It’s not about the art: Looking behind the effort to paint South Portland oil tanks

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The real goal behind the Art All Around project, which proposes to paint original artists’ designs on several Sprague Energy Corporation oil tanks in South Portland, will be fulfilled even if none of the tanks is ever decorated.

According to Jean Maginnis, who dreamed up the idea and is coordinating the effort to bring it to life, the project is not actually about art for art’s sake. Instead, she says, it’s about forcing “a large public discussion of art.”

Maginnis, the founder, executive director, and sole employee of the Maine Center for Creativity, the “group” that spearheaded the effort, is getting her wish. Five semifinalists’ proposals — all abstract designs — were selected by jury from 560 submissions and made public in the middle of last month (see “Words Over Pictures,” by Ken Greenleaf). And since then, the outcry has been deafening. Though her organization has raised just $200,000 of the $1.2 million needed to actually put paint on steel, hundreds — even thousands — of Portland-area residents are thinking and talking about art, though not exactly the way Maginnis might have hoped. (See sidebar, “Talk of the Town.”)

Good intentions
Maginnis is a passionate defender of her brainchild, initially responding to a Portland Phoenix request for an interview and up-close viewing of the proposals by saying “I’m not going to share my information with you if this is something you’re going to attack.”

She did eventually grant us an interview, in which she explained that she wants her three-year-old organization’s signature project to appeal to several distinct audiences, mostly far from Maine.

-international media outlets, which might cover Maine as an artsy destination;

-art-interested people around the country and the globe, who might travel to Maine if they thought about it as a creative place;

-Google Earth users across the Internet, who might see the painted tops of the tanks on their computer screens, if and when the Web-based satellite-photo database adds new images;

-business owners and leaders everywhere, who might be inspired to use artists’ work or artistic approaches in business applications;

-investors, who might bring their businesses to Maine if they were more aware of how creative our state’s residents are;

-artists, who might benefit from being able “to feel that they are able to make their dreams come true;”

-and, ultimately, the millions of people — mostly Portland-area residents but also visitors — using cars, boats, airplanes, trains, bicycles, and even just their feet on routes from which they can view the tanks.

These are, indeed, positive intentions — efforts to “put Maine on the map in the national and international markets,” and even trying to get people who bad-mouth the Pine Tree State to start “saying something different about Maine than ‘it’s not worth investing in.’”

Fixing what’s not broken
If all this strikes you as a massive undertaking intended to right a large number of wrongs, you’re getting the picture. And if you question whether some of those wrongs are as bad as Maginnis makes them out to be, you’re not alone.

Maginnis says that she already has strong evidence of her project’s success. For example, she notes that many of the 560 entrants wrote in their entries that they had learned something new about Maine when researching their submissions — which is, it’s true, a start down the road of teaching the world about Maine’s creativity, but not really numbers worth boasting about. And she professes great satisfaction at having brought discussions about art into the halls of government and corporate boardrooms, in her search for financial and logistical support — even though many of her sponsors and collaborators are long-time activists in the local arts community.

There are even farther-reaching goals, though. Maginnis admits that, based on the wealth of national-scale artists who live here, Maine has a strong reputation among artists and art sellers and a robust visual-art life and economy. Considering their small populations, Portland and Maine — which have been art destinations for decades — have a high number of quality galleries and museums. But still, Maginnis insists that more people think of Maine as a state where businesses and artists struggle, rather than one where ingenuity is key to survival — and that this project can help shift that view.

That seems like a strange perspective, but it’s easier to understand how she got there when she offers the most startling example of the pessimism driving her forward. There are, she says, currently “no industries” in Maine where creative people can work.

That’s a particularly ironic statement for many reasons, not the least of which is the letter of support from Governor John Baldacci that is prominently posted on the Art All Around project’s Web site. In it, the governor makes clear that “more than 63,000 Maine residents are currently employed in the creative sector, which provides about 10 percent of all Maine’s wages.”

Her claim is further contradicted by the fact that she delivers it — with great earnestness — in one of several conference rooms in the offices of a large Portland marketing firm that provides her with free desk space and other support. At the desks outside the room where she is speaking work some of the most successful creative minds in the state.

Talk of the town
The public’s objections to the Art All Around project are legion, and range from philosophical to savage. The most pragmatic complaints decry the use of $1.2 million in private donations to pretty up massive oil tanks when the petroleum industry is making record profits and Mainers can’t afford to heat their homes or gas up their cars.

Some local residents have expressed concerns about the designs themselves, with one South Portland artist telling the Current (a weekly community newspaper serving South Portland) the designs give her “little to be excited about.” A resident and business owner quoted in the same article used the word “horrendous” to describe some of the designs — her strongest praise was, “Others, I could live with.” And a South Portland city councilor voiced among the most common criticisms of the designs: “I was expecting (design proposals) more along the lines of Maine-related history, mountains, seascapes, and native animals.”

Even the tough-as-milquetoast Portland Press Herald arts section recently ran a column calling the project “controversial.” (Note to those reading daily newspapers: the word “controversial” is code for “We hate this, but aren’t comfortable saying it ourselves, and we can’t be bothered actually talking to anyone to get a quote.”)

Project creator Jean Maginnis has an answer to all of those critics. “A lot of people” tell her they like the project and its semifinalists and are willing to support it with their time, energy, and money. Fighting back tears, she explains that this work is “valuable . . . because art matters.”

Press Releases: Dumped by text

Published in the Portland Phoenix

He might not like this comparison, but Barack Obama has pulled a Britney. He told his supporters — or at least those who signed up on his Web site — his vice-presidential nominee choice before granting an interview to a major daily paper or even holding a made-for-TV press conference.

Yes, Obama dumped the newspapers and the TV folks the same way the Mouseketeer-run-amok ditched K-Fed in 2006: by text message.

Some mainstream media outlets have tried to claim they had the news first, saying they had beaten the campaign to the punch by telling readers and viewers (mostly on their Web sites) that US Senator Joe Biden, a Delaware Democrat, was the “likely” choice throughout the day last Friday. But none of them could get rid of that troublesome word “likely,” and the only official-type comment was an outright denial from Biden, who said, “I’m not the guy.” So their efforts were pretty transparently speculation, however right they have turned out to be.

(As one possible exception, CNN has been claiming its reporting apparently influenced the timing of the text message — at 3 am Saturday rather than 8 am, as the campaign had originally planned.)

But the guessing game that makes up much of mainstream political journalism these days didn’t gain much traction among the general public. Americans were waiting for the word from Obama himself — not on TV, and not in the newspaper, but in their text-message inboxes.

The old-media train was already headed off a cliff, but Obama’s move has accelerated the derailment, highlighting the shortcomings of the traditional news sources and, simultaneously, the practicality of a new form of mass communication.

Of course, the newspapers made it easy to see where they missed the boat — witness the massive headlines on Sunday morning, more than 24 hours after the text went out, saying Biden was the pick. By then, the only people not in the know were — you guessed it — people who only get their news from the daily paper (if any such people still exist).

“Yesterday’s news tomorrow” never seemed so apt a slogan for the daily-newspaper industry. Even the TV newscasts were reduced to telling a huge portion of viewers something they already knew.

Obama’s text also showcased a new way that news consumers can get information. While many news organizations have started to “go mobile,” with “mobile-accessible” Web sites readable on Internet-enabled cell phones, and text-message alerts about breaking news, this is the first time a non-news organization has been invited by so many people (hundreds of thousands, and maybe millions — the campaign’s cagey about the numbers) right into their purses and pockets.

If digerati philosopher Esther Dyson is correct — and all signs are that she is — then the most precious commodity of this century will be people’s attention. That makes the second-most-precious commodity the ability to get their attention — that is, the cell phone.

The Obama campaign’s success at getting immediate and direct access to large numbers of Americans could have a major effect on the outcome of the election. Most important, the campaign can send its supporters reminders to vote on Election Day — and receiving a reminder has been shown to significantly increase a person’s likelihood of actually casting a ballot.

But it’s also a hedge against the mainstream media, a warning shot across the bow of those talking heads and political horsetraders who ignored the real problems facing our country and instead spent massive amounts of air-time and ink speculating about whether Obama was secretly a Muslim, whether the pastor of the Christian church he attended was anti-American, whether the editors of The New Yorker had crossed some sort of ethical line, and a hundred other things that are pretty insignificant to average Americans struggling to buy groceries and heat the house.

With that one text message, the Obama campaign has signaled that not only can it make the daily-grind newshounds irrelevant, but also that whenever the need arises, it will.

Too scared to win? Barack Obama must fight for his principles, or he’ll give away the keys to the White House

Published in the Portland Phoenix; reprinted in the Orlando Weekly

The video shows a meeting of Barack Obama’s campaign staff. A progressive activist arrives to pitch in, but her eyes glaze over amid Democratic-establishment polling reports and move-to-the-center cliché-spouting. Not quite two minutes go by before she interrupts to explain Obama’s connections to big corporations and neo-conservative foreign-policy advisers. “He’ll promise to rock the boat, but he won’t sink it,” she warns, insisting that the campaign return to the strong, eloquent, principled stands Obama took in the primary.

Her argument wins over those in the room, but before switching strategies, one of the ex-establishment groupies has a question: “Do we still work for Obama?” The progressive’s answer: “No! He works for us. He always did.”

Sure, it’s just the opening skit of the most recent Liberty News TV episode, a progressive news-and-commentary program written and filmed in Portland and distributed on public-access cable channels nationwide. The Illinois senator and his campaign staff need to sit up and take notice anyway, not because it’s a suggestion of a path to victory, but because the clip lays out his only path to victory.

There are a lot of people giving Obama advice about what he should do to beat John McCain. (See “Winning at the Grassroots Level” for a list of books offering similar advice for progressive activists.) But only one of them is offering advice based on an actual analysis of long-term voting and polling data to determine what voters really really want. And what they want is not someone who follows the polls and gets pushed around by the media, but someone who knows what he believes, says so, and stands up for it even in the face of criticism.

In his primary campaign, Obama staked out the progressive, aggressive, principled high ground, and attracted millions of passionate supporters. Having created the movement, and having been selected as its head, he should now follow his people — which almost certainly means doing something more dangerous than any major candidate has ever done: ditching the party establishment.

The people who back Obama may be energetic young progressives, but they are not unlike the vast majority of Americans when it comes to what they look for in a candidate. Glenn Hurowitz, a longtime progressive activist, explains in his book Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party that a major factor determining any voter’s choice is whether the candidate fights well (a characteristic described in polling data as being a “strong leader”).

That trait, Hurowitz argues, trumps most other concerns — even differences of opinion on major policy questions (though not party affiliation). His book, based on a new analysis of 40 years of election and polling data, suggests that the reason the far-right conservative movement has risen to control the American political system is not due to any particular intelligence or ability on the part of right-wing activists, who espouse positions vastly divergent from most Americans’ values. The rise of the right has happened because Democrats and progressives refuse to stand and fight for what they believe in.

His book (for which Portland Phoenix staff writer Deirdre Fulton was a research assistant before she came to work here) debunks the surrender-prone “politics of fear,” saying Democrats cannot win by immersing themselves in polling data and shifting position as public opinion evolves. Rather, they need to show some backbone — by clearly stating Democratic and progressive values, and then standing up for them, over and over, even in the face of political resistance.

Audacity
Sadly, Obama appears to be turning to the center — for example, with his vote to approve the Bush administration’s warrantless-wiretapping program, which he had previously condemned. That brought waves of criticism from progressive activists, bloggers, and even the New York Times editorial board.

Yes, his vote to give telecom companies immunity for their role in illegal spying on Americans was a major policy failure, and one at odds with most Americans’ expectations of privacy from government snooping. But its repercussions are far worse, in Hurowitz’s analysis, because Obama missed a chance to be seen standing up for what he believes.

With his vote on the wiretapping bill, Obama behaved like most Democrats, who surrender to political pressure, waver as polling data comes in, and wait until the last minute to declare their position on an issue — and take the side that was going to prevail anyway. Not only do they lose important fights on public-policy issues, but they simultaneously destroy their credibility with voters.

Hurowitz’s research shows that when progressives and Democrats take and hold principled stands on issues, they gain respect from voters (even those who disagree with the particular position) and emerge as popular leaders, even if their stand fails. So if Obama had objected, fought, and voted against the bill, people’s opinion of his leadership abilities would have increased, whether or not the bill ultimately became law.

The crux of this argument is really quite simple: Americans are disillusioned with our politicians, and we want something different. We are so disappointed, in fact, that when we find someone who really is different — like Obama seemed to be during the primary — we get excited about him or her, regardless of whether we agree with them on key issues, and regardless of whether they win the fights they engage in. The mere act of fighting is enough, because a politician sticking to his or her guns despite opposition is such a rare surprise in this country.

In an interview, Hurowitz points to the conservative movement as an example. It’s dramatically out of step with the beliefs of almost all Americans, but its activists have convinced millions of people “to support pretty extreme right-wing candidates who don’t share American values,” he says.

“The Republicans realized that their values and their ideas are not what people are voting on, so they can hold those ideas and persuade people in other ways” — specifically, by standing on their principles (wrong-headed and dangerous though they may be) in a world of wafflers and waverers.

By contrast, the Democrats and progressives, whose visions for the country are, in fact, shared by the overwhelming majority of Americans, can’t seem to gather support for their initiatives, mainly because they won’t stand up for them when opposition arises.

“Seeming weak and losing all the time is not providing the strong leadership that voters are looking for,” Hurowitz concludes.

Hope
Obama may be getting the message. Hurowitz says he has seen some promising signs from the presumptive Democratic nominee: “In moments of crisis, his political instincts become better, and his principles actually come out, and he starts to actually fight for what he believes in. When he becomes comfortable and feels as if he has a lead in the polls is when he gets sucked into Washington conventional wisdom that for a Democrat you have to tack to the center to win.”

In the primary, for example, when Obama was behind, he became more willing to talk about Hillary Clinton’s weaknesses, “and that was when he surged in the polls,” Hurowitz observes. His attacks were based on fact, and were not snarky or nasty, as Clinton’s often were. “He attacked without seeming like he was on the attack,” which was a very effective weapon.

And Obama may have noticed that he didn’t pick up much support in the polls in the aftermath of his warrantless-wiretapping vote, cast shortly after he secured the Democratic nomination.

The “wisdom” of the party establishment would have expected otherwise, though — a move to the center, in Democratic political theory, attracts voters. But that’s advice from people who couldn’t even prevent George W. Bush from winning a second term.

Obama’s energy comes from the young, not the old, and that highlights what Hurowitz sees as a generation gap threatening the progressive movement. The older Democrats, who form most of the party establishment, grew up in the age of the hippies, and are more inclined to be “tolerant liberals,” he says, concerned about hearing everyone’s point of view and coming to an inclusive consensus resolution.

Turning to a recent example, Hurowitz talks about offshore oil drilling, and cites an environmental lobbyist saying publicly that she could understand the point of view of people who oppose her on the issue. “I could never imagine an oil lobbyist or a Republican . . . saying that they could understand the perspective” of an opponent, Hurowitz says.

But younger progressives — lefties who grew up as part of the “Me Generation,” for example — are less patient. “For younger people who have seen the fruits of losing battles because of the overemphasis on tolerance of other points of view, the important thing for us is actually winning concrete victories,” he says.

The progressive in the Liberty News TV skit wants Obama to propose a nationwide light-rail system. “Where’s the bold plan to get us out of fossil fuels and into alternative energies?” she asks. The others in the room, not yet convinced, roll their eyes, fold their arms, and lean back in their chairs.

“Liberals can be confrontation-averse,” Hurowitz says. But that causes a problem because Republicans and conservatives don’t play by the same tolerant, inclusive, consensus-building rules. “There’s a high price to non-confrontation in politics,” Hurowitz says, noting the wins racked up by the right, and suggesting “Democrats should start acting more like principled conservative activists.”

“We have to cultivate a great love for progressive values (and) at the same time a recognition that putting those values into place requires standing up for what you believe in and fighting hard against those who disagree with you. That is the challenge”

Dreams
“Forty years worth of political science research shows that being a proud progressive makes political sense for Democrats,” Hurowitz writes very early in his book. “Candidates can take quite unpopular positions without suffering major negative political consequences. So long as they do it with sincerity, integrity, and passion, they’re unlikely to lose many votes because of it,” he writes.

That’s where Obama fell down on the warrantless-wiretapping vote. Hurowitz’s analysis suggests the vote hurt Obama’s image not so much because it put him in the Bush camp for a bit, but because it cast doubt on his forthrightness as a principled leader.

The penalty for errors like that can be severe. Progressives who are disappointed don’t vote Republican, but they do the next-worst thing: they don’t vote at all. (Or, if they do vote, they go for a third-party candidate.)

So how can Obama win? First up, Hurowitz says, is “emphasize partisan affiliation.” The main factor in which candidate a voter supports is party self-identification. Right now “more people identify themselves as Democrats than Republicans, and that is the single biggest thing that’s going to help Obama this year,” he says.

Obama’s “task is to make sure Democrats don’t defect,” which means making sure they’re not disappointed in him or thinking of him as a bad leader. One way to do that is to declare his principles and describe himself in opposition to McCain. Another way is to do what progressives have already begun doing, and portray McCain not as “the independent he seeks to portray himself as but rather a lackey of President Bush and the Republican establishment,” Hurowitz says.

“McCain is just walking into it,” having won the Republican primary because “people admired his generally principled stands,” but now he has “totally jettisoned everything that people liked about him.”

Obama can do it. He can win. But it means standing his ground, not just against the Republican attack machine, but against those in the establishment of his own party who will try to push him to be a moderate, well-tempered centrist candidate, in the image of Al Gore or John Kerry.

Hurowitz’s biggest worry is that “Republicans will come up with an effective attack on Obama and Obama won’t hit back out of fear that striking back will make him unattractive to voters.”

The solution? Obama must remember “every day of his campaign” a famous line from Democratic attack dog James Carville: “It’s hard for your opponent to say bad things about you when your fist is in his mouth.”

Winning at the grassroots level
These books, all published within the past nine months, lay out very specific guidelines for on-the-ground political activists and get-out-the-vote efforts.

FEAR AND COURAGE IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY by Glenn Hurowitz | Maisonneuve Press | 274 pages | $14.95

A TIME TO FIGHT: RECLAIMING A FAIR AND JUST AMERICA by Jim Webb | Broadway | 272 pages | $24.95

CAMPAIGN BOOT CAMP: BASIC TRAINING FOR FUTURE LEADERS by Christine Pelosi | Polipoint Press | 243 pages | $15.95

CRACKING THE CODE: HOW TO WIN HEARTS, CHANGE MINDS, AND RESTORE AMERICA’S ORIGINAL VISION by Thom Hartmann | Berrett-Koehler | 220 pages | $24.95

FRAMING THE FUTURE: HOW PROGRESSIVE VALUES CAN WIN ELECTIONS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE by Bernie Horn | Berrett-Koehler | 175 pages | $24.95

GET OUT THE VOTE, SECOND EDITION: HOW TO INCREASE VOTER TURNOUT by Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber | Brookings Institution Press | 225 pages | $18.95

HERE COMES EVERYBODY: THE POWER OF ORGANIZING WITHOUT ORGANIZATIONS by Clay Shirky | Penguin Press | 336 pages | $25.95

LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER: STAND UP STRAIGHT by Robert Creamer | Seven Locks Press | 618 pages | $23.95

What should you do?
Glenn Hurowitz offers three pieces of advice for progressives who want to make a difference in November

REGISTER TO VOTE You can do this on Election Day, but voting itself will go faster if you do it in advance, either in person or by mail. You need to prove both your identity and where you live. The ideal document is a driver’s license (or some other government-issued photo ID that has both your photo and your address). Barring that, you’ll need your Social Security card or birth certificate and a utility bill or bank statement with your name and address on it. You can either go to your town office or call there to ask for a voter-registration card to be mailed to your home — you fill out the card and send it in with photocopies of the appropriate documents.

GO VOTE Don’t be so disillusioned that you refuse to participate, or so confident that you think your candidate will win without your support.

BRING A FRIEND Don’t assume everyone is as tuned-in to this election as you are, even though it’s a historic opportunity. Remind people to vote, and make a plan to meet them at the polling place on Election Day.

Jeff Inglis can be reached atjinglis@phx.com.

Press Releases: After the fall

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The bad news for the Portland Press Herald just won't stop.

The layoffs slated for August 18 — the third staff-reduction this year — will leave a demoralized, overworked crew, with 20 percent fewer staffers overall than at the same time last year.

The company’s predictions suggest advertising revenue might be down as much as $200,000 per month, as compared to 2007. And publisher Chuck Cochrane admitted in the pages of his own paper that the company will lose money this year.

Circulation dropped by more than 10 percent in the six months between September 2007 and March 2008, according to records filed by the paper with the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The paper is for sale, but the deal — if it happens — won’t come soon enough to prevent the Seattle Times Company (the PressHerald’s corporate parent), from failing to make its September payment on the loans it took out to buy Maine’s largest daily and its two sister papers (in Waterville and Augusta) 10 years ago.

It’s time to ask: Could the Portland Press Herald go under? The future of daily newspapers has been in question since the dawn of the Internet age. But the questions are only getting louder. The Albuquerque Tribune, a daily newspaper founded in 1922, closed in February. Closer to home, the Argus Champion, a 185-year-old weekly in central New Hampshire, announced two weeks ago that it would close at the end of July.

So far in Maine, most newspaper closings have been like those announced by Rockland-based VillageSoup in June: after buying six papers from Courier Publications, the company condensed those six and its previous two papers into five publications.

But in the June-July issue of American Journalism Review, senior contributing writer Charles Layton explained “why a lot of newspapers aren’t going to survive.” It’s not a pretty picture: with print-advertising revenue dropping precipitously, and online revenue-growth slowing, “we may begin seeing, pretty soon, big American cities with no daily newspaper,” he writes.

One industry analyst Layton interviews says some dailies will survive — “small local newspapers . . . with circulation under 25,000,” and some very large dailies, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times. But many of the rest — including possibly papers as large as the long benighted San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune — may close down.

This trend is not without risk, as many have pointed out. After all, daily newspapers — and their Web sites — are still how many people get their news. That’s true even of people who don’t read much — TV news stories and many radio headlines spring from the pages of daily papers. How will people be informed citizens, the industry asks, if daily papers die?

Layton's article suggests people have already found other ways, quoting another news-business consultant as saying, “If a big newspaper in a metropolitan area dropped dead right now, nobody under 30 would care.”

He might be right about Maine: more than two out of every three 18-to-35-year-old residents of Southern Maine don’t read the PPH right now, according to an independent audience survey released in February.

Even young journalists see the writing on the wall. In a piece entitled “Don’t Bean Count Me,” posted July 17 on the Columbia Journalism Review’s Web site, 26-year-old Kathleen Nye Flynn (a former weekly reporter now a grad student at Columbia Unviersity's journalism school) asked reporters facing major staffing cuts to walk off the job in protest.

If they're at the Press Herald, they should probably take their resumes with them.

Trying out an anti-demonstration ‘sonic cannon’

Published in the Portland Phoenix

The Maine Marine Patrol is considering purchasing a “sonic cannon” capable of broadcasting earsplitting, “disorienting” sounds, like those that have been used to break up peaceful demonstrations in public spaces in Iraq and the country of Georgia.

The device, called a “long-range acoustic device” (LRAD), is described by its manufacturer, the California-based American Technology Corporation, as having the ability to emit an “attention-getting and highly irritating tone for behavior modification.” (The company’s Web site helpfully adds that the device, which costs roughly $20,000, is two feet in diameter, and weighs 60 pounds, has been used “in combat since December 2003.”)

A demonstration model on loan from the manufacturer was tested in Maine over the July 4 holiday weekend by Marine Patrol officers interested in another aspect of the device: its capability to broadcast highly directed sound that can reach people as far as a mile away — for example to communicate with a boat approaching a security zone, according to Marine Patrol Major John Fetterman.

That was one of the intents of the device when it was invented for the US military in response to the failure of a security zone to protect the USS Cole from a suicide-bomber’s attack in a Yemeni port in 2000. That attack killed 17 sailors.

But it wasn’t the LRAD’s only purpose, nor the most worrisome to those who might be more inclined to peaceful assemblies than attacks on warships. The manufacturer’s Web site touts another “feature” of the LRAD — its “warning” sound. That tone can be as loud as 151 decibels, which is enough to cause permanent hearing damage to a person as far as 1000 feet away after just a few seconds of exposure. So if a Marine Patrol officer even accidentally switched the device over to “warning” mode from its more benign “communication” mode, it could literally and permanently deafen anyone in its line of fire.

According to news reports, the warning tones from LRADs, which can be mounted on trucks as well as boats, have been used against civilians by Iraqi police and US troops in Iraq over the past few years, and were used in November 2007 by police in Tblisi, Georgia, to disperse an anti-government rally. (The New York Police Department deployed at least one LRAD near a demonstration outside the Republican National Convention in September 2004, but didn’t use the warning tone.)

The most-often touted “success” of the device’s warning tone was in defense of a Carnival Cruise Lines cruise ship attacked by pirates firing assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades off the coast of Somalia in 2005. While it did repel the attack, one of the two men who used the device against the pirates says he has lost some of his hearing as a result.

But perhaps we can take some comfort in Fetterman’s remark that if the Marine Patrol did buy an LRAD, it would probably buy “only one” and move it from boat to boat as needed. And he says the agency is “only looking at it for communications,” not for crowd-dispersal purposes.

On the Web
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/georgia-police-.html
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/acoustic-weapon.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj1hGarg8lk
http://flickr.com/photos/16241099@N00/379261/