[Dialogue] A Witness [Sort of]

[Gordon Harper]

They're At It Again!


That troublesome band of prophets---or whatever they're calling 
themselves this time---they're at it again. For weeks and months now, 
they've been out there with their followers and signs, occupying spaces 
that the authorities should be keeping open and clogging up traffic. 
Respectable tradesmen and hard working shop owners like us don't need to 
fight our way through still more congestion to get to work! Good luck if 
your tea shop or shoe repair stand is in the town square, or you work 
anywhere near Walled Road! There's no way to tell, from one day to the 
next, whether you'll even be able to get to work.

As usual, these nay sayers are sending mixed signals as to what it is 
they want. The speakers all have long lists of injustices they decry and 
dire warnings about where we're headed, all the usual terrible 
consequences that will befall us if we don't change. Still, it's not 
clear what changes would satisfy them and get them to pack up and go 
home. Whenever my friends and I talk about them---and we seem to be 
doing that more and more these days---we shake our heads at how confused 
their message is.

God knows, we're familiar with the usual protests of groups that feel 
they've been hurt or somehow left out of the benefits of our system. 
"Here are our demands---meet them or set up a committee to negotiate 
with our leaders, and we can all get on with our lives." That's 
something we can deal with: simple, focused, tangible stuff.

This is something else, and that's why it's so frustrating. These issues 
are all over the place. They sound like someone reciting the contents of 
a peddler's bag. Have you seen their signs? Tell me something that 
they're not protesting! Some huge gap between the haves and the have 
nots? What on earth are we supposed to do about that? It's obvious they 
don't have their act together, and the rest of us are getting tired 
waiting for them to pull up their socks.

Speaking of socks, that's another thing about this group: it's 
attracting a pretty unattractive set of people. You can see a lot of the 
scruffy and unwashed in their midst, along with increasing numbers of 
the shiftless and homeless, as well as some whose mental health has to 
be in serious question. Vagrants and unemployed are one thing, but now 
rumors are flying of hashish users and violent types also joining them.

Many of them are young people who should be working or learning a trade. 
Of course, those are some of the things they seem to be protesting, the 
rising costs of apprenticing and the difficulty of finding a job. 
They've got a point there---entry apprentice expenses have gone up way 
too much and too fast, and the job market is terrible. Still, they need 
to address these issues responsibly: discuss them with the shop owners 
and craft trainers, get their butts over to the job fairs and military 
recruiting tents, speak up at the forums when the officials are present. 
Come on, you guys, send your grievances and petitions and resumes to 
those in charge of such things---and stop causing a public nuisance 
that's not going to do anyone any good!

In spite of our frustration, we have made a number of good faith efforts 
to do things for the group. Our town council just passed a resolution 
saying we should end some of these wretched wars we're in, which seems 
to be one of the things this group is calling for. I hear quite a few 
people have now stopped going to those big money lenders that we know 
are guilty of some pretty shady practices, another thing the group 
supported. But do these things satisfy the protesters? Hardly---they're 
still at it, as if this barely scratches the surface of what they're 
after. It's enough to try the patience of Job!

Of course, we've had our disruptions by bands of prophets before in our 
history, but this one seems somehow different. Many of these people 
don't leave their space, even at night---they just pitch their tents and 
camp out in our public areas, as if they were somehow entitled to squat 
there. And now the weather's getting worse. The authorities have every 
reason to take strong action, especially with the group including not 
only students but families and even seniors old enough to know better.

Another difference, this group seems to be experimenting with some form 
of utopian community. To demonstrate, I suppose, the changes they think 
all of us should make. They talk about operating so that every voice is 
heard, while they still claim to be after full consensus on this wide 
range of issues. We know all too well that's impossible and would take 
an ungodly amount of time if it weren't. Add to that, they're 
continually rotating their leadership, which has got to lead to chaos 
and makes it very hard for us to pick out who's really in charge here. I 
understand that they let anybody form or join small groups and come up 
with proposals which they can then bring to their rowdy mass meetings, 
what they call general assemblies.

You should see these assemblies; they're pretty strange. Where we can 
run a meeting perfectly well with a single strong leader, they need four 
people to handle crowd control (they call these "facilitators"). They 
have to 1) monitor the rules or guidelines of their process, 2) keep 
track of everyone who wants to be heard and line them up to speak, 3) 
keep everybody on topic and 4) interpret and propose what they see as 
the consensus.

You'd laugh if you went to one of these assemblies. The sessions are 
full of their own internal jargon, incomprehensible to the rest of us 
("Mic check!" "On stack!"). They have a childish kind of "repeat a line" 
system for their outdoor gatherings, where those up front echo what a 
speaker is saying to those at the back of the group. There's a lot of 
jumping about and waving of hands---no doubt helps them keep warm at 
night in this weather---along with a bunch of comical hand signals they 
use to interact with whoever is speaking.

I mean, do they seriously think this kind of group behavior points to 
any better system than what we have now? Really!

So, maybe these people aren't quite what we've historically known as 
prophets, or maybe they're stretching the definition of that word. I'm 
hearing "movement" applied to them more often these days. They claim 
they're not making specific demands because the problems we face are too 
complex to boil down to a few bullet points. That making demands of "the 
system" is fruitless anyway---we can't expect the system to make the 
changes required when it's that system that's at the heart of the 
problem. That they have to keep occupying their space to get everyone in 
on the conversation, if we're going to have a prayer of coming up with 
real, adequate solutions.

But that's a huge, indeed, a global task! Who has time to think about 
such things? You and I certainly don't; we're carrying a plenty heavy 
pack already, thank you very much! Gives me a headache just thinking 
about it! No, send those questions over to one of our wise men think 
tanks, or maybe set up a super committee to come up with answers to 
them. Don't try to lay that job on us ordinary folk.

Still, that's precisely what these people are trying to do---and at 
bottom, that's what really troubles and irritates us. The longer this 
circus goes on, the more decent, ordinary folk are getting sucked into 
it. Last week, the cobblers met with these protesters, and yesterday, 
there was a group of camel drivers in deep conversation with them. We're 
hearing that our neighboring towns and villages are having similar 
experiences. Who knows, this contagion could even now be spreading all 
across the land---even in other countries.

And I'd hate to prophesy what that might lead to.


/~~ Gordon Harper/

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