Thursday's Children Blog Hop: Mob Rule

http://tinyurl.com/a424lvn

"Solitude is strength; to depend on the presence of the crowd is weakness.  The man who needs a mob to nerve him is much more alone than he imagines." -Paul Brunton

Many of you probably know by now I recently visited Seattle.  What you may not know is my visit there coincided with a riot.

Last year, the May Day Protests gained Seattle national attention.  Originally billed as a peaceful march supporting immigration reform and workers' rights, the situation deteriorated into one rife with violence and opportunistic vandalism.

This year, I was in Seattle on May Day.

My husband, son, and I were walking around downtown Seattle that morning.  Someone mentioned to us there was a protest planned for that afternoon, and we should clear out.  My husband and son took the Light Rail back to our hotel.

I pulled up the camera on my phone, staked out a spot on a high balcony overlooking everything, and waited.  The things we do for research.

From a writer's perspective, a riot is a fascinating thing to witness.  While I was not present for the actual riot itself (and there was one, though not as devastating as last year's), being there for the build-up and the aftermath provided some interesting insights.

1) Emotion is electric.  People often speak of being able to "feel" the tension in the air before something bad happens.  This is legit.  Everyone was fairly crackling with nervous energy, from the storeowners, to the police, to the people on the street.

There was also a faintly violent undertone that was both intriguing and telling.

2) Mobs feed on passion.  As was the case last year, this year's protests were supposed to be just that: protests.  Despite this, it's easy to understand how a protest can devolve into a riot.

After all, they both feed on the same key ingredient.

Protests depend on passion to be effective.  Riots depend on passion too.  And if you gather together a large group of people who feel strongly about something, it's shockingly easy for that passion to turn septic.

3) You can often tell who is who at a protest-turned-riot.  There are a lot of indicators who is there to protest peacefully, and who is there to wreak havoc.  Clustering into groups, deliberate boisterousness - or, conversely, cold isolationism- and overall attention-seeking behaviors are some.

How people look/present themselves is another.  This is an uncomfortable topic.  It smacks of profiling and prejudice.  But while it should never be the only consideration, it can provide some insight.

In the grand scheme of things, May Day 2013 was fairly benign.  Over almost as soon as it began.  I can't claim to know everything about mob rule because of it.  I had rejoined my family before the real craziness started.

Hell, I wasn't even teargassed.

But what I witnessed was pretty powerful stuff.  If you're a writer, you spend your life seeking to broaden your understanding of the human experience, if only so you can accurately translate it later.

Thanks to May Day, I understand one part just a little bit better.  

Photos I Took

(above) the square at Westlake Center before the first protest march

(above) the first march; already, you can see some people who look like they might be there for something else...

(above) aftermath of the second protest/riot; police blockade at the top of Capitol district