Long Rallies Aren’t Just Boring, They Make Us Less Safe

We’ve all been there. The rally was scheduled to start at noon, but didn’t get going until 12:20. All of the speakers went over their allotted time and two spoke for three times as long as they were supposed to. The emcee is giving full speeches of their own in between speakers. The executive director of an organization that sponsored the rallies hadn’t been on the initial program but now their staff is insisting they speak. And there’s an elected official who wants to “say a few words of support.”

At 12:30 the energy was electric. By 1:15pm most people were sitting down in the shade. At 2pm the crowd starts to thin out. By 3pm many of our marshals and our entire health and safety team had to leave for other commitments. And we still have 5 speakers left!

These long rallies aren’t just boring. They make us less safe.

More time equals more opportunity for something to go wrong.

Anytime we gather large numbers of people outside for a significant period of time we have to navigate some basic public health risks. Exposure to hot or cold weather, dehydration, aggravating existing health conditions are all hazards that we navigate at large events. We can usually mitigate those risks with some pretty basic health and safety precautions: providing adequate drinking water; offering shade and cooling stations in warm weather or hand warmers and warming stations in cold weather; and having medical volunteers or staff on hand to respond to injuries and illnesses.

Longer events require more resources and health and safety infrastructure to support our people. When the program lasts longer than we planned for we run into the possibility that our health and safety team may not have the resources or staff on hand to continue to keep us healthy and safe.

The drinking water, first aid supplies and other materials that are on site will eventually run out. Health and safety volunteers and staff are real people with schedules and commitments and at some point many are going to have to leave. Those who are still around are left feeling stuck, not wanting to abandon the people they came to support but also finding themselves investing more time than they had agreed to.

And many of the common health and safety risks we face in large outdoor gatherings grow more acute over time. An hour in the hot sun without adequate hydration might leave someone uncomfortably dehydrated, but two hours in the hot sun might send that same person to the hospital with heat stroke. As time goes on people get tired. Fatigue is an aggravating risk factor for just about every health and safety hazard we face in the streets.

A more volatile political climate means even more risks.

Long rallies, especially longer-than-planned rallies have always been a challenge for our movement infrastructure. But in the current political climate the risks of these unnecessarily long events are even more acute.

Right now our movements are contending with an unprecedented level of militarization in our communities, a lawless federal law enforcement apparatus, and a surge in right-wing extremism. To responsibly mobilize large groups of people to take collective action in this moment, our organizations need to do careful security and risk assessment planning; recruit, train and mobilize bigger and bigger teams of marshals; and deploy additional layers of security including observers, scouts, documentarians, and legal workers.

Longer events require more time and resources from our safety and security operations. And longer-than-planned events run the risk of stretching beyond what our security plan was designed to respond to.

Fatigue can become a major issue. Marshal and security structure are usually in place well before the start of an action to support setup and crowd arrival and stay in operation well beyond the end of an action to support dispersal and tear down. These teams may be on site an hour or more before the start of the event and stay in motion until an hour or more after the event. So extending the length of the event makes a long day even longer.

Our security structures often become less effective over time. It’s relatively easy for teams of marshals and security organizers to be alert and vigilant at the beginning of an event but as time goes on, it’s very natural for our attention to wane — particularly with teams of volunteers who don’t do this work daily — and our structures start to degrade. When the events extend beyond the planned end time, some marshals and security organizers will likely need to leave to attend to other commitments, further degrading security structure.

Even if we are able to keep our safety and security structures strong and engaged throughout the entire mobilization, the dwindling crowds that come with long events introduce a whole new set of risks for our participants. We know that we are strongest and safest when we are together in large groups, and we’re most vulnerable when we’re isolated and on our own. That means we’re safest when we’re together at the action or departing in large groups. But we’ve all watched crowds begin to wane as long events drag on. People trickle out alone or in small groups heading to public transportation or their vehicles, finding themselves isolated and uniquely vulnerable to harassment from law enforcement or opponents.

Keeping the program tight keeps our people safer

Long events introduce our people to unnecessary risks. If we’re serious about keeping each other safe we need to be serious about keeping our events at a reasonable length. This doesn’t mean we need to stop mobilizing or spend any less time than we need to in the streets, but it is important to understand the impact of long events on overall safety and security.

Here are some tools for keeping our programs tighter and keep our events from running away from us:

Make sure that partners, organizers and potential speakers understand that keeping the program tight is about keeping our people safe.

The reason our programs often get so unwieldy is because it’s difficult to say “no” to adding another organizational leader or politician to the program. “What’s the harm in adding one more speaker!?” When we communicate that keeping the program tight is a matter of safety and security, partners can find it easier to accept limited space on the agenda.

Find other ways for partners to lead.

We often feel compelled to add more and more speakers to the agenda because we want to give more people and organizations an opportunity to visibly support the mobilization. We can take some of that pressure off our main program by creating other ways for leaders to engage. Ask partners to record a promotional video for social media ahead of the event. Create opportunities for leaders who aren’t speaking to do interviews with media and social media influencers during the event. Get an organization to host an after-party with some limited programming of their own.

Start on time!

If we don’t start on time, there’s almost no chance that we’ll end on time. Also if we consistently start the program late, supporters will start showing up late, leading to a difficult-to-break cycle of lateness. Kick off the event with a musical performance that starts 10 or 15 minutes before the announced start time of the event. The final song in the set starts right at the announced start time of the rally and then we dive into the speaking program. If you don’t have live music, build up that energy ahead of start time with a DJ or even a good playlist.

Send speakers up in pairs or groups.

If you have multiple speakers talking about similar topics or representing similar communities, send them up on stage at the same time. This not only reduces transition time getting speakers on stage and off, putting a speaker’s colleagues on stage with them creates a social pressure for them to keep their remarks brief, or at least within the allotted timeframe.

Ditch the Emcee

Putting an emcee on stage to introduce each speaker inevitably adds at least a minute to each speaker transition. If the emcee is talkative it can add two or three minutes of mostly fluff between speakers. Cut that out! Have each speaker introduce the speaker following them. Or use a “voice of God” announcement from off stage read a simple script “please welcome to the stage, ‘so and so,’ the executive director of ‘whatever organization.’”

When the program is over, get everyone moving.

We know that people are most vulnerable at the end of an action, when they’re leaving in small groups. So create some pressure to get everybody moving all at once. When the program is done, thank everybody for coming and tell them to get home safe. Have the production crew and volunteers start tearing things down right away. Play a song (or maybe two) over the loudspeakers and then cut the music. The clang of tables and chairs folding and equipment cases slamming open will make it clear that it’s time to go.

Keep the program tight for a safer and more powerful mobilization

Having more people and organizations wanting to add their voices to the mix is a good problem to have. And every single event is not going to have to contend with droves of voices that want to be added to the program. So some events may want to feature the voices of all of their partners, and recruit a high-energy emcee to fill space, lead chants and thread together a narrative for the program.

The point isn’t to limit voices or get out of the streets faster. But we need to recognize that unwieldy rally programs and speakers blowing past their time slots aren’t just annoyances to roll our eyes at, they’re introducing unnecessary risks for our people. Acknowledging the impact that drawn out events can have on our collective safety and being deliberate about keeping our programs tight can make our events more compelling for participants and help keep everyone strong and safe in the streets.