Drone street theater hits DC

On Wednesday, Code Pink, Foreign Policy In Focus and Pax Christi staged a mock drone attack in Washington DC’s Dupont Circle. To watch what transpired, check out the above video.

This type of street theater – which reminds me of the Iraq Veterans Against the War’s brilliant Operation First Casualty – is a creative way to give passersby just a hint of what people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have been living through as the Obama administration dramatically escalates the use of unmanned drones in our many wars. (Over the month of September, for example, there were a record 21 drone strikes in Pakistan. And this at the same time that the country is reeling from the flooding that has affected at least 18 million people.)

If this type of action is to be replicated, which I hope it is, I have one recommendation. To make the experience more real for those who accidentally walk into such an protest, I think there needs to be a more realistic drone that is actually flying in the sky.

One thought off the top of my head would be to have a kite in the shape of a drone that can be flying high enough that you just might at first glance mistake it for a real aircraft. The person flying the kite would need to be out of view, if possible, so that people didn’t know where it was coming from. Combine that with the sound of a drone, which they had playing on a stereo, and people shrieking and pointing to the sky, and you’ve created an experience that make take people a little more by surprise – and hopefully get them to think about what it would be like to live under the drones.