Democratic Dissent
News: From our reporter in Boston: Protesters hit the streets for a week of impassioned dissent. Most are anti-Bush, but they're not giving Kerry-Edwards a free pass.
July 26, 2004
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As thousands of delegates arrived Sunday in Boston for the week-long pep-rally that is the Democratic Convention, a motley group of anti-convention protesters began filling the city's plazas and parks in preparation for a week of impassioned dissent.
They filled Boston Common on Sunday for a march on the heavily guarded FleetCenter in protest against the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq and Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry's stated support for keeping troops there. David Barrows, an office manager from DC who had been protesting war for two decades, donned a rubber mask with President Bush's face in bloody fangs to write out on foam board his latest slogan: "Anybody but Bush‚ is Hairy-Kerry."
"That's good," said Jim Macdonald, 30, an organizer for the Washington D.C. Anti-War Network, or DAWN. "Although, it's spelled H-A-R-I. But Hairy-Kerry is good because of his big hair."
Initial plans by DAWN organizers for a rented bus to bring protesters were shelved for lack of interest, even though flyers were posted throughout the nation's capital. Macdonald, a doctoral candidate in Philosophy who recently worked for the U.S. Department of Education, expected a far better turnout next month in New York during the Republican convention. "The Democratic convention is more complicated to express what we are doing," he said.
But like hundreds of others who had gathered for the March, he believed such nuance was no excuse for inaction. "Even if you are going to vote for Kerry you should be out there saying we are not happy withthis," he said. Just days earlier he had been outraged when he read the 2004 Democratic Party Platform, which has been subtitled, "Strong at Home, Respected in the World." Among its provisions are calls for an expansion of the military by 40,000 troops and the addition of new neighborhood groups to improve Homeland Security. "It's calling for a neighborhood watch program. It's ridiculous," Macdonald said.
But the protesters who have descended on Boston come with nearly as many causes as there are state delegations. Anti-abortion protesters and Christian activists scrawled slogans in chalk around the FleetCenter yesterday, and held street demonstrations. College Republicans, dressed as giant beach sandals, stood outside a subway station to demonstrate their belief that Kerry "flip-flops." Nearly one thousand supporters of Falun Gong, a religious sect banned in China, gathered in Copley Square to perform grisly reenactments of the torture methods of the Chinese government. Other activists gathered at the University of Massachusettes, Boston, for the Boston Social Forum, a three day series of lectures and movie viewings about the whole spectrum of liberal social concerns, from international health care to the privatization of public services. On the Boston Common, protesters chanted for a Communist revolution, the freeing of political prisoners in Cuba, and the end of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Many in the crowd often seemed distracted, though, more taken by the sun than the speakers thundering from the podium in anticipation of the march. "Just a few days ago, we won the right to march," chastised one speaker from march organizers ANSWER, an anti-war group formed after the attacks of September 11. "So after we went through all that trouble to do all that, please don't fall asleep."
(Last week, a federal judge allowed protesters to march past the convention site on Sunday.)
Sunday's march was just the beginning of a week of counter convention activities, some of which have been planned with permits and some without. A march against police brutality, prison abuse, and the PATRIOT Act has been planned for Monday. On Tuesday, a thousand or more people are expected to attend a "Close Down Guantanamo" rally downtown, an event followed by a candlelight vigil for the casualties of the Iraq war. On Thursday, an Anarchist umbrella group called the Bl(a)ck Tea Society has called for a day of "massive decentralized actions."
As FBI agents and Boston Police have been working to uncover the details of these events, Emma Lang, a 19-year-old organizer of the Society, has been busy preparing a "convergence center," a town hall of sorts for the entire protest community. "Someone has to deal with the permits. Somebody has to make sure there is toilet paper," says Lang, who has become a spokeswoman for the group. The Society, which has no leader and comes to all decisions by consensus, has arranged for childcare, medical attention for protesters, and legal representation if protesters are arrested.
The group has called for an official boycott of the one part of Boston city leaders have designated for "free speech." The space, located directly across from the convention site, has all the allure of an industrial wastesite, or a prison--28,000 square feet located beneath abandoned train tracks, walled by steel fences and razor wire and topped by heavy black netting to keep protesters from hurling objects at--or handing pamphlets to--the delegates. A federal judge last week refused to order changes to the area, but called the conditions "an affront to free expression" and a "festering boil." The Boston Police call it "the playpen."
A native of Cambridge, Lang described herself as lucky because there was little chance President Bush could win Massachusetts, allowing her to cast her vote for a third party candidate. But she worried that the early signs the police and secret service would tightly control protesters undercut Boston's hallowed role as thebirthplace of the American Revolution. "This is the city where democracy was founded in a lot of ways, where direct action was founded," Lang said.
To protesters like Lang, such treatment has become a cause in itself. "We can't speak to our delegates," she said. "I can't hand a leaflet because I am in a cage. It's not American, it's not the way we were raised."
Michael Scherer is the Washington correspondent for Mother Jones.
