Infernal Noise Brigade Discussion Points

I understand the idea of protest through noise, disrupting the traditional notion of a person holding up a sign 'human bleating' their lament at the injustices of the world but I don't really feel that either one is 'better' than the other, as Jennifer Whitney seems to suggest. Perhaps it's the fact that the INB were such a new form of protest and the shock value of it made people take more notice of what they were actually trying to say. I do not mean to say that all protests are futile but there is a sense of finality about the act of protest, it's more of a last-stand than anything else. The recent protests at tuition increases in England did not change anything in the status quo and society moved quietly on. Monsanto has successfully lobbied the FDA into submission so that they no longer have to tell people when they're consuming products that are genetically modified...so what has really changed in the last ten years? The transnationals are, if anything, more bloated than ever and the majority of people really have no idea of the world and their place in it. College doesn't do much to help, you take a couple of INDV classes and learn about the destruction of natural habitat all over the world so that you can live your comfortable life and still nothing changes. I don't have a solution, I am as much a culprit as anyone else. I always feel an intense emotional connection to protesters and think, 'fuck yeah, I'm going to quit my job and do things like that too!' then I remember I'm married and have other responsibilities. Not that the people in the video aren't married or have responsibilities but the important factor is that they are a community. They work as a community, sharing their responsibilities among themselves which gives them more real time to do what they want to do with their lives. I think about the communities where child-rearing is seen as a village effort, no one mother is alone in it like most of us are here in the West. There is a disconnection in society that means we no longer really have a community, yes we're all living in the same place but we don't connect or rely on each other - we're independent of one another. I feel like the protesters need to 'grow up' and infiltrate the corporate world, take their ideas inside the companies and change from within but it is near impossible to survive being tainted by the corporate world.

Whitney's article talks about the first 'public/private' collision taking place for the INB when they invaded a Starbucks and started to play. For me, this was the most effective and unexpected visual in her piece because we all expect protests to happen on the streets. We all expect the police to be hostile and gas you but what we don't expect is the protest to invade the comfortable sphere of our being in a coffee house. This approach is probably bound to incite more anger at the participants because it disrupts all peoples business but it is probably very effective at getting people to pay attention to why you're protesting.

I think about the Style Wars video gallery scene when I think about trying to take the INB into a gallery just by showing photographs or artifacts and for me it really wouldn't be as effective as the protest. The INB exists for the protest, it is a living, breathing organism as Whitney describes - they all knew signals on which beat to take up, how fast to walk, when to turn etc. To dissect it and place it in a museum would mute the message that the participants were trying to get across. Like in the Style Wars video, I am sure that the people visiting the gallery would feel moved by their experiences viewing parts of the INB but fundamentally the message would be different.

Who has the power in a protest, who is in charge? Are the protesters in charge because they have taken over the streets or are the police in charge because they hem the protesters in with their batons and riot gear (or whatever US police have - I'm more familiar with the UK riot police...surely the US police don't carry their guns to protests?) or are the corporations hosting international events in charge because it is ultimately their presence in a city that means protests will be organised there. All participants in protests have the power of their respective spheres, the protesters rule the streets, the police rule the sidelines and the multinationals rule the corporate world. All these spheres have the power over their representation and message, the protesters relay their message through their music, mission statements, slogans or by direct interview. The multinationals relay their message through 'impartial' news outlets, designed to undermine the message of the protesters but the police really don't have a say in what they do. A protest is most effective when the lines between those spheres blur and merge, just as in the Starbucks protest or in the Shell office protest described in the footnotes of Whitney's article. These protests are most effective because the participants behave in an unexpected manner which is the most disarming way to get your point across.