Monday, October 22, 2007

Another Day - Another Demonstration! UPDATE! Demonstration now - RIOT?

UPDATE! Demonstration appears to have turned into a riot. Hit above link.

Walking down Broadway today, I saw an all too familiar sight. Two people with red-tipped canes waiting for a bus that will never come. People in wheel chairs and walkers trying to find where the buses they were waiting for have been rerouted.

And bumper to bumper cars on all the streets around Broadway as dozens of buses try to make left hand turns, making them late, and making every one on those buses miss their connections.

What I did not see - was any demonstrators. But - eventually - a handful of people will come prancing down the street.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people will have their lives disrupted as once again all bus service in the Central City area comes to a halt every time a handful of protesters decide to shut down what is possibly the single busiest bus (in number of bus lines) street in the city.

Now none of this would happened if they applied for a permit on a street that did not have dozens of bus lines that are either on that street or cross that street - but that would miss the point of the demonstration - which is to inflict as much pain as possible on the city to get the maximum amount of attention for themselves.

Private greed - versus the greater public good, and greed always wins out.

Ironically, the people who pay the price are the very people these demonstrators claim to be marching for; the poor and the working class who reply on public transit to get to work, to school and to a hospital.

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