UNITED STATES: 'The poor will not be disappeared'
PHILADELPHIA — While the smug elite of the US Republican Party gathered here in plush hotels and a huge new convention centre to celebrate their wealth and to anoint two rich white men to lead their presidential ticket, the US poor and their allies were very visible, and very vocal, in the streets. Women, the disabled, children, people of colour, immigrants, the unemployed, underpaid and uninsured all marched, danced, sang and spoke up loud and clear.
Determined that the grievances and unanswered demands of the poor would not be drowned out by the hoopla of the major party presidential circuses, a broad alliance of political activists brought chants, marches, street theatre, civil disobedience and confrontation to a city which welcomed them far less cordially than it did the high-rollers of the Republican Party.
"The poor will not be 'disappeared' in America! We will be heard!", declared Cheri Honkala of Philadelphia's Kensington Welfare Rights Union, a key organiser.
On July 31, opening day of the convention, KWRU led a peaceful mass march for economic justice from Philadelphia City Hall down Broad Street to the convention site. Despite denial of a parade permit, the police at the last minute allowed the march to proceed without interference. Honkala and other march leaders declared the action "a great victory for free speech".
All along the five-kilometre march route, residents came out to cheer the marchers and their demands for decent jobs, decent pay and decent health care for all. (In an ironic episode, fallen Republican Party leader Newt Gingrich accidentally stumbled into the line of march and was hounded by media until he took refuge behind the closed gates of a local anti-poverty training facility. The marchers paid him little attention.)
KWRU further directed attention to the plight of the poor by conducting media tours of some of Philadelphia's neighbourhoods, pointing out how once prosperous manufacturing and residential areas are now marked by abandoned factories, dire poverty and crime. KWRU spokespersons asserted that the economic policies of both the Republican and Democrat parties had produced this tragedy.
Honkala points an accusing finger at "the fat cats who run both these parties and who run this country now".
"They took away the jobs, sent them to other countries where they pay workers even less for their work than they paid us", she says.
"They took away our health benefits and make us beg and fight with a ridiculous bureaucracy for the little cash and medical help we get. Then they call us lazy and set up crazy rules we can't understand or follow. They call that 'welfare reform'!
"They took away our housing and left us homeless or in fear of losing what homes we still have. Then they send us killer drugs, crime and brutal cops. It can make you want to hide away because it is so painful to live life this way. Or it can make you mad enough to fight. We choose to stand up and fight back!"
Besides the KWRU, an array of local and national advocacy groups formed the Unity 2000 coalition, which held days of pre-convention educational workshops in the city. Unity 2000 coordinated a mass rally of thousands on the Franklin Plaza in the heart of Philadelphia on the Sunday before the convention. Speakers challenged economic injustice, military spending, the death penalty and the growing "prison-industrial complex".
Musicians and comics entertained the huge crowd, including the satiric troupe "Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)", who mockingly flaunted the power of plutocracy to make "all the important political decisions for you in advance" of elections.
While the rally had a festive atmosphere, a more studiously concerned tone prevailed at the Shadow Convention held on the University of Pennsylvania campus in West Philadelphia. Speakers including the Reverend Jesse Jackson lambasted the government's expensive and failed 10-year-long "drug war" and called for real reform of policy aimed towards the needs of poor and working people.
On August 1 and each of the subsequent days of the convention, bands of anti-corporate and anti-death-penalty protesters (including supporters of jailed and condemned-to-death Philadelphia reporter-activist Mumia Abu-Jamal) conducted both legal demonstrations and nonviolent civil disobedience throughout the centre of the city.
Police reactions were swift and forceful, but without the gassing, shooting and club-swinging that marked the Seattle WTO demonstrations.
The Philadelphia police and mayor's office clearly intended to avoid the further embarrassment of a "police riot" in front of thousands of reporters. Just a few days before the convention, the police had grabbed world media attention when a mob of cops was videotaped kicking and beating arrestee Thomas Jones.
Though no conventioneers tasted tear gas in the streets, by the end of the week at least 390 protesters had been jailed, most held on unusually high bails. Lawyers and prisoners' spokespersons alleged that many arrests and police actions were "pre-emptive" and unwarranted. Infiltration and spying by police within protest"affinity groups" was widely suspected.
Jailed protesters claim they are suffering extremely harsh treatment in the city prisons, amounting to "torture". A hunger strike among some jailed demonstrators is in progress.
A position paper released on August 8 by the National Lawyers Guild states, "The response of the City and Courts of Philadelphia to protests of the Republican National Convention and the prison industrial complex seems a blatant attempt to silence dissent and seriously curtail First, Fifth and Eighth Amendment rights. Those protesters who have been arrested are experiencing the kinds of abuses that are endemic to the prison industrial complex in the United States, the very institution they seek to reform."
The loose coalition of protesters, Shadow Convention organisers and poor people's advocates has now set the Democratic Party convention in Los Angeles as its target, where two rich white men again will be anointed as candidates for the top political offices in the US.
By Bill Nevins