The Boston Phoenix
October 5 - 12, 2000

[This Just In]

Protest

The debate's debate gets messy

by Camille Dodero

THINGS got pissy outside of the debate.


Now I know what it's like to be in the wrong place at the wrong time -- or depending on how you look at it, the right place at the right time. While covering the protests outside the presidential debate last Tuesday, I was pushed by drunken union thugs, loudly described as a "filthy maggot," and told to go fuck myself. So you can imagine what it must have been like for actual participants.

The cause of all this, um, emotion? A spirited, um, meeting of Green Party activists, Mumia-Abu Jamal supporters, and AFL-CIO members.

MORE DEBATE COVERAGE
More snapshots from the protest
Reporter's Notebook: Debating points
by Seth Gitell
Don't Quote Me: Spinning W.'s L
by Dan Kennedy

Here's what happened: By 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, the barricaded lawn outside the UMass campus - which was immediately dubbed the "protest pen" by the media - was swarming with Gore supporters -- mostly union activists. Posters and placards with acronyms like AFL-CIO, WPAT, IBEW, AFSCME, SEIU, IAFF were plastered everywhere. And by the looks of the discarded Bud cans tucked beneath trees, it looked like the party -- attended by the Boston Firefighters, the Gaelic Fire Brigade, and the Vietnamese Community of Massachusetts -- had started well before I arrived.

Around 6:30 p.m., Green Party activists marched in and set up camp, chanting, "Let Nader debate!" This sparked some minor scuffles between two camps - union members and third-party supporters - that had protested side-by-side less than seven months ago in Seattle. One union member grunted, "Fuck you and your Peace Corps" to a guy holding a cardboard American flag embossed with a dollar sign. Union guys pushed the Green guys. And the Green guys pushed back. But each time it seemed as though things were going to escalate, the third-party activists would back down. Someone would shout: "Don't! We can't let the press see us fighting." Which earned sobriquets like: "Ralph Nader is a corporate whore!" from the union guys. A Green would chant "We're not violent!" which, in one instance, was met with this from a gray-haired AFL-CIO member: "We like violence!"

When the Mumia Abu-Jamal crowd strode in around 7:30 p.m. with wooden crosses (from a march that started in Roxbury) . . . well, let's just say that things got worse. Much worse. A video camera carried by Rob Fish, a college student working with the Independent Media Center, was smashed to the ground. Marian Lane, a young woman with long, dark hair who was protesting Ralph Nader's exclusion from the debate was, in her own words, "pegged in the head with a rock." I watched, from about 10 yards, as a tearful blonde woman, who would later identify herself as Yvonne D., was knocked to the ground, kicked, and spat upon by assholes, excuse me, AFL-CIO members. And when I was caught watching all of this, a man in a hard hat demanded to know which union I belonged to (he apparently missed the media press pass hanging around my neck). His grounds for the question seemed to be: If you're not in a union, you can't judge my behavior. When I didn't answer him, I was, for the second time that evening, told to go fuck myself.

The bottom line? Everyone on the premises had something to say -- and had a chance to say it, chant it, or even bellow it. Everyone, that is, except for Ralph Nader. Nader, as you've probably heard, wasn't invited to the debate. As you also may have heard, he showed up anyway, ticket in hand, and tried to get into Lipke Auditorium, a separate viewing room where the debate wasn't taking place -- and was turned away.

Nader, who arrived to the debate via the Red Line -- in stark contrast to the limos that whisked in Al Gore and George W. Bush -- returned to the JFK/UMass station to leave.

"They utilized and misused police power to exclude me," Nader said into a cell phone as a group of about six supporters huddled around him. "I was excluded on political grounds. No other considerations were communicated."

While Nader talked, more and more of his fans and foot soldiers flocked to the station to meet him. "This is my quote," Nader said into his phone. "After serious mistakes, blunders, and demonstrations of arrogance controlled by Al Gore and G.W. Bush, plus this unlawful exclusion, this will be the beginning of the end of the Debate Commission monopoly. There will be access to presidential candidates for a multi-candidate forum. This country will be rid of the Debate Commission once and for all."

When he hung up, I described what had happened between the union workers and third party activists. Nader hadn't heard and seemed genuinely surprised. "I'm sure that Al Gore wouldn't allow violent actions to be imposed on peaceful demonstrators," he offered diplomatically. "But Al Gore owes these people a personal apology. In writing. And he needs to investigate how this manhandling came about, so that it never happens again."

Amen.