up here. I went to a student demo on Parliament Hill in Ottawa (basically, that is like demonstrating on The Mall), wrt University Funding, which was getting cut drastically at that time as the government wrestled with the massive deficits we were carrying at the time (~40G$/ann). The Minister for Youth and Education came out to speak to the demonstrators. Now, here is a wildly hostile crowd; as soon as he appeared, students started throwing Kraft Dinner (known as "poverty food" up here) and eggs. He kept it together pretty well until the egg caught him in the centre of his forehead, at which point he stated his position about the necessities of balancing different funding priorities in (shall we say) no uncertain terms and left the stage.

The point being that there was no question whatsoever about him coming out to speak, regardless of the hostility of the crowd. It was his duty to do so, as he was speaking to a group of people who, as citizens, and as people at the centre of the sphere of his political responsibility, deserved to be faced and to hear an explanation of why they were paying three times the tuition that they'd been paying two years ago. If you go into politics, there are going to be times when you will have to face hostile audiences; it's part of the job.