I finally got around to printing out a sign describing my protest. I likely made it too verbose but the 13th amendment issue seemed to complicated for me to simplify further.
Someone recommended that having a sign is essentially mandatory, suggesting my protest won’t get very far without one. I owe him many thanks.
Here is what it looks like:
People are absolutely reading it, but most skim through it for 5-10 seconds before continuing on with their day. They didn’t come to the White House to look at my sign, obviously.
But any crumb of attention I can get will help me achieve my goal, which is why I am glad I ran into a pair of what I would call my first hecklers today.
The first one came up and asked who the slaves were. A critical error I made was not having any specific example of who was being enslaved. The man seemed to want a name.
My whole protest was centered around the wording of the amendment in the constitution, it wasn’t my intention to bring attention to one specific person.
I tried explaining this, and I think they followed up by asking me to specify what slavery was.
“The thing is, the Supreme Court never defined what slavery was, so it’s kind of hard for me to form my argument.”
“Yeah, your displaying that pretty clearly.”
The second man let me know that my sign was a waste of money and the first was curious who was paying me to be there.
Then another woman (not sure if she was with them) let me know that since her ancestors were slaves she thought that what I was protesting could be offensive. I interpreted this as meaning that modern prisoners have it pretty good. I mostly nodded my head in acknowledgement to what they said to me towards the end of our discussion.
Then they walked away. It kinda felt like I lost, although I wasn’t tempted to give up my entire protest.
Not being able to provide a concrete example hurt my argument. There were some responses that I thought after the argument that likely would have matched the snarky energy they seemed to be projecting, but real life is not like those debate videos that tend to go viral on the internet. It would have eventually resulted in one party feeling walked all over, which is not my goal at all. I’m not even sure if debates resulting in the humiliation of one party lead to positive social change, wouldn’t it end in resentment?
I made a note to myself that I needed to actually sit down and do some research. Then my argument will present more strongly.
It could have been spite, but I was tired and strongly considering going back to my hotel for the day before the hecklers walked up to me. They encouraged me to keep up my protest more than the five or so people who offered positive affirmation.
Pretty shallow of me.
Most of the heckler group later circled back to the park in front of the White House to get to their next destination.
I watched them. They watched me back. I smirked.
The 2 main antagonizers looked at me like this while they were walking away:
I maintained my smug demeanor while watching them go. It was funny watching them try to maintain their affronted expressions in my direction while also making sure they didn’t bump into anything as they walked away from me.
I hope I get to know their stories one day.