Today the Olympic torch had to be extinguished - or at least turned down so far you couldn't see the flame - in order to put it on a bus because it became impossible to get it through Paris for all the protests. Athens, London... chaos. Paris... third verse, same as the first.
On the one hand, no one's been killed or injured really as far as I can tell. It's much in the news and NPR reports that the IOC has been mentioning that if this doesn't stop, they'll abandon the torch relay altogether. On the other hand this is largely peaceful resistance, albeit rather noisy and chaotic peaceful resistance. This isn't the WTO and the 'Battle in Seattle', at least not yet. On yet a third hand we now know that Parisian police wear roller blades while doing crowd control duty. (!?!)
Now it's our turn... so how do you think we're going to handle it? Do you forsee a downward spiral debacle ala the aforementioned WTO riots in my beloved city not all that long ago, where peaceful protest was overcome by radicals looking for an excuse to break windows and burn things? Do you think any of this is doing any good at all?
The torch reaches our shores soon in San Francisco. This morning, during rush hour three climbers scaled the bridge to hang a sign from the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/07/MN6L101A0U.DTL&tsp=1I know a lot of people in San Fran, early on I thought there were frankly alarmingly good odds that I know one of those three, or their crew. I don't recognize any of the names, but I'd bet that I at least know someone who does. (Somehow my separation never seems to reach six degrees, more like two. But I digress...)
It was certainly a bold feat but, I fear, ultimately pointless.
While I see the value of getting your message out when it's being stifled ala Dr. King, I'm not really convinced that's the case here. I can't turn on the radio or the computer without seeing stories about Tibet. It's a tragedy, no doubt. So it goes back to the simple fact that I've never been convinced that you can create a positive impression of your message by creating a negative impression on the people viewing your message. I am intrigued by the fact that NPR reports that they're thinking of calling off the rest of the torch relay if this keeps up.
And what will that prove except to prove that if you act badly enough you can create a two-day news furor that will not equal the value of the coverage that would have been had you been less anarchic with your attempts to get your message across. And the coverage will eventually sour... because that is the way of things. The world has been swayed by the serenity of the Dalai Lama in the face of relentless aggression and misinformation coming out of the PROC. If Tibet just becomes yet another hotbed of unrest... what then?
Positive image from negative actions? It strikes me as singularly un-Buddhist...
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From what I understand about the quality of the air in China, the Chinese might thank us for stopping the torch from reaching them; it might ignite the atmosphere and burn them all.
Philosophically, I think a lot depends on why violence ensues. I saw images of the torch bearer being attacked to take the torch. That's egregious in my opinion. But if a group of people were to form a line and not allow the runner to pass, not so much a problem in my mind.
How they respond to police intervention is the next test. If the police use undue force, there's a problem for the police. If the protesters are violent in their resistance, there's a problem for the protesters.
On PTI (Pardon The Interruption, a sports show), Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser discussed this issue. One of them -- Wilbon, I think -- mentioned that the situation in Tibet has been bad for a long time, so why wait for the Olympics to protest. Kornheiser pointed out that taking advantage of the media moment wasn't a bad tactic; you go where the cameras are. People have "quietly" been working to free Tibet for sometime now, and there hasn't been a change for the good.
It is and will be interesting to see how the media approaches this. They generally cheer[ed] the war in Iraq -- a war we entered because we lost patience with a bad regime. I wonder if they'll hypocritically admonish the protesters for taking similar actions or paint their actions in a negative light.
How's this going? I haven't been following closely, but this is the closest I've heard to "violence" to date:
“We got monks tomorrow, Desmond Tutu and Richard Gere here today, and a nude torch relay in the works,” Mr. Ballard said. “And I have no hope of leaving here without tripping over hundreds of members of the foreign media. I’ll tell you one thing: it won’t be boring.”
I dunno about the nudes, but Richard Gere... As long as it's him, personally, and not a film festival of his life's works.
I sat listening to someone today bemoan the way the torch relay has been treated, they way it is betraying the mythos of the thing. She got on my nerves to the point where I finally asked her why she felt that much nostalgia for times of yore when the 'master race' first thought the whole torch relay thing up?
Um... wait... what did he say?
Yeah. It was a bit of Nazi propaganda, linking the Aryan race to the ancient Greeks or some such thing. And somehow I doubt they let Jesse Owens have a leg of the relay.
My point, of course, is that nothing we do today in the name of drawing attention to human rights abuses in Tibet is tarnishing the symbol. It comes to us pre-tarnished with a good bit of history to live down. If it can actually manage to do some kind of good now, in spite of its history... I say let it.
Will the protests work? Probably not. And I still find the whole thing a little ludicrous. The mayor of San Fran hit it on the head with the quote 'Political kabuki theater'.
But it's hardly a betrayal of the torch's history. If anything it does some small amount to remind us what an embarrassment the 1936 games were to Hitler when Jesse Owens outran the best the 'Aryan supermen' had to offer.
Perhaps I'm a bit out of sorts today, but please... can we not treat Hitler's last surviving propaganda project like it has some kind of glorious shining history that the protesters are somehow besmirching by their efforts to draw attention to the horrible injustices visited upon them by the games' current host country.
Give me a friggin' break.
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