Need protest sign verbiage

Dennis E. Taylor

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Okay, here's the situation:

It's SF, space opera. There's some kind of "event" on a moonbase, which has been quickly hushed up by the guvmint, so people have little more than rumors to go on. The leading rumor is that it's some kind of alien plague or invasion or infestation. There are demonstrations and riots in major cities as people demand more information, and also that the government "do something."

I'd like to have people carrying signs and placards. They don't even have to be especially imaginative, although some of those would be great :e2flowers. I just want to get the right 'feel'. So far, this is what I've come up with on my own:

Aliens go home
Do your job. Protect the Human Race.
What are you hiding?
Silence is Betrayal
Nope nope nope.
They’ve already taken over!
Director Laakkonen is an Alien Agent
Free the information!
Are they already dead?
Gray Goo. You first.
 

Dennis E. Taylor

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There were some great protest signs at the Women's Resist March.

You might find some good slogans looking through these images.

Some of those were fall-off-the-chair funny (tiny hands, HUGE asshole), but I had tried that. I think the situations are too different to translate well. Even from the point of view of inspiration, what I posted above is from AFTER I scanned the pictures.
 

Ketzel

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Okay, here's the situation:

It's SF, space opera. There's some kind of "event" on a moonbase, which has been quickly hushed up by the guvmint, so people have little more than rumors to go on. The leading rumor is that it's some kind of alien plague or invasion or infestation. There are demonstrations and riots in major cities as people demand more information, and also that the government "do something."

I'd like to have people carrying signs and placards. They don't even have to be especially imaginative, although some of those would be great :e2flowers. I just want to get the right 'feel'. So far, this is what I've come up with on my own:

Aliens go home
Do your job. Protect the Human Race.
What are you hiding?
Silence is Betrayal
Nope nope nope.
They’ve already taken over!
Director Laakkonen is an Alien Agent
Free the information!
Are they already dead?
Gray Goo. You first.
As an old (and I mean old) lefty, I have carried signs at many a protest march over the last *$^*@^* decades. They have some similarities - first, they have to be VISIBLE. You want them to show up on television or to catch the eye of a press photographer. So they have to be brief and clear. Most of yours are a bit too long and would end up looking tiny if written with magic marker on a poster board. (Although I suppose protest technology could have evolved quite a bit in your world .. hmmm :))

But the main question I have for you is - what do the protestors want? When you think of the some of the classic protest signs such as "No Justice, No Peace" or "Pro-Choice And I Vote" or "Ban The Bomb" it's very clear what the protestors' message is. In the case of your protestors, what is it they think the government has done or what do they want the government to do? If the primary issue is that they believe something has happened and they are being misled in potentially dangerous ways, I think signs that say "Tell Us The Truth," or "What Happened on Moon Base One?" would be more effective than "Nope, Nope, Nope."
 

Debbie V

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Secrets Kill!
Humans First!
 

JJ Litke

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What if you had a small counter-protest, even if it's just a couple of people? That seems pretty realistic, since people are never in universal agreement about anything. Even just one guy with a sign like Vivica Fox's friend in Independence Day with the Welcome sign up on the roof of the building under one of the big ships.
 

neandermagnon

Nolite timere, consilium callidum habeo!
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Don't forget the chanting. There's always chanting at protests (in my experience - UK based). Often accompanied by hippies with drums. Every protest I've been to involves making a ton of noise.

1 2 3 4 infestation no more!
5 6 7 8 we don't trust our heads of state! (adapt to suit, while keeping the scan and rhyme)

Director Laakkonen what do you say? How many kids did they kill today?

Chant to the tune of Conga - we don't want no aliens, we don't want no aliens, la la la la, la la la la! (or replace the la la la with other words) (the poll tax protests at the end of the Thatcher era has "we won't pay the poll tax" to this tune and have heard similar at plenty of protests.)

For placards, plays on words with politicians' names are popular... or quotes from politicians juxtaposed with images or words that show the quote to be fake. Not sure what you could do with Laakkonen, but maybe there was a political scandal that could be referred to on the placards, similar how to no-one in Britain can mention David Cameron without someone making a joke about pigs. Similarly how Trump means fart in British English. Do something along those lines with politicians from your world.

Take any nursery rhyme or popular song and adapt the words to fit the political situation. That gives you a chant. Take the best bit of the chant and use it as a placard.

You also tend to get specific groups who show up at protests with banners that related both to their group and the protest issue, with large numbers of people from that group marching under the banner. Trade unions and other political/protest groups are likely to show up in support, e.g. "Lunar Workers Union demanding answers about Moonbase One" or "Alliance Against Homophobia supporting workers and residents of Moonbase One" etc. (adapt to suit your world)
 

Bolero

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I think my favourite one on the link to the pictures was the one that said "Yuck". Now that has many uses.
Funny is definitely useful and gets more pictures taken of you - but to do that in futuristic fiction is difficult - because what is funny in the future, might need a lot of explaining now.

Oh and I think neadermagon is right - there would be chants. And why wouldn't the conga survive? Not ever occurred to me but yes, humans will probably be conga-ing for a long, long time. Wasn't ever in my mental picture of the future, but it is now.

The re-use of songs with new words has a very long history. :)
 
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Tazlima

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people demand more information, and also that the government "do something."

I'm not sure I could see a protest with these particular goals. If there's enough information around that people are protesting to get the rest of it, they're probably convinced they already know the truth and want the government to come clean and admit they (the protesters) are correct.

"Do something" is also vague. They'd probably want pretty specific and likely conflicting things.

My first thought would be a complete quarantine. "Keep the (insert percieved "icky" thing) away from my nice home" is a pretty common rallying cry.

Others would be saying "My cousin lives on that moonbase. We need to send doctors ASAP."

You'd have the "I told you so" set, too, the ones who were against settling space completely and think moonbases are terrible. If your future still has religion, you'd probably get "God hates aliens"/"God Hates Moonbases" and this is the proof).

Question: Are aliens known to exist in your story? Like, they've made contact with humans and everybody knows it for a fact, and folks play tennis with aliens on weekends? Or is it like today, where a lot of people believe in them, but the word "believe" is still the operative term?
 

Dennis E. Taylor

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Question: Are aliens known to exist in your story? Like, they've made contact with humans and everybody knows it for a fact, and folks play tennis with aliens on weekends? Or is it like today, where a lot of people believe in them, but the word "believe" is still the operative term?

It's like today. As it turns out, the stuff happening in the naval base is proof positive of ET, and not necessarily in a good way.
 

Tazlima

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It's like today. As it turns out, the stuff happening in the naval base is proof positive of ET, and not necessarily in a good way.

Gotcha. So people on the ground would know that communications had been cut off, and possibly that people were sick or dead or whatever, but assuming the existence of aliens is one of the primary details being covered up, only a subset of protestors would believe in them in the first place, and another subset of protestors would likely view the alien-believers as nutjobs.

Just spitballing some signs from the "aliens aren't real, but something killed my cousin and I want to know what," crowd.

- Secrets won't stop Death.
- Who's next?
- NOMM (Not on My Moonbase)


And from the "aliens are real" crowd.
- Told you so.
- Bet on ET
- Wish I didn't believe...

These aren't great, but maybe someone will riff off of them and make something better.
 
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Bren McDonnall

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First, you have to figure out who benefits from the turmoil. Then you figure out who they can gull into being their street soldiers. These tend to be relatively stupid or... let us say, unwise. They'll hold up anything you hand them on the thinnest of premises.

The signs should be large and bright, with two or three word statements. They don't have to make sense, and they don't even have to follow the same theme. There will always be those who show up to these things for their own purposes. As mentioned above, save the whales, moon landing was fake, 911 was an inside job. That sort of thing. Those signs won't be as professional.

If you want to inject some humor, have somebody interviewing protestors only to find out that they have no grasp of what's really going on and are operating on 100% agitprop.
 

Dennis E. Taylor

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Well, my editor wants the more imaginative ones, and maybe a half-dozen or so. I do think I'll stick the "moon landing was a fake" one in at the end, though. :tongue

Maybe a flat-Earth one as well, if I can come up with something.
 

WeaselFire

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Free Huey! Run, Bambi, Run! Wage Inflation Now! Make Love Not War! Green Lives Matter! Dark Matter Lives! Asimov Was Right! Beware The Grassy Knoll! Power To The Human People! Rage Against The Machine!

And don't take that as a comment on my musical tastes, I'm more blues and less hip-hop... :)

Jeff
 

Pony.

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"What do we want? Time travel!
When do we want it? That's kind of irrelevant."


Ive seen photos of that sign on the internet.
 
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Bolero

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@ Pony - ROTFL

For Dennis - um - something about Area 51? As in the name of the area that everyone is suspicious about crossed out, with Area 51 written after it.
But it would have to be believable that the people in the future have heard of Area 51.