Street demos are meant to disrupt

Sometimes I think many in the country don’t seem to get the concept of a street assembly, rally or demonstration.

I was watching a local television news programme two days ago and they had a news story whereby they interviewed the public regarding street demonstrations.

It was amusing to see the reactions of the people who were being interviewed. All of them seemed to have the opinion that street demonstrations caused trouble and disrupted daily lives.

They felt annoyed that traffic will be affected, businesses will be disrupted and whatnot. It seemed like they didn't appreciate the trouble it would cause them for that few hours.

Don't they realise that street demonstrations aim to do exactly that? They intentionally want to stop traffic, cause chaos to businesses and put a stop to daily operations.

They do this to attract attention to their activities, and more specifically, attract attention to whatever cause they are fighting for, so society and the authorities will do something about it.

But this will only happen if a big enough disruption is achieved. It won't work if only fifteen people turn up in the middle of the city to voice out their dissatisfactions.

How big of an impact would it be if only a handful of people stood on the sidewalk by the streets chanting and holding slogans as everyone else just walked by?

It needs a whole lot of people. Preferably in the tune of about 50,000 people or more. That would be a nice crowd to stop cars from driving on the streets and from work to go on as usual.

It will hopefully even attract some nice attention from the press, so more people would actually know what is happening and more awareness could be created.

But it isn’t easy to galvanise such an enormous amount of people to come out at one time. Large successful street demonstrations happen very rarely.

It happens not because of any individual or group requested for it to happen. It happens because people actually want it to happen. And for so many people to want it, it must be due to a strong reason.

I doubt 50,000 or more people would suddenly want to gather together at the same time for a street demonstration without any strong reason at all.

So the next time people want to complain that street demonstrations aren't our “culture” or that these people just want to cause chaos in the country, think again really hard.

There must be something that pushed them to do what they are doing. You may or may not agree, but you can't deny that they have a voice and they have a right to use it. – May 2, 2014.

*This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.