Protest? What Protest?

Previously, i mentioned that there will be a protest held, today, infront of the Amanah Municipality building. The protest was organized with peaceful intentions and a specified set of goals that represent, generally, what the Saudis of Jeddah want from their government and/or authorities. The event managed to get 800 confirmed Saudis to attend today.

One thing you should know about the Saudi approach of Facebook events, we love to click "Attend" on any event, despite us really having any intent to be there physically and/or mentally. End result, there was a huge attendance: All the Bright colors of the Police forces, and no civilians.

Driving to the event, I was feeling all hyped up and excited being part of an iconic event in my lifetime on this planet (i had a blast back in Pluto, before they shut it down of course). The drive to the location had various "landmarks" of the recent floods and their after effects. A fitting jump start for a protest, eh?

Various cars washed up and abandoned, all over Al Hamra District

Since i was arriving 10 minutes late, I thought i'd join the already-active protest. However, while approaching the Amanah, i noticed that the area was too quiet. The streets were empty, movement was very limited, and there was at least a dozen of different police cars around the location, all in less than a 500m radius.

And this is only the ones i managed to come close to. An hour into the protest, no one showed up, and even more police cars started hovering the area in short rounds, and Police officers with Civilian cars were driving around the neighborhood infront of the Amanah, where i was hiding in my cool hiding ninja clothes (seeing a ninja in bright daylight is not suspicious, they said hi and we chatted).

Due to my distance far from the scene, i couldn't take clear pictures of the number of police cars parked infront of the Amanah steps, asking anyone who parks more than a minute to leave. I was moved away a couple of times, if it wasn't for my my employee card, since my company (won't mention its name because its a bad time now) designed the building. I was doing my "survey" of the building features. And by survey i mean crappy iPhone pictures, and by features i mean the lovely guy in the blue cars (seen above).

My impression, for a protest that was declared on twitter as "dead on arrival", that's a bit too much cars for a gathering of civilans with specific needs that need to be heard. Twitter caught the pictures i posted earlier, and they circulated around the #JeddahProtest trend instantly. I think, sadly, whatever little fear people had of the police was amplified. That didn't seem to stop the people who were waiting in their cars for anything to happen, all tweeting and asking about when will the whole thing start. Which brings me to my questions/thoughts:

• The event was not organized in any regular fashion of any protest I know of. And the event was cancelled at 12 pm, 2 hours after the event started. Why is that, i wonder?

• There are certain ethics and rules that need to be followed (marching in number not individually, milestone locations, regrouping points, specified agenda of the organizer..etc). If you wanted a peaceful protest, there are things that need to be done. One of which, is to actually protest, which didn't happen, and people (like myself) just waited there for hours.

• There were a huge number of unconfirmed rumors circulating around the Trend, during the supposed time of the event, that aimed for three things : Link this event to Sa'ad Al Fagih, Criticize people who want to attend as "childish time wasters", supposedly-Bedouin Supremacists (does that exist?) who shot everyone as Pilgrims who don't have the right to debate the country's way(Umm, I hope rain has some Nationality authenticity checkpoints before it drowns those bastards). This, added to our premature understanding of civilized dialogue with a monarchy, made the whole deal dead on arrival to many.

• Why does the government take such harsh extremes in allowing people to just speak their minds? -rhetoric, btw- .. Saudi Arabia, they tried to talk, but no one listened. They tried to write news, no one allowed them. They tried to blog, and you want to regulate that too. Am not sure how many options are there for people to show grief over losing their lives and property, repeatedly, with minimal-to-no-action to be taken. If you're an official, and you're reading this (kudos on your english skills), refer to my living hell here.

• A quick funny observation: the number of Municipality employees gathering at the balconies waiting for the action to happen were more than the number of protestors. Any value is larger than Zero, last time i mistakenly read my calculus book in the bathroom.

• The governmental warnings of the rain, the governmental SMS warnings during the rain, the governmental relief effects before/during/after were highly criticized by everyone. It's the citizens who took care of their own, long before the high-tech help decided to reach their areas. Only hours after the damage is done was there a police car to be seen in sight, or heard in any distance. The lack of coordination between safety divisions around the government was better this year than last year, i know, but in comparison to the number of Jeddah youth and NGO's that were the first arrivals to the scene, the government is still behind. Now, my question is, and i hope you don't mind if i sound a bit too bitter in this one, Where the *bleep* where these police cars when crap hit the fan and people were drowning in their own sewage? All this coordination problems seems to subside when the word "protest" is hovering around?

Personally, we still have a long way to go in learning the proper way in addressing our issues in a more socially involved dialogue, rather than blowing off steam anonymously on some message board. Today, despite being seen by many as the first step, was nothing but a prerequisite, a lesson one in a way. Learn your lessons, and stand for what you believe in.

Dear members of the Police force,

Instead of shunning down the will to be an active member of society, a more productive involved contributor, why can't you embrace it? Think about it this way, is it better to absorb the anger and divert it to productivity? or ignore it until it explodes unexpectedly?

If you believe in people's right to be free and express within religious boundaries, that have nothing against a peaceful expression of opinion about an evident case of corruption that is endangering their lives, you should be protecting the people from the secret agendas that you're so suspicious of taking place. It's your duty to separate the useful from the hurtful, not close them both all together.

Today, you sent a message of fear and doubt, more than assurance to those who believe in your ability to guard their lives. And today, in times of such emotional heights, different agendas are starting to surface. Including yours. Take care of the people, they're your brothers and sisters after all.

Maybe when you lose a loved one, then you'll know what it feels to yell at those responsible. Life should take care of that one, don't worry about any Boogy terror attack anytime soon.

Yours,

Lou..