G-20 in a lovely city

The Pittsburgh city council is planning to lay down some serious anti-protesting laws next week, that means no gas masks, no pipes and locks and certainly none of that free speech the kids are so fond of these days.

Who knows what the council will actually decide. There are rumors, yes I hear them, that there are some serious out of state protesters planning to do to Pittsburgh what hooligans did in London at the last super fun G-20 meeting. I say bring it on.

Protests are good. Protests and fun and can be loud and dangerous and exciting.

Here is something funny about protests. I was once renting a run down apartment on the lower east side of Manhattan many years ago, long before the lower east side was a decent place to live for hipsters and the people who want to be around hipsters. There was a Polish guy who was gutting the apartment when I went to check it out and we began talking. It seems that he was a member of the Solidarity movement in Poland, at least until recently, because he had scampered out of Poland because he feared for his life. "but," I said, " I thought with Lech Walesa and all the workers, the protests and control had been wrestled from the commies."

He just kind of looked at me like I was an idiot, which is a look I have become quite familiar with over the years. He then gently explained to me that what the Solidarity Union had done was shut down a city, not by protest, but by brute force. There was a difference. He laughed at the idea of protests by themselves accomplishing anything. Then he asked me, "when was the last time a protest in America had any impact?"

So, now, many years later, I think of my Solidarity friend when I think of the hooligans and the anarchists and the anti-global cabalists and I think that someday these protests will accomplish something, at least I hope the do. I would hate to think that all the effort that goes into costumes and posters and hair styles would be for nothing.