Despite puppy mills being legal and licensed in the U.S. by the Department of Agriculture, animal activists in L.A. are gearing up to take on pet stores they claim are in business with said mills. Rather than engaging in theatrics, the group will operate education tables outside of the stores they have indicted.

Last Chance for Animals and Best Friends Animal Society, two animal welfare groups working together on this issue, will set up education tables outside of pet stores where they will inform patrons of the origins of where the animals come from. They will feature photographs of the conditions in which the animals are purportedly bred and offer shoppers general information about puppy mills.

In contrast to the action we highlighted yesterday’s news report, this technique is especially interesting. Yesterday we highlighted a protest organized by the I.W.W. Starbucks Union—one that placed some focus on the theatrics of political theater. This back and forth between the effectiveness of tactics reminds me a bit of the debate inspired by the piece by Sally Kohn published in the Christian Science Monitor last week (that nearly the whole of the Millennial activist community chimed in on) about whether or not modern activism is effective because it doesn’t have the Situationist sheen of old activism.

Yesterday I stated that it would seem it makes more sense to bring a large group together and inform/impress with a presence rather than to bring together a small group of people and turn off spectators with confused imagery and political theater. Confusion is fine if irony and chaos is what a group is trying to convey, but if there is a message and it is distorted by an unwillingness to connect with onlookers, this is an unnecessary waste of resources. While political theater is not being denied recognition of its importance, applying it to every protest scenario might be ill-advised.

The animal groups appear to be striking an interesting middle ground by coming together to provide a small collective interested in educating the public rather than overwhelming the public or establishment with a presence. As it seems the group’s goal is to discourage support of puppy mills, and since they likely won’t be able to set up a stick-and-carrot model in which supporters agree to buy X so long as the store doesn’t provide Y (in this case, milled puppies), this appears to be a sensible way to engage with patrons.

In your experience, which is the better way to demonstrate? Is theater necessary for informing onlookers? Or is a more concentrated, person-to-person effort important? What, as an onlooker, do you find you’re more compelled to pay attention to when passing a demonstration?

Also in eAction news:

• Public art and collective action.
• Folks come together to fund their own candidates.

-Filed in News

On this day, June 20th, 2008, the news brings to our attention Google-bombing McCain and an introduction to Anonymous:

• Google-bombing John McCain
• Scientology and an introduction to Anonymous

And a large handful of commentaries regarding the AP and their assault on bloggers:

• AP Battles Blogs
• Duff: AP starts copyright fight but can’t handle blogger backlash
• AP pulls a Metallica
• AP Exaggerates The ‘Conversation’ It’s Having With Bloggers; Caught Copying Text From Bloggers As Well
• Michael Arrington: The AP Has Violated My Copyright, And I Demand Justice

-Filed in News

Flash Mob, noun: An impromptu gathering, organized by means of electronic communication, of the unemployed.

-The Devils Dictionary (2.0)

In its short time in existence, the flash mob, which turns five a the start of next month, has been the fodder of much experimentation and conversation in communities concerned with action, civic engagement, general frivolity, and the Internet. After the now [micro]infamous 100-patron-strong “Love Rug” shopping trip that took place at the start of June, 2003 kicked it all off, getting random groups of people together via email, SMS, message boards and other communication technology to do random things has come to be considered the bees knees by participants all across the globe.

Confronted with this new behavioral specimen, The New York Times and CNN ran news pieces, Thomas H. Sander at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government qualified how he thought the phenomenon would factor into civic engagement, and Bill Wasik, maestro of the first mob, suggested that to call it a movement was premature–the flash mob is a precursor to something bigger. Boing Boing and Instructables have illustrated how one can assemble their own random, electronically organized public sing-song and/or disco and/or pantless escapade. Jaron Lanier jived wearily about online masses of the anonymous, Robert Vamosi discussed where flash mobs have become dangerous to the public, and CNN once reported on it in the context of virtual retribution.

Oh. And Christopher Monks imagined organizing a mob to help him win back the heart of a lost love.

In preparation for the celebration, we try to look beyond a lot of the talk to take a look at the five (well, six, really) coolest flash mobs to date:

Number 5 // Rickrolling London, April, 200

The Rickroll phenomenon is sociologically fascinating in its transcendence of all traditional standards of appreciation for irony for disaffection’s sake [here, Boing Boing talks to Astley about what he makes of this odd, unsolicited revival]. And on the 20th of last month, after putting an unbelievable amount of time into somehow keeping this joke alive, 400 Rick Astley fans brought their enthusiasm to London’s Liverpool Street train station and sang his infectious 1987 hit Never Gonna Give You Up. A mirror event with less attendees followed in Baltimore, of all places, several weeks later

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFfY2QSyZ9s[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzaT1d718Sw[/youtube]

Number 4 // Doonesbury and Dean Lovers Occupy the Space Needle, September, 2003

In 2003, when it was generally believed by every political internet dork ever that Howard Dean was going to be the mascot of an Internet-led, anarcho-socialist revolution, even cartoons were rooting for “change.” In

September of that year, Alex, one of the strip’s characters, was featured in a strip typing the following: Saturday, September 13th, 10:35 a.m,. at the foot of the Space Needle. Everyone should link arms in an enormous circle, hop up and down, chanting “The Doctor is In.” Not even a week later the bait for this Flash Mob for Dean was eaten by over a hundred people and the Space Needle was overrun by at least 100, Internet-savvy liberals participating in the first cartoon-instigated flash mob.

Number 3 // Zombies Attack Apple Store in San Francisco, Recurring

For a while, I was trying to figure out how to rank the pillow fight flash mob which, as a whole movement, is itself interesting. They’re visually stunning (feathers everywhere!) and they appear to be good fun for what seems to be a mostly-college-aged group of participants, but a certain edge is missing. That edge? A tribute to the grandfather of modern zombie cinema, George A. Romero, articulated by way of disrupting San Franciscan Apple customers.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Myb68v33o[/youtube]

Number 2 // The First Flash Mob - Buying “The Love Rug,” June, 2003

The first flash mob, which has been documented somewhat extensively since, was the brainchild of Bill Wasik (and it was reportedly this guy who coined the expression). In an interview with Stay Free Magazine, Wasik discusses his plans for the first effort, which was to take place in a Claire’s Accessories location in New York, and how his plans were inevitably foiled by the law:

About ten minutes before the first mob, I get a call from [a collaborator], and he’s like, “There are seven cops and a police wagon out in front of Claire’s Accessories.” So I get there and they’re not letting anybody stand in front of the store. They made it look as if a terrorist had threatened to wage jihad against Claire’s Accessories.

CNN describes the successful second attempt:

In June 2003, after the initial attempt at a flash mob was foiled, over 100 people assembled in the home furnishings department of Macy’s department store. As instructed, the participants consulted bemused sales assistants about purchasing a “love rug” for their “suburban commune.”

And from there, the rest became history.

Number 1 // Culture Jamming and Leaving the Pants Behind, 2006-2008

Tied for first place are No Pants 2k8 and the Best Buy infiltration, two events that come from Charlie Todd and Improv Everywhere [here we look beyond the fact that, similar to skinny kids with affinities for Williamsburg and tight pants who don't like to be identified as hipsters, IE suggests that they do not deal in flash mobs]. Todd is easily one of the smartest folks out there constructively pushing the creative limits of flash-mobbing (not to mention many other sorts of compelling rabble rousing). While it is its own, unfathomable existence that makes an event like the Rickroll flash mob interesting, there isn’t anything particularly substantial about the way in which the event challenges people beyond invoking reaction based on spectacle alone. By organizing a pantless confrontation of the general public in 10 cities across the United States or culture-jamming a retail giant with 80 employee lookalikes, IE continues to keep the art of the flash mob interesting by continuously challenging onlookers to wonder if they have been confronted with an actual glitch in the Matrix.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXB_DcuMv_E[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utkkXCF8ZVc[/youtube]

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