Ryan Bridge: The power of protesting peacefully

Freedom is the thing I think we love the most about living in our country like ours: democratic, pretty liberal.

We fight, to protest, we argue, we debate. But unlike it seems most of the rest of the world, we don't get physical.

We don't kill each other for our beliefs. 

We express ourselves and then we try find a solution. 

Look around the world section of your newspaper this morning. From the Middle East, to Africa, to Europe, to Georgia. To parts of America, even. 

And you'll see places falling apart at the seams or freedom crushed into a thousand pieces. 

We have in this country, for the most part, standards about how we don these things. We have boundaries.

Two things that worry me about this. 

Protesters taking it too far as they did over the weekend and live streaming from outside the personal home of Member of Parliament. 

Their own personal home. Where their partner. Where their children visit. Where family friends stop by for a coffee. 

Their sanctuary. Their decades of family photos up on the walls. Their junk mail at the door. 

Some genius thought it'd be a great idea to get a mob outside a Senior Minister's home at the weekend. At nighttime.

It's not a good idea. It never has been and never will be. They published his addresses.

You might think you appear harmless with your flags and your balaclavas and yelling with your masks over your faces, but not all people outside of politics share this view. 

You can look scary, intimidating and threatening. 

So please carry on protesting - we're all free to do so but perhaps next time you stop and think about how far you're willing to take things and what that then think about heat that says about your as person. 

I think they should apologise.

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