To Tory Shepherd

To Tory Shepherd

By Kaye Lee on March 22, 2014 • ( 32 )

Sorry Tory, was the best I could do

To Tory Shepherd,


I was made aware of your article Grab-bag of rage as the March in March was much ado about nothing when reading Victoria Rollinson’s excellent article The missing ingredients.


I took part in the march and have read your criticism, some of which
may be valid.  If I may be so bold, I would like to offer some criticism
of my own.


You wish to denigrate protestors for not having professional signs?

“At the Canberra protest the UNHCR was the most
professional looking outfit there, carrying polished signs (not floppy
bits of cardboard).”

If you think that’s important then I am not surprised that you
thought it an “incoherent outpouring of rage against the machine.”  You
go on to say

“The point of March in March was to protest pretty much
everything, which meant that the valid points being made were drowned
out by noise. Those signs, those higgledy piggledy signs with bad
spelling and worse grammar, idiotic slurs and downright nasty smears,
tainted the whole project. “

It’s rather ironic that you spend the majority of your article
reporting that “noise” rather than the “valid points”.  I would suggest
that, without those few rather distasteful signs, you wouldn’t have
bothered even mentioning the other 100,000 of us.

“They have to be smart. And that is where the Marchers
failed and earned the contempt of so many.  If your form of protest
makes people either snigger in contempt or want to pat you on the head
or give you a good bath and a spelling lesson, then you’re doing it
wrong.”

Snigger at your peril.  Your condescension may well end up causing
you to be the one viewed with contempt.  You seem to feel that we needed
politicians there to lend credibility to the exercise.  Once again you
fail to see that it is the lack of credibility from our politicians and
media that was a driving force behind this people’s protest.  We are
tired of spin from image consultants and advertising firms.  We are
tired of biased inaccurate trivial reporting by the media.  What you
dismiss as a “grab-bag of mixed messages” was in fact an opportunity for
every individual to voice their concerns.


Saving the best of your journalistic expertise for last you end with

 “But the Marchers in the end threatened to disappear up their own proverbials in a puff of BO and bong smoke.”

Oh really?  I am 56 years old and I marched with my nephews who are 6
and 9.  We spoke in the lead up days about why we were marching.  The
boys’ take on the conversation was that we were marching to save the
trees and fish, and to make people be kind to each other.  I thought
that was a wonderful message and I was very proud of the “higgledy
piggledy” signs they wrote and drew themselves.  It was great to see my
elderly neighbours waving their anti-fracking signs to the beat of drums
played by pierced dreadlocked musicians.  It was uplifting to see
atheists applauding Father Rod’s speech about truth, decency, and
accountability.


This video is ”the horde of wild-eyed street-preacher types” that marched in Gosford.


You can’t pigeonhole the people who marched in March Tory, and you
can’t identify any one over-riding reason for their concern, but if you
think they are going to “disappear up their own proverbials” I would say
that your newspaper is far more likely to do that in the near future
than the concerned citizens of this country.


We marched because we love our country.  We marched for transparency
and accountability.  We marched for compassion.  We marched for the
future of our children.  Next time we will send you a press release so
you don’t have to bother writing this sort of ill-informed, poorly
researched, judgmental fluff in the future.