Staff | February 23, 2004
Introduction
This incomplete article is the result of ongoing research being conducted by Why War? on the potentials of a swarming protest strategy. For a background on Swarming, please consult Swarming and the Future of Protesting.
There are a few basic concepts that we must hold onto when we imagine a successful nonviolent swarm. The first is that one must imagine an aerial view of a city. Pay attention to the movement of traffic through the city. Notice that the city is organized for a specific kind of movement that is military in nature. Construction to facilitate the movement of soldiers aids commerce and the movement of supplies. If a mass wishes to take over a public space their collective movement needs to have an intelligence and the system must have spontenaity and mobility.
What activists call "the people (united)", the left's alternative to the right's "(fascist) mass", have two assets: their quanitity and their mobility. By quanitity I'm referring to their size, which is immense and was expressed on Febuary 15th. By mobility I mean each individuals range of motion.
Pre-swarming tactics relied on massing large numbers of people and destroying mobility in favor of uniformity. The goal was to move like a train, or a line of sheep. Tightly packed, slowly rolling down the streets, momentarily blocking the flow of normalcy.
This is a poor swarming strategy. As I noted in an earlier article, the protest should be viewed as a game. Individuals should favor mobility. Instead of congregating, we spread out. Instead of marching, we wander. This is easy to say, but how do we actually build it? This was a problem that I couldn't quite solve.
The initial idea of using radio waves was proposed by Jason Rohrer who wrote:
Each protester, or some fraction of the protesters, can carry a little black box on their keychain with a red "help" button on it. If a protester is present at a flashpoint, s/he can hit the help button, which would send out a radio signal. Nearby protesters' black boxes would respond to this signal by vibrating---stronger vibrations mean you are closer to the source of the help request. Protesters who receive the signal can head in the direction of the stronger vibrations (or follow others nearby who suddenly shout and head in a particular direction). To call for more help and send the request even farther away, responding protesters can hit their own help buttons to reach those that the first help request could not reach.
Issue no. 45 of Adbusters suggests another idea that embodies the mobility of the protestor with interference in the normalcy of the commute:
Pirate Radio Briefcase: Within a standard business briefcase, construct a low-frequency radio.... Prepare pre-recorded broadcast message, e.g. a public service announcement that a nearby mall has closed, or that a series of roadways has been declared carfree. Place briefcase near a high-traffic area, such as an overpass or parking lot. Transmit message over a range of frequencies. Move briefcase to a new location. Repeat.
The synthesis of these two ideas, is what I am calling the Swarming Stomp.
The Swarming Stomp: Synchronized Movement in a Distributed Mass
The Swarming Stomp is a game. There are two types of players in this game: broadcasters and receivers. The game can be played at any time of the day and involves roaming individuals who are broadcasting on a FM radio frequency (NPR, for example) that was publicized prior to the event. The second group carries a walkman and a whistle. The goal is to wander until you begin to receive a signal which blocks out the NPR broadcast. The signal may be chosen by the broadcaster, but it will embody a pulsating beep. Receivers than congregate within the area that they receive the singal and mimic its beat with their whistles - thus calling more receivers. The broadcaster can stop the broadcast whenever they would like to move locations, and the game will repeat at a new location that the mass must find through an unpredictable, uncontrollable wandering.
not done yet... need to add this this this this this