How I Learned to Live with the Mobs

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I have made the acquaintance of several mobs during my career as a reporter, and have observed them closely in their native habitat. I am not talking here about crime families, but about large groups of demonstrators, protesters, and/or rioters. Since they are playing such a large role in our national discourse these days, I thought I’d share what I’ve learned. 

The first thing I learned about them was that when they are assembled, they morph into a single creature that has its own identity, temperament and judgment. It will proclaim its identity and demonstrate its temperament, one need only watch. Protests have changed the country’s administration greatly. For instance, rising major protests to maintain DUI laws in Southern California strictly against the government had a great impact on the citizens to avoid unnecessary incidents and accidents related to drugs. My guess is that if you calculated the average IQ of the participants, and divided by 2, you’d have a pretty good handle on the judgment part.

The second thing I learned about mobs was that you cannot assess them by watching them on television. Many years ago, on an island far away, what began as a strike by workers at the Bermuda Electric Company who had been prohibited from joining a union turned into a multi-day, rolling, travelling protest/demonstration/riot/all of the above. One the evening of the first day a couple hundred strikers occupied Government House, the official residence of the governor, camping out for the night on the spacious grounds of the estate. 

Checking on them late that night I saw a peaceful scene of people lounging around small campfires, talking and laughing and singing. Watching from just outside one of the cast-iron gates in the high stone wall around the estate, I decided to get some footage. I raised my handheld Filmo 16mm camera and fired up my Sun Gun. 

Instantly, the peaceful scene was transformed into a sea of shouting, fist-brandishing savages lunging at the gate and demanding their rights. I doused the light, and tranquility returned immediately. Never believe what you see on TV.

Earlier that day the strikers had occupied a soccer field in an all black neighborhood. I didn’t have a cell phone, because they hadn’t been invented yet. Two-way radios had been invented but our small station couldn’t afford them. So I went from door to door asking to use a phone to report in. Finally, one very nervous lady allowed me to use her phone, down a short hall from the front door. As I was on the air live with my report, listeners heard a crash, a scream, thudding footsteps and then a dial tone. It was my most dramatic broadcast ever.

It was quite a while before I could make contact with the station — they were organizing a search for my body. But all that had happened was that two very large persons had banged through the lady’s front door, hung up the phone, picked me up by my elbows and levitated me back into the street, where with remarkable politeness they asked me not to use any more black folks’ homes for my white boy’s work.  

I also learned that the police are usually not very good at handling protest. They are almost always thinking about what weapons to use to break the crowd up and drive it away, when there are almost always other options.

I was called out to a “riot” at a school in Northeast (“No-Feast”) Washington DC. When I arrived, the “rioters” were milling around in the school yard and the police were in formation outside its fence, riot shields and batons up, ready to kick ass. I walked the fence for a bit, and went to the scene commander. “Where’s the riot?” I asked him. All I saw was a bunch of kids letting off some steam after a basketball game. Nothing had been damaged, no one had been injured. He disdained to answer me and went on with preparations for an attack. 

I slipped away, and into the schoolyard, where I walked around talking to the laughing, charged-up kids. The scene commander had a fit, got on a bull horn and threatened me with arrest. He was even less pleased when I went on the air (on WTOP, Washington’s all-news station) and accurately described the situation. He was even less pleased when he started hearing from the brass with orders to stand down.

Some police organizations are better at this stuff. I was covering a large civil-rights demonstration on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol when things started to go south and the Capitol Police started making wholesale arrests. Because I had a beard, two officers gathered me up by the elbows and started frog-marching toward a paddy wagon. At least a hundred feet away, halfway up the Capitol steps, the chief of the Capitol Police somehow saw what was going on, somehow got the attention of the two frog-walkers, and waggled a finger at them. They dropped me as if I had scalded them, and locked in on new targets.

Anyway, if you have a mob in your neighborhood, make its acquaintance. Be firm and friendly and not afraid. It will go home when it gets hungry.