Ban flash mobs? The whole point is that you can’t! News through this week is that the authorities in San Francisco have finally had enough of this anarchic flashmob business, after a pillow fight involving somewhere between 1500 and 3000 people went completely crazy, got rained on, and sent several tonnes of feathers down the drains,clogging them up and costing the city who knows how much money to clear up. Now the city councillors are talking about trying to stop it happening again, and no doubt city leaders all over the world are leaning in, trying to overhear the conversation and work out their own ways to stop these pestiferous protestors gathering together to make their various points.
The wonderful news, however, is that for two completely different reasons, flashmobs can not be stopped. First the legal stuff. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which almost every country in the world is signed up, states in Article 20 that everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. That means you are allowed, as a fundamental human right, to gather peacefully together. These laws have to be incorporated into our own laws, and here in the UK you should really be legally free to demonstrate whenever or wherever you want, without giving prior notice, as long as you are not blocking the pavement, or harassing or intimidating anyone. (There are a lot of ways in which this freedom is being eaten away, but it is there nonetheless.)
And secondly the tactical stuff. The whole point of flashmobs is that the crowd kind of materialises out of nowhere. You don’t book coaches and troop down in massive groups, you come along, one by one, without advertising your presence, and then at the appointed moment make yourself known. It’s the protest of choice for many campaign groups, including some great Ctrl.Alt.Shift moments, because it’s effective and bloomin’ enjoyable. If you’ve never been along to one, there’s a pleasant buzz of anticipation when you arrive at the specified meeting point, and you’ll find yourself looking
from person to person – are you part of the flash mob? Are you just a passerby? Are you a plainclothes policeman? The police will often be lined up waiting – their intelligence seems to be very good on these things – but they’re unlikely to touch you. Their brief is to make sure that the event doesn’t disrupt life for everyone else, and though they can be catastrophically heavy-handed at times, flash-mobs are rarely those times.
And then the moment comes, and you reveal your No-New-Runway teeshirt, or put on your Climate rush sash, or just start dancing. It’s a terrific adrenalin rush. And there is, gorgeously, absolutely no way that anyone can do anything to stop it. What are they going to do – shut down the airport? Parliament Square? The Tate (where hundreds of flashmobbers gathered this week with their own Morphs, in a tribute to artist and presenter Tony Hart)? Shut
down London, Liverpool, Moscow? Force everyone to stay home?
It can’t be done. And that, my friend, is the whole point.
Image: Flickr user Aaron Landry