Let's talk about cause and effect for a minute.

Submitted by an Artspace member:

As I write, the picketers are making noise outside. With a kazoo, I think.

honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk

Not to a tune, not in short bursts or Morse code or anything interesting, just

honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk

Yup.

All in all it's preferable to the slurs and screaming, but I would still hate to have them ten feet from my home.

So hey, I find myself wondering, just what is the aftermath of this supposed to be? Let's say that all of a sudden, magically, the strike ends today and...   what? The union people go on to their next mob project and the SAIL workers get back to their jobs?

I'm just not sure how that's supposed to work out. Are we supposed to pretend nothing happened? "What happens on the picket line stays on the picket line"? They might have the luxury of that disassociation, but we don't.

When the strike ends, no one is going to forget that these ~care workers~ were just out on the street screaming about "fat cr*pples" and "n***ers". We don't get to un-hear what they've said or un-experience what they've done. Our neighbours don't get to. Our kids don't get to.

What it comes down to is that this isn't a normal strike, protest or picket line. Even if we ignore the questionable circumstances of the strike itself, what we've learned as a community is that the people we assumed were trustworthy, or at least kind of decent? This is what they're like.

Not whatever they might have seemed like earlier on, not a generally okay person who just happens to take out their frustrations every so often by squeezing too hard or pulling too rough.

This is them. The person shrieking about "taking you out", the person threatening you, the person who won't let you come and go from your home in peace, the person keeping your from your appointments and medications, the person stalking you, the person who says you deserve it.

Maybe we should be grateful for this opportunity to see their true colours.

This isn't the the behaviour of protesters or strikers. You know whose behaviour it is? Abusers. Plain and simple.

They got a "free pass" to do and say whatever they wanted, and they chose this.

There's no taking that back.

Note: along with the kazoo, the picketers were honking a toy horn of some sort, plus one picketer wore a bell on his waistband while he and another picketer tossed a football in the street, pausing to shake it for extra noise, every now and then.  They are also back on the townhouse side of the street, blocking the stairs, on private property and harassing passers by on the sidewalk, as well as people trying to drive by.