RNC Protests Not a Success For Freedom

Police kept demonstrators a block away from Madison Square Garden, the convention site, three nights in a row.  That is not a success for the protesters.  It is a downright failure for freedom.  It is a violation of our inalienable freedom to move, gather, yell, hold signs, speak, and sing where we want to.  This freedom is enshrined in the first amendment as "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."  It is also fundamental in honored ancient religious and moral codes, and it is part of our first childhood understanding of freedom and fairness: if I'm not hurting someone else, it's all right.

Hundreds of thousands of people over five days showed up to protest in midtown Manhattan during the Republican National Convention.  Unnecessary closures of blocks of streets around Madison Square Garden (under which is Penn Station), arbitrary prevention of movement even outside this locked down area, and unjustifiable mass arrests that put some 1,800 people in jail made impossible a free demonstration of disgust toward and rejection of the Republican agenda. Articles in the independent and establishment media have called the RNC demonstrations successful.  Associated Press reporter Sara Kugler portrayed the protests and policing as a joint victory.  In "Protesters, Police Agree on One Thing: This Week was Successful" Kugler quoted Sidney Tarrow, a Cornell University professor of sociology and political science: "This is a very well-disciplined police force and they have been successful, but the protesters have been successful as well in demonstrating their opposition to this war and this administration's policies."

If we were there to demonstrate to the police, we were indeed successful in showing perhaps every branch of the New York Police Department our size and the scope of our demands.  I admit it was nice to talk to New York City law enforcement.  (Other than when the police were actively arresting someone, all the interactions I saw were cordial, even when our street corner was urging them to "Strike! Strike! Strike!")  But the NYPD was not the audience we originally set out to address.

Those of us with a belief in the infinite capacity of the human heart to break through years of conditioning and piles of money to suddenly embrace truth and justice (based on the appeal of fellow human beings holding signs) were there to reach the hearts and minds of the Republican delegates.  The other half-million of us were there to let the nation and the world know our (highly negative) opinion of: our government's terrorist wars, Bush administration lying, neo-con plans for world domination, continuing Republican hijacking of 9-11, and, perhaps worst of all, the war-mongering right-wing elite's attempt to claim Johnny Cash as one of theirs.

For a demonstration on issues of national significance the most important question is: what impact did it have on the people of the nation?  The behavior of the media, therefore, is a huge determinant of success or failure.  And the corporate media, of course, won't be particularly eager to pass on our unpaid political messages.

Overthrowing or replacing the media is one way of dealing with this failure to communicate the demands and dreams of the poor, the radical, the annoyed, and anyone opposed to the status quo.  Ultimately, a revolution against the media is necessary, but in the meantime we need to work on our strategy if we are going to use protest as one means for making the world better, or at least preventing it from getting worse.

Strategy

It follows from the importance of the media to protest the media themselves and, perhaps, shut them down.  Exposing and replacing the media is a special interest of mine (and why I support Narco News and urge you to do the same through the Fund for Authentic Journalism), but it's not my focus here.  Some essays offer a starting point.  Jennifer Whitney discusses media disinformation as a point of production we in the United States can shut down.  One group during the convention week did target television studios, mostly with a Shut-Up-athon at FOX, but to be effective we need to learn from and build on strategies already tried.  Narco News publisher Al Giordano laid the groundwork in his call for a revolution against the media, which I hope he (and others) will continue to update and create in reality.  But for this essay on general protest strategy I will just give some of my observations from the demonstrations during the RNC.

The goal is to have a demonstration of such size, in such a place, in such a time, and of such a manner that it cannot be ignored.  (I believe the anti-war protests, just because they couldn't be completely blacked out, played an important role in shoring up the core 20 percent of U.S. residents who always told pollster they were against the war on Iraq and in bringing back to half those who said they thought the war was a bad idea.)

So, insofar as demonstration is going to accomplish anything, we want to be in a spot and at a time where and when we will be seen, if not heard, by the media that might be trying to cover something else entirely.  And so strategy for effective protest is, not suprisingly, the same as strategy for defending freedom of speech and assembly.

The police are not our enemy.  Our enemy, broadly speaking, is international capitalism in its currently highly unequal form.  The police are our adversary.  So it is their tactics we must look at and out-think.  And after all that introduction I really only have one observation of any significance:

The police did not do mass arrests when there was a true mass of people, two or three thousand and up.

The vast majority of arrests came from the mass arrests; most of the remainder came from people doing civil disobedience with a reasonable expectation of arrest.  The mass arrests occurred not at large rallies or marches, but when a smaller group of two or three hundred were isolated from any larger groups.  The area would get surrounded and everyone in it, conservative journalists or downtown shoppers along with peaceful protesters, was arrested.  This was the case for the about 300 people, including the Infernal Noise Brigade, who set off from Union Square on Tuesday night.  Those arrested at the World Trade Center demonstrations, I understand, were in a similar situation.  (An exception, I assume, would be the 250 bicyclists arrested Saturday out of the 5,000 in the demonstration.)

So if we could be more organized, could we prevent mass arrests, or not have them be so neat and easy?  I suggest that when we move, we move in mass.

As ridiculously high a police presence as there was, we let too few police control too many of us (thanks to Teo Ballve for pointing this out).  If we had pushed harder to reach Madison Square Garden, if we had refused to stay caged in, would the police have stayed relatively nonviolent?  I think it's worth testing.

People who are willing to get arrested for civil disobedience could act to tie down police all over the midtown Manhattan -- nonviolently -- in as close to a one-to-one police-to-protester ratio (or better), while the large group finds a weak place to walk through the barricades and leave our police escort behind.  This brings up a question I asked myself a couple times while in the streets with thousands of people and many hundreds of police:

Could we have disciplined ourselves had there been no police?  The unbelievably overwhelming vast majority  would behave as model citizens.  My question is, would we have taken action to stop one of our number who was being violent or even just destroying property?  I think, if we are going to claim that the police presence is unnecessary, as I do, that we must self-police in this way: be prepared to withstrain people from violence.  Though this carries the risk of tackling an undercover cop.

Before closing, I should say that, aside from my having a great time, the protests during the RNC were a success in many ways: in the number of people who joined demonstrations against Bush & Co, in the relative nonviolence of police, and even in some of the media coverage.  Sunday night's march, by all accounts, was incredible.  I walked up late Sunday night after it had passed (but before some returned to protest again outside Madison Square Garden) and heard a hotel manager telling guests how the police had put up barriers to keep people off the sidewalks, and they were just overflowed.  And finally, however many people went home after Sunday, everybody knows we didn't go away.

My main message is this: we must always come up with new tactics, and implement them in a highly organized manner in massive groups, and stay one step ahead of police planning, in order to win our most basic freedom to stand where we want and have our say.  I don't think we did that this time.

Anyone else who was there, or followed the events, please correct me if I'm wrong at any point, or fill in the blanks, and anyone please weigh in on general goals or strategy ideas, either in a comment or by writing to me.