Rohan Pearce
It was the biggest-ever protest against a political convention in the United States. The August 29 demonstration against the Republican National Convention was a resounding rejection of the White House and its "war on terror". The protest's organisers, the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition, estimated that 500,000 people protested.
According to an August 30 report in New York Times, "One officer in touch with the police command center at Madison Square Garden agreed that the crowd appeared to be close to a half-million". The turn-out was twice that predicted by UFPJ.
The UFPJ-organised protest was the largest of a string of demonstrations held during the convention, protesting everything from the "war on terror" and the occupation of Iraq, to Bush's assault on women's access to abortion, to his homophobic opposition to equal rights for same-sex couples, to the war on terror's domestic corollary, the war on workers, immigrants and the poor within the US.
One of those at the march, 22-year-old Carlo Mirabella-Davis, told the New Standard: "I think Bush is creating the perfect climate for terrorism to breed. .... it is still extremely important to show that despite 9/11, New Yorkers are adamantly against the war on terror."
While many of the protesters obviously intended to vote for Kerry, according to the New Standard's report, for many of those in the crowd "there was no love lost between themselves and the Democrats' presidential candidate".
"Kerry is a huge disappointment for peace activists", one of the marchers explained. "His positions range from those that produce concern to others that are simply alarming, such as his desire to prolong the occupation [of Iraq]."
A slander campaign by the Republican Party, in collusion with the corporate tabloid media tried to smear protesters as violent, or even terrorists.
An August 26 article in the liberal Village Voice reported: "Today's Daily News report trumpeted 'police intelligence sources' who claim that 50 of the 'country's leading anarchists' are headed this way, including a handful of 'hard-core extremists with histories of violent and disruptive tactics."
An August 23 report by the New York Post's Stefan Friedman claimed: "A number of extremists with ties to the 1970s radical Weather Underground have recently been released from prison and are in New York preparing to wreak havoc during the Republican National Convention."
A "top-level source" told Friedman, "These people are trained in kidnapping techniques, bomb making and building improvised munitions. They've very bad people... They're not likely to take direct action but they'll be orchestrating operations"
UFPJ called a follow-up demonstration for September 1 to protest the conditions that those arrested were held in. Despite the protests being peaceful, by August 31, some 600 people had been arrested. A September 3 article in the British Independent put the updated arrest count at close to 2000.
"The large holding pens are made of chain link fence with razor wire on top; each pen has only two portable toilets and very few benches; most people have to sleep on the floor; arrestees have gone for many hours without access to food, water, phones, or lawyers... people are being held an unusually long amount of time before they are moved through the process and released", UFPJ claimed.
From Green Left Weekly, September 8, 2004.
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