What I saw at the revolution, continued

by Ben Geman

This could explain why most reports of this past spring's actions against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in Washington, DC, also focused on clashes that pitted demonstrators against police or delegates. But it doesn't explain why the media failed to cover the messages being put out by activists at the Republican convention in Philadelphia two weeks ago -- where there were no dramatic face-offs between police and protesters.

Part of the real reason the media haven't focused on the issues is that the protesters have no one message. They have about 20 -- everything, as the Miami Herald's Pitts notes, from releasing Mumia Abu-Jamal from prison to ending the excesses of global capitalism. This diversity does make such protests hard to cover. On the other hand, after attending about 10 protests over the course of the week, it was obvious to me what the activists' major message was: the Democrats have become too beholden to corporate interests and hostile to progressive issues.

"There has been some frustration and talk about how to hone the message better," says Matt Borus of the Boston Global Action Network, who attended the protests. Still, he adds, "a lot of media seem to forget that they are supposed to be investigating, and seem to want issues handed to them on a silver platter."

Acknowledges 26-year-old activist Josh Kamensky, of LA's Direct Action Network: "It's a challenge for us to get our message out there." Yet, he says, "It's also unfair to criticize us for wanting more than one thing. . . . They [the Democrats] have a long agenda, and so do we."

But if we don't hear about the activists' agenda in a meaningful way, does that mean the protests were a failure?

NOT FROM the vantage point of 1919 West 7th Street in LA. The four-story sand-colored building in LA's Pico Union neighborhood served as the "convergence space" for the activists who came to town for the convention protests. Here they could gather to meet each other, plan protests, receive first aid, or just chill out. There was even a meditation room.

Talking to people at the convergence space made it clear that the protests meant a lot to them. Take Erin Zion, a 22-year-old Bay Area resident who recently graduated from college and was inspired to come to LA after hearing stories about the DC demonstrations from a friend.

To her, the new protest movement that surfaced in Seattle is about waking up to reality. There's an expectation, Zion believes, that people like her will want to live happily ever after in the new economy after graduation. "Wait. We are not that dumb," she said as she ate lunch on the space's second floor, where other activists were resting between events. "We don't want anything to do with a system in this country right now. We see what it does to other people."

For her, Zion said, the demonstrations have been "a total turning point." And 24-year-old Liz, an LA resident who wouldn't tell me her last name, made a similar observation as we walked back from the "protest pen" outside the Staples Center following a rally against Gore's investment in Occidental Petroleum.

"How I am politically is radically changing," she said. "I'm still young, so I'm trying to figure it out, and I don't know how that change will manifest itself. But I'm drawn to this. It's very empowering."

Liz was raised in a Democratic family, but the new activism is making her consider some difficult choices. On the one hand, the abortion issue pushes her toward Gore. "I still don't know what I'm going to do when I enter the voting booth," she told me. "As a woman, I don't want to be told, `Here's a coat hanger. Have a good time.' " On the other hand, events like the Occidental protests have alerted her to lots of reasons for concern about Democratic positions on global issues.

The protests in Los Angeles and Philadelphia were viewed as the latest events in the evolving anti-corporate grassroots movement that made its debut in Seattle last year. But the convention protests were fundamentally different from the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization.

For one thing, Big Labor was on board in Seattle, supplying about 40,000 of the 50,000 protesters. That wasn't the case at the conventions -- particularly in LA. Though the Clinton-Gore administration broke with labor on free trade, union leadership still saw a big enough difference between Democrats and Republicans to avoid participating in the protests. "Trade is [just] one issue as far as we are concerned," AFL-CIO head John Sweeney told me after a union rally in Santa Monica.

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Ben Geman can be reached at bgeman[a]phx.com.