December 10, 2004
SOB of the week
POLITICAL STUNT IDIOTS ruin my day. Seriously, there is nothing like some large puppets or a screaming idiot at the back of a hearing room or a traffic-snarling banner unfurling by some Indymedia twits to make a legitimate argument seem completely wacky.
This week's case in point: There are legitimate arguments to be made for not selling the Randall School men's shelter to the Corcoran Museum of Art or at least for making a better alternative available to the people who depend on it for housing during the cold winter months. You do this by working with elected officials, presenting your chosen option to administrators and even going through the courts system if you think you have a case. You might lose or not get exactly what you want, but the goal is to get what you can given competing interests and to live to fight another day.
The problem with the tactics employed in yesterday's fiasco is that a real concern has been turned into a sideshow by the activists' tendency to make every dispute into the Alamo. Newsflash: This isn't apartheid or the British Raj, where groups had to appeal to the world community through nonviolence. There are people working in government who you vote for, at least some of whom would be more than interested to hear a reasoned argument in favor of keeping a homeless shelter open or moving it somewhere convenient. The way to reach these people is through email, telephone or polite personal conversation, not screaming like a lunatic out of turn during a meeting or shutting down their building.
That's not how you make friends.
The same thing happened last month with SOB of the Week Adam Eidinger, who turned a story about the economic benefit of stadiums and a hotly-contested City Council battle into a story about a senior citizen fending off an attack from a deranged man with a sign.
The system isn't perfect, but it generally works and it's the one we've got. If you want to win, you've got to be constructive. If you want to make a scene, go right ahead, but please try to choose issues with which I disagree with you.
Posted by rj3 at December 10, 2004 11:30 AM
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Comments
You seem to know very little about the subject at hand. Fuck you- you are a troll who doesn't know shit about this issue.
Posted by: jill at December 20, 2004 6:16 PM