something about it. Maybe the silence that I keep for now is worth a million of my rantings on the street.

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