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Protesters set sights on GOP convention

NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK
Tuesday, May 25, 2004, Page 16

In Richmond, Virginia, Jen Lawhorne holds a map of downtown Richmond while Jim Straub points out a good route for a July 3 anti-war protest. They are a band of like-minded activists, many in their 20s, leading a charge to direct protesters from Richmond to New York for the Republican Party convention, Aug. 30 to Sept. 2. Linked by indignation over the war and economic and social issues, protesters from across the US are developing plans to descend on New York for the convention. PHOTO: NY TIMES

He relishes the idea, and it is just an idea, he says, of linking arms on streets around New York's Madison Square Garden to block delegates and bring the Republican convention to a halt. Getting arrested for civil disobedience, if it comes to that, does not faze him.

"I am not going to have a work schedule for two weeks after, just in case," says Jim Straub, 23, who is a part-time dishwasher and bookstore clerk and full-time radical in Richmond, Virginia.

For Jen Lawhorne, 24, who also plans to attend the convention from Richmond: "This is going to be one of the finer moments of the American left. The sheer numbers excite me."

They are a band of like-minded activists, many in their 20s, leading a charge to direct protesters from Richmond to New York for the convention, Aug. 30 to Sept. 2.

Linked by indignation over the war and economic and social issues, protesters from all around the US are developing their plans to descend on New York City for the convention.

The protesters are not deterred by the barriers they face. New York City has yet to issue any protest permits. Housing is in short supply and prohibitively expensive. And just the logistics of getting to vehicle-unfriendly New York can be daunting. But convention protesters like the group in Richmond are pressing forward with plans, and developing ways around the hurdles.

An organizer on the West Coast is suggesting using airline discounts to New York. Another is arranging backpacking trips to raise money for airfare, while some groups in Los Angeles and San Francisco have discussed a car caravan. And in Richmond, organizers plan to pass the hat at parties and hold other fund-raisers for the US$1,000 or so needed to charter a bus.

No permits, no problem

The fact that the New York police have not issued permits for any of the 15 groups that have applied for marches and rallies near the Garden matters little, especially to the more rebellious sorts.

The RNC Not Welcome Collective, an affiliation of radicals in New York, is encouraging prospective demonstrators to focus on other sites besides the Garden, like parties and other gatherings of delegates.

"If we are diffused throughout the city, we will have a much better advantage," read a recent handout at a strategy meeting. "After all, the real target is not Madison Square Garden, the stage of the spectacle, but the various events where deals are made -- where the lobbyists wine, dine, and bribe Bush & Co."

"If we are truly everywhere in this very big city," it goes on, "the police cannot be concentrated in one area, their communications will be hampered by their hierarchical processes, their steps will be slowed by their pounds of body armor and fatigue from forced overtime."

Big and small groups joining in

Whether for organized demonstrations or not, people anxious to protest the convention are strategizing.

A "consulta" was held recently in Chicago among various groups to discuss plans to take at least 1,000 people to New York, said Jose Martin, an organizer in Chicago.

M.J. Musler, an anti-war activist in Cleveland, said groups across Ohio hoped to muster 15,000 people to New York, "little church ladies to the more radical end of the spectrum." Most, she said, plan to go for at least Aug. 29, when United for Peace and Justice has applied for a permit for an anti-war demonstration past the Garden for 250,000 people or more.

West Coast demonstrators may find it more difficult to get to New York but they seem undeterred, with groups sprouting in Santa Barbara, the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles, Fresno and other places promising to bring carloads.

Tanya Mayo, an organizer with a national group called Not In Our Name who is in Oakland, California, said she had advised prospective demonstrators who want to fly to take advantage of a Continental Airlines discount on air travel to New York during the convention period.

"It's a beautiful location for mobilizing people," she said of New York. "Three international airports, big bus terminals."

While established anti-war groups and labor unions are actively organizing, many grass-roots organizers, young, self-described radicals like Straub and his Richmond companions, are playing a role, too.

Nicholas DeGraff, a 23-year-old anti-war activist in Fresno, helped coordinate a group called Rancor (a play on the initials for the Republican National Convention), that is raising money through guided backpacking trips and other events to send at least a couple of dozen demonstrators to New York.

"A lot of people going are professionals, social workers, people who have the ability to save up and pay for a ticket and a place to stay," DeGraff said last week. "We are having fund-raisers for people who can't afford to fly out, like students and individuals whose voices are not heard."

DeGraff himself does not have a place to stay yet, counting on the beneficence of churches or other organizations that may offer housing. But he said that would not hold him back and he planned to take part in acts of civil disobedience, if it came to that.

"Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. taught that civil disobedience is your duty if that's what it takes," DeGraff said. "The thinking is are we going to have to shut down your convention before you listen to average people?"

Organizers are discussing with several churches in New York the possibility of housing demonstrators, and people across the country are calling in favors with friends who live in the city. An anti-convention Web site includes a bulletin board for housing and transportation assistance.

Many activists are deciding to skip the Democratic convention in Boston July 26-29 -- and other events like the Group of 8 summit meeting of presidents and prime ministers in Savannah, Georgia, next month -- to reserve resources for the Republicans. While many object to Senator John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee whose support of the Iraq war is anathema to the left, "he is the lesser of two evils," said June Grossholtz, a retired college professor organizing convention protesters in western Massachusetts.

Scraping together money

The will may not be a problem but the means can be, especially in places like Richmond, which does not have a deep history of leftist mobilization.

"I am less concerned about getting people interested than where we are going to get the money for the buses," Straub said, adding that they rent for US$1,000 per bus.

Muna Hijazi, another organizer, retorted, "People always find a way to pay for them."

The organizers plan to pass the hat at parties and meetings. They will pass out leaflets at a planned July 3 anti-war demonstration in Richmond and they are collaborating with organizers in Washington for at least the Aug. 29 demonstration.

The uncertainty over what permitted marches will materialize has caused some confusion and delays in planning.

"What are we going to, if there have been no permits issued?" one woman asked at a meeting in Richmond the other night to plan the July 3 march, which Straub and his companions see as a way to fire people up for a descent on New York.

"You don't need a permit to go to New York and express free speech," said Emily Harry, an anti-convention organizer.

This Richmond group began organizing eight months ago, after regular Sunday gatherings in a city park of the local chapter of an anti-poverty group, Food not Bombs. Not all are agitated 20-somethings; Connie Moss, 45, who has a son in the Air Force stationed in Europe, said she wanted to show that not all military families support the war.

"The reason I am going to New York is I want the numbers there," she said.
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