the bridge incident

On Friday morning I was sitting on a bus, and like any good Sydneysider, avoiding talking to anyone. The traffic was heavier than usual (but then I am new to this public-transport-forsaken area) and I only began to suspect something was up when the bus driver pulled into a side street and exited the bus rushing off to a nearby servo to, I can only assume, take a leak.

After breaking the golden rule and talking to the person sitting next to me I learnt that the bridge had been closed due to a protest and hence the usually bad traffic was woeful. I read the news on ABC online and learnt that a guy called 'Mick' was protesting about not being able to see his kids after his divorce. I was late to work as were around 60 000 people.

As have many people I've been following the stories from the Middle East and North Africa about the protests for regime changes there. I'm as far as you can get from being an expert on the political situation in that region but the way that some of the governments have responded to peaceful protests has to show that something is really seriously wrong. A civil war is now raging in Libya, and there are stories pretty much daily at the moment from Yemen and Syria about protesters being open fired upon. In Syria mourners at a funeral for protesters were shot at. (Not to mention countries that have fallen below the reportable radar.) But the people continue to protest. I don't think I would be that brave.

With all the current discourse in Australian politics it's easy to just criticise the government - (and we need to) BUT the fact that measures were taken to make this man's protest end peacefully despite the fact that it held up the city in peak hour made me feel quite grateful. I heard people on my bus quietly making phone calls telling their workplaces, schools etc that they were going to be late, but no one was really outraged. On the SMH website there was a pole at the end of an article about Mick that asked if 'a protest of this magnitude is ever justified?' and 63% of respondents said 'Yes.' I'm not endorsing his approach to getting his message out there but I wonder if us affluent Aussies who were stuck on the bus for ages are learning from watching the Middle East that protest can be a noble and amazing thing. Maybe we're not as apathetic as I thought.