There's been so much confusion about the protests popping up across our country. People showing up to one, think they are there in support of another...you know the usual. However I think we are beginning to learn something after these couple of weeks.
The protest tactics employed before are not as effective nowadays. The Powers That Be are content to let us 'sit in' who cares they think, they give us permits and we even have to clean up after ourselves. Which I'm not sure is a good or a bad thing. Cleaning up after yourself is courteous, and doesn't piss off the folks you are trying to help, but it doesn't raise any true problems.
This was exemplified in the Occupy D.C. 2011 protest that is still going on, they have a permit until Feb. 2012...W.D. Noble writes about it in Daily Dispatches at Subversify. You should go check those out there are good things happening there and also a big spotlight on what's missing.
What I think is missing is a disconnect between those who protested in the 60's and those who are just now finding their voice. And, they are very different voices by the way, it's going to be different. W.D. postulated we may need a Kent State. While I think that would certainly draw more news coverage, I don't think it's going to happen, we have easier tactics for controlling mobs at this point.
One of them is making it cost prohibitive to get there in the first place. Gas is expensive even if you pool, nobody picks up hitchhikers and you cannot jump a train anymore. Try it and you may end up in a terrorism investigation situation. If you think, "Ok, fine that's good, it'll get the word out." Remember Bradley Manning, and start to work on your meditation because you could be in a long silence.
The Occupy Wall St. movement I think is working better because so many of the people live near or around there. What needs to happen maybe is local orgainizing. It's not as easy as you think, even with event coverage when I went to check out my local one today there were 6 people (down from 50 last week) not including my group. Granted we are not a city but 80,000 seems like enough. The Dog walk-off down the street had a better turn out, maybe they were going to walk their dogs down there later...
Protest is going to look different in America. We are HUGE, we need to use that to our advantage, it's easy to contain a city, not so easy to contain them all.
Anyway, my song pick this week is all about protest. Bye Bye Badman was written by the Stone Roses about the 1968 French Student Riots. The lemons in the song by the way, refer to carrying lemons to combat tear gas.
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