Earlier this year Mr. Nanjunda Swamy gathered 50,000 farmers to sit outside the state secretariat and tried to “laugh the Government out.” They had tried all the usual forms of nonviolent protest — sit-ins, blockades, refusing to pay taxes, picketing, blockading roads — but the State Government remained unmoved by the farmers’ plea for land reforms and an increase in produce prices. The farmers’ only reward was getting arrested or shot.
The farmers, surrounded by policemen, just sat on the lawn outside the Government building and told jokes against Mr. Bangarappa. And the jokes? “They were puns, actually,” Mr. Nanjunda Swamy said. After warming up the farmers with a little word-play, it was enough simply to say “Bangarappa!” over the megaphone and the farmers would shake with laughter. The police made no arrests (“How could they? All we did was laugh”) and no public property was damaged. “It’s as easy to make people laugh as to make them angry. Laughter can be a very powerful weapon against the Government,” Mr. Nanjunda Swamy said.
Quelle:
sniggle.net: Guerrilla Hacks