Young and the Restless..

[gaijinda]

Over this past week I have made my way around New York City, to Madison Square Garden, through Union Square and visited last weekend's protest march.

Politics aside, those that have been protesting against President Bush and the Republican convention have been totally ineffectual. I am not talking about any particular protest being thwarted by the masterful job of the NYPD to "divide and conquer" those stepping out of the bounds of the law (and a few bystanders swept up with them, if it is to be believed). But rather, the inability of these (mostly) young people to articulate any message.

First of all the city is empty. Besides the threat of real terrorism, the angry mood of the anti-Bush crowd has simply driven people not to be around. It has been like a giant winter storm without the snow and cold.

Otherwise, the F#CK BUSH t-shirts, hateful chants and rude stickers are no way to communicate to anyone beyond your own cohorts. Look at the civil rights movement, has there ever been a more just cause in this U.S.A.? Can any of us imagine MLK, Jr using the tactics of today? Where is the self respect of these kids? Where did they learn this boorish behavior?

Right wing or left, democrat or republican - protest as a form of political and popular expression has been damaged. In this town and across this country.

[kach22i]

Originally posted by gaijinda
Right wing or left, democrat or republican - protest as a form of political and popular expression has been damaged. In this town and across this country.

Yea, I wonder where this practice started?

Republican sabotage
http://www.cloggie.org/politics/us-election2000.html
Within minutes, some two dozen GOP recount observers and other Bush supporters had begun pounding on the doors and windows of the county elections tallying room on the 19th floor of the building. They demanded to be admitted and chanted, "Stop the count. Stop the fraud." Television cameras showed the protesters trying to force their way into the room.

Note: I still remember the 2000 Florida election, the bus loads of republicans shipped in started a riot during the chad counting. They broke into the building and chased some guy down the hall shouting at him (he's stealing ballots!)- the camera catching it all. The ballot counters were so freaked out they stoped counting and would not return the next day.

Damage?

America deserves democracy, anyone who would take that away from us is a traitor.

[kach22i]

Very recent, the link is at the bottom of clipping.

Guantanamo On the Hudson: Detained RNC Protesters Describe Prison Conditions
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Protests against the Republican convention continued yesterday throughout New York as Democratic Sen. Zell Miller delivered the convention's keynote address and Vice President Dick Cheney accepted his nomination to run for a second term.
Early in the day, AIDS activists from the ACT UP group breached the Madison Square Garden convention hall and briefly interrupted a speech by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card to young Republicans, including Bush's twin daughters.

Outside, five thousand people protesting high job losses formed a silent, single-file unemployment line that stretched for three miles from Wall Street to 31st Street, just shy of the convention center. Tens of thousands other protesters gathered for two hours in a designated demonstration area two blocks from Madison Square Garden in support of more union jobs in the United States.

Later in the day, some 2,000 people staged a "March on the Media" to protest what they say is uncritical coverage of the Bush administration by the mainstream press. Other major protests yesterday included a women's rights demonstration and a protest against Coca-Cola.

The police arrested 19 people, bringing the total of those detained so far during seven days of relentless convention-related protests to more than 1,760, a record for a political convention.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yesterday morning we received a call from one of the protesters being held at pier 57 who had smuggled a phone inside. Detainees passed the phone to each other and described the conditions of the holding facility. Democracy Now! producer Mike Burke took the call and spoke with the detained protesters. Listen closely. After the first caller passes the phone, you can hear a prisoner in the background calling out for help and medical assistance.

EMILY: My name is Emily. I was arrested yesterday off of Union Square East, on East 15th Street in between Union Square East and Irvine. [sic] I was on the sidewalk, and I was never told that I would be arrested. I was just on the sidewalk. And no one ever read me my rights. They just took us all away. They trapped us and put us all into buses. We’ve been in jail for over 13 hours right now. In our first nine hours, the only food we received was an apple. In our first four hours here we weren't allowed to go to the bathroom or get water. So none of us were read our rights; we haven't been able to talk to any lawyers. A lot of people here that were arrested without even protesting, they were -- just happened to be on the sidewalk where everyone was on that block -- was arrested. And there are chemical warning signs all over this place that we’re being held. A lot of people are forming rashes on their skin from the floor -- from whatever it is that is on it. And I’m going to pass this on to someone else who has another story.

VOICE SHOUTING IN THE BACKGROUND: I need medical attention!

ALTHEA: My name is Althea and I was -- am a New York City public school teacher. I was out on Union Square on 16th Street between Irving and Union Square just walking, trying to enjoy the day, and I got swept up in a demonstration. I wasn't a part of the demonstration and I was arrested. I was arrested about 8:00 p.m., handcuffed and we’ve been sitting in the Chelsea piers in very crowded conditions. Right now some people are experiencing toxic reaction to the environment, itching in their skin, and we’re very crowded. We have been given water and a sandwich, but they have not been giving us any information, and we’ve just been sitting here really penned in.

MIKE BURKE: Have you been able to communicate to any of your family or friends about your situation?

ALTHEA: No, I haven't. I have been asking my arresting officer when can I make a phone call? And no one knows where I am. Basically I feel like I’ve been ‘disappeared.’ Nobody knows in my family that I have been arrested. And I was out by myself shopping; so, you know, there's no one to -- they haven't allowed me to contact anyone.

VEEPA MAJAMUTAR: Hi. This is Veepa Majamutar. I'm calling also from the arresting facility. Basically I was just a stand-by and I was walking on the sidewalk and there was a march going on. They cordoned off the whole street and just arrested all of us. When I tried to explain that I was just walking by -- I had a receipt from a store that I had bought something from on that street. They did not pay any attention. And here we are sitting in this almost a human-rights abuse conditions. So many of us are cold. We are freezing. Some of us need medical attention; but nobody's telling us what to do. Nobody's listening to us. Nobody’s giving us any timeline, any idea of when we might get out. They’ve always been saying ‘Next two hours. Two hours.’ It's been more than 12 hours now.

MIKE BURKE: Could you describe what you were doing just before you were arrested?

VEEPA MAJAMUTAR: What was I doing?

MIKE BURKE: Yes.

VEEPA MAJAMUTAR: Basically I was just – I was walking on the sidewalk. I didn't even know that there were police and the march was going on. And all of a sudden the street basically just gets cordoned off and we cannot move. So before I was arrested I was just standing still because that's all we could really do. And then they just started putting handcuffs on people. They didn't tell us, please leave otherwise we’ll arrest you. They gave us no warning. They gave us no chance to leave. They just basically closed off the street, put handcuffs, and took us. They did not listen to anybody. They did not listen to even pure reason. They just put us off. We thought we would basically get out in a couple of hours if we had done nothing. But here we are 12 hours later and, basically, almost ridicule us. They ridicule us if we start to complain. And the condition here are atrocious. You have to see them to believe it. It's dirty. It’s smelly. It’s filthy. We don’t have a blanket. We don't have something to sit on. We are sitting on the floor. There's dirt on the floor. There’s oil on the floor. There’s chemicals around us. It's smelling bad. I could go on and on. It’s atrocious.

MIKE BURKE: Could you describe what kind of room you are in? It sounds like there are many, many people in the same room.

VEEPA MAJAMUTAR: We are like a hundred – a hundred people in a very small room. It's surrounded by fence and we are like -- it's almost like rats in a hole. I mean, there's nothing, there is just a floor which is very dirty, which is a lot of oil and all dust in it, I mean, all our clothes are dirty our hands are ditty. We had to eat an apple with our extremely dirty hands because we have no tissue paper, nothing to clean our hands with. We are just basically packed. Nobody can sit down. They don't even give us a plastic bag to sit on. They don't even give anything to lie down on. We just have to lie on the hard floor, basically. And there is not enough space for everybody to lie down because we have to sit so close together. It's cramped. And we were freezing before and people were actually coughing, they were getting cold and nobody paid any attention, nobody gave them even a blanket nobody gave them even a plastic bag to cover themselves with.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/02/1454254

[tabs]

Originally posted by gaijinda
[B Where did they learn this boorish behavior?
. [/B]

Quiet Frankly Kachi your naive....these protesters learned it from their BOORISH BABY BOOMER PARENTS....

[RickM]

Originally posted by gaijinda

First of all the city is empty. Besides the threat of real terrorism, the angry mood of the anti-Bush crowd has simply driven people not to be around. It has been like a giant winter storm without the snow and cold.

This is right on. Everyone I know of, here in Northern NJ, is simply staying away. The media coverage the protesters need has, IMO, been spotty at best. How's that saying go?... preaching to the choir?

[kach22i]

Originally posted by RickM
The media coverage the protesters need has, IMO, been spotty at best.

Then if it's spotty coverage (ask yourself why), you will have to read the radio transcript above from "Democracy Now" to find out what has been going on.

[cowtown]

The Dems and Boston made a huge mistake by penning their protestors in. If they had allowed free media coverage of the Boston protests, the NY protestors would be entitled to more air time.

Of course, as gaijinda says, you've got to be coherent and thoughtful to change minds. Not just a frustrated boor with nothing better to do.

[gaijinda]

I keep seeing this over and over in the newspapers, on-line and on the TV news. Seems 90% arrested were "just walking by". If you take part in an organized protest, practice civil disobedience - why not take your lumps?

And please. This is New York City. Imagine this crowd brought to central booking? Now that would be a story to impress the crowd back at State U.