Protesting Protesters

As I was working in the conference room at the Mail Tribune the retail manager ran in and gushed: “We have protesters.”

I was crossing the street between the press warehouse and the business building when an unmarked police car drove up. Unmarked police cars are supposed to blend in with all the other vehicles on the road. The giveaway that this is actually a police car are the bars between the back and front seat. This could also be the car of a mother driving through town with 3 rowdy kids in the back seat.

A few minutes later a motorcycle officer pulls up. I was afraid the building was under siege and tried to remember my exit strategies. Then I remembered I was already outside which is the end result of my strategy of fleeing the building if the newspaper came under assault.

Once in the building one of the managers ran up to me and gushed, “did you see the protesters outside?”

“No, I hadn’t. What are they protesting?”

“We ran an editorial from the Oregonian that questioned the value of medical marijuana. They apparently didn’t like it.”

In Oregon it’s legal to possess or grow a small amount of pot if it’s used for medicinal reasons.

As I watched the protesters walk slowly in front of the building carrying their hand scrawled signs I wondered why those who protest an issue always seem to look like what I have in my mind they should look like.

For example, ultra conservative men seem to wear business attire with cowboy hats and drive gargantuan pickup trucks.

The liberal protester has long greasy hair, dresses in holey jeans and drives a VW van.

These pot protesters looked like they had been time warped from the sixties, or from Ashland, southern Oregon’s equivalent of Haight-Ashbury.

They were dressed in tee shirts and shorts that were too small. Body types were either very thin or very large. We watched as some of them had trouble walking a straight line or “marched” with an occasional stumble. But they did look blissful.

I think one of my coworkers put it best:

“I don’t think any of them had to take time off from a job in order to come protest…”

I began to think in marketing terms concerning these protesters. Their marketing was flawed. If they really wanted to have impact they shouldn’t exemplify what everyone sees as the typical pot smoker. If they had dressed in business attire people would relate more with their cause and perhaps pay more attention.

I’m always impressed when a guy who looks like a hippie or is highly tattooed or pierced and supports conservative issues. The same for a liberal in a business suit with a cowboy hat and pick up.

Those who passed by would then read the signs instead of reading the protesters.