Please bear with me as I make a few separate yet related
points on the matters of:
Politeness
Frustration
Protest
And PROTEST
Politeness
I’ve always felt grateful that most Torontonian’s repress
their inner desire to let rip on a person or situation that is particularly disturbing.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking the politeness we show to tourists, and I
know we’re not saints, we’ll mutter under our breath something fierce, or snipe
from the sanctuary of a locked vehicle, but it’s rare that someone will rant in
open public (anonymous social media venues aside). This self imposed
prohibition by most people generally makes Toronto a wonderful place to live.
By contrast, the disparity between the US and Canada is quite jarring. Many
people in the US
seem to have dedicated their lives to exercising their right to free speech in
obnoxious and provocative ways. One need look no further than the Westborough
Baptist bigots anti-gay protests or Open Carry movement whose mottos are “a
right unexercised is a right lost.” You’d think they may be onto something
since it appears their intelligence is long ago lost… but they’re not.
Frustration
Now we come to our current situation in Toronto , there’s a growing frustration among
many residents borne over these last 14 months due to the many anti-social behaviours
of the infamous Rob Ford. The social aspects of our frustrations are well
known, racism, homophobia, misogyny and general asshattery… Unfortunately in
our connected world a person’s level of frustration often correlates closely
with their use of social media and awareness of the local news events.
I’ve been noting a growing frustration and incivility on
social media that I attribute to frustration–aggression–displacement
theory. While controversial the theory seems to fit our situation well. According
to Wikipedia frustration–aggression–displacement theory says “that
frustration causes aggression, but when the source of the frustration cannot be
challenged, the aggression gets displaced onto an innocent target.”
Protest
The #TOpoli twitterverse recently suffered a scapegoating meltdown,
involving dozens of prominent tweeters for many hours, that I attribute to people
casting about for an alternate target of their Ford fed frustrations. The
majority of these spontaneous protests occurred with no cognitive input, but
rather were borne of pure reflex.
This is the sort of reflex that struck Joe Killoran while
out for his morning jog. As a teacher Joe is highly educated, well informed, and
prone to critical thought. Like many people long denied an outlet for their
frustration, reflex took over when Joe was confronted with the very source of his
frustrations. We’ve all heard about Joe’s shirtless rant. I agree his was not a
deliberate act of political activism, and that he did not seek the spotlight
that he so rightly deserves if he chose to pursue it. But that is not Joe’s desire.
That his was not a deliberate act means that society should
respect Joe’s decision NOT to be in the spotlight. Joe has avoided many
opportunities to speak with mainstream media, and requested not to be contacted
by the media. So I am requesting that we all as Canadians recognize the events
and conditions that led to Joe’s involuntary outburst and respect his right to
fade into history, to be recalled only over a beer on some distant Canada Day.
PROTEST
This brings me to deliberate planned political activism the
sort that #shirtlessHorde began in response to Joe’s outburst of emotion, and also
to our dilemma. The level of media attention the Horde has attained and the
level of public encouragement participants have garnered is such that it cannot
be ignored, yet we have our source of inspiration seeking to disappear from the
public consciousness.
So now we must struggle to maintain a balance that will
permit Joe to regain some semblance of his normal life and still allow ShirtlessHorde
to grow into the grassroots epidemic that Torontonians are seeking.
So in addition to Joe’s requests to the media, I’m
requesting on behalf of Joe that all people please refrain from trying to
contact him. He’d like to see everyone refrain from posting tweets mentioning
him, using the shirtless jogger hash tag, or using his image on social media. I
believe that outside his work Joe is quite modest and embarrassed by all the
attention.
To that end, I’ve not included Joe's image in this article, and I have removed Joe's image from the @shirtlesshorde twitter profile page. I’ll be modifying the shirtlesshorde facebook page
as well. Our group will continue to refer to the incident that spawned our
movement and but will also continue to state that Joe was just a source of inspiration who did his part for democracy and had no desire to continue his inadvertent activism.
We will continue to grow, and as we do so we’ll not only
push for Ford to answer questions, and to resign, we’ll advocate for our right
to civil public protest. Our members like me, do not wish the hateful negative
attention of Ford’s supporters. We’re fully cognizant that Ford’s supporters
are even more frustrated by his failures than we are. In their frustration they’re
seeking to lash out since the source of the frustration cannot be challenged. As
the marginalized Ford was their favoured son, their great hope. To abandon him
now is to abandon hope… underneath it all, the Ford’s betrayal of them must be
crushing.
Those issues aside, the attacks by Ford supporters are unacceptable against a grassroots organization seeking our legitimate right to protest and we will fight against them especially the many people who have made threats of physical violence and harassing phone calls and tweets.
