Riot

They just wanted some hamburgers. A group of young men in Dallas, TX, were waiting in line at the FemCad nutrition distribution center. It was hot. Lines were long and even slower than normal. Patience wore thin. Some boys began chanting, “Hamburgers! Hamburgers!” They wanted burgers and fries. They wanted what they wanted to eat.

Security personnel came out. No one wanted to be hushed down. Pushing turned to shoving. Shoving turned to hitting. The security personnel retreated into the building. Doors were locked. But the line was long. And it was so hot. The doors did not stand a chance. The security personnel just stepped aside.

But they did not find hamburgers. They did not find French fries. They found aisle upon aisle of government-issued meals. No secret steak aisle. No donut aisle. That made the crowd even angrier. But there was no one to take their anger out on. That, of course, did not stop every government-issued meal from disappearing before the riot broke up.

Which it did, long before the FemCad goons came to put the hurt on people.

The mood was revealing, though. Some “impromptu” riots were planned. I joined a few. They were semi-violent but as unproductive and uneventful as the first riot since nothing was gained except access to more food you didn’t want.

Lesson learned: There was no reason to storm a distribution center. They did not have what you were looking for. I’m not sure who did. Perhaps it didn’t matter. The pot was boiling.

The masses still needed to make a statement. While the effectiveness of sit-ins and their more modern brethren, the Occupiers, is probably up for debate, the masses latched onto the peaceful protest. As with many things it started slow and began to grow. Loosely organized and driven by a simple desire for food freedom, the impact was at first a novelty. The media latched onto it with their 24-hour news cycle approach as if it were nothing more than a nasty storm front blowing through. The media dubbed them Foodem Fighters. But the protests kept growing, even when the media wished they would just go away.

The President’s opponents didn’t think it was a just a storm blowing through. It was a storm of protest. No one had ever openly protested against methane collection. People sued and bitched and complained but on one had ever protested. This was an opportunity for a political storm.