To the streets: scenes from the protests

Anyone
physically close to the Rochester crew that
marched through New York City last week
knows how determination smells — musty and rank, like a high-school locker
room.

While many of the 5,000 delegates to
the Republican convention stayed in swanky hotels, ate at posh buffets, and saw
a Broadway show, many more people — perhaps more than 100 times as many —
gathered in New York to protest.
They slept on friends’ pull-out couches and strangers’ floors. Among them was a
group of 14 from Rochester, who slept in
a tent city in Brooklyn, forgoing baths for days to protest
the Iraq war and the
policies of the Bush administration.

Comfortable beds and showers weren’t
the only luxuries the protesters gave up. Many lost their freedom, spending
hours or days in jail. By Friday, more than 1,800 people had been arrested.

The marches and other activities
sometimes turned chaotic, and there were angry confrontations. Police on
scooters rushed tightly packed crowds. They pushed, hit people with batons, and
used pepper spray. At times, the fear and tension created by such interventions
made the air feel electric.

Chris Powers of Rochestersays a police officer pushed him off his bike during a Bike
Block protest Monday and pepper sprayed him while he was on the ground. Powers,
30, suffered a broken collarbone from the fall and was
detained for two days. He was handcuffed nearly the entire time he was in the
hospital despite the pain, he says. And when he asked for Tylenol to dull the
pain at the Post-Arrest Screening Site, he says, he was refused.

Controversy had surrounded many of
the protests from beginning to end. Just days before the event, organizers of
Sunday’s March for Peace and Justice were in court trying to get permission to
hold a post-march rally. Their request was denied, but thousands of people
gathered in Central Park after the march despite the
ruling, many lying down in the moist grass after a long day of walking,
singing, and shouting.

Overall, the major protests were peaceful
— so much so that New York officials
congratulated leaders of United for Peace and Justice, the organizers of
Sunday’s march, for their efforts. The marchers came from all over America and the
world, not just to protest President Bush and his administration but to support
third-party candidates, talk about the environment, teach others about Falun Gong, make colorful posters, and sell inflatable Bush
dolls. Sunday’s March for Peace and Justice drew the most participants of any
march in New York in the past
two decades: organizers estimated the total at 500,000.

The streets were a carnival of
creativity. Marching on Sunday were Women for Peace, a half-serious group
called Men Who Love Women for Peace, the Men Without Pants for Peace, and a
dead-serious group called Women Who Support Men Without Pants for Peace (check
them out; they have a website.)

While many groups flexed their First
Amendment muscle through humor, many others chose music. The Raging Grannies of
Rochester were a big hit that day with the media and marchers alike. The group
of conservatively dressed older women impressed passers-by with witty lyrics as
they stood in choir formation on a Seventh Avenue sidewalk.

Denise Gaines had joined the group
that morning after being recruited on the bus. Gaines, who lives in Rochester’s Maplewood neighborhood,
says she went to the march because she dislikes the Bush Administration’s
treatment of the middle class, the ballooning budget deficit, and the way America is viewed in
the world.

“No more lies from Dick and Georgie,” she and other Grannies sang to the tune of The
Battle Hymn of the Republic. “We deplore their wartime orgy.”

The beats on the street that day
came from Middle Eastern drums, metal pot lids, and the occasional unidentifiable
piece of material energetically thwacked by a guy wielding a stick. “No war, no
Abu Ghraib, no fascist USA,” two women
chanted to the tune of dunun and dumbek
beats coming from a group called the DC Rhythm Workers Union.

Another musical group, Ukuleles for
Sanity, wielded their tiny four-stringed instruments with a pride that enticed
other marchers to participate. Jonathan Nemzer, 27,
had never played a ukulele before. But he joined Ukes
for Sanity on the spot after a Ukes member loaned him
an instrument and taught him three simple chords.

Monday’s March for Our Lives also had its
musical groups, chanters, and singers. It drew an estimated 10,000 people,
among them members of Rochester’s Poor People
United and Metro Justice, who’d stayed in the Brooklyn Bushville.

The route snaked from a park near
the United Nations building past New York institutions
like the Gap and New York Sports Club. Several people on treadmills watched the
march process by the Club’s glass windows, prompting
one marcher to comment, “They ain’t poor; they don’t
care.”

The Monday march was spearheaded by
the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, whose national coordinator,
Cheri Honkala, marched with her two children. The
Poor People’s group had applied for a permit to march and been denied, but
chose to march anyway. They’d also marched illegally during the 2000 Republican
convention in Philadelphia, where they
were the only activist group to be denied a permit, Honkala
said.

That such a hodgepodge group would
risk arrest together — children, the elderly, people with disabilities —
sends a signal that “something must really be wrong,” said Honkala.

Also in Monday’s march
was South Wedge resident David Cox (who, when asked what he does for a living,
said he’s a “professional survivor”). Cox was protesting because of his concern
about racial and economic divisions in the country, he said. Poverty, he said,
is a direct result of the United
States’ racist past.

“We never gonna
have peace in this country if we don’t have justice in this country,” said Cox.
“That’s not just rhetoric. That’s real. We’ve got to confront white racism,
white privilege, and white supremacy. It doesn’t work.”

Metro Justice organizer
Jon Greenbaum, who had been sleeping in the Bushville tent city for several days, said the March for
Our Lives was less about protesting the Republicans’ presence in town and more
about arguing for basic human rights.

“Victory is not Kerry,” said Greenbaum. “Victory is health care for all, access to
education for all, affordable housing for all, and services that allow you to
stay alive. We’ve got people who are dying because of the paucity of services.”

If Kerry wins, “we’re going to have
to work even harder to make sure he doesn’t sell us out like Clinton did on
welfare reform, NAFTA, and deregulation of the media,” he said.

Greenbaum
talked at length during the march about what he considers the Bush
administration’s dismal record on poverty. He cited the Census Bureau report
released a few days before the protest march, stating that the number of people
in poverty rose by 1.3 million between 2002 and 2003.

Things have been especially bad in MonroeCounty, said Greenbaum. Job-interview requirements for social-services
aid are punitively high, he said. In addition, he said, the county has taken
such a tough stand on assistance that Monroe has one of
the state’s highest rates of challenges brought by people who feel they’ve been
unfairly denied services.

“I’m hoping Maggie Brooks can undo
some of the culture of punishment left over from the Doyle Administration,” he
said.

Despite a scratchy-sandpaper voice, Greenbaum suddenly shouted, “Do you guys know ‘Rich Man’s
House’?”

“Yeah!” the people around him
shouted back.

Pleased that his fellow marchers
knew this Civil Rights-era song, he began to sing:

“Well, I went down to the rich man’s
house and I took back what he stole from me/ Took back my dignity/ Took back my
humanity/ And now he’s under my feet, under my feet, under my feet/ Ain’t no system gonna walk all
over me.”