Blog for Oregon

I’m the founder of miniprotests.com, the site which urges all the different progressive activism campaigns to use the miniprotesting strategy in what I call Direct Target Protesting.

Miniprotesting uses small groups of four or five people each aligned on successive street corners in what I call “protest strings” thereby allowing protest groups to make the best useof their numbers and reinforce their message to motorists many times over within a few minutes.

This tactic isn’t just for designated “action days” by one of many entities. Groups need to do it weekly, say on Wednesdays when antiwar vigils abound everywhere. Only have a couple of dozen members in your group? Perfect. With 24 people you can have two protest strings in different parts of town, each consisting of groups of 4 on three consecutive blocks.

The Holy Grail of this movement is to have ALL antiwar and anti-Bush groups use these tactics to SURROUND THE US CAPITOL DAILY. See http://miniprotests.com for a map depicting what that would look like.

But momentum needs to start in towns and cities all over the US where the target of the protesting is Donny Dittohead. Donny needs to know that credit card lobbyists wrote the Bankruptcy bill, Bush lied us into war, and that the GOP is just fine with 12,000 US-based companies avoiding paying taxes by having a PO box in the Cayman Islands.
He will when he sees us on the streets in Everytown, USA every week.

Unifying all the voices of change is key to the success of miniprotesting. One person in each group should be holding a 30″ by 40″ main sign AT WAIST LEVEL that ends with “Against War” or “Against GOP Lies” on it. These are the two unifying cries of our age. Others behind her or him should hold their signs overhead in the usual manner. This uniformity of presentation provides a “BRANDING OF THE MESSAGE” that will reinforce the impact of each group individually. There is a rather quaint depiction of this on the home page of

http://miniprotests.com

Odds are, small regional groups will be the first in each city to utilize this approach. Their protest strings can be sprinkled about town with signs like, “Code Pink Against War” or “ACLU Against GOP Lies” in three-block-long protest strings. If unaffiliated folks just want to take to the streets on their own, their groups can display “4 More Against War” or “We’re Wise to GOP Lies” or something local like “Tigard Dems Against GOP Lies.”

A crucial aspect of Direct Target Protesting on the local level is that since there is no designated protest location, PENTAGON SPIES WON’T KNOW WHERE WE’LL BE. Here in Portland, I’ve posted over 100 potential locations for protest strings to go to on the local politics forum of the Portland site for craigslist.com. Part of the growth ofminiprotesting is for others to post similar spots in their own towns, with links to the Links and Sponsors page on miniprotests.com. Since this page is being set up state by state, links to these lists on local entities’ home pages will help draw people to their causes.

Our motto: On the Corners WE ARE HOPE

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Oregon, Washington County by ProgToddinTigard