Protest

Traveling rabble-rousers

by Michael Blanding

When the Ben & Jerry's bus rolls into Boston on July 26, it won't be dispensing free ice cream. The activists inside will refresh the minds of the masses with a traveling teach-in that picks up where energetic world-trade protests in Seattle and Washington, DC, left off. The "Democracy in Motion Caravan/Roadshow" hitches international trade issues to domestic issues that major-party candidates can't be bothered with in an election year, such as welfare and campaign-finance reform. The goal: to energize activists for the protests planned around the Republican and Democratic National Conventions this summer.

"We're trying to tease out the connections between these issues," says Kate Pham, an organizer with Boston-based United for a Fair Economy who will be traveling with the caravan. "A lot of cities are fighting the same battles, whether it be against corporate farms, or for a living-wage campaign. But people don't necessarily link it to a greater struggle." To that end, the road show will check in at places such as Louisville and Salt Lake City, bringing street theater and local bands together with workshops on race, labor, and the environment. In Boston, it will be joined by hip-hop group Original Black Kings and street performers Billionaires for Bush (or Gore), a nonpartisan spoof whose motto -- "Less Democracy! More Plutocracy!" -- celebrates the dubious role of big money in campaigns.

Protest veterans will also give training in nonviolence and media skills. After each stop, the organizers hope that like-minded folks will tag along in their own VW buses and Ford Escorts, building a traveling army bound for Philadelphia (July 31 through August 2) and Los Angeles (August 14 through 17). Those who can't physically join the caravan can participate, via celluloid, in a project to create a "New Declaration of Independence" that will be taken to the conventions. "At each stop," says the Direct Action Network's Rachel Neumann, "people will be on camera for a minute declaring their independence from corporate rule, or privatization of welfare, or whatever they want to declare."

Although the idea of traveling rabble-rousers goes back at least as far as William Dawes and his horse, this incarnation takes its lead from such events as the People's Global Action Tour, a movement started by Indian farmers to protest genetic alteration of seeds that went all the way to the G8 summit in Cologne last year. Similar teach-ins have hit the pavement in Mexico around the Zapatista uprising in the mid '90s, and on both coasts before the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle last year and the International Monetary Fund meeting in DC this spring.

What all these tours have in common is the effort to make an issue more intense by personalizing it. The left has been criticized in the past for an over-reliance on Internet organizing that has alienated those without access. Events like Democracy in Motion, says Neumann, try to remedy that situation. "People get excited with the relationships they make and with face-to-face conversation," she says. "If we can take huge issues like campaign-finance reform and put them in the shape of a person, we'll be more effective in the end."

The Democracy in Motion Caravan/Roadshow arrives in Boston on July 26 and will be at the Freedom House, 14 Crawford Street, in the Grove Hall neighborhood of Dorchester from 4 to 10 p.m. Call Kate Pham at (617) 423-2148, ext. 36, or visit www.democracyinmotion.org.