E-Mail This Article to a Friend Up the establishment (continued)

Even as the Democrats prepare to launch the convention, a small army of activists and grassroots organizers will be massing at UMass-Boston for the Boston Social Forum. Friday through Sunday, some 50 groups with agendas ranging from affordable housing and health care to combatting imperialist foreign policy and globalization will unite for upward of 500 panels and workshops, with speakers ranging from Angela Davis and Harry Belafonte to Dennis Kucinich and Howard Zinn. Expect equal helpings of lefty politics and self-serving bullshit. Case in point: it’s nice that Belafonte and Danny Glover are showing up, but a discussion of the influence of hip-hop on pop culture isn’t exactly what we’d have chosen for them. (If you’re curious, they’re speaking Saturday at 10 a.m. at UMass’s Lipke Auditorium, 100 Morrissey Boulevard; see www.bostonsocialforum.org for a complete schedule.) Among the bigger offsite BSF happenings is a Friday-night "Evening with John Sayles" at the Brattle Theatre (40 Brattle Street in Harvard Square; call 617-876-6837), where the legendary filmmaker introduces clips from his new political thriller, Silver City. And Saturday night, the BSF lets off steam in Central Square, as the English folk-rocker Billy Bragg headlines "Another World Is Possible," a three-club benefit for the Forum at the Middle East upstairs and downstairs (472 and 480 Massachusetts Avenue) and T.T. the Bear’s Place (10 Brookline Street). As it happens, the annual convention of Veterans for Peace is running concurrently with the BSF. On Friday night, the group’s "Veterans Address the Nation" event gives a platform to people’s historian Howard Zinn and to Daniel Ellsberg, the man who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers to the Washington Post and the New York Times. Also on the bill: Boston city councilors Felix Arroyo and Chuck Turner, the latter of whom leaked X-rated "prison abuse" photos to the Boston Globe that turned out to be from an Internet porn site called IraqBabes. That’s at historic Faneuil Hall in Quincy Market; tickets are $10. Call (617) 782-2313. Turner also speaks today (July 22) at Boston City Hall Plaza alongside members of Veterans for Peace at the noontime opening of "Eyes Wide Open," a provocative exhibit sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee that consists of a pair of boots for every American soldier killed in Iraq as well as a memorial wall featuring the names of more than 10,000 Iraqi civilian dead. The exhibit travels to the BSF for the weekend; it will appear at locations including Boston Common and Copley Square throughout the convention.

After the BSF ends, many of the groups involved will be taking to the streets for a near-constant stream of protests that’s likely to follow Democratic bigwigs wherever they go. (One group’s Web site lists the locations of the city-hosted welcoming parties for the delegates as well as the hotels each delegation is staying at.) But the two biggest protests, both of which have the benefit of city-issued permits, take place on the opening and closing days of the convention. On Monday, for a day-long action focusing on "Police Brutality, Prison Abuses, and the Patriot Act," protesters will gather on Boston Common at 10 a.m., march on the FleetCenter beginning at 12:30 p.m. for a rally at 3:30 p.m., and then march on Government Center for a 5 p.m. rally. On Thursday the 29th, another protest carries the theme "No Blood for Oil: End All Occupations." (In practice, both are shaping up as ad hoc collaborations among a number of interests.) That rally begins at 10 a.m. at Copley Square, marches to the FleetCenter for a 12:30 p.m. rally, and then converges on Boston Common around 6 p.m.

One of the most watched groups during the week will be the Black Tea Society, an umbrella group of anarchists and other anti-authoritarians who’ve been planning their thing for months. Black Tea is setting up HQ at the Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston Street in Boston, where its "Convergence Center" will serve as an all-purpose command center and info booth complete with a medical aid station and on-site legal assistance. The group’s biggest event is a day-long "Really, Really Democratic Bazaar" on Tuesday from noon to 8 p.m. on Boston Common, where an open-air gathering space and market will include performances by punks, thrashers, and folkies plus street theater, radical cheerleaders, and info booths sponsored by Pirates Against Bush, the Lucy Parsons Center, and local-legend underground political activist Dan the Bagel Man, among many others; visit www.blackteasociety.org. Meanwhile, United for Justice with Peace will occupy the DNC-approved "Free-Speech Zone" near the FleetCenter on Monday at 5 p.m. for a rally focusing on the occupation of Palestine; and the same group is sponsoring a noontime rally on Wednesday in Copley Square focusing on prison abuse at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, with speakers from the ACLU and Amnesty International plus the ubiquitous Dennis Kucinich.

By far the most well-heeled protest of the week will be the "Million Billionaire March" by members (probably a few short of a million of them) of Billionaires for Bush, the hilarious NYC performance-art group who’re kicking off a nationwide "Limo Tour" on which they plan to hound John Kerry for threatening to repeal that Bush-instituted tax cut for the wealthy. The group mass on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at Rowes Wharf and proceed to Massachusetts GOP headquarters. Then on Wednesday, they’ll be protesting a protest. They’re picketing "The Sideshow," a Video Underground–sponsored event that’ll include a screening of the documentary Horns and Halos, which chronicles the author J.H. Hatfield’s ill-fated attempt to publish his controversial Dubya biography, Fortunate Son. Filmmakers Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley will be in attendance, as will Democracy Now radio host Amy Goodman, the political hip-hop group the Foundation, and sundry activists, comedians, and political cartoonists. The event will conclude at 10 p.m. with a screening of Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, the new documentary from Robert Greenwald whose title is pretty much self-explanatory. It all starts at 6 p.m. at Jorge Hernández Cultural Center, 85 West Newton Street in the South End; call (617) 522-4949.