[Writingworkshop] Flash Mob

[Neale Morison]

Flash Mob

What happened to the marching and the banners and the songs?
What happened to the cheerful, hairy, motivated throngs?
What happened to the folk guitar that was our fife and drum,
The swaying to the joyful strains of We Shall Overcome?

We blinked, that's what, they wore us down, they fiddled with the rules,
And now we need to find ourselves some innovative tools,
We need to get together on the task that is before us,
And use now all we have so they no longer can ignore us.

We need to grab our cellphone and our keyboard and our mouse,
And get online and let them know we're burning down the house,
They're big, we're small, we have to change the balance and the scale,
And virtually seize them by the short and curly tail,

The source of information now for group coordination,
The disenchanted, disengaged in close communication,
The clandestine injustice now exposed to global gaze,
The fifteen second sound bite now the google-friendly phrase,

A zombie walk, a pillow fight, with others you resemble,
Becomes a crime where you're denied the right to free assemble,
A flash mob drawn by SMS can generate exposure,
And posting online happy snaps bring governments to closure,

When corporate indifference seems truly insurmountable,
The secret is it to make them universally accountable,
You get the information out to those who sympathize,
With email, blogs and websites: galvanize and polarize.

The fourth estate is failing, in the hands of power and wealth,
The print and TV moguls are not in it for our health,
It's up to us to network, with our way of life at stake,
And let them know we mean it in a manner hard to fake

Their sites of progaganda are our sites of congregation,
Their channels of control are where we make communication.
We take a single issue and a strong participation,
And clearly let them know there will be no capitulation.

The target, beaten by suprise, may now become resistant,
Spontaneous togetherness must now become persistent,
The flash mob must become a movement, in a cause united,
Determined, never deviating, focussed and farsighted,

We're scattered but we're not alone, and many share our goal,
We're nodes within a network, parts that constitute a whole,
A whole that is far greater than the parts that form its sum,
Shall we work together? Then we shall overcome.

-- 
Neale Morison
neale at nealemorison.com
http://www.nealemorison.com
31 Maple Ave #2, Cambridge MA 02139
+1 617 460 9969
nmorison at mit.edu