Archive for November, 2011

Monthly Archive

Sat 19 Nov 2011

Make friends: Mary Wesley & Moon Mullican

Posted by Alex
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A dear friend of mine, Mary Wesley, has recently started working as the new CDSS Youth Intern. She is a truly wonderful human being. I learned this song from her, which has been called her theme song. And it turns out there’s also a singing square version of the song! How wonderful is the message of this song?

Make Friends – Moon Mullican (lyrics)

Make friends with the rich, make friends with the poor
Make friends with the high, make friends with the low
Even the little child, you oughta greet him with a smile
While traveling through this world, try to make friends

Make friends, make friends, make friends, try to make friends
While traveling through this world, try to make friends
Wear a smile, not a frown, don’t you put your neighbor down
While traveling through this world, try to make friends

Sometimes you may be weak, sometimes you may be strong
Sometimes talked about, and sometimes treated wrong
But you just can’t miss, if you just remember this
While traveling through this world, try to make friends

Make friends, make friends, make friends, try to make friends
While traveling through this world, try to make friends
Wear a smile, not a frown, don’t you put your neighbor down
While traveling through this world, try to make friends

 

Thu 17 Nov 2011

Occupy Wall Street chants: Stop beating students (and everyone else)

Posted by Alex
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Protest chants are really fascinating to me. They are at the intersection of targeted marketing and crowd dynamics, in that they can only become popular if they’re catchy and succinct, but they need to communicate a clear message. Some of the standards of the Occupy Wall Street movement seem to be growing stale, though. We’ve got:

  • “We…are…the nine-ty-nine per-cent!”
  • “The whole world is watch-ing!”
Then there are some that I like, such as:
  • “Whose streets??” “Our streets!”
  • “Hey hey! Ho ho! Corporate greed has got to go!”
But, I’ve had some thoughts about the effectiveness of different chants, sparked by this video:

As you see in the video, when the chant changed from “The whole world is watching” to “Stop beating students!” The police stopped. I think calling attention to police brutality in this simple format was extraordinarily effective. I think there are clever people who could create some really fantastic chants that could become really popular and influential. Chants need to be simple, and they need to communicate a clear and tactical message. How about “Stop beating journalists”? What better way to get the mainstream media on your side than to call out the mistreatment of their colleagues? And really, in this age of new media, anyone can be a journalist. And I’m sure the creative people at Occupy Wall Street and other occupations around the country can come up with other great chants to use. We need them; I feel like the old standards are good, but overused, and there’s opportunity for so much more.

There are also many good chants I haven’t heard, so please, fill me in!