The Fine Art of Bush-Bashing (Page 2)

It's important to organizers that the protests seem hospitable to members of the general public; otherwise, fearing confrontations between police and demonstrators, mainstream Bush-haters--who are legion--could stay home. Aware that opposition to Bush reaches across age, race and class lines in a way that many specific issues do not, organizers want to be as inclusive as possible. Compared with protests against the IMF, says Hickman, "there is really broad interest in this. Moms, dads--it's not going to be just a bunch of 20-year-olds in the streets."

The emphasis on artistic expression is partly borne out of this "discomfort with the idea of mass riots in the streets," says Hickman. But these days, the government doesn't seem to like "creative" and artistic expression against Bush any more than it likes marches and rallies. In Boston in late May, a student who dressed up as an Abu Ghraib torture victim, wearing a hood and standing on a milk crate in front of an Army recruiting center, was arrested and charged with making a terrorist threat (charges against him have been dropped). And in Buffalo, an artist faces indictment under the USA Patriot Act for making a political art installation that used scientific equipment; the Feds are, surreally, claiming that the art was actually a weapons lab.

This mentality has even affected New York City. The Tompkins Square Park concert, for example, has no permit yet. In March the group staging the event was issued a permit for a "concert" of no more than seventy-five decibels. "That's basically your car stereo," objects organizer Daryle Lamont Jenkins. In a peculiar development several weeks later, the group received a letter from the Parks and Recreation Department rescinding even that limited permit, claiming it was issued in "error." Borough Commissioner William Castro wrote, "At this time we are unable to make determinations on any permit applications for events of this scale on September 2, 2004." If the Bloomberg administration doesn't give in, says Jenkins, "they will more or less prove our point, which is that Republicans are repressing our rights as American citizens."

That could help swell the protesters' ranks and involve still more artistic types, who tend to respond indignantly to First Amendment violations. And as Hickman points out, these repressive incidents do keep the protests in the news, and almost always sympathetically. Jenkins, for his part, is still optimistic that the concert will take place and, most important, that cultural and political activists will continue to work together to fight the right. "The left has more momentum than it's had in thirty years," he says. "Let's hope it stays that way if Kerry wins."

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