Not surprisingly, The Commons are a vanishing resource. Campus Martius Park, which sits at the city center, is billed as “Detroit’s gathering place,” but if you try to exercise your right to speak with people there, a private security guard will quickly remind you that while it is a public space, it is privately managed. Smaller towns that once had a city square surrounded by shops now have shopping malls off a freeway without even a hint of a sidewalk.

Private entities have taken over public spaces, so they rely on the public coming into their private spaces. Businesses and government offices have public facing locations that are ripe for being taken over themselves. A crowd of people can chant all day on a sidewalk in front of a store or they can take their action indoors to its cash registers. A flash mob can be an escalation of the outside action or a grand finale when it’s ready to wrap up.

Expect security guards to give orders they are not able to enforce. They can detain you if merchandise has been stolen or property damaged, but they really want you out of their store as quickly as possible. When police arrive, follow their orders without hesitation because they have the power to effect arrests and issue fines. (Although really, they’d prefer to get back in their cars and go rather than fill out reports all day).

A well crafted action need not even involve law enforcement. I am jealous that I didn’t think of one that targeted Home Depot for their cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as they arrested and deported some of their best customers. Activists purchased .37 ice scrapers, got in line, and slowly paid for them before returning them to customer service with a lengthy explanation. The action was perfectly legal, yet it disrupted the status quo. In fact, there’s no reason you couldn’t go to Home Depot today to purchase and return an ice scraper.