What is the definition of "professional protestor"?

[patrice]

The Washington Post used the word "novice" in conjunction with my name and now I see some blogging going on that says I'm a "professional", apparently because I organized our bus to D.C. last weekend, have been to 3 other rallies there, I blog on our DFA website, and have been holding signs on street corners (with my friends) for about 3 years now.

I'd have to make money at it to be a professional, wouldn't I? and that has not happened. Those bloggers made it sound like I've been doing this all of my life. Should I be concerned about this? Do you think prospective employers look at that kind of stuff?

[CBGLuthier]

1. I would think the proper word would be

seasoned or veteran.

Certainly you would have to be paid to be a professional. That is usually what that means.

[unblock]

2. a "professional" protestor is one you are trying to discredit

simple enough?

[patrice]

7. You mean like Thor Hearne who helped attack the count in Florida

in 2000 and is now on one of Gov. Blunt's committees formed in response to the Help America Vote Act? There's quite a bit a difference between him and me.

[evlbstrd]

3. It sounds like a smear.

[annabanana]

4. it IS a smear...

It implies that the protesting itself is the end purpose.. and that what you are protesting ABOUT is secondary..

[leveymg]

5. I think we should all demand union scale.

And, I have a ton of back pay coming as an activist.

In fact, I may go on strike for better wages and working conditions.

Who wants to help us organize DU and get everyone into the International Union of Protestors and Activists?

Let's all sing (just follow the bouncy ball)::bounce:

Solidarity Forever

(Tune: John Brown's Body) (by Ralph Chaplin, January 1915 )(9th edition, 1916)
When the Union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun.
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one?
But the Union makes us strong.

Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
For the Union makes us strong.

Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
For the Union makes us strong.


It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade;
Dug the mines and built the workshops; endless miles of railroad laid.
Now we stand outcast and starving, 'midst the wonders we have made;
But the Union makes us strong.


All the world that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.
We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.
It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own,
While the Union makes us strong.



They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power; gain our freedom when we learn
That the Union makes us strong.


In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold;
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old.
For the Union makes us strong.

:bounce:

[eridani]

19. Oh, there once was a union cat

Who on the table sat
At contract talks
And for a box
She'd often use the boss's hat.

She wore a union sign
When she walked the picket lines
At the running dogs of the capitalist system
She arched her back and hissed 'em.

(Courtesy Garrison Keillor in Songs of the Cat)

[bemildred]

6. Much the same as "effective protestor". nt

[WilliamPitt]

8. Medea Benjamin

[G_j]

12. she gets paid? n/t

[WilliamPitt]

14. CodePink

or the other organizations she works for/founded probably pay her expenses and bail. So, yeah.

[patrice]

16. Okay, so she may be one of the reasons they were saying that.

ANSWER probably is another.

But I'm not Code Pink nor ANSWER. I support them when I see them around, but I'm not a member.

Besides, I'm only one person. I had 45 other people, most of whom had never been to anything like these big rallies before.

[WilliamPitt]

18. Well, you asked for the definition

of a professional protester. She's it.

Yeah, I think someone was trying to zap you. That having been said, it's the professional protesters who get the most done. It's only a smear if you want it to be.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

9. probaly people like tom delay's rent-a mob

from 2000

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

10. probaly people like tom delay's rent-a mob

from 2000

[never cry wolf]

11. This:

[patrice]

13. Oh well, I haven't been looking for work real hard lately anyway.

Thank "God" my husband is employed.

[newswolf56]

15. Prospective employers do indeed look at "that kind of stuff."

Despite recognized talent, several big stories to my credit, and an extremely rare perfect score on at least one major-media employment test, the fact I was once jailed during the early 1960s as a civil rights advocate forever barred me from all major newspapers or other such publications and condemned me to a career on backwater papers and obscure journals. This country's corporate employers are savagely vindictive toward anyone who dares question the nation's ruling capitalist/fascist ethos -- and the Civil Rights Movement did just that. It took me a long time and a lot of anguish for me to realize just how vicious our employers are in their demands for conformity: the real reason that despite 45 years of hard work, the only pension I have is Social Security -- which means I will have to keep laboring literally until I drop dead. In short, if you're concerned about your resume, get out of radical politics: the corporate world will readily forgive conventional criminals -- especially if their crimes are of greed -- but it punishes political unorthodoxies with the most merciless reprisals imaginable.

[patrice]

17. More evidence that it's time for some of us to start building that

village we're going to need pretty soon.