Authorities and protesters are on a collision course aimed
at the Republican National Convention in New York City this summer.
Fifteen groups have applied for marches or rallies of over 10,000 people
and one group, United for Peace and Justice, has applied for a rally of
250,000. No permits have been granted. Spokesman for United for Peace
and Justice, Bill Dobbs, called the refusal to grant the permit "an
effort to derail the whole protest." With the immense number of possible
issues to protest under the rubric "No to the Bush Agenda," thousands
of people working on disparate areas of activism -- the environment,
social justice, education, foreign policy, health care, fiscal responsibility, etc. -- will be in the streets whether or not they have a permit.
The police are gearing up, with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly
estimating a $76 million price tag for security. Protesters, however,
are worried about violence and arrests by the police. As student
organizer at New York University, Max Uhlenbeck, put it, "I'm sure there
will be horror stories." -
With 15,000 members of the press expected to be on hand for the
Convention it is likely that much attention will be outside Madison
Square Garden and on the streets instead.
At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, police lines
advanced through protesters, shot tear gas, and clubbed students. The
violence was splashed across the front page of every major paper. Some
say the Convention doomed the chances of Democratic candidate Hubert
Humphrey. Will New York in 2004 define Generation X in a similar way?
History, from the last four years at least, suggests that New York
may well resemble Chicago. The refusal of permits and massive build-up
of security measures points toward a pattern of suppressing dissent,
exemplified by the 2000 Republican Convention in Philadelphia and the
protests at the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) talks in Florida
last November.
In Philadelphia, over 400 people were arrested, including
well-known organizers walking down the street, random bystanders, and a
mass-arrest of political puppet makers in a warehouse.
Only a minuscule number of those arrested were convicted and no one was
sentenced to jail time. A Philadelphia Daily News editorial following
the last trial of a protester called the mass arrests, "very disturbing
for anyone who thinks the 4th, 5th, 8th, and 14th amendments to the
Constitution ought to mean something in the city where they were
written."
Similarly, protests at the FTAA talks last November saw the use of
unrestrained violence by police. For instance, members of the Miami-Dade
County's Independent Review Panel of police actions said, in a draft
report released a few weeks ago, "Civil rights were trampled and the
socio-political values we hold dear we undermined."
The FTAA is now known for giving birth to the "Miami Model," a
method where authorities use force -- rubber bullets, tear gas, etc. --
and the arrest of legal protesters to silence dissent. -
In New York, orders to use the Miami Model may be coming from the
highest source: the Bush administration. The main clue to this is
Ashcroft's most recent terror alert. Numerous news organizations openly
questioned why he released information
that had already been revealed months earlier. One possibility is that
Ashcroft may have used the terror alert for the political purpose of
chilling dissenting opinions. Evidence lies in the fact that Ashcroft
only named three specific events for possible terror acts: Georgia's G-8
summit, Boston's Democratic Convention in July, and New York's
Republican Convention in August. These are also the three biggest
national protests planned this summer.
Robert Ross, a Miami Activist Defense and National Lawyer's Guild
Attorney involved in lawsuits filed this year accusing the city of
Miami, Homeland Defense Secretary Ridge, U.S. Attorney General John
Ashcroft, and others for abridgment of civil rights, said, " have no
doubt that, in Boston and New York, they are going to utilize tactics
used in Miami." Or, as Uhlenbeck put it, "There will be plenty of
violence from the police." Joel D. Stonington is an editorial intern on Orion Magazine.
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