So I’m working up a new story, and thinking I’ll do a big scene around Peterloo, a mass meeting in Manchester, England, in 1819 that was bloodily dispersed by ill-trained, sabre-wielding near-vigilantes. I don’t usually think much about protesting for social change, beyond the latest march on Washington, but lately it seems like that’s all I see.
For example, last month I read the short history Waterloo to Peterloo in between seeing films at the fabulous 5th annual Traverse City film festival, and it seemed so many of the films we saw included some scene of social-justice confrontation parallel to what I was reading about. Some were obvious: Burma VJ (monks lead the masses; army shoots), The Garden (L.A. cops surround community farmers as the farmers protest the unreasonable loss of their land; the farmers lose), Songs for a Revolution (civil rights protesters sit at tables and walk down streets; police and/or mobs attack them), and the heart-ripping Rachel (peace activist Rachel Corrie stands up to a bulldozer in Gaza; she is crushed to death).
Some of the parallels were subtle: The Cove (animal rights activists try to take photos; Japanese fishers and lackeys stand in front of the cameras), Football Under Cover (German women’s soccer team tries to arrange a game against the Iranian national women’s soccer team; bureaucracy and clothing laws threaten every step). Even the one drama we saw, Everlasting Moments (a dramatic memoir) includes a dockworkers’ strike in which people are killed (and Finns are dissed). (We did see the non-confrontational Everlasting Moments, too, a meditation about a Michigan undertaker who writes amazing essays and poetry, and Waterland, about the aches and pains of the Great Lakes.)
I shouldn’t be surprised. Storytelling thrives on conflict, and what better way to show it than people facing one another down? But somehow in my post-racial, post-new-age sunshine-glazed fog, I thought we didn’t do so much of this yelling and wilful misunderstanding anymore.
But then these health insurance reform meetings started, with so much shouting and so little listening, and it’s feels like post-war regency England around here. Except Peterloo protesters were more polite, marching and chanting, sure, but also singing “God Save the King” and listening to the speakers. None of them carried a weapon to the meeting, not a pike, not a blunderbuss, and certainly not an assault rifle.
What interests me about this moment in English history is that it is such a clear turning point. Sweeping changes permanently altered English society, from who owns the land and polices the streets to who chooses the government. The people in the middle of it couldn’t see all the facets of these changes, just their more-or-less narrow field of vision; and they reacted in well-meaning ways that sometimes helped and sometimes hurt themselves and others. It took more than 30 years to settle out; England in 1840 was radically different than in 1810.
I feel that we here, now, are in a similar fold in the fabric of society, where things are changing around us but we’re in the dip in the fabric and can’t see truly what is happening. I don’t know that our technology will make these painful social changes go any faster; people are slow processors. And we, in the crease, are reacting in our own varied, well-meaning ways that may help or harm, who knows? How many of us see the whole picture?
None?
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