Protesters plan to disrupt GOP convention

New York Lockdown
(This is a really long article -- originally from "Salon" -- so here are some excerpts)

If you're a delegate attending the Republican national convention at Madison Square Garden later this month, Jamie Moran knows where you're staying. He knows where you're eating and what Broadway musical you plan on seeing. For the past nine months, Moran has been living off savings earned as an office manager at a nonprofit and working full-time to disrupt the RNC....

"We want to make their stay here as miserable as possible," says Moran, who has sandy hair, a snub nose and a goatee. The son of a retired Queens cop, he's 30 but looks younger. "I'd like to see all the Republican events - teas, backslapping lunches - disrupted. I'd like to see people from other states following their delegates, letting them know what they think about Republican policies. I'd like to see impromptu street parties and marches. I'd like to see corporations involved in the Iraq reconstruction get targeted - anything from occupation to property destruction."...

In April 2003, after the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center issued a bulletin about the potential for terrorist violence at an antiwar protest in Oakland, police opened fire on the peaceful crowd with wooden pellets. It later turned out there had been no real basis for the terrorism warning.

Mike Van Winkle, spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, told the Oakland Tribune that it was made because protest itself can be seen as a form of terrorism. "You can make an easy kind of link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest," he said. "You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act." ... [jfc comment: I find this particularly troublesome]

The city's security plan provides for a "designated protest area" on the south-west corner of Madison Square Garden. Those who want to protest the convention legally will be confined to this corner and probably sealed off in pens flanked by deep walls of men in blue. All of this has alarmed local Democratic politicians, many of whom are planning to take to the streets with the demonstrators.

"I am very concerned that activities during the Republican convention will be silenced or pushed out of the way, supposedly for the 'comfort' of those participating at the convention," State assemblyman Richard Gottfried said in a statement. "Our civil rights cannot be sacrificed for political purposes."

Meanwhile, as protesters themselves feel squeezed, their urge to rampage grows greater. "I think people will fight back if they're provoked," Moran says. "Usually a riot is an explosion of energy and anger at a situation. The cops create a situation where peoples' desires are completely foiled, so they lash out. I don't think that's unhealthy." ...

Moran calls himself an anarchist but is weary of the subcultural poses adopted by so many of his young black-clad comrades. Recently, he and the four other members of RNC Not Welcome put out a "position paper" urging radicals to leave their black Balaclavas and facial piercings behind, and instead attempt to blend into crowds.

"Outside of marches, all-black clothing is rather conspicuous, so our dress code should be 'business casual," they wrote. "Sunglasses are suggested, the bigger the hipper. And hats are always in. Would you make the small sacrifice to cut your hair or take out your septum ring to stay out of jail? [jfc comment: I find this particularly funny] Racial and political profiling are commonly practiced here and we need you in the streets!" ...

Plenty of Bush opponents worry about what this grand carnival of rejection, while cathartic for some, will actually mean. There was nothing liberating, after all, about the welts and bruises protesters sustained in Miami last fall. "Stark brutality can paralyse people with fear," says Moran. "Miami hangs like a black cloud." So does the Chicago Democratic National Convention of 1968, where Mayor Richard Daley took a hard line against demonstrations and the cops clashed with protesters on the streets around the convention centre. Few doubt that the police, if provoked enough, will respond with equal force this year.

This terrifies Bush opponents, who worry that violence on the streets of New York will help the Republicans by making them look like Middle American moderates besieged by nutty radicals. They note that the Chicago '68 debacle helped cement Richard Nixon's reputation as the law-and-order candidate. ...

"I've heard some old-timers say, 'If you people riot it will hand Bush the presidency,'" [Moran] says. "I think that's just lazy thinking. Any situation where we are joined by regular New Yorkers in the streets is a positive thing." Besides, it's too late to hold back the protests now. "The last four years definitely created a lot of rage in people," Moran says. "People may decide to unleash that rage on war profiteers. Our collective isn't going to condemn that. It's not our objective."

What is their objective? The Republicans should leave New York, he says. "It was a really bad mistake to come here."
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Comments? Are the protesters martyrs for free speech or quasi-terrorists? Will massive demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience help or hurt their cause? And would you cut your hair or ditch your nose ring to help defeat George Bush in November?