The final nail in the coffin of public protest as a method to effect policy change. That, and some nudity

So this morning, after a misadventure in the mundane details of life [automotive, if you must know], I went to this. Embarrassingly, Puddinhead has a long history of public nudity, albeit usually more in the sense of gleeful shenanigans than actual protest events, and so he felt obliged to have one last go-around. Living in a city that still has a comparatively thick hippie population, I get treated to the occasional protest in the street against Bush or Iraq or Ashcroft or oil or whatever. I'm no great fan of Dubya, and I can understand the cultural momentum that underlies the genuine protest sentiment. Time was, one could get the people together and actually accomplish something. At one point or another, some folks decided that protests weren't actually going to get the job done. These days, in the United States, it seems pretty clear to me that protests don't do a damn bit of good, and, in particular, why this one with the naked people and the bikes was woefully flaccid. [If you skipped the first link, it was a "naked bike protest" to increase awareness of alternate forms of transportation.] There are several reasons for this protest impotency:

1) In terms of trying to influence the current President, you can't even get close enough for any policymakers to actually hear you. [Of course, it's not like they even bother watching the news anyway.]

2) Do protesters actually vote? I'm looking for numbers and am not really coming up with anything definitive. For the time being, I'm going to speculate "no", mostly because ...

3) Protests are no longer political events but social ones. Probably the greatest example of this is a lengthy New York Times article on the enormous grassroots to-do of the Howard Dean presidential campaign, yet somehow couldn't get past the notion that people who did this made social bonds and fell in love. Much was made of their social awkwardness and the seeming acceptance they found by volunteering in the organization, indeed, the article didn't really touch on Dean's politics at all. Is this what the movement amounted to? A cure for loneliness, as compared to a genuine thrust for social and political change? You bet.

4) Anybody who has any real power these days is a lobbyist anyway. Ever wonder why all the laws are slanted to benefit the rich? It's because they're better at bending ears! If the sorts of protests you see nowadays changed things, we'd have marijuana at the grocery store and free patchouli in your mailbox. Okay, we might have universal health coverage too. But the people who are pushing for these things are either a)not rich or b) really shitty at disseminating their message to the right people.

As you might well imagine, the naked protest ride flopped as a protest. Why? It was a social event. It invited lots of gawkers [a bunch of newspeople, the usual cadre of Girls Gone Wild-type photographers, several TV news trucks], got the front page of the local paper, and, let's face it, there's no way it would get that sort of participation without a gimmick. The "protest" element was restricted to yelling at streetbound pedestrians, either walking or waiting at bus stops, that driving sucks and one should seek alternate forms of transport. Er, like they were doing.

To add a tinge of nastiness to the proceedings, Austin both prides itself on being liberal but has gentle racial tensions unheard of in other, more "conservative" cities, like Houston. Which is to say, Austin is full of privileged white folks who are fine with the idea of recreational drug use and homosexual experimentation but are not quite so sure about making friends in the "bad" part of town. Despite having say, a 12% black population in the city, wandering anywhere west of the interstate that divides the town will net you zero sightings. While Austin's racial divide is a topic for another post, it was palpable to be in a phalanx of well-heeled hippie whiteys riding bikes, telling the poor folk and pedestrians that they should be bicycling when they're too poor for cars or almost anything else. There may have been some uneasy solidarity between the hippified Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Panthers, but it sure don't seem that way now. Somewhere the hippies either got rich, or turned into crystal-bearing earth mothers, or both. In the meantime, brown and black folks got screwed. Again.

So, well-off naked people tending a social event and gentle exercise are not really going to get the US out of Iraq, no matter how loud they yell. They'll tick off the folks who might actually benefit from some of the policy changes they're proposing. And the female ones will get their images masturbated to later on that evening.

But hey, it was pretty cool to cruise through the Capitol in a speedo with a police escort.