Protests…Vigil’s…Petitions??
Writing by shinda on Tuesday, 17 of January , 2006
In the last few years we’ve see a lot of protests, vigil’s and petitions, some better then others. Today there will be an international set of protests happening across the UK, India, USA, and even in Canada, which on paper sounds amazing, but the concept itself a little sketchy.
(I’ll deal more with the ones happening across Canada, since those are the ones I am most familiar with.)
Firstly I’m not sure whether the actual event is a protest or a vigil. After all it has been dubbed both. The vigil aspect of it is good, something is being done, something of little use, but something all the same.
The protest? Firstly who are they protesting to? The public? A protest is usually when you try to send a message to somebody directly. Union workers picket outside their place of work, in a manner that interferes with the daily operation or at least in a manor that gets their message through to upper management. So in this case rallying people up and picketing outside in a Park or City Hall seems frivolous. I think that picketing outside the Indian embassy would be a more reasonable place to picket, considering it’s them who we want to send a message to.
Now the vigil aspect. I think the biggest problem with the vigil’s and something you can’t blame the organizers for, is the fact that only those who are aware of the problem tend to come out and support it. A lot of the vigil’s around Toronto, you usually see the same faces at everyone, and not much “normal” sangat comes out, and with that being the case I really don’t think that vigil’s succeed in trying to create awareness amongst the community, but rather become an outlet for people to reflect.
Lastly, petitions. Why do we sign them? Who ends up getting them? We’ve seen countless petitions over the years, but what good are they? If someone came to me with a list saying these million people are not happy with you, I’d just nod my head, accept the petition then pass it off to someone next to me to shred it or toss it somewhere. However if someone came to me with a petition that said these million people will stop buying my product if I don’t stop something, I may take notice. Point being, what is being done with the thousands of names on these petitions? Is the media getting them? Do these petitions have a cause for action? Again, it just seems more like a formality then anything else.
Now don’t take this as an insult, or a diss towards these events. I do support them in the sense that they do have potential to create awareness, however as a community I think we have yet to harness the energy and power that can come from such acts. At the same time it could all be a learning experience, stepping stones to bigger events later on, just seems like we’re moving to slow, because we keep loosing aim at the bigger picture. Just like when your learning to drive, they teach you to keep your head up and look ahead rather then focus directly in front of you, I think we need to do the same.
Category: Politics, Protest, Sikhi
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Balzey from 
Made Tuesday, 17 of January , 2006 at 2:13 pm
i can see petitions going back to GOI who would then have a complete list of ‘agitators’. maybe petitions are doing more damage then good?
Anonymous from
Made Tuesday, 17 of January , 2006 at 2:20 pm
I see more questions in your post than answers, and the answers are not in the questions.
U KnoW from
Made Tuesday, 17 of January , 2006 at 11:07 pm
all I gots to say is…….
Shinda’s Wicked!
Anonymous from
Made Wednesday, 18 of January , 2006 at 12:07 am
finally someone with a brain,
the is a situation and a time that can be taken advantage of, its election time, get the petitions and reporst from protests to the MPs and just say we got this list of 1000 who wont vote for you unless you do a public speech about this topic.
