From Milwaukee Sentinel
July 19, 2004
Cities await conventions, protests Security intensifies for Democratic, GOP rallies - plus marches, terror threats
By GRAEME ZIELINSKI
Tony Schultz, a recently graduated education major from Athens, Wis., was on the road last week, seeking to secure couches and floors for several busloads of fellow protesters alighting from Madison in late August to march against war, and the incumbent Bush administration, in the New York streets.
"We're planning on bringing three buses, maybe more," he said of his group's contribution to demonstrations that could draw as many as a million people. "This will be incredibly huge."
Chris Lato, the spokesman for the state Republican Party, also was on the road, driving around Wisconsin and personally collecting pictures of delegates to the Republican National Convention to be used in identification badges, part of an effort to make safe the rallies of both major political parties in a security landscape deranged by terrorism.
"It's unprecedented what they're going to be going through," Lato said, referring to the New York efforts for the more than 5,000 Republican delegates, activists and alternates, and many more members of the media, who will gather Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 at Madison Square Garden to renominate President Bush.
Similarly, when the more than 6,000 Democratic delegates and alternates gather at their national convention in Boston next week at the FleetCenter, they will face a security plan that not only factors in large and possibly disruptive street protests, but also the threat of terrorist attacks.
"We're sending additional bomb dogs. We're sending additional people to both places. This is going to be big," said Dennis O'Connor, chief of staff of the Federal Protective Services, just one of the myriad state, federal and local agencies involved in the process.
Besides the threat of a terrorist attack at the Democratic convention, Boston police will have to deal with at least 70 sets of demonstrators, including abortion opponents, particularly passionate in the heavily Catholic area; Quakers, who want to protest the war in Iraq with 800 pairs of empty combat boots and a plowshare forged from 10,000 spent bullet casings; anarchists; Buddhists - and even themselves.
That's right. Boston police, along with the city's firefighters, are locked in a long-running contract dispute with the city and plan to picket a number of convention events, beginning with the 32 welcoming parties for various state delegations held by Mayor Thomas M. Menino.
Indeed, there is much that is new and much that is familiar about this year's political conventions. New? The threat of terrorism. Familiar? Dissent in the streets.
With a nation divided politically and a war raging, the protests - with exponentially bigger numbers expected by planners in New York than in Boston - seek to alter national opinion. They bear similarities not only to the anti-war efforts against incumbent presidents at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968 and the Republican gathering in Miami Beach in 1972, but also to more recent anti-globalization protests in Seattle and Washington, D.C.
"The protesters have gotten good at out-foxing the police," said Pam Oliver, a UW-Madison sociology professor who studies protests, citing the use of cell phones and the Internet.
Indeed, such Web sites as counterconvention.com have been set up by the New York protesters, offering a clearinghouse and calendar for a sophisticated complex of actions and activity.
The sites show a pastiche of poetry performances, street theater, puppet brigades and the more traditional marches. These numbers will be joined by some anti-abortion groups and other Bush supporters who will be a minority in the heavily Democratic city.
The administration of the Republican mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, has granted more than a dozen permits for smaller events, but remains at loggerheads with United for Peace and Justice, the planners for the biggest of the rallies, scheduled Aug. 29, the day before the convention begins.
Citing damage to the lawn in Central Park, the city has offered an alternate site and denied the group a permit for a rally of 250,000, though negotiations continue. His decision has drawn derision from most quarters of New York politics.
United for Peace and Justice organized a rally that some estimated at one million people in New York shortly before the start of the Iraq war, and George Martin, a Milwaukee peace activist, said that there was no reason to expect the coming march, permit or no, would not draw similar numbers.
In fact, "This is going to be bigger," said Martin, an organizer of the national march and director of Peace Action Wisconsin. "You don't know how many conversations I've had with people who never talked like this before against the war."
David Cobb, the Green Party presidential nominee, who will protest against both Republicans and Democrats, said that while the marches against the status quo might not rouse Middle America into the streets, they might provide influential cover.
"These protests provide people an opportunity for what I think of as a psychic break," Cobb said.
The most stark departure from political conventions of days past, however, is the real possibility of terrorist strikes, raised by national figures such as Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Earlier this month, he told reporters al-Qaida is "moving ahead with its plans to carry out a large-scale attack in the United States in an effort to disrupt our democratic process."
For months, thousands of police in both cities (which declined to provide a specific deployment strength) have been coordinating with federal officials to prepare for terrifying scenarios involving nuclear, biological and chemical weapons attacks.
But Paul Elliott, a spokesman for the New York City committee hosting the Republican convention, said the city that frequently sees large-scale gatherings was ready.
"The city gets 3 million visitors a month. That's more than 100,000 a day . . . At the same time the convention is going on, we also have the U.S. Open and major league baseball, and 'fashion week' is coming up," he said. "We're used to this."
The New York Times contributed to this report.
Protest of the Republican National Convention in New York City