From The Capital Times
August 30, 2004
Protest is 'intense, smooth'
Madison group in march
By Lee Sensenbrenner
NEW YORK - Protesters from Madison who filled two buses on a weekend trip to Manhattan were headed home today, returning safely from an enormous but peaceful march past the site of the Republican National Convention.
For Nate DiPiazza, a 22-year-old with an easy smile who works at Cottonwood Futons in Madison, being part of the hundreds of thousands of protesters Sunday was the first time he'd participated in a major demonstration. And, as he walked up Seventh Avenue past Madison Square Garden in a sweltering flood of bodies, cheers and drumbeats, it was the first time he was seeing New York.
Like several of the protesters on the buses, he had boarded alone Friday evening in Madison. And when he was dropped off at a hostel 17 hours later on New York's upper west side, he wrote the phone number of the National Lawyers Guild across the top of his forearm in black permanent marker with the word "help" below it inside parentheses.
By the time he began walking Sunday, the numbers on his arm were mostly rinsed away by sweat, and he was, through the tumult of the crowd, staying together with two University of Wisconsin students, Ian Sansom and Bob McGraw.
For two days, what they and the other visitors from Wisconsin experienced were largely peaceful and orderly protests, despite their size and exuberant power.
Linda Kurowski, who works at the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, said she had never before been to a protest of any kind, and this was also her first trip to New York.
"This is my first everything," she said after arriving at the hostel Saturday. During a training session before the trip, she had asked organizers one question: What is tear gas like?
Happily, she didn't find out firsthand over the weekend. Instead, she said she was left with more complicated, unexpected feelings as she boarded the bus home and talked about what she'd experienced.
"It was loud. The city was loud, but I feel like the march was quietly overwhelming," she said. "The weekend was so intense, but so smooth, too. In a way, the march was so calm it almost didn't feel like a protest.
"I feel like the effects of it are going to grow in me over the next couple of days or more. And it's definitely inspired me to be more active," Kurowski said.
She walked side by side with Sara Derge, a 16-year-old senior at Mount Horeb High School. As the people around her chanted against President Bush and drew attention to failures in Iraq, the national deficit, same-sex marriages, abortion and other issues, Derge said: "I think it's so cool that all these people can get together. We have strength in numbers."
No sharp objects: Sunday morning broke hot and got hotter, climbing past 90 degrees on the crowded pavement of Seventh Avenue. Protesters began gathering around 14th Street about two hours before the noon march organized by United for Peace and Justice.
After listening to a group with kazoos and plastic banjoes play "Help me, Kerry" to the tune of "Help Me, Rhonda," DiPiazza started chatting with other protesters about their signs, which they had, according to the rules, mounted on cardboard tubes instead of wooden sticks. DiPiazza tied his two anti-war signs to himself like a sandwich board.
"Is that just a New York thing, you can't have sticks? So many things could be weapons. What's next - you have to wear oven mitts on your fists?" The people with the signs laughed.
Sean Chappe, of New Jersey, told them that the local news had generally been discouraging to protesters.
"They're trying to portray this as a dangerous situation," Chappe said. Brent Clayton, a friend of Chappe's from Boston, said that the local TV news had a segment on places to avoid.
"That's the way they put it: Don't go here," Clayton said. "So far, I'm just waiting for something to happen. It feels kind of laid-back."
Bruno Cartosio, visiting the United States from Italy with his wife, spontaneously turned out for the march and said he was not surprised at the level of participation.
"I was convinced that in New York there would be this much, or more," Cartosio said. "The fact that Bush could be re-elected is a concern to the whole world."
Just before noon, five of the Wisconsin protesters - DiPiazza, McGraw, Derge, Kurowski and Sansom - were standing in the heat of Seventh Avenue, just north of 21st Street, when drums started pounding and someone began banging on a cowbell. They started to inch forward to whoops and cheers as others in the crowd joined hands, perhaps unsure whether they'd be able to stick together.
As it turned out, the route - a horseshoe that passed the Madison Square Garden convention site before turning back down toward Union Square - was a relatively easy walk for them. They were not hassled or shoved and they didn't witness any arrests.
Somewhere behind them, a float briefly caught fire, but was extinguished. Police also made some 200 arrests during the six hours that the crowd snaked through the parade route, but none within their sight.
As they went along, they saw a thousand flag-covered cardboard coffins being readied for a demonstration. The signs in the crowd said things like "worst president ever" and "Don't let 9/11 re-elect Bush" as the crowd chanted "We are America."
The Wisconsin protesters spotted each other and picked up friends along the way.
Peter Leo, a British student who worked at a Massachusetts summer camp, met Derge at the hostel Saturday and decided to come along for the march.
"A lot of people just turned up like me because they fully support this protest," he said. "This is great. I reckon there's about a million people here."
(The New York Times, quoting organizers and police, estimated the turnout at about 500,000 people.)
When the group had passed the police patrolling Madison Square Garden, reportedly empty at the time, and reached Union Square Park, Leo, Kurowski and Derge took a seat at a bench to take a break and marvel a bit at their walk.
"I'm bloody knocked," Leo said of his fatigue. The march went on for a few more blocks before it dispersed without a closing rally. Some made their way to Central Park, which many of the Wisconsin protesters had visited the day before to have a picnic and lie in the grass after the bus ride.
Despite feared conflict over the decision not to allow protesters to rally at the park, the scene in the early afternoon was calm, with small groups informally lounging around on the lawn. Before the Wisconsin protesters began heading for their buses, they got some parting advice from a New Jersey woman, Delia Pitts, who said that until Sunday she hadn't participated in a march since 1970.
"Four more years of Bush will be a disaster for our country," Pitts said. "People in Wisconsin have to stop it. Your state is on the edge, and you folks have to make the difference."
Protest of the Republican National Convention in New York City