Protest Warrior

Since the Florida 2000 debacle, there has been a new upsurge of conservatives "takin' it to the streets". In fact, back in November 2000, about 10 days into the madness, your host was involved in organizing and putting on one of the first "No More Gore" demonstrations out in front of San Francisco City Hall (As well as getting and setting up the sound system, I was the emcee!). A friend of mine was the primary driving force behind that demonstration, and other friends helped with getting the permits, leading us in song, etc. About 200 people showed up, and for me, it was the first taste of the new spirit which has come into politics since Bush took office.

Since the run-up to the Iraq war, with its massive A.N.S.W.E.R. organized, commie-backed anti war protests, an organization called Protest Warrior was started by a couple of "regular dudes" to act as an on-the-scene antidote to the lefties. They created a lot of "leftist-like" protest signs of their own to throw a monkey wrench into typical radical sloganeering. One of my favorites is this one:



You can go to their webpage to see all the posters, as well as action reports from the various protests they've been to. Front Page Magazine has an interview with the Protest Warrior founders, who have just finished making a one hour movie of their exploits. I'm downloading the movie now, and will update this post after I've watched it.

Update: I've watched the movie and I give it a thumbs down. It doesn't have enough of a narrative arc (it would have been interesting to see how Protest Warrior got started, for example), and has long, drawn out, unedited sequences of the Protest Warriors being about as obnoxious as any left wingers ever are. The footage they have could be useful as material for someone else's documentary covering a bigger topic, but the movie just doesn't cut it.

Watching it leads me to the conclusion that the whole idea of street politics naturally belongs on the left, not the right. I remember during the anti-war marches of early 2003, how the protestors and the media were all hepped up about there being 3 million people out there worldwide and how they must be listened to. "Yeah", I thought. "5.97 billion people were not out in the streets. I think we need to listen to them."

Really, I think it's pretty neat that sober people, rationally, calmly, and quietly pulling a lever in a voting booth beats the mobs in the streets, with the added benefit of leaving the mob utterly bewildered when it loses.

Still, though, our little demonstration in front of City Hall four years ago was cool!