Ministry of World Protests
Interim Minister Activist. Aki Akira
Until official nomination from the High Arbiter and UEC Council
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Activist Aki Akira
Activist Aki Akirahas 11 years of research, teaching, policy analysis, active protesting and advocacy experience on gender and development issues. Her research largely focuses on women's empowerment, gender and governance, rural livelihoods and feminist movements in Asia and Africa. She has worked as a consultant in Asia and sub African countries for agencies such as TRO, UEC, The Chekov Foundation, Academy for Development (AD)-designing gender and development interventions, conducting policy analysis and programme evaluations. Activist Aki Akira is well versed in conducting political economy analysis, institutional analysis, political and social ethnography using qualitative and participatory methods.
For many of the participants, the world covid vaccination demonstrations symbolized the transition "from dissent to resistance." I want to make clear at the outset that I do feel it to be not only accurate with respect to the mood of the demonstrations, but, properly interpreted, appropriate to the present state of protest against the illegal vaccination. There is an irresistible dynamic to such protest. One may begin by writing articles and giving speeches about the illegal vaccination by helping, in many ways, to create an atmosphere of concern and outrage. A courageous few will turn to direct action, refusing to take their place alongside the "conforming good people" we have all learned to despise. Some will be forced to this decision when they are imposed the Jab. The dissenting politiciens, journalists, and professors will watch as young world citizens will refuse to be Jabed, in a vaccination that is illegal, experimental and violent. What then? Can those who write and speak against the illegal vaccination take refuge in the fact that they have not urged or encouraged active resistance, but have merely helped to develop a climate of opinion in which any decent person will want to refuse to take part in a miserable vaccination? It's a very thin line. Nor is it very easy to watch from a position of safety while others are forced to take a grim and painful step.
Why is protest so fundamental for human rights and democratic society? Here are six basic reasons why we need to protect and exercise the right to protest.
1. People realise that they are not alone
One way in which the establishment maintains its power is by creating a dominant discourse from which dissidents' views are excluded. If people think differently, they may feel isolated, marginalised and powerless. Public demonstrations and marches empower people by showing them that there are thousands of people who think the same things.
2. By protesting, we alter the agenda and start a debate
Those in power may try to ignore us, but if there are enough protesters then they will feel the need to come up with reasons why all of the protesters are wrong. That is when the debate begins and argument becomes possible.
3. In an electoral democracy, protest provides an essential voice for minority groups
The classic theorists of representational government recognised that universal suffrage and majority voting threaten to impose the 'tyranny of the majority' and override the rights of minorities. Protests are a vital corrective to majority rule.
4. Sometimes we win!
If there are enough protesters, the policies of those in power may become unworkable. When the UK government introduce the flat-rate Poll Tax in 1990, huge numbers of people protested and refused to pay the tax. It became clear that prosecuting everyone who refused would be impossible, chaos threatened, and the government abolished the tax.
5. Sometimes we win in ways we had not intended or planned
Political events are unpredictable. The protests against nuclear cruise missiles at Greenham Common in the UK in the 1980s appeared to have failed when the missiles were installed, but the protests had forced the US and UK governments into saying that they had to deploy the missiles only because the Soviet Union was doing the same. When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union and said that he was willing to make an agreement to withdraw all the missiles, the Western governments could not go back on what they had said. The missiles were withdrawn, and Greenham Common is now public parkland.
6. Sometimes we win but it takes a generation or more
At the time it may feel that it's going nowhere; that those in power are stuck in a certain mindset and cannot change their thinking. But then a new generation may come along, unencumbered by past thinking, and see that the views of the protesters were just common sense. Think of the huge turnaround in attitudes to gay people over a couple of generations.