Those who were in my protest group are Dee, me, Saffron and Charlie and our protest was called "Don't Do Nothing, Do Something". The cause we were protesting for isn't straightforward, but in a nutshell, we were protesting for people to do something when they see something happening instead of watching from the sidelines and doing absolutely nothing about it.
For example there is the James Bulger case where this little boy was abducted from a butcher's by two ten year old boys , beaten up and was walked through the streets .Fifteen people walked past him and his kidnappers, knew something wasn't right but didn't take their suspicions any further even though he had a bump on his head and was crying for his mother. The boys then took two year old James to an unused train station where they tortured and killed him. Had somebody listened to their instincts and taken action, James would probably still be alive.
We went ahead with the idea of acting when you see something bad happening and we knew we needed something eye-catching so we'd attract a bigger audience This reminded me and a few others of a time where Dee's history class stood around in the courtyard one break time in absolute stillness and not responding to those around them. I remember that it was an odd sight to see and when I had tried to get my friend to go to the canteen with me (I ended up going alone because she wasn't responding) I became really confused. It's not something you see every day and many people just stood at the sides and stared or some others were trying to get a reaction from the standers.
We took this idea and used it in our protest. The routine we decided on was: we were sat in a row (order: Saffron, Charlie, me, Dee), but we knew we needed something more because after a while sitting still gets boring for us and the audience. So one by one, we set off in doing something that we may or may not see daily but either way we did something unnerving: Saffron screamed, Charlie was a drunk homeless, I collapsed and Dee did nothing. This continued for about five seconds then we all turned to look up at Dee who was stood at a slight distance then she opened her cardigan to reveal a bloody stab wound (fake of course) and was writhing in pain on the floor. She would go for the audience's feet (this was to include the audience in our protest because protests include audience interaction a lot), Charlie and Saffron stuck post it notes saying "Do something" or "Don't do nothing" and I was sat there holding a sign saying "Don't do nothing, do something". Me and Charlie picked up Dee and pushed her about until she fell then we sat back down in stillness, then Charlie became a drunk homeless and hassled the audience while me and the others went around the audience explaining what we were doing, that it was a protest and how it's relevant to our lives. Then we sat back down and repeated.
The audience reaction was kind of what I was expecting. We started the protest at about 10:45/50 am and there were loads of other people doing their protests around the school too so we weren't the only ones. To start with, we sat in the foyer in our line with masking tape crossed over our mouths sat eerily still and nonreactive. People from other p16 strands on their break came to see what we were doing and they spoke to us but quickly understood we were doing a silent protest; some of them laughed, got creeped out and others just gave us bad looks. When there was a big enough group, Saffron started screaming and we started our routine. NOBODY was expecting that so they all got jumped and hastily moved away from us, but they watched from a distance, as more people came out we attracted a bigger audience. When Dee was on the floor and grabbing at feet they inevitably moved away, said things like "Get off me" or "I can't help you". We had the occasional person who kissed their teeth at her but I think Dee did very well, She was persistent and wasn't deterred by some responses she got. When charlie's part came along people reacted as they normally would to a beggar which was moving away or saying "I have no money" but when we went around and explained ourselves to people they instantly understood even though some of them were saying they didn't get it during our routine. We did have hecklers though who were a group of immature year 10s who didn't know how to react but there was one who was coming up to us when we were sat silently and imitated the screaming in our faces (mainly Saffron). It got annoying because he had his mouth full of baguette, he was doing it for his giggling friends and he was irritating. When he was getting too close, Saffron started screaming again and I've never seen anybody stumble as badly as he did. Not to mention his face. So we learnt how to deal with them.
Overall, I think our protest was quite effective. It wasn't your typical protest, but we got a good reaction. The two things I would change are the time taken to get back to our seats to restart after talking to the audience because some of us got there before others and we had to reapply masking tape. We were slacking. The second thing is we could have made it a bit less performanceish and more like a protest, but then again the performance side is what got us a big audience in the first place so it's debatable. I got some feedback from my friend and she said it was effective and alienating but it wasn't easy to grasp the meaning until it was explained to you. Very few people understood without it being explained to them because we had stickers on us that said "help" or "do something" or "don't do nothing" so we did drop hints. Otherwise I'm really happy with it
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