> As I went to pack my bag, I noticed that my co-workers had stopped working long enough to stare at the television screen, which showed thousands of protestors filling the New York City streets just blocks from where we sat. Suddenly, one of my teammates spoke up: "Ugh. This is getting a bit ridiculous," she said. "I'm sorry. Does anyone else think this is ridiculous?"
> My hands stopped zipping up my backpack, and I turned my head far enough to see her in my periphery -- sitting behind me with her head shaking and arms folded in exasperation.
> "These protestors aren't going to solve anything," she said. "Like, what are those people even trying to do? Seriously. What are they trying to do? Make people mad about getting stuck in traffic? Piss people off because they can't get to Grand Central? It's annoying. I just can't stand it."
I think this could be a problem of sensitivity or awareness, rather than heart being in the wrong place.
The person speaking might have felt they were aligned with the goals and intended message of the demonstrators, and was only expressing frustration with what they thought were ineffective or unwarranted methods, but...
I suspect that the speaker wasn't in that moment being sensitive to the anguish and sense of urgency some people might've felt, over brutality and related injustice. The demonstrators might've been crying "pay attention to this", and then a coworker seemed to dismiss that.
It's too bad that the writer of the piece couldn't speak up in the moment. Though they alluded to some of why, and I think I understand.
(I probably wouldn't have spoken up then, either, even with lesser stakes for myself. I learned this from a workplace incident, when I was walking up to a group of (presumably straight) coworkers chatting casually about some gay issue in the news (this was before the first US gay marriage), and one of them, who was normally thoughtful, started riffing glibly on how "it's unnatural". I doubt this struck me as deeply as the writer had been, and I hadn't really felt part of an oppressed group, nor had to fear anything around that -- but I was still shocked in the moment, and speechless, as I felt like my face flushed, and I walked away quickly. In hindsight, they were probably within earshot of another coworker, who I knew to be secretly lesbian or bi, but I don't recall whether that registered in my mind at the time. Elsewhere in life, I try to do what I can, but I couldn't speak up in the moment.)