Editor's view: Consequences to hardball protest tactics

Devan C. Tasa, Editor

Protest is an important aspect of our democracy.

Sometimes, protest uses tactics that are designed to tick people off in order to get some action.

I believe those tactics should be on the table if you’re a protestor, but at the same time, you should have to deal with any consequences that come from those tactics.

Over the weekend, we had a no-mask protest here in Humboldt at a park beside city hall, with the activists expressing concern about the government’s anti-COVID-19 health measures.

There might be a case for fewer restrictions, considering there’s only two active cases in the area around Humboldt as of Oct. 22. I don’t support fewer restrictions, as we know this virus is able to spread pretty fast if we’re not careful.

After the protest in the park, some of the protestors then went to No Frills, which is part of a chain that has a national mask policy – one that the local stores have to follow.

There was an incident where the group – with a few identifying themselves as from being from Saskatoon – went into the store without masks and the store’s management kept asking them to leave. The police then got involved.

Again, the protestors have the right to use this tactics, but they have to deal with the consequences.

In this case, it certainly got everyone’s attention.

Yet, I’d suspect that sympathy will go towards the employees at No Frills. After all,

they’re just doing their job, enforcing a national mandate from headquarters. That can’t be any fun, especially during these stressful times.

Office move

We have moved our office.

Instead of the one on Main Street, we have moved to a new place on Highway 5. It’s in that red building behind Wireless Age, kitty corner to the Uniplex.

One of the things that we’ve discovered during the pandemic is that our old office was way too big for what we needed, especially since many of the staff can work from home just as well as they can from an office.

So instead of spending money on maintaining a building that had too much space for what we need, we can use that to improve our core services: our two newspapers and our website.