There is no zero-sum equation between contributing to a concrete cause and spending time and cash on a protest. People can do both. A major component of everything happening during the G8 is designed to get more people more involved in these issues day to day. There is far more to this particular event than marches and concerts, but even if there wasn’t, just those still serve to bring people more fully into the fold.<\/p>\n
Still, it would be disingenous to say they’re independent. Yet if everyone who came to Edinburgh instead stayed home and gave their budget to charity and spent so many hours on good works? Surely, it would be a bonanza of positive outcomes – but even this impossible dream would be a drop in the bucket compared to the potential impact of downstream influence on public opinion and the G8 decisionmakers. Not even that.<\/p>\n
Sandbrook said that the 1960s protests achieved little, but the world did change. There is now little support for nuclear power in Britain, the Vietnam war is well-understood to have been a moral and strategic disaster, and the Troubles have finally begun to end after a long series of iconic protests. The world did change. Sandbrook doesn’t understand what protests do.<\/p>\n
I’m leaving the house in a few minutes. Off to be part of the speech as a population talks to itself.<\/p>\n
[next: What the day was like!]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is no zero-sum equation between contributing to a concrete cause and spending time and cash on a protest. People can do both. A major component of everything happening during the G8 is designed to get more people more involved in these issues day to day. There is far more to this particular event than … Continue reading G8: Wouldn’t our energy be better spent elsewhere?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-48","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6041,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions\/6041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}