Is Live 8 evil? Si!
Jul. 3rd, 2005 12:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eclectic_boyForgive the silly subject, I've just been in a palindrome mood lately, ever since I came up with one for an event-planning email last night:
A man, a plan, mutual aid, a firm lap, a Noda, a 'do, napalm, Rif, a dial, autumnal Panama!
I don't actually think Live 8 is evil at all. Ineffective, sure. Overhyped as a consciousness-raiser when really it's closer to a big party, definitely. But not evil. Just misguided. And tiring to volunteer at:
I signed up to volunteer at it when I received an email request from Philadelphia Cares a fortnight ago. I was told I'd be a 'transportation assistant', stationed at a high-pubtrans-traffic area to help give directions. I was hoping 30th St because the a/c would be better than at Suburban.
So today at 12:30 I got to the check-in area for volunteers, the old circular visitors center at 16th and JFK, where I passed the silly and somewhat tragically wasteful sight of many dozens of people in blue ASK ME tanktops all standing around outside it, just talking with each other and not interacting with any concertgoers. Turns out they were just like me, waiting for their afternoon volunteering shift to begin. I was given a tanktop, assigned to a group, and ten minutes later got a very brief orientation. I was to be part of the 20-person "Water Tent / Roving Helper" squad for a particular section of the concert area (from 20th to 23rd St, the Parkway north to Pennsylvania Ave).
Okay, not transit info at all! Just asking people if they needed help with anything, being proactive if I saw people lost or upset or (as our trainer put it) "looking anything other than 'woo! I'm at a concert!'". And giving out water at the free H20 tent in our area. I spent some time making loops of the area, seeing where exactly the crowds were (this was still four or five blocks from the stage, though there were big projections screens & loudspeakers every couple of blocks down the Parkway). A few people had questions (directions I could answer; which band was playing I couldn't! I wound up actually hearing maybe 30 minutes of the concert the whole day; the rest of the time I was too busy to listen), but mostly it was running smoothly: a huge block party like Philadelphia has a couple of times a year, with a long row of food vendors lining the inner section of the Parkway and hundreds of thousands of people walking or sitting all along it.
I went to the water tent around 2:00 and Gary, the supervisor, told me he had a problem: he'd sent several volunteers out to refill the empty coolers (standard 10 or so gallon jugs-with-spouts) and they hadn't come back. He couldn't walkie to find out if they'd made it to the water truck because his walkie wasn't working. So I set off to find them, and discovered: (a) there didn't seem to actually be water trucks. (b) the first crew had ended up at water fountains, filling up the coolers there, which was taking A Long Time, and (c) over at the free water tent two blocks east they had a garden hose to supply their water. So we switched to treking over there. I also borrowed a spare walkie from them to give to Gary, but it eventually turned out that his did work but he'd never been taught how to use it. So I returned the borrowed walkie and got lessons, and taught Gary.
I spent the next while making those water-refill runs and doing more direction-giving, before discovering another garden hose at an EMT tent half a block from us, making our lugging a lot easier. Then it turned out Gary and a few others hadn't gotten bag lunches at the check-in, so I walked back to 16th St and grabbed some for them, and learned that the check-in building had run out of water for the volunteers there. So after bringing the lunches back I got an empty cooler spare cooler, filled it with a few gallons (not full because I knew how far I'd have to lug it) and took it back. And picked up a dozen more lunches, since it was after 4:00 at this point and there were more than a hundred left. My plan was to take them all the way up to our volunteers at the area right near the stage, and that's when I learned just how packed together people were from 23rd St westward. Much weaving later, I got there to find they'd all gotten lunches, so I eventually have mine to some apparently-homeless men. And signed myself out, a bit early but I was pooped.
The day wasn't quite over; walking down Race I came across a man in a wheelchair just sitting in the middle of the street, head down. I asked him if he was okay, yes; we chatted and he asked me if I could push him east to Broad, which was near where I was going. The streets were all closed, from Broad west to the Schuylkill, so his being in the middle of them was no problem, and we talked about how cool and eerie it was to travel right down the center of major city streets like that. At Broad Calvin headed north and I went another block east to the subway (I wanted to avoid City Hall at 15th, expecting huge crowds, but I needn't have bothered. the subway was almost empty. Turns out the railroad were where everyone went, and in fact they all had long delays. I lucked in my transit choice). Subway to bus (so I could stop at the ACME along the way), food shopping and the bus the rest of the way home, one adventure later.
Also, I think the numbers were ridiculously off. Several times I heard performers say "we've got over a million people here!" Maybe. I'm the first to admit my estimating skills are carp.
But I figure there was a huge stretch from about 18th St to the Art Museum and as wide as the Parkway packed with people at a density averaging one person per six square feet. That area is about a mile long and 250' wide. So 5280 * 250 / 6 people is about 220,000. To get a million people there, you'd have to fit a lot of people in areas that I didn't see...
A man, a plan, mutual aid, a firm lap, a Noda, a 'do, napalm, Rif, a dial, autumnal Panama!
I don't actually think Live 8 is evil at all. Ineffective, sure. Overhyped as a consciousness-raiser when really it's closer to a big party, definitely. But not evil. Just misguided. And tiring to volunteer at:
I signed up to volunteer at it when I received an email request from Philadelphia Cares a fortnight ago. I was told I'd be a 'transportation assistant', stationed at a high-pubtrans-traffic area to help give directions. I was hoping 30th St because the a/c would be better than at Suburban.
So today at 12:30 I got to the check-in area for volunteers, the old circular visitors center at 16th and JFK, where I passed the silly and somewhat tragically wasteful sight of many dozens of people in blue ASK ME tanktops all standing around outside it, just talking with each other and not interacting with any concertgoers. Turns out they were just like me, waiting for their afternoon volunteering shift to begin. I was given a tanktop, assigned to a group, and ten minutes later got a very brief orientation. I was to be part of the 20-person "Water Tent / Roving Helper" squad for a particular section of the concert area (from 20th to 23rd St, the Parkway north to Pennsylvania Ave).
Okay, not transit info at all! Just asking people if they needed help with anything, being proactive if I saw people lost or upset or (as our trainer put it) "looking anything other than 'woo! I'm at a concert!'". And giving out water at the free H20 tent in our area. I spent some time making loops of the area, seeing where exactly the crowds were (this was still four or five blocks from the stage, though there were big projections screens & loudspeakers every couple of blocks down the Parkway). A few people had questions (directions I could answer; which band was playing I couldn't! I wound up actually hearing maybe 30 minutes of the concert the whole day; the rest of the time I was too busy to listen), but mostly it was running smoothly: a huge block party like Philadelphia has a couple of times a year, with a long row of food vendors lining the inner section of the Parkway and hundreds of thousands of people walking or sitting all along it.
I went to the water tent around 2:00 and Gary, the supervisor, told me he had a problem: he'd sent several volunteers out to refill the empty coolers (standard 10 or so gallon jugs-with-spouts) and they hadn't come back. He couldn't walkie to find out if they'd made it to the water truck because his walkie wasn't working. So I set off to find them, and discovered: (a) there didn't seem to actually be water trucks. (b) the first crew had ended up at water fountains, filling up the coolers there, which was taking A Long Time, and (c) over at the free water tent two blocks east they had a garden hose to supply their water. So we switched to treking over there. I also borrowed a spare walkie from them to give to Gary, but it eventually turned out that his did work but he'd never been taught how to use it. So I returned the borrowed walkie and got lessons, and taught Gary.
I spent the next while making those water-refill runs and doing more direction-giving, before discovering another garden hose at an EMT tent half a block from us, making our lugging a lot easier. Then it turned out Gary and a few others hadn't gotten bag lunches at the check-in, so I walked back to 16th St and grabbed some for them, and learned that the check-in building had run out of water for the volunteers there. So after bringing the lunches back I got an empty cooler spare cooler, filled it with a few gallons (not full because I knew how far I'd have to lug it) and took it back. And picked up a dozen more lunches, since it was after 4:00 at this point and there were more than a hundred left. My plan was to take them all the way up to our volunteers at the area right near the stage, and that's when I learned just how packed together people were from 23rd St westward. Much weaving later, I got there to find they'd all gotten lunches, so I eventually have mine to some apparently-homeless men. And signed myself out, a bit early but I was pooped.
The day wasn't quite over; walking down Race I came across a man in a wheelchair just sitting in the middle of the street, head down. I asked him if he was okay, yes; we chatted and he asked me if I could push him east to Broad, which was near where I was going. The streets were all closed, from Broad west to the Schuylkill, so his being in the middle of them was no problem, and we talked about how cool and eerie it was to travel right down the center of major city streets like that. At Broad Calvin headed north and I went another block east to the subway (I wanted to avoid City Hall at 15th, expecting huge crowds, but I needn't have bothered. the subway was almost empty. Turns out the railroad were where everyone went, and in fact they all had long delays. I lucked in my transit choice). Subway to bus (so I could stop at the ACME along the way), food shopping and the bus the rest of the way home, one adventure later.
Also, I think the numbers were ridiculously off. Several times I heard performers say "we've got over a million people here!" Maybe. I'm the first to admit my estimating skills are carp.
But I figure there was a huge stretch from about 18th St to the Art Museum and as wide as the Parkway packed with people at a density averaging one person per six square feet. That area is about a mile long and 250' wide. So 5280 * 250 / 6 people is about 220,000. To get a million people there, you'd have to fit a lot of people in areas that I didn't see...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-07-03 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-03 04:10 pm (UTC)