Whenever the rabble get a little riled up and start to do that icky and unsanitary thing called "a protest", the establishment (or powers that be, or whatever you choose to label them) always try to tamp the thing down by interfering with the crowd's ability to communicate. In Iran and Egypt and practically every other arab state where protests sprang up, the governments took down the internet, or they suspended cellphone service or they blocked twitter - they did whatever they thought would be the most disruptive to the protestors' need to communicate and coordinate. It's a primary tactic in every conflict, and every government does it whenever they feel threatened. Remember that the USSR banned fax machines for years, and when they finally allowed them, each machine had to be registered and each transmission was monitored and recorded. That's how threatening free and open communication is to any government, including here in the good ol' USofA.
Occupy Wall Street has struggled with NYC's prohibition on the use of amplification in public spaces. Their work-around has been to use humans to relay the speakers' words out to the crowd by simply repeating what the speakers are saying. Semi-brilliant in that it's organic and cheap and very "community-ish". I imagine it also tends to work in favor of keeping the oratorical blather to a minimum.
I'm wondering, tho', if maybe there's a better solution that serves the purpose and stays within the law. What if you just put together a conference call? One quick pass thru Google and I found a company offering "free" conference calling, allowing up to 1,000 listen-only participants. If you had a thousand cell phones scattered thru the crowd (on external speaker), it'd be like one of those church services at the old drive-in theater setups.
There must be other tech solutions too. Get thinkin', you guys.
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