From this mornings Pittsburgh Post Gazette:
Scaling 30 stories of the Sears Tower in Chicago in early December to unfurl a 2,500-square-foot banner protesting nuclear power.
Creating giant papier-mache marijuana cigarettes to protest potential legislation in Italy.
Dressing as clowns and floating in bathtubs down the Allegheny River to mount a naval attack on the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.
The last hasn't happened, but all are ideas for creative protests -- events designed to maximize exposure to the media and subsequently the public -- and to draw in new supporters to a movement.
As the Group of 20 summit looms, experts expect a slew of various actions in and around Pittsburgh.
Some of them may be traditional sit-ins or encampments. Others, though, like the clowns-in-bathtubs idea (suggested at an early G-20 planning meeting for activist groups from Pittsburgh), are designed to be off the wall.
"People respond to creativity because it's more interesting in talking about a problem," said Alexander Bloom, a history professor at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. "There can be joy in protest -- and enthusiasm and excitement. And that makes people respond to it."
John Sellers, who is a founder of the Ruckus Society -- an organization that helps train various movements to run creative actions -- believes that enthusiasm is crucial to success.
Before the rioting began during the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle in 1999, Mr. Sellers described the protest marches there as "amazing."
One example he gave was a gathering of thousands and thousands of Sierra Club activists dressed as sea turtles -- joined by Teamsters -- blocking intersections and dancing.
"They were rocking, boogieing in the streets together," said Mr. Sellers, who once worked with Greenpeace. "It was true people power -- democracy in the streets."
He recalled that even the police were smiling at the antics.
"I feel we did America proud," he said. "It never felt that way before."
He helped found the Ruckus Society in 1996 to help spread the idea of safe, creative and strategic actions to any group that was interested.
"There weren't that many practitioners of high-profile, media-friendly, creative direct action," Mr. Sellers said.
Now, he said, the organization is small, but has a large network. There are more than 150 people who work as trainers for Ruckus, and another 3,000 to 4,000 alumni who have gone through the program.
The idea is to train people to look at traditional activism in a new way, Mr. Sellers said.
"People should think what they can do differently and not do the same thing over and over again -- like a ballet the state knows all the steps to," he said. "You can be easily marginalized as someone who is against, against, against. It's important to show what you're for and not be constantly in opposition mode."
One of the most important steps in creating an effective action, he continued, is framing the dialogue.
"It's really important to distill your messages down to the most clear naked poetry that you can," Mr. Sellers said.
Dr. Bloom agreed.
"Every social movement, if you want people to participate, you have to bring them to some consciousness of the problem," he said. "It's hard to get people into something arduous."
But sometimes, outlandish actions can provide the opposite effect and trivialize a message, said Jackie Simpson, a professor of sociology and peace studies at Notre Dame.
"It can undermine the sense of seriousness of the issue," she said.
Dr. Simpsonsaid, though, that to be effective, it's essential for protesters to influence the political elite.
"The authorities won't pay attention to the message unless something interrupts business as usual," she said. "Really novel tactics can sometimes be effective, as well as tactics that generate confrontation."
While violence detracts from the message that most activists want to convey, it also tends to get the most media coverage.
But Mr. Sellers doesn't like that approach.
"Actions that scare people aren't effective," he said. "If it scares my grandmother, and the teachers and firefighters we want to get out there [with us], then it takes us backwards."
While some organizations take a traditional approach and others go for shock value, several try to use humor to spread their message.
The Raging Grannies, first started in Victoria, British Columbia, in the mid-1980s, have now spread to cities across North America.
Carolyn Hale, who helped start the group in Seattle, has protested at events as small as city and county council meetings to the WTO.
"It was amazing when we walked down the street how many young people ran down and said, 'We love the Raging Grannies.' "
Their hook is humor. The older women wear hats and dresses, and they sing, dance and use street theater.
One recent song Ms. Hale's group has used to protest America's economic breakdown is sung to the tune of the "Hokey Pokey":
"Sub-prime loans go in,
Toxic assets come out.
Cut them all up and spread them all about.
Let's do the hocus pocus and bring the system down.
Fraud's what it's all about."
"I think we do get heard because we're different," Ms. Hale said.
And that's sometimes all it takes, Dr. Bloom said.
"People have learned how to get the media to respond -- what it takes to get attention."
One movement in the 1960s that attracted worldwide notice was a 1967 incident at the New York Stock Exchange.
A guerrilla theater group call- ed the Yippies went to the stock exchange and started throwing hundreds of $1 bills off the balcony into the air over the floor.
"The tickertape came to a halt," Dr. Bloom said. "The stockbrokers left their desks to grasp for money floating in the air.
"It made a literal point. These guys who pretend to be sophisticated are really just grabbing for dollars."
That same group, during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago the next year, nominated a baby pig for president.
Generally, the tactics used to protest -- or start an action -- evolve with the times and technology, Dr. Bloom said.
In the United States, while there may have been sit-ins in the 1930s, television ads were used in the 1950s.
Today, a form of protest that has been used involves computer hacking.
Just last week in Australia, hackers shut down the prime minister's Web site for an hour to protest proposed Internet censorship.
"Mostly, protest comes when people feel things are being done over which they have no control," Dr. Bloom said. "People protest when they feel their voices are not being heard."
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