Follow-up on this previous BoingBoing post from Cory: Link. As he steps out the door to "lead another sortie of dancing fools out into the streets of Manhattan," John Perry Barlow reports on the dance protests he's been organizing this week in NYC:
After four missions, Dancing in the Streets has exceeded my fondest expectations. It was my objective, as it usually is, that we afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, and this is what we have been doing by all appearances. We generally make the credentialed Republicans we encounter visibly nervous and spread good will and humor to most of the rest, including the police, who could well use it at the moment. People dig it when they see other people dancing in incongruous places. The most surprising people will join in, falling on the dance with a kind of hunger.
Republicans were hard to encounter at first. They are being quarantined behind the blue membrane of the NYPD (for whom my affection and respect has only increased through this experience). In addition, they spend much of their time inside the Garden having a lot less fun than we were. (As several of them told us.) Levels of engagement have increased with fine-tuning. The results vary, ranging from the Stepford husband whom we made so nervous that he walked into a plate glass window to the sweet young delegate from Oklahoma who tore off his tie and joined us for the balance of the evening.
We've had many interactions with the police. They certainly weren't interested in arresting us, though they kept us moving. Several of them said wistfully they wanted to join us. In general they only interfered because they are trying to maintain as familiar a peace as they can. Major variations from standard reality worry them. But not enough to go maximum on us.
