New York Minutes

Stand Up (and Duck) for Choice

By Nation contributors

At Monday night's Stand Up For Choice benefit for Planned Parenthood, I felt a momentary swell of pity for Republicans for Choice . Not only did they bravely co-sponsor a de facto RNC protest event, some of them even showed up for it. This meant leaving the safety of Madison Square Garden on an opening night that featured some of their heroes (Bloomberg, Giuliani) and coming to the Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side (den of Jewish leftist intellectuals), where they weathered the rants of hecklers and critics, inside and out.

To enter the Beacon, they had to walk past a small but coordinated row of fundamentalist Christian protesters. Organized by Randall Terry, of Operation Rescue infamy and the Society for Truth and Justice, the fundies have been in town since Friday on a double mission--praying for the soul of the Republican Party and counterpicketing events like the "March of the Radical Liberal Feminists" (aka Saturday's March for Women's Lives across the Brooklyn Bridge), and the "March of the Radical Welfare Queens" (aka Monday's Still We Rise anti-poverty march).

Lest you think the left is alone in wrestling with analogies to Nazi fascism, you ought to visit their website , where they compare a "Historic Islam committed to wiping out Christianity and Judaism" to Adolf Hitler and United for Peace and Justice to Neville Chamberlain.

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August 31, 2004

Poor People to Bush: We Don't Want Your 'Compassion'

By Nation contributors

"We love the people!" a homeless man explained to me as he tapped his cane on the sidewalk in delight. The man was sitting on 23rd Street with another homeless man, cheering and smiling as several thousand demonstrators streamed by yesterday in the "March for Our Lives," which was organized by the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign to draw attention to the scandalous state of housing, healthcare and other socioeconomic conditions in George W. Bush's America.

While Republicans would love nothing more than to dismiss this week's protests as the work of anarchists and latte-sipping, Ivy League-educated college kids, those who turned out at the Poor People's March consisted mostly of community activists, low-income workers and a diverse array of groups representing the poor-whom no one seems to want to talk about, but whose ranks grew by 1.3 million last year, according to a recent Census Bureau report. (It was the fourth consecutive year the poverty rate in America increased.)

Before the march began, I chatted with Angela Perry, an African-American mother of four who is a member of Women in Transition, a group of low- income women based in Louisville, Kentucky. "We need better childcare, better education, better housing, better jobs," said Perry, explaining why she'd made the trip all the way from Louisville.

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August 31, 2004

Billionaires Unite; RNC Protesters Confront Armageddon

By Nation contributors

Billionaires for Bush is basically a one-joke movement, but the joke's a good one and the movement has added some much-appreciated agit-prop hilarity to the goings-on in the RNC city.

On Sunday the Billionaires opened their convention activities with a croquet game in Central Park before convening near the Plaza Hotel for a pre-march rally. A fake secret service agent shooed reporters away, "unless you are with Fox News-then step forward." The chants ensued-"Four More Wars! Four More Wars!-and funny/biting signage unveiled: "Swift Yacht Vets for Bush," "Privatize Central Park," "2 Million Jobs Lost-It's a Start," "Free the Enron 7," "No Justice? No Problem," "Global Warming-Better Tans."

The marchers rallied 'round and began to march down Fifth Avenue, passing Trump Plaza and numerous other wealth signifiers. The Hungry March Band blasted out "Puttin' on the Ritz" and other Warbucks-approved tunes, as the well-dressed entourage hooted and hollered (it must be said, however, that some of the "billionaires" were more of the "grunge princess" fashion persuasion, cf. Courtney Love, Madonna.)

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August 30, 2004

Instead of a Riot, A Riot of Pink

By Nation contributors

After a year of planning, months of legal wrangling over the city's refusal to allow a rally in Central Park, and mounting warnings of violence from every quarter of the media from the Murdoch-owned New York Post to The Nation and the Village Voice , the mass march protesting the Bush Administration went off brilliantly. It was festive, colorful, spirited, creative, humorous and huge--tens of thousands, a quarter million, or 500,000, according to police and activist sources cited in the New York Times.

I met people who had traveled for days to shout, "Boooo!" while sweeping past Madison Square Garden: a Viet Vet Against the War from New Hampshire, a contingent of steelworkers from Alabama, A pair of professors from Eastern Illinois University, a fantastic pink-clad, glitter-spangled and flamingo-themed drum band called Turn Up the Heat from Florida. (Pink, by the way, is definitely becoming the new black of protest culture: besides the antiwar women of Code Pink, who dressed up in lingerie to promote their Pink Slip Bush campaign, I saw lots of pink T-shirts in the crowd. And why not? Pink carries so many meanings we like: female, gay, antimacho, peaceful, playful and, well, pinko.)

Others had come a political rather than physical distance: Staten Islanders for Peace and Justice had ventured out of the city's one Republican borough with a beautiful banner showing doves, or possibly seagulls, surrounding the Verrazano Bridge; looking like he'd wandered out of a play by A.R. Gurney, a lone gray-haired WASP in a rumpled button-down shirt and chinos carried the day's most poignant sign: Republican for Choice. There were papier-mache monsters, a giant globe, whistles and kazoos, Raging Grannies and Men without Pants (in flag-patterned boxers--hmmm, is underwear the new protest outerwear?), and endless vaginal puns on Bush. Three artists from Hell's Kitchen fashioned red-and-white-and-blue balloon hats--I wore one happily all day. Sticker that best sums it all up: "'Yee-ha' is not a foreign policy." Sign that best reminded us all why we were there: "GOP: Our City Is Not Your Commercial."

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August 30, 2004

Protest Slide Show

By Nation contributors

Click here to view a special slide show from Sunday's march by Michael Di Paolo.

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August 30, 2004

Bush Takes Knocks from Girlie Men, Grannies

By Nation contributors

"They knocked him down again!" The cop grinned gleefully, straining to get a better look. Demonstrators with boxing gloves were knocking a not-quite-life- size George W. Bush mannequin off a pedestal with great force. Everyone wanted to take a turn.

The game embodied the unity of Sunday's marchers behind one idea: dislike of George W. Bush. A tiny elderly woman carried a sign that read: "In my 84 Years I Have Never Seen a Worse President." The simple, declarative "Bush Sucks" was popular.

At one point I was amused to find myself surrounded by people I didn't know who were wearing t-shirts and carrying a huge sign advertising The Nation magazine. One explained, "We didn't want to march with the lunatic fringe. We're very concerned about backlash to our guy, who we're, of course, not thrilled about."

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August 30, 2004

Making Love, Not War, Glamerican-Style

By Nation contributors

For the Glamericans, Sunday's United for Peace and Justice march began--how else?--with breakfast at Tiffany's.

Tiffany Restaurant, that is, the all-night diner just off Christopher Street, traditional host to dawn breakfasts for club kids and nightclub staff. This morning, it served as a place for an antiwar group called the Glamericans to congregate, caffeinate, unpack bracelets and feather boas from Eric Mercer's shiny red Mini, and admire his brand new bling, a Swarovski-crystal-encrusted medallion featuring a six-inch-wide W with a slash through it.

Mercer founded the Glamericans two years ago along with fellow New Yorkers Bernhard Blythe and Troy Lambert to inject a bit of glitz into the standard lefty protest wardrobe of practical shoes and earnest political T-shirts--to occupy the space, says Mercer "where the stiletto meets the Birkenstock."

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August 29, 2004

Youth Protest Bush, Don't Care Much for Kerry

By Nation contributors

"If I find out later this is the Ralph Nader march, I'll cry," said a young protestor holding a homemade Kerry-Edwards sign. She can hold her tears. It wasn't a Nader event she had joined this morning but the Youth Feeder March, organized by a coalition of student groups who formed the self-appointed RNC Youth Welcoming Committee.

Still, the source of her anxiety was clear. This protestor's sign of support for the Democratic candidates, plastered with pink cut-out hearts, was the lone valentine to Kerry in sight. "2 Parties, 1 System, No Choice" read one student's sign; the chants that led the group of around 200 protestors from the edge of Central Park to feed into groups of protesters from the larger UFPJ march included "No Bush" but also "No Kerry." The group's most conspicuous sign was held by a man who could not be categorized as young, even by the generous 18-34 bracket: "Vote for Ralph Nader," it insisted in day-glo colors.

The feeder march hushed fitfully as it passed the spooked carriage horses lining the south side of the park, and grew louder along an eerily deserted 5th Avenue. Joined briefly by World Peace Clowns and cheered by Church Ladies for Choice, it maintained a festive and celebratory tone. Mass protests are performances of unity, just like the national political conventions. But this group, which included plenty of young people who planned to vote for Kerry, won't vote with only one voice in November.

Thousands more young people joined today's UFPJ protest and will fill out other RNC protest events this week. The Bush team has tried to portray the protests as the work of the Democratic Party. But while Kerry may wish he had the power to draw hundreds of thousands of passionate supporters to the streets, today's young protestors are nobody's baby.

Kristin V. Jones

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August 29, 2004

This Ain't Chicago '68

By Nation contributors

Former sixties radicals, including notables like Norman Mailer and Todd Gitlin, have been fretting over the possibility that if the RNC protests get rowdy, Middle America, fearing anarchy and chaos, will vote for the Republicans in droves, "just like in 1968."

Easily the most overwrought was James Traub, writing in the Sunday Times magazine. Not content to condescend to his younger, demonstrating self, he admitted that he might not allow his 14-year-old son Alex to attend, even though the kid is furious with Bush and itching to go.

Obviously, protesters should think about the political implications of their actions, and not view the demonstrations as elaborate performance pieces. But the analogy to the 1968 Democratic National Convention, where police brutalized antiwar protesters during an angry street riot, is a flawed one.

As Editor and Publisher pointed out on Friday, Hubert Humphrey, 1968's Democratic nominee, actually enjoyed a bounce in the polls right after the convention. True, images of the convention riots may have hurt the Democrats when they were later used by Nixon in campaign ads, but even if that's so, it's not clear that such tricks would work today. In the 1960s, a culture war raged between so-called patriotic Americans and despised longhairs; in 2004, many patriots oppose or view ambivalently the war in Iraq. Protesters don't attract the hostility they did in the 60s, even from those who disagree with them.

Not surprisingly, those most worried about how New York demonstrations will play in Missouri turn out to have idiosyncratic notions of what constitutes "good" and "bad" protest. Gitlin, speaking Saturday at a panel organized by the New Democratic Majority, cheerfully endorsed the oddly numerous protests involving nudity, but spoke with horror of "blocking traffic." (Of course, even permitted marches create traffic problems, as every taxi driver can tell you.)

Traub did suggest in his Times magazine article that he might allow Alex to attend the protests if he could find a "responsible adult" to go with him. If you're that responsible adult (no child molesters or Republican operatives, please) and planning to attend the UFPJ protest, why not call the Traub household and offer your services? They're in Manhattan.

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August 29, 2004

Anarchists Plan Mayhem! Then Hold Press Conference

By Nation contributors

The New York Times may believe, misguidedly, that it's doing its civic duty when it warns us that the anarchists are coming to town, a "shadowy group of protesters" known for "throwing rocks or threatening officers." But surely no such benign motives lie behind the appearance of a similar story in the ultraconservative, and partisan, Washington Times, which quotes an FBI counterterrorism chief to the effect that "violent anarchist groups" are "'planning to do more than protest.'"

Local tabloids did their part to amp up the hysteria by naming names--names, that is, plucked randomly from some dusty red file. According to the New York Post, "extremists with ties to the 1970s radical Weather Underground have recently beenreleased from prison and are in New York preparing to wreak havocduring the Republican National Convention." The Daily News's piece of fantasy, which ran under the headline "Anarchists Hot for Mayhem," claimed that a former Black Panther named Kazi Toure was training young militants in weapons use. None of these stories bother to mention that almost every anticapitalist protester accused of violence over the past five years, from Seattle to Philadelphia to Montreal, has won acquittal or seen the baseless charges dropped. (Check out David Graeber's Nation piece on lies the police tell, and the press believes, about anarchists.)

Yesterday I spoke with several of the instigators singled out in these recent articles, which, it turns out, is more than the reporters at the Daily News and the Post bothered to do. "Wreak havoc?"asks Laura Whitehorn, now a Manhattan editor and one of the only members of the Weather Underground to serve time. "The most dangerous thing I'm planning for next week is to do yoga in the park. I'm on parole--so I'm not going anywhere near a demonstration." According to the News, Jaggi Singh, a Canadian activist who organized anti-FTAA demonstrations in Quebec City in 2001, was one of Toure's trainees. But Singh says he's never met the man, never had arms training--and anyway, he isn't even making the trip to New York for the RNC. I also spoke with Janet Yip, of Refuse & Resist, listed by the Post as one of five "extremist" groups singled out by the NYPD in a manual titled "Executive Resource Handbook on Radical Groups." Yip says R&R did have RNC plans: an awards ceremony for activists last night and the permitted United for Peace and Justice march on Sunday. "What's extreme," she says, "is what's being done to our country."

Several of the inflammatory tabloid pieces have been posted to officer.com, a website for police officers, and activists fear that they'll influence police response. "They've been so pumped up with fear about us," says anarchist Eric Laursen, "that they may feel justified in snatching people off the streets at any excuse, caging protesters up and doing mass arrests." On Monday night Laursen gathered together Graeber, an anthropologist; author Starhawk; and half a dozen other anarchist thinkers at St. Mark's Church in the East Village for a media briefing to respond to the misinformation. Though the speakers made a good-faith effort to explain what anarchism means to them (egalitarianism, nonhierarchical social structures) and why they're protesting the RNC, the reporters asked only about property destruction. Laursen, who's a member of the A31 coalition, which is coordinating a day of direct action for next Tuesday, says various collectives have sit-ins planned, and die-ins, and even dance-ins, as well as street theater good and bad (one group will dress in flight suits and play golf; another will walk the subway cars dressed as dead Iraqis), but he says no one's planning any property destruction that he's heard of.

"If the Post or the News thinks that direct action is always violent, then they probably think Rosa Parks was violent when she sat down in that Montgomery bus," Laursen says. "Direct action is when you stop supplicating for things that are rightfully yours, and instead take them. A huge part of Manhattan has been cordoned off and given to Republicans for their cocktail party, and significant public services are being devoted to making sure they don't even hear a pin drop outside. It's essential for us to truly reclaim the streets instead of being shoved off into some distant protest pen."

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August 27, 2004