The Atlanta Protests

Back in Atlanta. The house was okay when we got back, and the weather was a cool 52 degrees. It reminds me that winter will soon be around the corner. It's jacket-wearing weather right now.

What I missed was the huge protest in downtown Atlanta. (There was a similar protest in Phoenix.) No fewer than 50,000 Atlanteans gathered to protest the lack of action by the Atlanta City Government regarding the Energy Crisis. However, it wasn't one's usual protest.

First, there wasn't the atmosphere of "one guy on a soapbox with a megaphone". The point of the protests was not to be grim and determined, but to provide a community atmosphere, and a pleasant shared experience between people with the same goals. Someone described it as "a cross between a state fair and a protest", with very few chants, marches, or whatever for the first part of the protest. Of course, people showed off their electric cars, brought canned preserves, held improptu knowledge-sharing sessions, but no one needed to be hectored about the lack of fuel. Everyone already knew there was a lack of fuel; the point was for people to have a good time.

Second, the area at Centennial Olympic Park was rigidly controlled by the organizers themselves. Access to the central planning camp was controlled by old Vietnam and Iraq veterans who had established walkie-talkies and checkpoints with the Atlanta police looking on. The organizers had no plan of losing control of the area to young anarchists or anyone who cared to co-opt the point of the convention for whatever their pet cause happened to be.

Indeed, control was shockingly ruthless. One young woman who quickly moved from a speech about the lack of oil from the Middle East to the plight of the suffering in Palestine had her mike quickly cut off and was scooted off the podium. There was loud booing from the attendees, and one of the organizers came up to the mike. "This is about fighting one war at a time, people. This isn't the 'cause of the week'. We're not meeting today to solve every problem in the world -- just one of them." (Indeed, many radical groups held a counter-protest of the protest, angry that their speakers wouldn't be allowed on the agenda.)

Third, what few speakers there were were chosen for the age: nearly all of them were eighteen or under, and all talked about the way their lives had been changed since the Energy Crisis. The call was for the adults in the world to help solve this problem, at least in the City of Atlanta, by providing workable solutions.

Many of the teenage speakers called for more money to be diverted to the "Beltline", a project where abandoned train track encircling Atlanta would be taken over by the mass-transit MARTA system to expand mass-transit service to the periphery of Atlanta. Many MARTA workers attended the strike, and the union looked on the participation of those workers favorably. "At last, someone in Atlanta finally gets it."

The kids were actually quite wise as to how much of an uphill battle it would be. "I think the first time we do this," said one young man, wearing a suit, "they'll say we were crazy. The next time we meet, we'll all be ignored by the media. The third time we meet, they'll call us "dangerous" and there will be call for the cops to break us us. But by the fourth time -- we'll win!

(* * *)

The amazing part was the fourth part. This was probably the first Mass Internet Protest.

The organizers had circumvented going to the major media and radio stations to get publicity for the protest. Instead, they went to independent newspapers, posters, leaflets, and organizing the college and high school communities. Kids told their parents, who then joined with their kids.

A new website was created that provided an "alternative media". However, it wasn't your usual, "here is the issue/here are the salient facts/let's protest" website. Rather, the website's goal was to act as a major newsite, like CNN's newsite or the CBS newsite. "We want people to bookmark this site first. That means we have to provide content other than the kind of content we're protesting about. About sports, and entertainment. Lots of people think those issues aren't important, but the goal is to preach to the world, and not just to the converted." And there were a lot of people get news about sports, TV, the weather, local news, all at the website -- which faced several legal challenges from "legitimate" news providers claiming that their material had been "poached".

Furthermore -- the protest was not seeking the help of the television media. The founders turned down TV interviews. They turned down radio interviews, sticking to the Internet and local speeches at universities. Of course, there were plenty of people who talked about the protests, but the media seemed annoyed that they were being shut out of the process.

One founder put it this way at a speech at Georgia State University: "Screw the media! We know what happened during the Iraq War protests. We were ignored. When we weren't ignored, they would find the least representative protestors and focus on them, or they would find a small handful of counter-protestors and treat the situation as if they had numbers similar to ours! The media doesn't own the world. The media doesn't think for us, and frankly, we've stopped thinking about them."

All in all, the website was a success. Although it faces legal challenges, its user-contributed news might make it a powerful player in its own right in Atlanta's future.

(* * *)

Around 7 pm, however, the protestors suddenly began to wander over from Centennial Olympic Park to the CNN Center. "They don't listen!" shouted the protestors. "Make them hear us!" "Take over CNN! Let's have a sit-in!" someone shouted, and the crowd massed across the park, crossing Marietta Street and making their way towards CNN.

At that point, the riot police went into action, forming a line across Marietta Street and gathering up any stragglers that had made it to CNN Center before they had. The protestors shouted and screamed at the riot police, who remained impassive.

Aside from some debris thrown and the occasional swinging of the billy club, there was no true "riot" and the police more or less remained unmobilized. By about 10 pm, the protestors simply began to disperse, and by midnight it was all over. ("Of course", said one of the organizers, "the hard part will be to get people to come back again.")

(* * *)

My wife had great news. One of my wife's sales customers (he works for a duck-related insurance company) who lives in Columbus has offered to sell us...a pig! A dead pig, of course. It will be fed, slaughtered, and packaged, and we have to help pay for the expenses.

It's a lot of money, but it will keep us in meat all winter! Meat! What a luxury! We immediately went shopping for a freezer for the basement to use to store our gains. They say "it takes money to make money", but I guess the actual phrase was "it takes money to make meat". We're out about four figures and we haven't seen a strip of bacon yet. I figured we'd better buy now before it became impossible to buy later.

(* * *)

Of course, there had to be bad news: San Francisco won Games 6 and 7 of the World Series for their first World Championship ever in the Bay City. Barroids hit a couple of home runs, kissed the World Championship trophy, and immediately retired -- so something good came out of it all, at least.

But if the players go on strike, what am I going to do for sports? Although one person talked about electric car racing.....