Remember what I said (or Eco said) about protesting and sports?

There is one thing that – even if it were considered essential – no student movement or urban revolt or global protest or what have you would ever be able to do. And that is to occupy the football field on a Sunday.

Well, it appears as though people are starting to grasp the power of that idea:

As Tithi Bhattacharya says,

“…the protest on Sunday actually is not a one-off. It stands on the shoulder of and in solidarity with the thousands of people who came to the State House over the last two weeks to protest this bill. It is also not, I think, the end—-or I hope it’s not the end of this series of protests. Why the Super Bowl? Lucas Oil Stadium was built with 100% union labor. Every single structure that is up in the city of Indianapolis today that has been built to beautify the city has been built with union labor. So, I think it is absolutely shameful that the legislature passed a law that condemns unions and is now using the city to kind of showcase Indianapolis while ordinary people in Indiana are completely opposed to this law. The protest on Sunday also stands in solidarity with the NFL Players Union, which has come out so strongly against the legislation. I think there has been some talk of how the Occupy movement may—-there has been some fear that the Occupy movement may disrupt a Super Bowl. As far as I know and as far as I’m concerned, the Occupy movement nationally has been a non-violent movement and absolutely is committed to being non-violent on Saturday. The question of disruption absolutely is not an issue because as I said before, we stand in solidarity with the Players Union. The only thing the Occupy movement, on Sunday, hopes to disrupt is the complacency of the 1% who think that they can get away with this.”

Good luck to them, but just remember how Eco wrote that:

…an attack on a sports field would surely cause the massacre of the attackers, indiscriminate, total slaughter carried out by self-respecting citizens aghast at the outrage…

Not to say that it shouldn’t be done – it is a smart move to try and interrupt the inevitable media spectacle of the Superbowl for the aims of these demonstrators. Protesters must find those intersections of physical and virtual space to create interruptions for the public if they’re going to draw attention to their cause, especially in a world where the traffic of our attentions is increasingly virtual and not physical.