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MONDAY, AUGUST 30, 2004, NEW YORK -- George Bush is a liar. According to the hundreds of thousands of anti-RNC demonstrators who deluged Seventh Avenue yesterday, the American President’s a Dick-tator. He’s a bad Christian. He’s an ass of evil. He’s a racist, sexist, anti-gay pig. He’s an election thief. He’s an empty warhead. He’s "not your drinking buddy, he’s the boss’s son who just got promoted again." He’s like a rock, only stupider. He’s a criminal. He’s a murderer. He’s the real terrorist. And he smells like shit. Funny, on the streets during the DNC, probably the nastiest attack on Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry -- alleged by smiling College Republicans carrying fluorescent foam shoes, no less -- was that he flip-flopped on the issues. Ooh, that nasty man. So is the country as divided as we’re told? If the convention protests are any indication, absolutely not. All in all, yesterday’s United for Peace and Justice demonstration against the RNC was nothing like the protests during the DNC. Nothing. Boston was a pick-up kickball game; yesterday was the goddamned Olympics. Yesterday’s parade was, as march organizers dutifully noted in a press release, "the largest protest ever held during a political convention." In 2000, around 10,000 protesters marched on the first day of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. And at the Democratic National Convention in 1968, there were violent protests, but the marchers (at most, about 15,000) were outnumbered by police -- about 12,000 police officers, 6000 National Guardsman, and 7500 US Army Troops had been dispatched to the streets to combat the protesters. Yesterday, by contrast, saw 120,000 (according to an official quoted in an AP report) to 400,000 (Indymedia) to half a million (a United for Peace and Justice press release). The President of the United States, no surprise, is a widely hated man. It seems that all kinds of people hate the Prez: men, women, child, senior citizen, family dog. And that was another major difference between the DNC and the RNC. Those grubby, gnarly-haired, pimpled people in tattered clothes we've come to associate with political protest since 1999's WTO Seattle riots didn’t populate yesterday’s march -- this was truly a family event. Fathers brought their daughters. Boys were matching protest shirts with their moms. Parents pushed their children in strollers. Even grandmothers held their granddaughters hands. And unlike during the DNC, not everyone was white. Typically, senior citizens are novelties at protests. Like the Raging Grannies, an elderly anti-war choir that’s always willing to hobble out in floral shawls and straw hats and sweetly chirp protest ditties on the sidewalk. But yesterday, there were white-haired people who looked like they could be sunning themselves in the Hamptons, or eating at Denny’s. There were even signs complaining about the USA Patriot Act from Northhampton’s PHLOL (Perfectly Harmless Little Old Ladies). The UPJ march officially commenced around noon. But so many bodies congested Seventh Avenue that from in the cross-section of Seventh Avenue and 18th Street, the demonstrators in that area didn’t start move for nearly an hour. And when it did move, the throng moved slowly, with so many marchers clogged the pavement that people spilled onto sidewalks, even squished themselves under scaffolding. People didn’t really duck into bodegas and Blimpies to get water -- they fell inside. The streets just weren’t wide enough for all the people who’d come to protest, as one sign put it, the "Radical Neocon Clusterfuck." Even the effigies were better here. During the DNC, one anarchist burned a silly two-headed dummy of Bush and Kerry. Yesterday, around 2:45 p.m., one anti-authoritarian group that’d pushed a green papier mache dragon, along with a banner that read "Don’t Just Vote, Take Action," lit the green beast in front of Madison Square Garden. Police first tried to put out the blaze with fire extinguishers; when that didn’t work, they sprayed it with hoses. It stopped the parade for about 15 minutes. But this, of course, was only the beginning. As one sign read, "Fuck parades. See you Tues!" -- a reference to the massive civil disobedience protests planned for tomorrow night. In Boston, the hyped day of action was a bust. But if yesterday was any hint, tomorrow will be a radical clusterfuck, indeed.
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Issue Date: August 30, 2004 Back to the RNC '04 table of contents |
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