Speaking Truth to Shower

A few days ago I became aware of this video showing a Doctor and Medical student disrupting a presentation by Minister Joe Oliver on June 22, 2012 because @dgardner, no doubt fishing for activity on his twitter feed, called their disruption 'thuggish'.
Now anyone who follows #cdnpoli Canadian politics at all closely knows "thuggish" is a trigger word - basically the go to term bandied about to describe everything the Conservatives have been doing for the past several years. So to describe something done by an opponent of the Conservatives as "thuggish" in my mind is calculated to stir up 'liberals' into the twitter version of, well, activity.

Dan Gardner made the claim that asking the Minister a pointed question, then following it up with another pointed question when not satisfied with the Minister's response, was all good and proper, but at that point the Doctor should have sat down and let the press conference proceed. Watch the video , but the Doctor's gist was to do with cuts to funding for refugee medicine programmes and the Minister's response that this government, and Canadians, don't want refugees to receive preferential treatment to ordinary Canadians.

Now I don't know all the details of the cuts but the Doctor and medical student seemed to be saying "We have to deal with these people, you're cutting this budget will cause suffering and possibly death, and as you've refused to meet with us, and by the way we represent many medical associations across the county, we are left with no choice but to interrupt you while you're ribbon cutting to try and get your attention"

The Minister walked away from the podium, one of the hosts accuses the doctor of ruining the press conference, and the media was left to ask the doctor if he was a real doctor, he said that he was, and then hear the medical student explain how it's not only the refugees' health that was at stake, but also the health of all Canadians as not treating refugees carrying potentially infectious diseases as quickly as possible could just end up costing more money and putting more lives at risk.

Rising to @dan gardner's bait, I said that I thought this was a legitimate protest, that the minister should have defended his governments policies and schooled the doctor soundly if his position was justifiable, but by leaving the conference essentially ran away. In my mind the doctor, risking his professional reputation and potentially legal consequences, was acting in the tradition of civil disobedience. He remained civil, and when not satisfied with the minister's response, continued to press his questions which might have led to his being escorted from the premises by security personel or the police.

To me, albeit a liberal, the rightness of the doctor's actions were clear. He denounced a policy he opposed and stood his ground, risking whatever repercussions might come his way. He spoke truth to power, refused to let evil triumph by doing nothing, did what I would hope more of us would do in the face of the Harper conservatives.

Am I viscerally anti conservative and need to constantly remind myself to try and assess their actions objectively and not as a knee jerk liberal? Yes. Do I know enough about this issue to be able to state categorically that the doctor was right and the minister was wrong? No. But do I think the Doctor and the medical student were the heroes of the piece and the minister the villain, or the villain's henchman? Absolutely.

We all need to speak truth to power - because screaming about it in the shower just isn't enough.