[Peace-discuss] Protesting on Private Property

[John Fettig]

* Chuck Minne <mincam2 at yahoo.com>: 
> This is just my opinion, but I think it is very counter-productive to
> “invade” private property to protest against the war. If the point
> is simply to piss everybody off, then it works fine; but if the point
> is to work for peace by trying to convince “undecideds” to our way
> of thinking, it is a real loser. A mall just happens to be private
> property. 

While I do agree that most of our efforts should be focused on appealing
to people rather than doing things that cause them to hate us, I do
think that the recent mall arrests and protests have been given
extremely large amounts of press coverage, something we could only dream
about up on north prospect.  For this reason, it does have it's utility.

It has also brought into question the rationale of the pro-war crowd,
when a man can be asked to leave a mall for no other reason than wearing
a shirt that says "give peace a chance".  This is good, people on the
fence will look at this very critically.

Also, I do think that there are some people you cannot convert.  These
are the ones that will most likely be pissed off by a mall protest.

John