Flash Rage

They're the abused of the abused.

by Bruce Schimmel

The stronger they stood, the weaker they seemed. Days after a Saturday night flash mob of teens rolled through South Street, a long line of Philly's top cops stood shoulder-to-shoulder around a dry fountain in Headhouse Square. They were a backdrop, a prop for a pissed-off mayor, who declared to cameras that he won't put up with "this behavior for any reason, under any circumstances."

Behind the blue line stood Society Hill Towers, creating a symbolism that was idiot-proof. Here was the line beyond which the "knuckleheads" — as Nutter called — would not pass.

"We're not going to put up with this stupidity. We're not messing around," Nutter growled, promising swift and severe retribution against both child and parent.

It was a modern morality play, a civic charade. But with the hordes at the gates, you sometimes have to rattle the sabers. Still, it was just a show, which at best will provide only a breather before the summer heat arrives, and rage pops up like a Whac-A-Mole.

Philly's flash rages are an innovation in intergenerational warfare, one that renders brute force practically irrelevant. So as I looked down the cops' blue line, I thought of a barrier that France had once built: the Maginot Line of concrete bunkers around which the Germans easily marched.

"We don't know where a problem will arise," admitted Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey. "It seems spur-of-the-moment," adding that cops can't endlessly "chase around packs of teenagers."

Nutter was angry, but he also seemed genuinely befuddled. He grew up in a middle-class family, with a good and tough taskmaster for a dad. And so I believe him when he says he does not understand why flash mobs, friendly elsewhere, turned so vicious in Philly.

"I don't know why, and I don't care about the motivation," said Nutter. "I didn't run for mother," he added, trotting out a favorite line he's used to fight litter, but which rang hollow here.

Many kids get nuts, I think it safe to say, because they don't have functional mothers. They're the abused of the abused, who ache to vent their rage on a wide, public stage, because they aren't being heard in their home neighborhoods.

I teach journalism at the Youth Study Center, where some of the rioters are being held. And if you respectfully ask why kids go downtown to riot, their reason is, well, reasonable.

"You go downtown," said one 19-year-old I'll call Anthony, "so you'll attract more attention. Everybody's not going to come to your neighborhood. But they'll go to South Street."

These teens seek the limelight for the same reasons protesters demonstrate for jobs or against war. To be seen. To be heard. For the teens, it's a moment of fame to validate their rage. Against parents who abandon or pimp them. Against neighborhoods controlled by drug lords and gunrunners.

These teens have a lot to protest about. But unlike more civil protesters, they have'nt learned to be heard in a peaceable way. And, sadly, we have a mayor who's not yet interested in listening.

"You want to join together, be together in the City of Brotherly Love," continued Anthony. "But they — we — don't know how." It's been said that a riot is the voice of the voiceless. And if we do give these teens a chance to be heard, we won't have to worry about their need to be seen.

(bruce@schimmel.com)