Adventures with/in Will H. Moore, Part 6: Let's Go to the Anti-G8/NATO protest and do some street social science

Series Introduction

​Will H. Moore had a kind of personality that is best described by the phrase: "down for whatever".  For those that don't know, this is defined brilliantly by the "urban dictionary" below:

down for whatever
Ready and willing to participate in most any activity. If said by your homie it implies that he is ready to have a good time in any situation.

That was how Will and I interacted with one another.  Sometimes, Will would set it off and I would be like "Let's do it!".  Sometimes, I would set it off and Will would be like "how do we start?"  Some of these efforts never got off the ground, but they were still fascinating to imagine.  Some were partially successful and incredible to try.  Some failed miserably but were fun to attempt.  Some were more successful than we could have possibly imagined and these were just heavenly or the urban/funkier version of that (Mo' Betta Hevnly).  

In my new series, I am going to explore Will, Willness (or, Mooreing) and my interaction with him.  These adventures are useful to put out there because it is soothing to remember them now and because they not only tell us something about the type of human that he is but also the type of humans, situations and social science that he helped create - these were connected in his mind.  Most of these are not on either of our vitaes - we just did them in an effort to start something, try something, create some resource for ourselves and others.

At its core, the adventures represent some bizarre mashup that is part buddy film, part travel story, part Mindwalk and part bromance set over 25 years.  To help me tell these stories, I will use film, music, literature and perhaps a drawing or painting or two.

Let's Go to the Anti-G8/NATO protest and do some street social science

Will and I had just come out of the excellent social movement workshop being run by Rory McVeigh and Kraig Beyerlein at the University of Notre Dame and for some reason I asked him if he had heard of Clark McPhail the sociologist.  He had not.  I mentioned to him that Clark's work was really an earliesh foray into disaggregated conflict research.  The short version: Clark maintained that what we generally describe as a single event (e.g., a protest or demonstration) was really many mini-events that took place in the same space and time but which were undertaken by different individuals as well as potentially involving different activities.  In a sense, he maintained that researchers needed to leave the interconnected nature of contentious events as an empirical question. The cool part: to figure this out, Clark went to protest events, placed students into designated areas (some grid that he placed over the relevant events) and asked them to code specific activities providing a general sense of who was doing what, where and when.  With this information, he could determine the singularity of particular contentious events - exclusively concerned with protestors. 

We both thought that this was cool for a variety of reasons.  First, it provided an alternative source of data to the conventional alternatives (i.e., news papers, ngo reports and government records).  Indeed, it gave us an important fourth source against which we could compare to the others.  Second, it was something that we could not only do in the upcoming NATO/G8 meeting and protest/march in Chicago but something that we could do whenever NATO/G8 met - potentially involving research teams from around the world.  That was the idea at least.    

That's all it took.  We decided to do it.  To pull it off, we asked for volunteers (from friends and then different listservs), we worked out a coding protocol and tried to find funding.  Very quickly, we ditched the coding protocol because it was kind of problematic to get folks in a short time period ready to code stuff on the fly - validly and reliably.  We were like a month away from when the meeting was being held.  Instead, we opted to have students video what was around them and we would just code later.  For this, we tried to get a few companies to donate cameras but this did not work out.  We then decided to go with people's smartphones.  

Training

For training we went over what we were trying to do, what we thought we would get out of it, what researchers generally did to compile information about contentious politics, what the NATO/G8 meeting was about, why people were always going to protest it and then where the protest and march were going to take place.  At some point, we walked the route and took the pictures of the end point (at least that which was identified as the end point).

Before we got started, everyone had to sign a form:

INDEMNITY AGREEMENT for NATO Protest Research Project Participation
 
 
TO:   Christian Davenport and Will H. Moore (the “Indemnitees”)
 
FOR GOOD AND VALUABLE CONSIDERATION (the receipt and sufficiency of which is hereby irrevocably acknowledged) the undersigned, …………………………………………, hereby indemnifies and saves harmless the Indemnitees from and against any and all claims, demands, actions, suits, losses, costs, charges, expenses, damages and liabilities whatsoever which the Indemnitees may pay, sustain, suffer or incur by reason of or in connection with my voluntary participation in the NATO Protest Research Project that the Indemnitees are conducting on May 20-22, 2012 in Chicago, IL, including, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, all costs and expenses (including legal expenses) incurred in connection with any such loss or damage.
 
DATED: May 20, 2012
 

…………………………………………..        ………………………………………….
            Signature                                                                     Printed Name
 

The Route

Closer to the event, we mapped out the route in more detail and gave the students the map below to help them figure out where we were going, what was along the route, where we would rendezvous if things went south and where we were meeting when everything was done.

The Plan

​The basic idea was to put McPhail's grid over the protest and then do our best to keep it assembled as the march got underway.   The outline of the protest was easy as we laid out the grid.  The march was a little more complex.  We went with the following:

Formation During March:
 
1st Row: Christian
2nd Row: Ari and Molly
3rd Row: Matt and Emily
4th Row: Brenna and Alexi
5th Row: Christie and Sam
6th Row: Cori and Bria
7th Row: Olivia and Montana
8th Row: Lizzy
Roving Team: Will, Douglas, & Charlie
​

The Protest/Counter-Protest as Will saw it

Everyone went to their designated areas and at 30 minute intervals (starting around 9am until about 4), everyone did a 360 and took a picture of where they were.  I am putting these up so that people can see what we did/what we found and so that you can assist in figuring out what could be done with the material.  In between the videos, people took pictures.  Will's pictures are below.    

​He later provided his field notes about what he saw

20 May 2012
WH Moore
FIELD NOTES, NATO Protest, Chicago, Ill

11:40 CST Departed Petrillo Band Shell, walked south on LSD.  East on Congress (snow plows blocked LSD south), walked through the snow plows and went south on Columbus.  

12:05 CST Federal fence at Roosevelt (in front of Field Museum) forced us east to Indiana. East to, and then south on, Wabash to Cermak.

13:41 CST Wabash & 21st (Loreal R&D): 2 buses of cops [video]

13:xx CST Wabash & Cermak: spot CNN & Fox broadcsat trucks in out of business tire store lot. Cops interact throughout the afternoon.

13:xx CST corner of Cermak & Michigan Papa Johns: 3 feds in PJ's shirts [no photo].  Nice haircuts and cargo pants.  Wanted to order a pizza, but didn't.

13:xx CST Lunch break at White Castle. NBC broadcast truck in lot. One fed dressed as bicycle rider (with bike), one as fly fisherman(?)/tourist.  Nice haircuts, boys.

13:46 CST 18th b/t Wabash & State: Riot police bus

13:49 CST Under the L (b/t Wabash & State) is empty

13:59 CST Wabash, next to Hilliard Project: cops (no riot gear), chillin

14:00 CST Wabash, next to Hilliard: long row of cops chillin [video]

14:02 CST Wabash & Cermak: Cops ordered to "Suit up! Full BDU!"  Officer Boudreau <Kenneth.Boudreau@chicagopolice.org> explained that they had a report about a group of four with swords walking on Harrison & Michigan [which was ahead of the march, which was just getting started].

14:21 CST 1830 Wabash: one lot south, cops staged in parking garage; three lots south, handful of unmarked police cars in junk yard

14:30 CST Clark & 18th is a Police Precinct

14:39-41 CST 16th & Wabash: Fire Dept, CPD, and Riot Buses 

14:59 CST Michigan & 14th: front of the march (looking north) 

15:00 CST Michigan & 14th: front of the march (looking north)

15:06 CST Wabash & ~14th: Sent this text to team leaders: "Tell people: don't go to curb.  Christian did and is now kicked out"

15:08 CST Wabash & 13th/14th: Phalanx of police roll south, fill side streets

15:12 CST bike cops and cars roll south on Wabash, turning east at 16th. Riot gear on

15:12 CST Buses, etc. no longer at 16th corner

15:20 CST Wabash & Cermak: Sent this text to team leaders: "Expect to be dispersed west at Cermak. Cops heavily deployed; riot gear, horses nearby.  Be alert and have an excape plan!  Pass this on.

15:23 CST Wabash, south from Cullerton: Empty buses (for arrests?); major police presence beyond the buses

15:25 CST 21st @ Michigan: Cops earlier at Loreal R&D now deployed, helmets off

15:27 CST Wabash & Cermak: Sent this text to team leaders: "Cell battery dying in prob 20 mins"

15:28 CST Wabash & Cermak: Firefighters and mounted cops at the ready.

15:29 CST Wabash & Cermak: CNN & Fox broadcsat trucks photo

15:40 CST State & Cermak: Sent this text to team leaders: "Juicing phone at Chicken Shack on NE corner of State & Cermak"

15:44 CST State & Cermak: Sent this text to team leaders: "CORRECTION: Rally is on.  Location: Park on SE corner of Cermak & State.  Grid there.  Porta potties available.  Please pass on."

15:47 CST State @ Cermak, looking south: Police lining the cattle shute into the Park [B&W png file from video stub]

16:00 CST State & Cermak: Sent this text to team leaders: "March is apparently stopped due to speeches.  Cops want to move to park two blocks west, speakers don't. Have an exit plan if it gets unsafe!  Be prepared. Please pass on."

16:12 CST State & Cermak: Sent this text to team leaders: "Please tell your team we are dispersing. Project over.  Meet at Chinatown Gate."

16:21 CST Cermak @ State: Riot cops move east down cattle shute

16:21 CST State & Cermak: Sent this text to team leaders: "Riot cops moving to Mich on Cermak. Batons out.  Disperse now."

16:22 CST State & Cermak: Dispersal Order

16:24 CST Cermak, west of State: Riot Cops looking west

The Protest/Counter-Protest as Christian saw it

I evidently took more pictures.  Mine are below, starting from training to set up to the end of the day.

Note: we pulled the plug on the project when things started getting a little hostile.  Initially Will and I were going to loop back to what was becoming a standoff between the police and the black bloc.  We could not get back in however as the area got locked off - nobody in after they had left.  With that we went to go get some food.
​

What else did we collect in addition to videos and photos?

• we scraped all news reports: before, during and after the event
• we scraped all tweets
• we obtained all court documents concerning the event
• ​we obtained all police press releases concerning the event
• we began a video depository for people to give us their videos

What did we find?

• Contention Starts Earlier than event
• Contention continues beyond the specific event 
• Protests are highly variable events as McPhail suggested
  • Some elements are clearly diffusing across contexts
  • Much of what happened was quite boring and uneventful
    
• Policing is also variable which was something the McPhail did not discuss
  • There was significant Intermixing of the police with the crowd
    
  • There were mixed protest-policing dyads with black police policing predominately white protestors and white police policing predominately white protestors (not many black folk attended the event)
• Coverage starts before the event and set the tone for subsequent coverage
  • ​Conflict garners more attention than other activities
    
  • The freakier/stranger the more likely something was to be discussed

Here is our pitch, approach and some of what we discovered

While excited about what we collected, we were kind of disappointed that no one seemed to want to follow up on our effort.  We also got stuck with trying to code video.  Clark did discuss some of this but we did not find that we were able to move it too far.   We did make some headway though.  We also found a number of hypotheses that we could explore with these data:

Hypotheses Regarding Repression and Dissent

• Repression increases a challenger’s costs of collective action (Tilly 1978; Snyder and Tilly 1972; Hibbs 1973)
• Massacres lead to backlash protests (Franciso 2005)
• Repression increases protests (Fransisco 1995;1996; Carey 2006)
• Repression has an inverted-U effect on dissent (Gurr 1970; DeNardo 1985; Bwy 1968; Fierabend and Fierabend 1972; Muller and Seligson 1987; Muller and Weede 1990; Olivier 1991; Khawaja 1993)
• Repression has U shaped effects on dissent (Lichbach and Gurr 1981)
• Repression has U shaped effects in democracies, inverted U shaped effects in non-democracies (Gupta et al. 1993)
• Repression has a direct, negative effect on protests, but inspires micromobilization processes that encourage protest later on (Opp and Roehl 1990; Rasler 1996)
• Repression of nonviolent protests lead to violent protests (Lichbach 1987; Moore 1998)
• Repression of violent protests lead to non-violent protests (ibid.).
• Indiscriminate repression leads to increased protests (Mason and Krane 1989; Goodwin 2001; Kalyvas and Kocher 2006; Kocher et al. 2011)
• Indiscriminate repression leads to decreased protests (Lyall 2009)
• Selective repression deters protest participation 
• Repression will deter protest during normal settings, but during periods of national protest waves repression will increase protests (Brocket 2005)
• Repression radicalizes non-violent protestors (White 1990)
• The ratio of state repressive order to challenger order determines the amount of information flowing to the state 
• Backlash protests occur when repression is perceived as extremely unjust by the general public and when information about the events is communicated to receptive audiences (Hess and Martin 2006: 249; Martin 2004, 2005)
• Torture does not influence dissent (Sullivan 2011)
• Leadership decapitation decreases movement mobilization (Jordan 2009; Nepstad and Bob 2006)
• Individuals who are repressed will escalate their commitment, the non-repressed will drop out (Davenport and Sullivan 2011)
• Individuals who strongly identify with the movement will protest more in the face of repression, others will drop out (Sullivan and Davenport 2012)
• Repression inspires movements to change tactics (McAdam 1983)
• Repression leads to less easily observed tactics (Sullivan and Davenport 2011)
• Fear of covert repression decreases protests (Star et al. 2008)
• Covert repression radicalizes a movement (Varon 2004; Zwerman and Steinhoff 2005)
• Non-violent protestors often seek out repression (Ackerman and Duvall 2000, Chong 1991; Sharp 1973
• Protests threatening the government increase repression (Davenport 1995)
• Dissent in areas that the government weakly controls leads to greater repression than dissent in areas controlled by the government (Boudreau 2005)
• Protests threatening the police increase repression (Earl and Soule 2006)
• ​Sources directly influence what is reported and recalled (Davenport 2007)
  

Finally, we got a little disheartened when the venues selected for the meetings became a little bit harder to access and we then kind of left the topic on a shelf for a while until we could get our heads around it.