This sounds like a passage from One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
The Old Believers were sent to Siberia simply because they were Old Believers.
Stalin would be proud.
I would like to know how many of the 'parade participants' were actually Philly residents and how many of them are from the 'Flash Mob' circuit that gets bussed in to all of these large gathering events and protests.
About Flash Mobs:
http://www.flashmob.com/
http://flashmob.info/
http://www.flash-mob.com/
MoveOn organizes sign ups for 'mob' events often. Sample recruit for event letter:
MoveOn.org PAC - Flash Mobs for Democracy
Fen Labalme fen at comedia.com
Thu Sep 11 12:38:34 PDT 2003
Dear MoveOn member,
The outcome of the California recall will come down to this: the side that gets more people out to vote wins. Those behind the recall are counting on poor turnout. That's why we need to make sure that every friend, family member and colleague votes.
There is one fantastically simple way to do that: give them mail ballot request forms and make sure they complete and send them in. If everyone receiving this email did that with 10 like-minded friends, family members and colleagues, we could increase voter turnout against the recall by one million votes. Click below to print out your mail ballot
request forms:
http://moveon.org/pac/recall/register/
/copy