Protesting

To protest or not to protest! That is the question. No, I am not imagining I am Shakespeare writing play here. I am posing a question for you, given what I am about to tell you about protesting an issue. Everyone would agree that some protests are good, and a cause that is stalled or nearly inactive is often impelled by protesting.
But what kinds of things should and should not be protested? Surely there are good protests (equal rights for all, for example) and then there was the protest recently (Thank God it failed) in Atlanta, Georgia. That one may have ben the most misdirected of all protests.
You see, hundreds of homeless people gathered in Atlanta to protest a ban on begging in the downtown tourists areas of the city. They were protesting for a right to beg! is begging a civil right or is it an imposition on the rights of others because it is harassment of them? Calling the ban on their harassing others for money on public streets "an attack on the poor", they packed a city council meeting that voted for the ban and camped out on the City Hall lawn in the name of their right to be...well...bums.
A number of the beggars shouted to disrupt the City Council meeting and had to be escorted out of the chambers, one shouting "This is a day nobody in Atlanta should be proud of".... Oh, my....that one thinks it is prideful to beg and harass others for money on a public street. The ordinance makes it illegal to beg in a small area of downtown Atlanta, and says it is a crime citywide to panhandle at night or near public phones. Violators would get a warning on the first offense, referral to a resource center on the second offense and a possible one month jail term for further offenses. (Maybe they should just force the beggars to work. That would certainly send them scurrying to other cities).
Oh.... you can relax. I am not asking for a donation today. I admit that panhandling others is usually a mild crime. Most of the time there is no violence involved when a passerby refuses to give money to the beggar. But in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, perhaps the world's most violent city, crime was taken to a new height the other day.
How? Well, a dead woman lying in her casket was hit by a stray bullet during her own wake in Rio, as mourners fled in terror. The bullet, fired in a shoot out between a drug gang and police in a slum adjacent to the cemetery where the victim, Clenilda da Silva, 49, was to be buried, pierced the casket inside the cemetery chapel and became lodged in the dead woman's pelvis. Yes... they took out the bullet before they eventually buried da Silva.