Counter-Protest is Gote (後手)

The Japanese term, sente (先手) means "prior hand" or "first move". In the game of Go, sente translates roughly into the english term "initiative".

I've been spending a couple/few hours on most recent Monday evenings counter-protesting at our Alderwoman's office on Archer Avenue in Chicago. A very small, but obnoxiously loud group of people have been stiring up opposition to a traffic safety project on Archer which was approved after years of public meetings at which there was approximately zero opposition. The scheduling just happens to co-incide with "Ward Night" - the time when the ward staff and the alderwoman makes themselves available for walk-in visits from constituents (actually one can visit any time they are open). The loudest of the dozen or so regular protesters are afflilated with conservative groups opposed to our progressive alder. Their motives are suspect to say the least.

For reasons unrelated to the Archer Avenue astroturfing, I'm exhausted with participating in public protests, so I'm not objective. But I'd really rather spend my winter Monday evenings doing almost anything other than standing around in the cold showing support for the safety project by holding signs and quite possibly being mistaken for a protester, rather than a counter-protester by a subset(?) of the passing drivers who can be bothered to pay any attention at all to the situation.

At last night's counter-protest I was reminded of Go's concept of sente. It is a bit of an exaggeration, but I've heard it said that to lose sente - to lose intitiative - is to lose the game. After one has lost initiative, one's move is reactive and worse, there may only be one weak, defensive move to make and if that isn't bad enough, that move is dictated by one's opponent. The pain! To counter-protest is to react - in Go terms, this state of reacting to an opponent who has seized the initiative is called gote (後手) - literally, "after hand". There is a way out of the situation in Go called tenuki (手抜き) in which a player who has lost the initiative intentionally ignores the threat and instead of defending, makes a move elsewhere. I wonder if it may be time for tenuki on Archer?