Rally against Bush

On the night of Bush's acceptance speech, I and my friends joined the protest rally down the street of MSG. It was a huge pain in the ass getting there. The police wouldn't let you walk straight there, you had to go several blocks out of the way to get to the site. I have no idea how much, I feel the detour added at least a mile. The picture below is roughly how it worked. (X marks the Rally, S is where we started):

S---------------------------------------------------

                                             l

                                             l

                                             l

MSG X--------------------------------------------

We walked our tired selves to the rally. Once there, we had a good time talking, shouting slogans, basically a multi city block street party. The protest warriors were there too (a pro war group that supports bush) keeping things interesting. The cops put pens between the groups and kept the groups apart so the dozen protest warriors could protest the protest. It was amusing watching people shout at each other, no real communication happening, but it looked like a good tension reliever.

Footage of the warriors before they got warmed up and angry.

By being there, protest warriors were blocking the thousands trying to get to the rally against Bush. So the protesters asked them to go away.

Naturally, a group called "Protest Warriors" will respond with their own very compelling chant.

The police penned the warriors into their own protest zone so the rest of the protestors could get around them and get to the legal area for the rally.

People looking at the protest warriors trying to figure out why they are so angry.

At the rally was a woman fresh out of the NYPD protestor pen.

(On the back of her shirt is the civil liberties the cops ignored while detaining her.)


She had been in it for over fourteen hours. She stood up the whole time because she didn't want to lie down on the floor caked with grease and chemicals. Her group got arrested for not dispersing when ordered too. The cops had them surrounded when the order was given. Apparently, they were expected to grow wings and fly. As she was being put into the pen, she said there was some rough treatment by an officer who kept one hand covering his name on his badge. That scared her. She and her group yelled at reporters to take pictures now so they would have evidence of the bruises they would receive.
The cop walked away. He dropped his hand too soon and she got his name and yelled it at him. Everyone else chanted it too.
Thankfully, she wasn't assaulted by the police other than being tossed in the pen.

I guess protests in NYC were going too peacefully. Some of the police were organized behind the tactic of baiting groups into breaking the law, so the NYPD was responsible for causing a number of arrests like one mentioned above. Another group was surrounded like the group above. Someone in the police told them they should walk single file to leave. When they did, the cops arrested them for demonstrating without a permit.
Another group was standing with signs in front of the NYC library and an officer said they should sit down. As soon as they did, they were arrested them for not leaving.
I can only think the police or Bloomberg didn't want things to go too smoothly.

I heard Bloomberg speak on NY TV. I heard him talk about the anarchists and apply the word terrorists to them. He went on about how the anarchists are about causing trouble with the goal of getting people's rights revoked.

Is this guy for real?

While this could be some group's goal, this has as much to do with Republicanism as the anarchism movement. Michael Bloomberg, I ask you, take a day off and read a book about anarchism. You need to grab a clue because a lot of people watching TV think you know something about the topic, but you don't. Suggested reading list about anarchism below, but let me sum it up for Bloomberg--anarchism doesn't mean running around and breaking shit.

Books Bloomberg hasn't read but should:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0853451753/qid=1094318879/sr=ka-1/ref=pd_ka_1/103-4993887-1012639
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0486224848/qid=1094318879/sr=ka-2/ref=pd_ka_2/103-4993887-1012639
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1873176643/qid=1094318879/sr=ka-3/ref=pd_ka_3/103-4993887-1012639

Photos:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/lancerkind/album?.dir=d5e0&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/lancerkind/my_photos

In some of the rally footage, you will see skyscraper's in the background. MSG is before them and to the left. This rally ran up to 10PM eastern, which is when the demonstration permit expired and Bush started his speech. You will hear a MC speaking from somewhere ahead of my position. There are signs facing back at me because the rally was split to allow the street to stay unblocked. Perhaps the MC was in the street with sound equipment. Later the police closed the street and let the rally combine.

Here is the layout:

SkyScrapers

MSG

=================      <- barriers

=     Rally     =      

=       in      =  <- Police surrounded all the barriers on all sides and monitored 

=     the front =     the rally from the top of nearby buildings.  There was a

=================     chopper with a spot light too.

****************  street*******

================

=     Rest of  =

=     Rally    =

=              =

=              =

=              =

=      ===     =

=      = =     =

=      ===     =

=        ^Protest

=        Warriors    <- There was police guarding the protest warriors too.

Footage:
1
2
3
4
5
6

The rally gets vocal near Bush time:
7
8
9

Is a message a controlled substance?

Before the RNC, I was running around looking for materials to make a sign.
No I couldn’t just take some cardboard and markers, that would mean I had to have a single message and use it for the entire week. I wanted something more flexible. While my wife and I searched a craft store for inspiration, she accused me of being such a geek (you know, she is probably right). I settled on plastiboard (like cardboard but plastic, better than the foam board stuff which isn't flexible and more durable than cardboard) and a sheet of material that is a dry-erase surface. When I got home, I cut the stuff down to suitcase size and glued the dry-erase surface to the plastiboard home and had a sign that I could write whatever I felt at the time—like a blog but better, you don’t need a browser.

This style of sign came in handy because as I and my Seattle friends left MSG. A cop stopped me at a check point and said I couldn’t go that way with a sign. It said :
We can’t afford
4 more years of Bush!
Haliburton Can!

With a swipe of my hand, the message was gone. “Can I go now?” The cop said yeah.
Perhaps the cop had something against signs and realized what I had was a whiteboard. He probably never carried a sign but uses whiteboards for police work.
Or it was the message. We entertained doing an experiment by circling back with “Bush is Cool” written on it. But carrying that message for that long was hard to stomach. A more efficient plan was to insert a "c" so it was "Busch", but there is no accounting for the drinking tastes a Cheney/Rumsfeld company could have.

Anyway, we went on to the rally. I don’t know what that officer's problem was. I hope for his sake he was just misinformed and not someone abusing the constitution with his authority.

Last I heard, signs and words are not controlled substances.


Movies:
The crowd outside of MSG. Business in the area has been off. But this last day, everyone is getting out for one last shot at influencing the public.

The march of the New Black Panthers, and the NYPD following. Again, it's the guys in the suits you have to watch out for. They're called delegates. In fact, one guy has put a bunch of people in harms way so through circumstances, kill another group of people. And he did it with reasons ranging from weak to outright lies.

Some like his work so much, they want another four more years.

Jeff and Chris's Street Debate

During the day before Georgie's speech, I spent most of Thursday at Madison Square Garden (MSG) and walked the block with my sign along with many others. I talked to a number of people, and waved my sign at the buses hauling delegates to the RNC. It was tough. The cops wouldn't let anyone stand in a spot very long, so it was a matter of circling around the block to keep up the visibility.

I came across a tall young man (lets call him Jeff, I didn't get his name) who was debating with a blackman (call him Chris) who look like he's traveled a long hard road. It wasn't a debate about whether or not the GOP and this administration has been bad, it was about to what extreme things are going wrong.
The interaction was great, Chris had this sort of cadence delivery and the young man would take his point and push it further in sort of a group weltschmertz about the state of things. I started to record it. I was convinced the two new each other because they put their words together in a polished stream like they were on a stage, and they did it loud so everyone could hear it. I started shooting video, but didn't get much because a cop broke us up.
Here is the movie but its missing the good stuff :-(. Jeff is on the right, Chris is in the middle, another fellow heard what Jeff and Chris were saying and came over to talk to them.
http://www.skind.net/rnc04/thursdayevening/MVI_4571.avi

After the trooper broke this up. I walked with Jeff for a while and asked him if he knew Chris. He said he just walked by him on the street and heard Chris telling his story of tragic government as he walked the street, to everyone around him. Jeff decided he had to go talk to the guy.
Jeff just got off from his first day at a new job and came straight down to the convention. He said this was the shit he came here to see and was loving it. He flew in from Florida to NYC this week to protest at the convention, but he said there was something about the place and he couldn't leave. He sold his ticket home and got a job.

He's voting absentee in the Florida's presidential election.

Jeff, you rock!

Security at the RNC

On Thursday, security was pushed up another notch since our friend GWB was in town to accept his nominations. The barriers were larger, more PD.


Lets talk about the PD for a minute. They have been really nice and polite. Not one of them has been anything but helpful. For my other Seattle friends, that hasn't been the case. They have been here longer so they've had more exposure to the police. Also they left their khaki and button down shirts home. They are parading around in comfortable shorts, T's and tanks. I guess they really look dangerous with long uncut hair and exposing the tops of their feet through scanty sandals.

Perhaps that's it and perhaps it's the people they surround themselves with, even more of the same that were pouring from the subway and one of the officers told a friends mom to "Move it bitch!" Something equally rude was said to my friend's wife.

Then about fifteen minutes ago, I was sitting here in Starbucks talking to two nice officers enjoying their first Starbuck fruit drinks. One Officer Henderson and his partner from Hawaii thought the drinks were a bit girly. But his partner liked his strawberry something or another loaded with whip cream. They were both very nice. They said that officers from all over the region are here. They don't have anything against protestors, just the anarchists who are there it cause trouble, and destroy property.

I wonder how surprised they would have been to find a gas mask in my briefcase. I wonder if I had worn my Birkenstocks, shorts in a T if I would have been hastled at checkpoints.

The well dressed Republican staffers that rioted outside the Florida ballot counting office, they weren't ever hastled. I don't think we have anything to worry about with anarchists and so much attention is spent on them.
What's a few broken windows to a broken country.


Photo album

Grannies Against War

I walked to Rockefeller plaza with my "*Stop* Bush War for Corporate Profits" sign. It was twenty blocks from my hotel. It's amazing how easy it is to silently make a statement. Every person I walked by was compelled to read it. Few people reacted audibly. One lady stopped her friend as said "You think Bush would go to war for money?" I said yes, then her friend drug her off. I guess she didn't make the oil-oil company, Haliburton-Cheney-Rumsfeld connection.

I got to Rockefeller and walked around the plaza, some people saying "yeah", others shake their heads, most just read the sign and go on, perhaps thinking.

Protesting with the grannies was pretty calm, we lined up outside the plaza and people stop and see what we are about, tourists took pictures. I got to talk to a woman named Victoria from Brooklyn and hear what her grievances with the Bush administration. The list was pretty long, in short- bad election, a war for the wrong reasons, coverup of post-two towers air quality. I'm not doing her arguments justice. Those words don't have her force of presence behind them. Keep up the work Victoria!

pics:


http://www.grandmothersforpeace.org/index.html

That night I walked around the Fox news building and CNN which in a few hours would be visited by protesters. Along the side streets I saw three police department paddy wagons. On another, three or four buses lined up, some of thedrives looked like PD.

I went to Starbucks to do some blogging and thought about why those vehicles were there--were they for the protest against corporate media? I didn't think so, since I didn't think it was going to be a large protest. Then what were they for?
I didn't get to find out. Friends called me up and we went out instead. :-)

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/lancerkind/my_photos

What to wear to a protest

I took a hellacious red-eye that left Seattle at 12:15 AM. But I'm finally here. As I was running to catch the plane, I found a number of places that have the schedule of RNC protests. (Google RNC protest schedule) I had some fear that I would show up here and not get dialed into the events, but it's like a multitrack conference but instead of seminars, there are protests happening at various sites around the city. For this week, Manhattan is like a large hotel, and sites like the Fox building, CNN, Rockefeller square and Madison Square Garden (MSG) are the rooms for various venues.

It's like being at a conference, you choose from a schedule of protests. Today, I'm going to open with Grannies against War, then visit CNN and Fox studios for corporate media control protests, then finish off the night by protesting at a party thrown by Coke for RNC goers.

Links:
http://www.dailypress.com/news/nationworld/NYC-protest-GOP,0,5784728.story?coll=sns-newsnation-headlines
http://www.dailypress.com/news/nationworld/NYC-protest-bios,0,7730150.story?coll=sns-newsnation-headlines
http://live.axisofjustice.sparkart.net/

I'm sure many of you are wondering, what do you wear to a protest? Naturally anything goes--tank tops and shorts are the derigor. I chose to follow the advice of a card carrying ACLU friend who said, "Dress like a Republican. The cops are less likely to hassle you."

So I left the sandals and shorts home and brought the khakis, Eddie Bauer shirts, and polos. In my HP briefcase, I have my laptop, map, protest schedules, and gas mask. I just had a gyro at a shop across from MSG and struck up a conversation with a nice guy wearing a suite and RNC pass that said "security", so I think my cover is complete.

But a guy can only take so much right wing talk. My wired 'home away from home' is a Starbucks that is alongside MSG. As soon as I walked through the doors, a woman with a Kerry pin was ranting along with the baristas about why we decided to ship our young people to Iraq to be targets and kill other young people over there.
So I echoed some advice I got from a PK Dick novel, you have to look at who profits the most-- Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Haliburton. Though this too is a simplification, there is still the oil and the oil companies, and the list of keeps getting larger. But eventually you and I in America do get to profit by having gas to put in our cars, and maybe after that, at the bottom of the list the Iraqi people.

Perhaps that isn't fair. Perhaps there is some chance that country will reach the stability of other examples of American imperialism like Germany, Japan. Or maybe they will have to suffer as a third world country as Vietnam. It is possible.

But there is a guarantee-- Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, GWB, Haliburt--all those near the top of the list are going to make a bundle no matter if Iraq turns into Cambodia or Germany.

They know a sure buck when they see it.

Photo album