From The Capital Times
August 27, 2004
http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/local/index.php?ntid=9092&nt_adsect=edit
GOP protesters hope to keep it positive in New York
Ready to roll, ready to rally
By Lee Sensenbrenner
Seats aboard two coach buses that will take protesters from Madison to New York for the Republican National Convention are sold out, with waiting lists, and ticketholders have been busy preparing for a peaceful march.
"People never bring enough water to protests. Never, never, never," John Peck, an organizer with the Madison Infoshop, told a group of protesters who are scheduled to leave this afternoon and Saturday morning. "The worst thing is not to be prepared."
Spread before him at a conference table at the Memorial Union, Peck had pamphlets giving advice on how to handle all kinds of potential problems, such as finding a public toilet in Manhattan or, if things don't go as planned, reacting to clouds of pepper spray.
On the matter of pepper spray, the advice sounded pretty empowering. "Be prepared to feel intense anger at this moment, and remember that you need to stay focused," the handbook says. "Stay calm. The effects are temporary. You are strong."
Most of Peck's Thursday night audience - a group of 20 or so, from college age to former civil rights movement marchers - had participated in a large protest before. But a few said that they'd never before done anything like this, a protest that promises to draw more than 200,000 on Sunday.
With that size of a crowd - and some are predicting a much larger gathering - members of the Madison group were incredulous that a court order issued earlier this week would ban protesters from Central Park. But the message that they offered each other again and again was to stay out of trouble, act peacefully and be prepared to have a safe trip.
"This is not your regular sitting in front of Truax Field protest," Peck said, referring to a small group of anti-war demonstrators who got cited last year for symbolically blocking a military gate near the Dane County Regional Airport. "Your goal is not to get arrested."
The first bus was scheduled to leave this afternoon and those aboard it will spend Saturday night at a hostel in Manhattan, or wherever space allows, and head back to Madison Sunday night, on the eve of the convention's opening Monday.
Those leaving on the Saturday morning bus will sleep aboard it. Either way, participants paid $80 for their tickets, which was discounted by about $3,000 in local donations to support the cause.
"This promises to maybe be the largest march ever in this country," Matt Zebell, of Oregon, said to the group. "The main thing, I think, is to have a great time. There's nothing like the feeling of being involved with hundreds of thousands of people who feel the way you do."
"Smile a lot. Have fun. Sing," he said.
Zebell, who is 55, said the thinks this election year is a "defining moment in history" and is "the scariest in memory. If this administration gets four more years, we're really in trouble."
As Peck tells the group that they should think about dressing to "look more average," a 28-year-old man across the table adds that "We're not like these radical liberals - well, maybe we are - but we're not Molotov-cocktail-throwing anarchists. We're peacefully trying to support democracy."
Tony Schultz, a young high school teacher, said that he thought the march Sunday would be historic, comparable to the Vietnam War protest marches of 1968. He is going to New York, he said, because he has a wide range of complaints against the Bush administration. But in particular, he said, he is upset with policies, such as tax reforms, that have concentrated wealth and power.
"They're putting wealth in fewer and fewer hands and marginalizing the rest of us," he said.
Nina Vega-Westhoff, a UW-Madison student who until a month ago had been living in Mexico, said that this would be her first major protest in the United States.
"I live in the empire again, but it's nice to be around a lot of people who say, 'OK, let's not re-elect Bush,' " she said.
Vega-Westhoff said that she is not thrilled with John Kerry and voting for him this year "would be a concession." But she said she thinks the differences between him and Bush are distinct, even if she finds the differences between the national Republican and Democratic parties less clear.
"It should be good," she said of the protest. "My goal is not to be arrested."
After about two hours as the discussion was winding down, a woman who is out of school and about to take part in her first protest of any kind, volunteered her last question:
"What's tear gas like, just out of curiosity?"
Protest of the Republican National Convention in New York City