Even if your goal is to make people aware of your situation or the situation of your group, you're still essentially saying that your problem is more worthy of attention than another group protesting for a different cause.
How is it saying that, may I ask? How is asking for help saying "Oh, save the dolphins - but don't save the orangutangs."
Obviously, a protest is saying that when it comes to an opposing side - say, the side that wants to drain the oceans versus the side that wants to save the dolphins.
But I don't see how a protest to . . . make the air cleaner would be saying to people "We're more important than the people who want freedom for Tibet!" I don't see how they'd conflict unless they're two opposing sides.
Running around the street going "boo-hoo" will make people aware of your problem, sure, just like a screaming child makes people aware that he is unhappy. It won't make them care, in fact, they'd rather you just shutup.
You seem to have this view that ALL protests must be a bunch of whiny people crying and throwing rocks at passerby and stealing their money. I don't SUPPORT that kind of protest. That's harassment.
I support a group of people calmly making people in the vicinity aware of their problem through open discussion, handing out information, and politely approaching passerby and asking for their support.
If it inconviences a few people, that's unfortunate. But unless you're such a whiny little bitch that having a person stop you on the way home for work and politely ask if you'd like to wear a certain-colored ribbon and take a flier - it's not hurting anyone.
Of course, if having a group of people put up signs and hand out information makes you so upset that it just ruins your whole day and makes you want to lash out at the world - I submit that it's YOU, who have the problem, sir.
I'm sick of the whining. Everybody can find something to bitch about. People can single themselves into minorities based on any endless number of criteria, from race to gender to religion to employment status to ethnic groups to schools to hair color and whatever else you can imagine. There's plenty for everyone to be concerned about, yet people are only concerned about themselves, and protesting is as much an example of this as ignoring the issues.
So by your logic, unless a group protests for EVERYONE and EVERY ISSUE all at once - no one should protest at all? Guh?
Yes, everyone has their problems. That doesn't mean that every group should be forced to suffer on their own. If that were the case, we might as well throw the whole political system out the window because everyone has their own issues and no one could ever possibly agree on everything - so what's the point in trying?
What's wrong with trying to ask for compromise? For appealing to people and their sense of decency or logic or charity or whatever?
I don't see how a peaceful, civil, protest could do anything worse than make a couple of whiny bitches complain because "Some lady stopped me for three seconds outside my building and I'm so mad I could just KILL SOMEONE! How dare someone from a group of people attempt to talk to me or share their opinions! KILL GRAH!"
Which is still the very strange sort of view I'm getting from you two.
You got the part about advertising right.
Protesting is nothing but advertising your cause. Not a bad thing to do, yeah? Look at it this way: Businesses advertise. Why? Because they want to get ahead of the other companies, to push their products ahead of everyone else's, to brainwash you into choosing their stuff. You like that? So you want to say that a technique used on something so petty as a consumer product should be implemented on something so important as a political choice? Sounds like you're cheapening the cause.
See, now I see it the opposite way - finally putting advertising techniques to use for something less petty than making more cold, hard, cash.
