Most good
slogans have
rhythm or
rhyme or both. Many popular ones are in two parts -- a
question posed by one person, answered by the group as a whole.
I noted these over two days of protests against successive meetings of the G20, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank in Ottawa, Canada, on Nov. 16 and 17, 2001:
- "Whose streets? Our streets!" (very popular)
- "Tell me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!" (variations include the feel and sound of democracy)
- "Sol! sol! sol! Solidarité!" (note the bilingualism)
- "The people! united! can never be defeated!"
- "Le peuple! unis! jamais ne sont vaincus!"
- "IMF? Shut it down! World Bank? Shut it down! G20? Shut it down!" (easy to get out of sync if more than one person is shouting the questions)
- "We're not violent, how 'bout you!" (disingenuous if rocks and bottles are flying out of the crowd and hitting the riot shields)
- "Don't waste gas! Turn off the trucks!" (those enormous water cannon trucks must burn through huge amounts of fuel)
- "Water plants, not people!"
- "Don't spray water! Don't go and waste it! You can sell it for a profit!" (weak on both rhythm and rhyme, but not bad for the spur of the moment)
- "Who are you! serving and protecting! What you're defending we're rejecting!"
- "The banks have blood on their hands!"