Preface to a counter protest – observations on power and perception in public places

Preface to a counter protest – observations on power and perception in public places
Torrey Orton
Nov.7, 2011


The FCC protest site is a miniature power vacuum which allows and facilitates our access. It's almost as if we did not have to intervene as such…just show up. Which is what we did… to be received with slight apprehension / wonder by the occupiers of the two lane pathway. We had no authorisation other than our interest in the daily dramas played out there. We did, though, have an encouragement from a senior FCC staffer as a jumping off point for our fronting up the first day four months ago now.

We came to do a job we did not know, which did not exist and, for whatever it turns out to be, we could easily be blamed and quite likely not congratulated (it seemed at the time). The only certainty still is we will not be paid. We really did not know what we were doing. We did know we wanted to do something to reduce patient harassment by protestors. We created the job somewhat by a default to our personal role preferences – me somewhat more combative and Charles somewhat more consultative.
The human scale of this theatre made our entrance moderately and manageably threatening to the others and us*. We talked to people immediately person to person, face-to-face (unmediated by banners and territories). Our starting place was wonder about what is going on there…how they all see the daily drama. We could see it but not interpret it without their perspectives and meanings. The personal entry level allowed close examination of all their behaviours to test the polarised interpretations (of each's perfidy in the other's eyes, of course) which leapt out first.

We started from a clear position that we side with the FCC. This became more explicit as I tended to spend all my time with the guards and Charles all his with the protestors, especially the one most open to our interest in understanding their experience. I have a workable relationship with him but not as deeply founded on hearing his views or putting mine. I did test with him the potential impact of a shaming threat I was considering if necessary to balance the patient harassment equation on the Wellington Parade footpath stage. Its potential impact was big enough.A few regular passers-by (local inhabitants mostly) inquired who I was in the play, or more sharply, what I was – 'lifer' protestor or 'choicer' FCC patient rights supporter. I eventually ported a small badge saying: "Pro-child, Pro-family, Pro-choice" on a white background. Another badge - "My Body, My choice" against a half green, half blue background - captures my personal concern about euthanasia but isn't so clearly relevant to Wellington Parade. It rests for another day.

Seeing patent harassment from both points of view is an essential achievement for our intervention. It cannot be read from a book or even watched in a video of a harassment event. It takes at least a minimum of two different and independent viewpoints to establish a video fact, as it does a judicially respectable one, and hence a successfully prosecutable one. Further, the most important meaning, that of the patients, has to be inferred much of the time. To enquire directly as they pass through the two lane pathway would only intensify whatever negative pressure they already feel from being watched / harassed.Harassment by protestors and guards of each other across the same pathway is driven by unrequited righteousness on both sides. The "lifers" have the Word in their hearts, justifying anything that comes to mind in seeming contradiction to their perceptions of its meanings. The security services have historical injuries of the Word's church school renditions from which they are still recovering and the daily animosity of the protestors…injuries easily re-primed by the "Lifers" persistent patter ("Please save your little baby", "You'll be a good mother", etc.).

All this becomes more instructive when contrasted with two recent massed protest events – (1) the monthly Saturday appearances of large numbers and varieties of prayer protestors who set up across Wellington Parade for an hour from 10:30 to 11:30am approx. and (2) the Victorian Parliament steps launch of the 40 days of protest against abortion on Oct. 14, 2011. Such events are dominated by loud voices and large posters / banners. They are totally speaking at, not with, events. The boundaries on the launch day were marked by "scuffles". On the monthlies they are policed across 20 meters of streetscape by two bunches of Vic Police, one assigned to each side of the street. Little crosses the street but air and hard looks.The more recent ejection of Occupy Melbourne protestors shows how quickly things in larger scales can move from dominance to violence, even though early violence inducing initiatives may be the products of very small numbers of protestors and police provoking each other.

We, Charles and I, are a small force in numbers and proven persistence – the real denomination of interpersonal power and engine of virtue. The protestors' forces are both larger in the street and proportionally massive in the background (members of active "lifer" organisations, catholic and otherwise). And, their persistence quotient is seriously impressive (18 years at this site for one leading player, who is also present five mornings a week minimum). So, unless we can achieve a systemic shift in the rules of the daily theatre we will be worn down by their moral dominance in effort. They will still be here in a year, or five. I haven't got that long.If we were to move to active intervention against the protestors – turning the threatened threat to their self-esteem into an action program which made it so uncomfortable for them they would retreat – it would be fun but hard to do without causing as much new trouble as the old it was meant to punish. Patients would be in danger of being harassed by our anti-harassment campaign. Not a good look or touch!


*While at the same time much less threatening to me; I have a distinct aversion to potential shaming, and a thin skin for deflecting anything I can construe as an allegation deserving my shame; on reflection here, however, I think my aversion is more to being posted on the other side of an imaginary fence of inclusion…but then being on the inside is shameful in some things, such as being in the community of "lifer" protestors. Being a lone member of a non-existent group alerts my aversive side just fine.