i didn't intend for it to be top-down organized but, rather, these were suggestions. more will emerge. the basic idea could simply float. but you do have to organize it in the sense that you strategically pick the right mall in a community. for instance, i'd pick countryside mall, here and the dewitt mall in syracuse. both have crumby parking already and both cater to the upper middle class neigborhoods, for the most part. at any rate, none of that needs to be organized. the idea was that taking up parking spaces shouldn't be "obvious" and appear random.
the strategy is stealth for as long as possible. a black bloc can still do its work, you see?
At 10:22 PM 10/31/00 -0500, Leslilake1 at aol.com wrote:
>I thought there was a supreme court case which upheld the right to gather
>signatures or perform some kind of political activities in malls - citation
>something like "plumfield v...." or something?
>
>LJ
dunno. i only recall that i approached a prof to do an independent study for *my* benefit, he tried make me do research that *he* wanted--and that was on the depoliticization of pulic space. (where's cat so she can chatise me about politics...?)
google turned up nothingon plumfield supreme court mall
but on another, less strict, attempt this turned up:
http://www.freedomforum.org/news/2000/03/2000-03-30-07.asp
so i gather they are working on it but it's not cut and dried just yet so that malls will still suspend such freedoms when they can, counting on the lack of political resources to fight the malls that prevent such protests or nip them in the bud.
again, the idea is to catch them off guard so they don't actually know what is happening yet and don't know how to respond. it's easy to know what to do to leafleteers--stop them, ask them what they are doing, bug them, patrol them and thus keeping people away and further making a freak show of it.
how do you respond to 100s of people not buying anything but just "shopping"? or a bunch of vehicles parked in your parking lot and you can't know who is wasting the space and who is actually shopping? and if they're shopping, what's wrong with just "looking"? eh? they need to suffer, see. the biggest shopping day of the year and their sales suck!!
the idea is to politicize the space by using it in a way they didn't intend-- in the same way rappers and hip hop culture once politicized urban space with block parties and graffiti. they took it over and used it for themselves.
so window shop, buy a pack of gum and return it, swipe those library cards, park those cars so you take up--oooops!--two spaces, circle around and around the mall entrances, in and out, driving rented u-hauls, the biggest ones, whatever!
then the blac block can come in and grafitti the k-mart anchor store or something!