Well-Orchestrated Chaos

I saw a green sign with red letters today, advertising for a service opportunity, but I thought it was a sign for Newports. Yep. I had been to the south. I spent the weekend driving to Fort Benning, Georgia and back, though we did manage to go to a protest for just-over-24 hours that we were not on the road. So between multiple trips to Waffle House, I saw and participated in a festival and solemn service reminiscent of the Vietnam protests.

A modern day protest, set within inches of a major military base, is much like a ballet. It was organized, disciplined, and it caused you to drop your sense of reality. On day one there was a festival of different groups, peddling their different causes with t-shirts and petitions. Cops stood around drinking coffee and talking casually with the protesters. They knew that there was nothing to worry about. Then came day two. There were three options during the solemn march, mourning the loss of those who had fallen to the SOA: stay safe, low risk, and high risk. The safe option involved simply marching within the designated protesting area with no chance of arrest whatsoever. The low risk option was the most visible, marching down the street to meet the waiting squad of police cars with an officer casually reading the charges of "parading without a permit." Ironically, the most extreme form of disobedience, crossing onto Fort Bennig property, is the least visible. Nuns and priests slip out of eyesight to cross in private and to await their 6-month sentence.

What is present here is true civil disobedience. There is apparent chaos but, in reality, there is none. The police know the drill. They appear almost bored as they round up the law-breaking protesters for holding up traffic or trespassing on federal property. As much as it kills me to say it, it is a lot like Goffman's ideas in that it is very much a display, put on for the onlookers, the cops, and the protesters alike.