Protest Creatively, for Safety's Sake

Are outdoor in-person protests safe? There's been a lot of back and forth about this.

I went to a couple last summer, based on the organizers' call for participants to wear masks and practice physical distancing. Both times, most did wear masks, but when the rally transitioned to a march down a street, people were squeezed too closely together, willy-nilly. The problem was not apparently that they didn't understand the importance of distancing; they just had no way of spontaneously coordinating to accomplish this.

As a result, I stopped taking part in such in-person events, but I took every opportunity to point out that an alternative is possible. That alternative is for people to actually plan ahead of time exactly how they will stay far enough apart. I have seen stories about events where this was done successfully.

One way of doing so is to use a service like signup.com, which is how Planned Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania ensures that enough, but only enough, people volunteer to be patient escorts and escort coordinators. Volunteers go to the website, sign in, and are presented with a specified number of slots for each day, hour, and location. Once the full complement is filled for a given time and place, no more people can sign up for it. This ensures that patients aren't intimidated or inconvenienced by an excessive number of volunteers as they go into the clinic. The same technology could be used to arrange for, say, three and no more than three people to stand and hold up signs at each corner of each intersection along a major thoroughfare, ensuring that lots of motorists will get the message -- and not merely for a moment, but over an extended interval of time -- while demonstrators stay a safe distance apart.

Some may point to the fact that no significant spikes in COVID-19 cases followed last summer's protests. This is true, and it reflects that fact that this pathogen spreads more easily in enclosed spaces. Unfortunately, there are now new, more contagious strains, and even if these aren't easily transmitted within outdoor crowds, such events still create conditions that could hasten the evolution of new strains that would be. We can't afford to risk that.