To the barricades

If I could believe that going to a barricade would affect man's fate in the slightest I would go to that barricade, and quite often I wish that I could, but it would be less than honest to say that I expect to happen upon such a happy ending.
--Joan Didion (1970)

The rumble of street demonstations, the flash of police batons, and the smell of tear gas (or, more likely, pepper spray) once more assaults the senses. Seattle won't be excluded. Today, Seattle commuters nervously awaited the drive home. An organization demonstrating against the state's budget and in favor of "Jobs Not Cuts" announced plans to demonstrate during evening rush hour at the Montlake bridge, near my house -- one of the few bridges, aside from I-5, that link the downtown to Seattle "north of the cut," as well as to Seattle's north end suburbs. The original organizing group has been joined by other protest movements and by labor unions.

At the last minute, the demonstrators agreed to move the protest to the University bridge, to avoid interfering with emergency hospital traffic near Montlake. The Seattle Times now reports that about 700 demonstrators showed up, and were able to shut down bridge traffic for about an hour and a half.

On May 5, 6, and 8, 1970, University of Washington students protesting the Vietnam war shut down the I-5 freeway, marching four miles along the freeway from the University to downtown. Marchers were estimated to number 7,000, 10,000, and 15,000, respectively, on those three dates. No one in 1970 much cared whether emergency vehicles were being inconvenienced.

I doubt that the demonstrations in 1970 -- huge as they were -- hastened the end of American military involvement in Vietnam, over three years later. I have even greater doubt that the protests going on now will hasten bipartisan cooperation and national healing -- or stimulate the rise of a new and more responsible political party -- or ameliorate global economic trends beyond our ability to control.

The demonstrations in 1970 did permit students to blow off steam, and the protests occurring over the past few weeks do the same. I don't see what other purpose they can serve, other than inconvenience commuters -- also overwhelmingly part of the "99 percent" -- who just want to get home.

Sometimes, a really big protest movement does effect real change by overturning the government in power. France in 1789, Russia in 1917, Egypt in 2011. Unfortunately, such revolutions tend to be followed by unforeseen and unpleasant consequences. Even if the nation itself may, in the long run, be benefitted, the revolutionaries themselves often end up disillusioned, impoverished, and even, as the revolution feeds upon itself, executed.

Our 700 protesters at University bridge don't strike me as Jacobins or Octobrists. They seem to be nice folks who just hope for a better world for themselves and their families ... as do we all. Our problems seem insoluable at present, but maybe not. Maybe there are solutions to our dysfunctional political and economic system, and we'll find a way to muddle our way through to those solutions. I hope so.

But I doubt that blocking bridges is a step toward the answer.
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Photo: Seattle freeway protesters. May 5, 1970