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Demonstration
in NYC
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It
was not all about Iraq: The signs displayed anger at the US
president over a whole array of issues—from his attacks on
women’s, workers’ and immigrants’ rights at home to his
assaults on the environment and his decimation of the US
economy.
But
a great deal of the anger came back to the same root—the
occupation of Iraq: while George W. Bush can find almost
limitless funds for the military, there is no money for domestic
social programs like education, welfare, and health care; and
while the American poor become poorer, the wealthiest
corporations get tax breaks and lucrative contracts to rebuild
the huge tracts of Iraq, which were destroyed by the bombing and
sanctions. It came back, though not everyone expressed it that
way, to capitalism.
Around
half a million people marched in the streets of New York City on
Sunday August 29, protesting against the Republican Party
Convention, which took place in the city during the following
week. It took an hour to move five blocks with the number of
feeder marches merging in, comprised of special interest groups
from the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army and Gays Against
Bush to military families and Iraq veterans.
The
protesters expected violence from the police and, presumably,
vice versa after weeks of the corporate media whipping up fear. The
New York Times, among others, had been making dire
predictions of riots, and the New York Police Department had
been staging shows of strength against cadets holding placards
demanding US withdrawal from the fictional territory of
Grahambia (named after the police chief, apparently).
The
city council and courts had refused permits to several marches
and rallies, including a rally in Central Park on Sunday, the
day of the biggest single protest. The anti-globalization writer
Naomi Klein paid tribute in a speech before the protest to the
two thousand unarmed people who went to Najaf to be in the Imam
Ali Shrine. “If they can go to Najaf,” she said, “we can
go to Central Park.”
While
the State denied protesters the right to gather in a public
park, even the liberal pundits rambled pointlessly on the radio
about windows. Unlike previous major demonstrations in the US
and Europe where the divide had been between pacifists and
non-pacifists, between punks and hippies, anarchists and
socialists, “Fluffies” and “Spikies,” here it was said
that the difference was between the nationalists and the
internationalists.
“If
they can go to Najaf we can go to Central Park.” |
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The
nationalist viewpoint said that the most important outcome of
the protests was that Bush should be voted out and Kerry in,
that it was imperative that no windows were broken, and that any
“unrest” (whatever that means) would play into the hands of
the Republicans, harming John Kerry’s chances of election.
The
internationalist mindset held that the most important outcome of
the week’s protests would be the message they sent to the rest
of the world—that the people oppressed by the US government
should see the US public’s rage, that Kerry and Bush are both
pro-war, so it makes no difference who gets elected, and that
windows— broken or not— are irrelevant. It’s the endless
talk about windows—Starbucks’ windows, McDonalds’ windows,
Nike’s windows—in time that could have been better spent
talking about what’s really happening in Najaf, for example,
that really plays into the Republicans’ hands.
Without
fanfare, most of the marchers did go to Central Park to gather
at the end of the march while others found delegates attending
theater shows before the conference and followed them around,
shouting at them. There were few arrests, unlike the Critical
Mass bike protests on the Friday before, where police cordoned
off the street the cyclists were processing down and arrested
around 130 without an apparent cause.
The
same tactics were obvious during the Poor People’s March for
Human Rights which started at the United Nations on Monday
night, August 30. After attempting to prevent the marchers
getting onto the street, police continually tried to divide the
procession, and from time to time leapt on an individual within
the crowd. One man, not resisting arrest, had a policeman
kneeling on his neck as he was handcuffed.
Towards
the end of the planned route, police put up barricades at the
front of the march. As the marchers came up against the
blockage, the back end was cordoned so people were trapped.
Further barricades were thrown up in the middle to split the
march and police began clubbing and pepper-spraying the people
closest to the barricades. It’s not, of course, brutality
compared with police in other countries, but it was unacceptably
excessive use of force without any reason—gratuitous provision
of the violent images required by the corporate media.
Non-Americans
oppressed by the US government should see the US
public’s rage. |
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New
York’s police, incidentally, have been working without
contracts for about two years since their previous agreements
ran out. The State wants to re-negotiate for less favorable
conditions for the force. “No contract, no work,” the crowd
chanted as it passed police lines. “Where’s your class
solidarity?” some yelled. The police are just another group,
like the firefighters and the general population of New York
City, hailed as heroes by the US government after the September
11 attacks and then quietly abandoned without adequate benefits,
equipment, or assistance.
New
Yorkers were already furious with a Bush administration which
promised money for rehabilitation of the city’s economy after
the World Trade Center attacks and failed to deliver, which
failed to give adequate answers as to how much it knew about the
terrorists’ plans and did not do all it could have to protect
the city, and which has refused to acknowledge the long-term
health effects of the collapsing and burning of the two towers
and everything within them—much of it toxic. The timing and
venue of the Republican Convention, the latest in history, were
deliberately chosen to be as close as possible in time and place
to the September 11 anniversary.
Members
of September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows marched
with a giant stone commemorating “Unknown Civilians Killed in
War,” pushed around the US by Stonewalk. The only group
permitted to march in front of the Convention Center, they and
supporters passed in emotional silence but for the slow beating
of a drum, looking at the people who have abused their grief to
engineer wars and continue to abuse it in a bid for re-election.
Elsewhere
street theater groups dramatized the opposition to Bush.
Billionaires for Bush chanted satirical slogans like “Four
More Wars” and “Halliburton Makes Money for Me.” Reverend
Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping led exorcisms in the city
where—amid the grief after September 11, when people were
beginning to come together and discuss their feelings, the
reasons for the attack, and positive change—the government
sealed off the public spaces and told the population to go
shopping to help revive the economy. Protesters were offered
badges declaring them to be “Peaceful Political Protesters,”
which entitled them to discounts in city shops and cafes.
The
Republican Party uses an elephant as its symbol (the Democrats
represent themselves with a donkey), and members of Theaters
Against the War (THAW) and Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory
(TOP Lab) held a press conference in which the elephants
resigned as Republican representatives and launched a lawsuit
for defamation of character. Asked whether any other creature
would be replacing them as party figureheads, the Elephant King
replied that, in view of Bush’s appalling record on the
environment, he didn’t think any animal ought to serve them,
but that the vultures had been very keen to take over.
Throughout,
there were smaller, more covert actions against targets such as
Bechtel, Halliburton and some of the mercenary companies
operating in Iraq, companies closely linked to the US government
and are taking enormous profits from providing services in Iraq,
companies which pressed for an invasion of Iraq. Moreover, there
was constant harassment of delegates, demonstrators demanding an
end to the war, improvements to domestic policies and that the
Republicans leave New York City.
While
the scale of the protests was more or less unprecedented in New
York City, many people were, nonetheless, frustrated with the
lack of radicalism and the real disruption that took place. A
shocking number of people were parading with placards and badges
advocating John Kerry, a man as pro-war and Zionism—and almost
as anti-women and environment—as Bush, as if voting for either
would end the occupation of Iraq or Palestine even ten minutes
quicker.
The
main march was on a Sunday, allowing people to march without
missing work, but also allowing the commercial business of the
city to continue more or less unhindered. The arguments were
over permission to gather in a park whereas, as labor organizer
Larry Holmes pointed out, before, activists have always fought
for the right to be in the streets, not closed away in a park.
The
corporate interests, which Bush serves ahead of the US
population, were not seriously targeted, perhaps because of the
endless fussing over windows, which obscured the point that the
Republican Party and the wealthiest American corporations are
inseparable.
It
is true that a mass is not necessarily more effective than a
small group of fiercely committed people. The importance of the
half-million strong marches is that they’re big enough to be
seen across the world and they have to carry on—but it’s the
sabotage, the ongoing disruption, and the dedicated targeting of
guilty companies and individuals that will start to crack the
edifice.
Still
it’s fair to say that the people of the US demonstrated to the
world that they don’t agree with the Bush administration and
its actions, and that’s a good start.
Jo Wilding is a British human rights campaigner, writer
and trainee lawyer from Bristol, UK. 29-year-old Wilding went to
Iraq several times, where she maintained a daily blog and took
part in Circus 2 Iraq, “a small group of circus
performers—fools, clowns, jugglers, stilt walkers and
magicians—set up to… perform and give circus skills
workshops to children [in Iraq] traumatized by sanctions, war
and its aftermath.” Her writings about Iraq and ordinary
Iraqis were published in the
Guardian, the New Zealand Herald, Counterpunch, and Australian radio, and in Japan, Korea and
Pakistan.
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