The Surrealism of the Small Protest 
Alexander S. Peak

                                                                                                         22 May 2006


I attended on Friday a small pro-peace protest in Harford County, Maryland. About 40 or so people showed up.  I did not 
take a count myself, but this number is what I heard from others.  This was certainly the smallest protest I’ve ever 
attended, as the people participating did only cover a single block when lined up.

The whole event seemed surreal…at least from the non-protestor perspective, to put myself in other shoes of the drivers 
passing by.

You’re driving along, and you see complete apathy.  People walking along the streets, doing whatever it is humans do.  
Nobody caring much about anything, or if they do, not showing it openly.  Suddenly, you’re surrounded (at least on one 
side) by the opposite of apathy: passion!  People begging to be heard, voicing their opinion and displaying deep empathy 
for those behind whom they were rallying!

And, as suddenly as you come across this sea of passion, it is once again gone, and all around you is the apathy of the 
ordinary day.

This evoked hasty passion from the drivers, too.  For, in that brief moment that they were semi-surrounded by passion, 
they were casually evoked to display or recipricate the passion, whether through a friendly honk of solidarity, or a hand 
gesture of proverbial war against us.  They were provoked in a sense, not so much by the nature of the protestors, but by 
the suddenness of the situation.

This evocation of passion was just as surreal, often, as the sudden existence and disappearance of the protest itself.


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