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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 30, No. 3. 1967.

Shocked

Shocked

What can you say to someone who is sincerely shocked at the events, say, in Vietnam, and who wants to find a tangible and effective vehicle for his protest? Or, for that matter, what do you say to anyone frustrated at the injustices he sees here or overseas?

First and foremost: join or form a group of like-minded people. Groups can act in concert on a common policy. Pressuring by force of numbers, building resources, to attract public attention and amplify the message. This all gives to the protest an air of established legitimacy which lifts it out of the realm of anarchy. Single issues and single groups very rarely manage to sway elections and topple governments, but it has happened. Elections are still the best time to air the issues and get the commitment of the politicians. They are, however, notoriously imprecise both as a yardstick of the strengths and subtleties of opinions, and as a clear mandate for any course of action on a single issue.

Some issues, particularly the domestic ones, resolve themselves quite readily into yes no, either or alternatives, and the closer politics becomes to the Ranfurly Shield, the more the voters know exactly where they stand. But so long as the majority is always right, it can become a tyranny to the minorities who have to bend to their will. It is one of the ironies of the democratic way of running things that those people who often most genuinely need state help in their plight, such as the elderly, the mortally sick and the socially and economically deprived, are precisely those people who are least organised for action, least vocal on their own behalf, and least able to help themselves.