In 1989 I was the strike captain on my Los Angeles school campus.
The faculty had met multiple times so that, before the strike began, we knew exactly what was legal and illegal; what was acceptable and unacceptable behavior; who would be the official spokesperson, so there would be one unified message; and what comprised an actual picket line.
We knew what we could say, and what was totally to be avoided.
The major things we all had to keep in mind were that the picket line had to keep moving without blocking driveways as that would make us anything but a legal picket line, that we were to yell nothing that would be considered in bad taste especially as we were at a school with students arriving in the morning and departing in the afternoon, and that no matter how annoyed we were with any scabs, we were to leave them alone.
I had attended multiple meetings as the captain before the strike began, and each day when that day’s strike activity concluded to report on activities and progress, and to get information that needed to be passed on to the people on the line the next morning.
For three days our line moved, teachers did not yell with any anger, we did not interfere with people entering and leaving the campus, and we did nothing that would have been harmful to the students.
Then it happened.
On the fourth day a teacher got a little too hyper on the line and for reasons we could not explain then nor could I explain now, this totally level headed teacher who was such a softy with his students and who had been following the rules, picked up a piece of loose Macadam from the edge of the parking lot exit, threw it at the hood of a scab’s car which it bounced off, striking a student who was standing on the other side of the car.
Although the student was not really harmed, but just a little shook up, the teacher was arrested and spent the night in jail, and was not allowed back on the picket line or near the school until after the strike ended, which it did the next day, until his case as adjudicated.
His action was clearly not part of the plan, went against the orderliness of our picket line, and was the one thing about our campus that got into the newspaper.
No matter what the issue is, one of the things that is most feared in any organized and legal strike and in any well organized protest is the possibility that only one person, or group of rogues will act stupidly and on their own, and cancel the good that the strike or protest was to have accomplished.
Those who follow the rules and act as intended remain, by and large, unnoticed, but the one jackass gets the attention and becomes the symbol of the moment.
On the morning commute we pass hundreds of cars that make no impression, but the one car that hits another one is certainly noticed and suddenly the routine drive becomes dangerous and that car is certainly noticed as it stands out.
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Those who protest do so to bring attention to an issue.
They are not the issue.
And their hope is that the issue gets discussed.
The jackass takes that away.
The response by those who revel in seeing the bad behavior of the irrelevant in a demonstration or protest, mainly because they would rather judge the protesters than discuss an uncomfortable issue, seem to always want to know why people can’t protest peacefully.
Then that Colin Kaepernick thing happened.
A football player who had something to say and was in a position to say it, quietly knelt during the National Anthem, and being behind his teammates and close to the Gatorade table only got attention when someone published a picture of him and made the quiet loud.
He made no noise. He made no attention getting gestures. He did not bring attention to himself. He neither looted nor set anything ablaze.
He knelt quietly.
But, even as people demanded to know why protesters can’t be peaceful, they found fault with this peaceful one.
Those who chose to disparage Kaepernick and his issue then began to claim that he was irrelevant and his attempt to bring attention to something that concerned him was a waste of time as, in spite of all the discussion about him and his cause, no one was interested.
And recently, as proof that he had not brought attention to a concern and did not introduce a topic that needed to be discussed, people were thrilled when a U.S. Navy Admiral brought him up in the most irrelevant of places, the memorial service on December 7 that was to honor those who lost their lives at Pearl Harbor.
Obviously, if an admiral brought him up where there was absolutely no reason to, and at such a solemn event, his quiet protest would seem to be very effective.