With the protests to end the lockdowns, the main pictures I’ve seen in my social media bubble have been ones with signs like ” I need a haircut” or ” Let my People Golf”. So it’s not surprising that people would be writing responses like annacaffeina’s:
People aren’t out protesting to be waitresses and hairdressers again. People are out demanding that their waitresses and hairdressers go back to work. The idea is to force the service industry to serve them despite the risk to the servers.
This seemed unlikely to me: the financial strain of not being able to work is something I’ve seen my conservative friends posting about a lot. Since the signs we see are generally coming through multiple layers of filters, primarily for being interesting and controversial, I wanted to try and get a more representative sample of what people actually had on their signs.
I ran an image search for [reopen protests] and looked for pictures that had a lot of signs. I picked ones that had as many legible signs as possible, and where it didn’t look like the photographer was trying to feature a specific sign. I ended up with the text of 71 signs.
Most of the signs were generic pro-reopening ones (“Reopen NC”, “Stop the Shutdown”). The most common theme was the constitution (“Gov’t can’t Suspend the Constitution”, “1st Amendment—The right to peacably assemble”, “We The People”) with nine signs, followed by references to tyranny (“Tyranny Is When You Restrict The Movement Of Healthy People”, “Tyranny Calls Itself Safety”) and freedom (“Free People Make Free Choices”, “We Demand Freedom”) with six each.
On the motivating question, I counted four signs about wanting to work (“Let Us Work / Let Us Live”, “Re-Open NC /Let Us Get Back To Work”, “We Want to Work”, and “If It Pleases The Crown May We Go To Work”), three about wanting to let others work for their own benefit (“We can do Both / Save Lives / Save Jobs”, “Poverty Kills”, “Let’Em Work / Let’Em Live”), and none about wanting others to go back to work for one’s own benefit.
Here’s the full list:
Wyoming Protest (18):
Reopen Wyoming Now!!
Re-open Wyoming
We can do Both
Save Lives
Save JobsStop the Shutdown
God Gives Gov’t Takes
Life of Lock-up
Gov’t can’t Suspend the Constitution
Stop following other States
Wyoming is full of Leaders
Let’s LeadFaith Over Fear
Keep Wyoming Economy Open
Open
Poverty Kills
Spread Facts not fear
My Constitutional Rights are Essential
1st Amendment—The right to peacably assemble
Your Solution is worse than the problem
Free People Make Free Choices
All Businesses are Essential
#ReopenNC
#WeThePeople
America StrongLet Us Work
Let Us LiveReopen Our Lives
Reopen NC
Freedom Over Fear
Re-Open NC
Let Us Get Back To WorkAbsolute Power Corrupts!
Reopen NC
Losing Your Rights
Preventable DiseaseFacts Not Fear
Reopen NCMore Harm Then Good
Every Business Is Essential
We The People
Free People Make Their Own Risk Assessments #ReopenNC
You Woke a Sleeping Giant
Tyranny Calls Itself Safety
Shutdown Is Tyranny
Shutdown Is Based On Lies!!
Reopen Now
No Mandatory Vaccines
ReOpen with GA, TN, SC
Fear God Not Covid
Do Not Consent to Tyranny
Re-Open NC
Reopen Our State Before Its Too Late
Obedience To A Lying Government Is Not Virtue
You Are In Violation Of My Constitutional Rights
Make America Constitutional Again
We the People Want To #ReopenNC
Just Say No Socialism
By We The PeopleNo Fauci
No Gates
No VaccineLet’Em Work
Let’Em LiveMy Rights Are Essential #ReopenNC
Stop Gov’T Overreach
Freedom Is Essential
Politicians Are Not
Re-Open Florida
Never accept the Government Infringing Upon Your Freedom As Necessary or Justified
Plandemic
Small Business is Essential #ReopenFL
When Tyranny Becomes Law Rebellion Becomes Duty #ReopenUSA
Stay Home
Promote UnemploymentTyranny Is When You Restrict The Movement Of Healthy People
There Is No Virus Clause In The Constitition Reopen Florida
Don’t Tread On Me
Trump Pence
Fauci Lied About Death Toll & Oppressed America For Pharma-Tyranny Nazism
Open
Stay Home MN [in a red circle with a line through it]
Free The Humans
We Want to Work
If It Pleases The Crown May We Go To Work
We Demand Freedom
Planned Parenthood Is Not Essential
Open Minnesota
Facts + Faith Over Fear
Comment via: facebook
Some of those waitresses and hairdressers need money to pay for mortgage and food. People who don’t get that, really should check their privilege. Not everyone is a remotely-working software developer.
Golf actually seems quite harmless to me, as long as the players wear face masks. In open air, not large crowds. But I am afraid that “golf” is mostly an euphemism for “football” here.
“Stop following other States / Let’s Lead”—definitely save this picture for its future memetic potential, if Wyoming happens to surpass New York in the number of COVID deaths.
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I mostly feel bad about people who want to protect their health, but will be forced by their employers to interact with people without wearing face masks.
It would be nice to restart businesses without sacrificing safety, but this world doesn’t work like that. (My gut says that the lady complaining about needing a haircut would be the first to complain if her hairdresser wore a face mask at job. And the hairdresser needs the money to pay for mortgage and food...)
It’s worth noting that what someone puts on a sign doesn’t necessarily indicate what they really care most about, especially if what’s on the sign is more socially acceptable than what they really care about. So I don’t think the findings here are inconsistent with what annacaffeina says. (They are probably, albeit not very strong, evidence against what she says, though. Only “probably” because it could be that the other sign-slogans—especially the more generically-political ones—are evidence about the sort of person waving the sign; maybe some of those slogans are more characteristic of wealthier people who want the service industry serving them again than of poorer service-industry employees who want to be at work again.)
Thanks for this! I don’t agree with the protesters and my gut reaction is that they get too much attention. However, uncovering truth is always worthwhile.
Wow, that is a really toxic and hateful Tumblr post. I don’t think it’s worth this sort of respectful response.