Pre-G-8 Demonstrations

There were a lot of effective, thoughtful, and truly engaged protesters at the Rostock, Germany demonstrations being held prior to next week's G-8 meetings. Many were calling needed attention to specific issues such as the power exercised over all of our lives by a couple of dozen multinationals or the degradation of the environment due to over-consumption. They marched and made themselves seen and heard, as it should be in an enlightened society. I also liked the more ambiguous but entertaining protesters who simply showed up dressed up as clowns.

On the other hand there were demonstrators who seemed to have no desire for a better world, these were the ones who hid their faces with scarves and hoods and took on the police and security with rocks and molotov cocktails. These guys (and gals) decided to turn over cars and set them alight, in the name of what, I don't know. This obviously wasn't a case of certain well-intentioned demonstrators being unfairly provoked into defending themselves. No, these people had obviously arrived ready and equipped for a brawl. I wonder who it is that they believed they were benefitting with this intentional, pre-meditated destructiveness....the world's poor?....the un-employed?...the marginalized?....the exploited....the workers? Just who is it that they think they were helping by doing this big, bad bit of hell-raising o' a weekend in Rostock? 'Especially given that you can see that some of them are wearing expensive running shoes sewn by underpaid workers in China. 'Especially when some of them had hip haircuts and faux-ratty, faux urban working class clothes probably sewn by children in Bangladesh.

I'll tell you who it is that the face-hiding, brawling demonstrators are helping. It is all of the entrenched, powerful, exploitative interests that they claim to be fighting against. This because every time these losers ruin another demonstration with acting like overgrown, tantrum-throwing brats (albeit ones with gasoline-filled bottles), they trivialize and even taint the legitimate messages that the more astute and non-hypocritical demonstrators are trying to convey to the people in the G-8 meetings and to the world.