How to Handle the Coming Riots!

Presidents and prime ministers are not telling us how they're planning to handle the riots, but you can be sure they're thinking about it. Just as sure as the riots are coming...!

Today's arcane numbers about sub-prime mortgages and international banking meltdowns torture the mind, but being shamed into long unemployment or food lines tortures the soul. Feelings of worry turn to fear to panic to violence. It's already happening in the hurting economies of Russia, China and throughout Africa. How long before New York, Buffalo, Gary and Los Angeles?

The presidents, prime ministers and media antiseptically refer to this as "social unrest." The police know it for what it is -- rioting. It's when desperation spills over into the streets.

The dangers from milling crowds can be disastrous (see the Depression and the Vietnam War for bloody details), Recently, though, the police got some encouraging news from Britain's Lancaster University. Studies led by social psychologist Mark Levine have arrived at some counter-intuitive conclusions.

If you've ever been in an angry football stadium crowd, you've seen the explosive mass hysteria and criminal acts that can break out. But not so fast, say the studies. Dr Levine has observed there is a surprising "collective choreography" in crowds which frequently means the more the people, the less the violence.

The good doctor says he has the crowd-control camera footage to prove it. However, once you've been in one of these ugly mobs, you dread this recession igniting such scenes in our cities. Other cities as well. For in today's world, whatever de-stabilizes Baghdad, Peking or Warsaw eventually threatens the safety of our armies in the Middle East, our labor force in Pittsburgh and Detroit, pretty much everything.

In hard times, fear and anger happen. We have every reason to hope such fears and angers are calmed long before they reach the world's streets. Dr Levine's encouragement notwithstanding.