The year of the protest

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by Kristen Lombardi

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Locally, too, protest fever hit hard. In late March, thousands of biotechnology bigwigs flew in to the Hub to attend the Bio 2000 conference at the Hynes Convention Center, where 2500 chanting demonstrators met them. Protesters made sure to dress in costumes, many of which resembled regurgitated fruit, to symbolize the dangers of genetic engineering. Comic flair aside, the protest's high point came just before dawn on March 28, when four merry pranksters, hoping to send Bio 2000 attendees down, dumped 30 gallons of what they claimed were genetically altered soybeans in front of the Hynes. The activists were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

Passions erupted in Boston again on October 3, when Bush and Gore squared off at the UMass Boston campus for the first of three presidential debates. The barricaded lawn outside UMass was dubbed the "protest pen" by the media, and rightly so. Thousands of protesters turned out, ostensibly to object to Green Party candidate Ralph Nader's exclusion. But drums were beaten for everything from ending capital punishment to campaign-finance reform. Nader and Gore supporters went mano a mano over who backed the better candidate. As the dust settled, police arrested 16 people, some of whom were caught throwing an eight-foot steel fence at passing cars.

The fracas surrounding the first debate was more than appropriate, given the rage over the political process that has ensued since Election Day. No sooner had November 7 passed than Jesse Jackson led the rallying cry against voting snafus that had resulted in thousands of African-Americans' being denied the right to vote in Florida -- in a year when blacks went to the polls in record numbers. The AFL-CIO brought in scores of union members to boost Democratic demonstrations over the Florida recount; it bused in hundreds for a December 6 demonstration on Capitol Hill, during which demonstrators decried action from the Florida State Legislature, which was preparing to call a special session to name the state's 25 electors. And a parade of Democratic officials traveled from DC to Tennessee to Florida to demand an accurate tally of all ballots.

But when it came to sheer, unbridled rage, the Republican camp -- with its rent-a-mob partisans -- truly outdid everything the year had witnessed up to that point. Of course, the act of protesting was about the only thing the GOP demonstrations had in common with those of the youthful Y2K activists. Overwhelmingly, Republicans spilled into the streets not out of idealism or a desire to better the system, but because their political party had appealed to their economic self-interest. W. attracted them with the very item that made their counterparts recoil in disgust: the dollar bill.

And the Bush camp -- which, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, paid party operatives to travel to Florida and protest -- got its money's worth. As soon as the recount of Florida ballots commenced, far-flung GOP followers poured into the Sunshine State and proceeded to lash out in mass gatherings orchestrated by the Republican Party. In Broward County, a crowd of angry GOP protesters chased down one Democratic official who was suspected of stealing a ballot; it turned out to be a sample. The day before Thanksgiving, demonstrators in Miami-Dade County showed their gratitude by screaming, pounding walls, and waving fists while storming the offices of the election commission. Amid the vitriol and confusion, some GOP protesters shoved, kicked, and punched Democratic spokesman Luis Rosero.

When the Florida Supreme Court handed down its December 9 decision to allow 14,000 contested ballots to be recounted, hundreds of Bush loyalists flocked to Gore's DC residence -- only to turn their jeers into cheers less than 24 hours later with the US Supreme Court's ruling to halt the count. Spontaneous outbursts soon shifted to the front of the US Supreme Court, where hundreds of Republicans and Democrats spent December 11 in a partisan shouting match while the nine justices heard legal arguments on the Florida recount. The clamoring grew so intense that DC police in riot helmets separated the two sides with metal barricades.

The election outbursts provided the perfect end to a perfectly tumultuous year. But the very people who had expressed the most vigorous dissent over the previous 12 months were conspicuously absent: the young activists. This could be because many of them voted for the anti-corporate Nader, derided as a campaign spoiler. Maybe Y2K activists were nursing their wounds after their man had been blamed for the election fiasco. (Under other circumstances, it was Patrick Buchanan who might have been the spoiler: he won crucial votes in four states -- Iowa, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin -- that, had they gone to Bush, would have won the Republican 30 additional electoral votes and thus the presidential election.) Maybe their anti-establishment mindset simply prevented them from taking up the fight for a major-party candidate. Whatever the reasons, in retrospect it may be that, ironically, Republicans and Democrats who engaged in spontaneous outbursts (as opposed to the meticulously planned "actions" by the Ruckus Society, complete with training sessions on how to avoid arrest by secoring oneself to a fence with a U-lock) will be credited with preparing the ground for immediate change. After the mess that was the Florida recount, who doesn't believe that the next crusade on Capitol Hill will be an attempt to overhaul the way we vote?

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After such a spirited 2000, 2001 seems destined to carry the fiery flame forward. True, we probably won't see the numbers we saw during the last great period of activism, the 1960s. For one thing, today's protesters embrace such a buffet of causes -- everything from environmental damage to sweatshop labor -- that they confuse the rest of us. And a confusing message makes for a tough sell with mainstream audiences.

Still, the seeds for widespread mobilization were planted with the remarkably odd coalition of activists that organized demonstrations this year. Labor leaders, environmentalists, death-penalty opponents, gay-rights activists -- a host of advocates worked together under the anti-corporate banner. These seeds should grow and bloom before they wither. After all, when it comes down to it, Y2K activists are not all that different from their counterparts in the '60s. Like their forerunners, young people spent the year protesting because they expect their country -- their government -- to live up to its ideals.

Besides, the passion that characterized 2000 is bound to be fueled further once Bush and his fellow Republicans come into power. Talk of a Seattle-like demonstration at the January 20 inauguration has already circulated among this year's young crusaders in more than 30 states, including Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island. They will join Jesse Jackson and others in speaking out against what they call the anti-democratic US electoral system, as well as the "gross disenfranchisement" of black voters in Florida. If the GOP's hungry ideologues succeed in passing even a fraction of their regressive policy agenda -- if they reverse the social, environmental, and educational gains made under the Clinton-Gore administration -- we can expect the outcry to be amplified. Says Boston University professor Joseph Boskin, who studies social movements: "Conservatives in the Republican Party are nasty, nasty people, and their nasty policies will translate into greater activism."

And if that happens, then maybe, just maybe, we can watch the Year of the Protest turn into a year of sustained political action.

Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com.

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