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Demonstrations and protesting in what you believe in are as much a part of our American history as is our flag. Our freedom of speech is protected by the constitution. Our right to peaceable assembly, no matter how much it may irritate some people, is set in stone.
The recent landslide of protests in the illegal immigration arena is the perfect example of the tolerance America displays on this front. Even if you are not a citizen of this country and are here illegally, we Americans will let you tie up traffic and disrupt our daily lives so your voices can be heard. That’s just the kind of people we are, let freedom ring!
It doesn’t matter what your cause is. America protects your right to protest or display it, no matter how much the masses disagree with it. We still see little flare-ups from our most disgusting of residents, the white supremacists, but their numbers are so small nowadays that they don’t even warrant any press coverage. They have almost become a parody of themselves. But we still let them march around in their hoods, carry signs with swastikas on them, and no matter what the majority of us think of them, there they are in all of their putrid misguided glory, free to spout their ugly agenda in our streets.
What about the rest of us though? Don’t we have agendas to push and things that are bothering us? There are a lot more people that aren’t demonstrating and protesting than those that are, regardless of how large the crowds may look on the TV screen. It is everyone’s right to exercise this freedom provided to us but I don’t think we are getting as much mileage as we could out of it. There are a lot of people sitting on the sidelines and it is time for all of us to get in the game.
We all have those little things that irritate us, but most of us working Joes have a tendency to just let them go. Let the other guy pick up a sign or get on the soapbox, I just don’t have the time or energy. I have to walk how many blocks carrying this banner? Waving that flag for twenty-five blocks? That sounds like too much like exercise.
But there are other less physical ways to show your civil disobedience. You could join an already pre-established group that uses the Internet as their form of protest. You could also hook up with a right wing religious group who likes to write letters to television stations and movie studios trying to hamper what can be viewed by the public, if that is a topic you embrace or you just like to write letters.
Or if you are lucky enough to get an opinion column that is published in a newspaper and on the Internet, that can work
too, but there are very few of those gigs around. If none of those grab you and you still feel as though you are shirking your constitutional responsibility to demonstrate or protest then maybe you could start your own grassroots movement. Trust me there is plenty to rage against and you won’t have to look too far to find them. Trust me, I find them on a weekly basis.
It doesn’t have to be a big or important one, in fact you may want to start small, you know, just to get your feet wet. For example, I don’t know how most of you feel about TV commercials, but there are some that should be banned. Sit N Sleep and their pitchman’s screech of “Or your mattress is freeee”, Citi Bank’s idiotic man who can’t hang up the phone because he can’t get through to his bank and is willing to burn down his house in the process, or any commercial advertising a drug that won’t tell you what it is used for.
Or how about the most unsettling advertising right now? The increasingly creepy Burger King commercials featuring the freakish plastic headed, well Burger King. Some people might think these are OK, but I think you have to be doing some serious drugs or experiencing a 60’s acid flashback to find them entertaining.
I have literally had nightmares about this royal plastic headed monster and even thought I saw him behind the wheel of a Lexus the other day on the way to a softball game. When something is invading your consciousness when you are asleep and awake it is a danger and should be protested. If somebody wants to begin a movement against the King let me know, cause baby I’m there.
If TV commercials are not important enough to get you off the couch or even change the channel how about something that is affecting the entire country? One thing that has been happening for the last couple of years that I am surprised has not had the masses in the streets. It has impacted every single one of us and has had a devastating effect on our economy on every level. That of course would be the skyrocketing gas prices.
Recently the last couple of big jumps in price have been eclipsed on the news by all the illegal immigration hoopla, but in case you missed it or haven’t been to the pump in the last week, be prepared. If the costs now don’t make you nauseous just wait until this summer, because we, and that is “we” as in all Americans, are in for the biggest reaming yet at the pump.
Like I said, this has been going on for a while but they, whoever “they” are, have been playing games with us which may be why the masses have stayed quiet for so long. The cat and mouse game that has been going on is outrageous. First they would raise it up .20 cents then slowly inch it up to .30 cents. Then when people would start to squawk they would drop it by a nickel. Then we would all feel grateful that the price would go down, even though we were really paying .25 cents more than before.
Then as if to prepare us for the future, last year they made even more dramatic rises in the price with the warning that last summer we could be paying $3.00 a gallon for regular unleaded. When it didn’t happen in the suburban neighborhoods we all felt grateful as though we had dodged a bullet, and once again we maintained our silence.
Now here we are again just before summer is to arrive and the prices are starting to make more dramatic rises once again. Yet nobody is saying a word unless asked by a reporter while at the pump. Minor indignation is registered but nothing close to a call to arms against evil “they”.
OK, so we all know who “they” are, it is the gas companies. You know the guys who for the last two years have recorded record profits while the rest of us are being swallowed whole by our dependence on our cars. Sure last year Congress started looking at the possibility of price gouging by the gas companies, but as usual, the evil “they” played their usual shell game and the investigation soon fizzled and they went right back to raising their prices.
So how long is this going to go on and how high do the prices have to get before all American’s start taking to the streets? Are we going to wait until we are paying $4.00 a gallon or when a head of lettuce costs us $5.00? Because that is where we are heading. While we would all like to make a statement by doing something as simple as not driving our cars for a month, we all know that would not have the same impact as a march on the capital or 500,000 people showing up on the doorstep of Exxon.
So we better start thinking about doing it soon, because shortly we won’t be able to pay for the gas to get us to the demonstration site and it’s a long walk to the White House from here.
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