? of the Day: Are you ready to bring some natural flash to NEO?

When I think about the kids in Brattleboro who are getting naked wherever and whenever they like [1], it makes me feel very stupid for living by social establishment rules I don't respect. When I think about the fact, pointed out by a poster to realneo, that in Cleveland people doing the same thing would probably get arrested, it makes me feel stupid for living here. But then I think of the beautiful morning a few years ago when 3,000 of us got naked for art, and felt very free and natural, and were not arrested, and it occurs to me I didn't do it to be part of a work of art or to see lots of naked Clevelanders but to be free, in my society and city, as I like. So I propose we who want to be free develop a tradition of expressing our freedom here and become better connected in the process, through some NEO Flash mobs.

From Wikipedia, "flash mob describes a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, do something unusual for a brief period of time, and then quickly disperse. They are usually organized with the help of the Internet or other digital communications networks." We certainly need to do more unusual things in NEO, we need to use the Internet and other digital communications networks, and we need to get organized, so we need to start flash mobbing. Beyond that, we need to get more natural and comfortable with ourselves and each other and break free of this stuck and stuck-up midwestern force-fed white-bread regionalized, homoginized NEO-non-sense that threatens to make Cleveland just another lame Ohio city and post-industrial bore. So let's get connected, natural and show some flash to the world.

The first step will be for some real, anti-establishment community members to bring their mobs together around the concept of flash mobs... we'll let that percolate for the next few months... nudge that here and there... and then it will begin to happen. One way to be sure to know next steps is to set up a realneo account, as we'll send everyone on our list an update as the time to mob approaches. You can also email me at realneo [at] inbox [dot] com and I'll add you to the notification list. The sites and purposes of the flash mobs will not be made public unitl hours before hand - and there will be a series of these events and some will be in the flesh and others will not. The point is not to get people naked, although there will be some natural flash mob events planned, and I suppose anyone who wanted to show up at a Flash mob naked would be safe and welcome to do so. The reason to do this is to do something different in the community, not only outside the establishment but without them even knowing until it is long over... time to take back the streets and culture of our community.