DailyJim: Protests and wanting to hear why people are angry

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. This is the episode for Tuesday, June 25th, 2025. 2025, 2024. Today I want to talk about protests and wanting to hear what people are angry about.

So today, if you've been following any of the news, there were protests in Kenya. Plan protests because there's a new finance bill that was going up for vote and people were protesting reject the finance bill and it was so there were planned demonstrations for today, um some of them seemed i mean i think they broke into the parliament i think maybe some fires were started but also i wasn't there so i don't know the extent i imagine much of it was very peaceful, meaning non-violent.

And some people said that there was a lot of joy and celebration in the protests. I think there was probably a lot of anger as well.

And I think often I've looked at protests as ineffective, but today I started to see it as, and even like today, I think I questioned one of my friends. I said, okay, good, you want to reject Inject the finance bill and start what? And I think sometimes I can be so quick to jumping to, what are you going to start? What are you going to do next? And I think what I saw today was, what if I just slowed down and listened to what they're angry about? Sometimes wanting to stop something is okay, at least a starting place. Instead of jumping to step two three four five six what if the first step is really to just stop something and i think anger can be a very powerful tool for telling people to stop this one thing yes i think anger can also be channeled to focus and go in the direction that we want to go. And yet I'm wondering, what if me, what if I, what if government leaders paused, not just government leaders, but other people as well, paused to see what are people angry about? Why are they angry? Inquired, why are they angry? What is underneath the anger? What is the greater context to the anger? So, for example, why are people angry that they're putting a new tax on motor vehicles? Why are people angry that they're putting tax on sanitary pads? Why are people angry that they're planning to tax, I think, remittances from overseas? Why are people angry? Instead of telling people that you shouldn't be angry, stop feeling angry for what you're feeling angry, you just need to suck it up and be a good adult or whatever condescending bullshit we say, frankly.

What if we just paused and tried to figure out why they're angry because maybe we don't want to be doing the things that they're angry about maybe we realize that what we're doing is hurting them and that wasn't our intention so i mean i worry that some of my friends are going to get hurt i I worry that the direction of unheard anger can take. I worry that anger can turn into hatred very quick. I don't think anger has to be hatred. I don't think it has to go from anger at a behavior to anger at the essence of an individual. I think if the anger stays focused on the behaviors, then it can really lead to powerful change and actually unity. But even then I'm trying to say to myself okay maybe.

Maybe I get caught up on how I want people to point their anger instead of understanding why they're pointing the anger the way they are, and to try to dig into the deeper context.

Ideally, they would say what the deeper context is, but really just being curious to try to figure it out myself as well. And so this reflection is about the protest, tests but it's also about anger in general and how i imagine other people do this but i can see myself i sometimes get angry at the anger like i tell myself i'm okay with the anger but i'm okay with anger expressed in certain forms and anger expressed in other forms i can also i can get very angry and try to shut that down or reshape it and um i wonder if there's a lesson in there for people who are maybe on the receiving end of the anger right now.

This could be both sides, right? It could be people who are protesting and people in the government who I think both sides are throwing anger at each other in different ways. But just to recognize when there are that many people in the streets that there are a lot of people who are feeling a sense of anger And when they want to reject a bill, that means they want, they angrily want to stop something. I think something that they perceive is hurting them. And so to try to understand why might this hurt people. and.

Yeah I think, that's the kind of society I want to live in where, when somebody gets angry we try to figure out why instead of blaming them for being angry, where we say it's okay to feel angry actually be grateful that people are angry because it says that they're standing up for, themselves that they care about themselves and that they care about the people around them so i don't know if this is helpful for you just i think it's helpful for me to understand my kind of hesitance and my.

I don't know if it's a looking down upon but my kind of frustration, with a lot of protests and how i didn't see them being effective but if i look at them more as a starting point where people are overwhelmed and feeling very angry and the anger just boils up and the helplessness boils up and the suppression boils up and they say, I just can't do it anymore. This needs to stop. When I look at it that way, I.

Yeah, I think it can be a starting point. I don't believe it's the final answer. I don't believe it fully resolves the conflict. I don't believe it fully moves people forward and unites a population or a family or a relationship or whatnot. But I think it can start the conversation.

And maybe part of this is me just having the courage to also express anger in relationships. I think I'm often afraid of it because maybe I don't see it as the final answer. And so it doesn't make sense to express it because it's not the final answer. But maybe it is a really good starting point for conversations, if the two sides are willing to go into it or rather if the one side who receives the anger is willing to take it and see it as a starting point and go deeper.

But uh yeah i'm curious to hear what you think about it if you want jump on jim and friends and uh lead a message and uh yeah let the conversation start all right bye.