Angry!
Many years ago Victoria’s Dairy Farmers blocked supply of their milk to the factories in protest at the very low prices they were being paid for a product that they worked very hard to produce. They felt unheard, disrespected and as a result angry enough to protest against someone more powerful than them, in order to create change.
I recall the pictures of these protests, the marches through the city, the arrests from sit-ins, the bolshy farmers, the radicals. I recall this so vividly because two of those farmers were my conservative parents, who had never ever in their lives behaved in this way, but who felt that this was the only way they could be heard.
In 2014 a group of people opposed to the building of a tunnel called the ‘East West Link’ in Melbourne are protesting. They are protesting a construction process that they disagree with, by blocking the paths of trucks and being arrested.
I am seeing pictures of the protests, the sit-ins, the human chains similar to those of the farmers in 1985, which causes me to wonder… are they feeling unheard, disrespected and (as a result) angry? Are some of those protestors regular conservative citizens just angry enough to protest in a way that appears radical and bolshy?
