American Politics Journal

Anatomy of a Protest
By William Rivers Pitt

"No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots."
-- Barbara Ehrenreich

May 23, 2001 (APJP) -- The email came down the wires a couple of days ago, in triplicate, from a variety of sources. The Republican National Committee was meeting at the Boston Park Plaza hotel for their summer session. The theme of the meeting was "180 Days of Bush: Real Progress for Real People." A protest march was being organized for Friday afternoon.

I spent Thursday night with a peculiar tingling in my belly. The last protest I had attended was the Voter Rights March in Washington, D.C. in May. That had involved ten-hour train rides to and from the Capitol. The protest had been a success, but I was broken and exhausted by the time I got home. Now, however, the scoundrels were coming to my back yard.

The protest, I was told, was being organized by CPPAX, or Citizens for Participation in Political Action. I was sure they would not be the only group represented. Protests like these tend to draw people from a wide variety of interest groups -- gay rights, environmental protectionists, the occasional Socialist. Everyone is welcome under the Big Tent that was erected after the election in November.

The offices of CPPAX are located on the seventh floor of a narrow box of a building on Winter Street in downtown Boston. I took the rickety elevator, at my peril, up to the offices. Inside were two people. The woman, Robyn, was my contact for the march. In the corner stood Eric Weltman, Organizing Director of CPPAX, resplendent in purple shirt and fedora. He was testing the bullhorn as I walked in. It worked deafeningly well within the small confines of the room.

Robyn, an energetic organizer from Quincy, rushed over to meet me and then put me right to work making signs. Robyn was with First Amendment Zone, a network of activism that was born from Zack Exley's remarkable Trust The People movement. 1AZ, of course, refers to these herding areas where protesters are bottled up. They have been popping up at Bush protests around the country. One of these days, I need to sit down with someone who can explain to how it is constitutional for my rights to free speech and free assembly can somehow be contained within a First Amendment Zone.

Weltman waved hello and got on the telephone, calling every press contact he had. Sprayed across floor and tables were large white posterboards. The reek of magic markers was immediate. I took a swath of the white boards and a couple of markers, tossed my bag into the corner, and got down to it. Robyn toiled at the table, giggling with every Bush barb she enthroned on her sign.

The theme of the protest was to be "180 Days of Shame." Weltman and Robyn had compiled a top-ten list of Bush's non-accomplishments, or "Disaccomplishments," and created flyers for any press representatives who happened by. On this list were Bush's ability to embarrass America while abroad, his complicity in helping to forge a new alliance between Russia and China against his missile plan, his shattering of the Federal budget with the ruinous tax cut, and the fact that he almost…almost won the election.

I am perhaps the worst artist on the face of the earth, so I tried to keep my posters simple. We had no sticks to strap the signs to, so I crafted some crude ones out of folded posterboards. They would serve. Two interns wandered in and out of the room, young women from local colleges who helped with the photocopying of flyers and the making of signs.

About ten minutes before we left for the protest, I managed to sit Weltman down for a couple of questions. I asked him first what CPPAX was about.

"CPPAX is a 40 year-old citizen organization that works on a range of social justice, economic democracy and peace issues," said Weltman. "It was started in 1962, oddly enough, to run a candidate against Ted Kennedy, of all people. We lost."

"We do work on an electoral level," he continued. "We endorse candidates, we do lobbying up on Beacon Hill, and we do grass-roots organizing."

I asked Weltman what we were doing there with this protest. He said, "It's an ad-hoc rally against the Republican Committee here in Boston. We are here to tap into the local zeitgeist at the moment. The emails just started flying a few days ago, you know. That's the nature of the Internet -- you can reach a lot of people very quickly and inexpensively."

I asked what the RNC was meeting about over at the Plaza. "I think there are a couple of purposes to the meeting," he said. "On is strategizing; it is a business meeting, you know. It's also a PR thing. They're trying to tout the Bush record over the last 180 days in office. Someone from Tom DeLay's office will be there, and Delay…well, he's poison."

At 11:30 we shouldered our signs and billboards and crammed into the elevator like clowns in a circus car. We creaked and groaned to the street, emerging into bright sunshine and the hustle of the city at lunch hour. There were five of us in total: Eric, Robyn, the two interns, and myself. Supposedly, others would meet us at the hotel. We set out across the Commons towards Arlington Street, signs held high.

The Boston Park Plaza is old and huge, one of the flagship hotels in the city. It occupies nearly an entire city block between Arlington and Stuart Streets. The hotel has been home to nearly every itinerant politician the city has ever hosted. John Kennedy had a favorite room in the Plaza, and Gore himself stayed there while passing through the city last September.

We gathered ourselves near a small patch of grass at the back of the building. There was construction happening nearby, and several of the workers had gathered in a van to eat lunch. They smiled muscular smiles from behind day-glo orange vests. I knew what was coming.

"Get a job!" from one.

"I'll shave ya Bush!" from another, directed at one of the interns.

Weltman turned with his bullhorn towards a phalanx of motorcycle police parked across the street. One officer, a Black man, raised his own bullhorn.

"What are ya doing here?" the cop shouted through the speaker.

"Protesting the GOP," bullhorned Weltman. "Want to join us?"

"Well," said the cop, "I didn't vote for Bush, but I gotta work."

"Next time," said Weltman. "Next time."

Over the next ten minutes, our tiny band began to swell. People arrived from all directions bearing signs of their own. The gay rights representatives were there in force, as usual. I have noted several times that those who support and defend gay rights are a powerful presence at any anti-Bush rally. They know full well how little compassion there is for them among the conservatives, lip service and Log Cabins notwithstanding.

We began the march at twelve noon. By then we were about ten in number. I was reminded of the first sad couple of hours I spent at the Voter Rights March. That morning, it had been me, the eternal nuke protester, a woman from FringeFolk, and about three others. Eventually, of course, the crowd swelled to the thousands, but I felt that same initial sense of dissatisfaction as we walked towards the hotel. Where the hell was everyone?

Patience, I scolded myself. The movement against Bush and his minions is a marathon of a thousand miles. No matter that we are so few here. All that matters is that we are here. All that matters is that no gathering of Republicans anywhere in America is free from catcalls from people like us. Word is spreading and dissatisfaction is growing. Ten today will be a hundred next month, a thousand by winter. By the midterm elections, we will be cheek-to-jowl in the streets from here to California.

I raised my sign and got to marching. That is when the really interesting stuff started to happen.

We walked once around the building and chanted our slogans to the cadence of Weltman's bullhorn, earning bemused stares from blue-suited Republicans with elephant-emblazoned nametags on their lapels. Cars honked, and passengers inside tour buses waved and flashed us the thumbs-up.

People started to join us.

The first was a small Black woman wearing the livery uniform for the hotel. She was smiling from ear to ear, and joined right in with leather-lunged enthusiasm. Next came three kids who had been passing by. A bike messenger jumped into our column, followed by a Chinese man wearing a silk suit. Others bearing signs, obviously running late, dashed pell-mell through the traffic towards us.

Each time we marched around the building and passed the main door, Republican committee members who were gathered by the ashtrays to smoke noticed that our numbers had grown. A few even attempted to out-shout us, but the bullhorn made short work of that. I looked behind me and counted some fifty people bearing signs and chanting.

This was something truly inspiring. A protest that had very little in the way of advanced planning had gone forward, despite the fact that the participants at the beginning had been so few. Five had grown to fifty because ordinary people on the streets of Boston decided to use their lunch hour in protest. We would have been a feeble display without them. With them, we slowed traffic and caused that little corner of the city to stop and take notice.

After ten laps around the building, I decided to go and see the beast for myself. I slipped into a small café adjoining the hotel and changed out of my CLG shirt in the bathroom. Donning a simple white t-shirt, I made my way into the hotel lobby and climbed the stairs towards the convention rooms. I cajoled a press pass from the woman at the registration table and dove into the throng.

I found myself surrounded on all sides by overweight White men from Virginia and Pennsylvania. Natural bald was the hairstyle of choice, and the wives all appeared to be taking their fashion cues from Barbara Bush. I inherited a tall man in a blue suit as my shadow who followed me with a two-way radio pressed close to his mouth. I stopped and stared at him until he looked away.

It was difficult to determine the purpose for this gathering. All of the main convention rooms were closed to the press save for one, a vastly empty hall where nothing was happening. As I walked, a door opened briefly to reveal a seminar in progress. On the wall was a projection with the words, "Be Like Bush."

Perhaps these people were there to congratulate themselves on the size of the tax rebate check they were about to receive. It was difficult to ascertain, because none of the participants would speak to me. My big pink press pass acted as wolfbane upon them; they retreated, hissing, from my very presence.

Finally, near the exit, I cajoled one young RNC staffer to speak to me. His name -- I am not making this up -- was Chad. Chad looked natty in his tweed sportcoat. He was from Pennsylvania, and had been in the city since Wednesday.

I pressed Chad for details about the gathering, and he informed me that this was a "party-building meeting" designed to address issues and strategy. They were there to support their champion, but also to plan for 2002. The Governors races in Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey were right around the corner. Tom Ridge had been here, I was told. Mary Matalin gave a speech. The Mayor of Boston had been a great host.

I asked him what he thought of the protesters. "We're focused on our message and our agenda," said Chad. "They seem very negative. We're focused on what Bush is doing, the tax cut that everyone will be getting, prescription drugs for seniors, the Patients Bill of Rights. We're focused on what we're doing, not what a handful of Democrat activists are doing."

The Park Plaza is a busy place. As Chad and I spoke, people kept pushing through the doors. Each time the doors opened, the shouts of protesters could be heard throughout the entire lobby. Chad smiled grimly through it, focusing on his message. I could tell he had practiced it often, perhaps to his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Robert Novak could not have delivered it better.

I returned to the cacophony of the street to say goodbye to Eric and Robyn. While I was inside, the protest group had grown even more. They had occupied the street corner by the main entrance, First Amendment Zones be damned. I watched RNC members emerge from taxis, wince at the noise, and scuttle into the sanctuary of the hotel. Obviously, they had seen protests like this many times before. I didn't have the heart to tell them that they would be seeing such things many times again. They'd find out soon enough.

The shouted chants followed me as I descended into the subway. Arriving home, I turned on CNN to discover that a protester had been shot and driven over by police in Genoa, where the Group of Eight was trying to meet amid an ocean of angry Europeans. Later, police apparently barged into several protest headquarters and started cracking skulls. The protesters responded with even more vehement action, causing dismay among the majority of groups present. Only the violent get coverage, they lamented. Meanwhile, Genoa burns at the hands of the people and the summit is in danger of flying apart at the seams..

As a citizen of a nation that prides itself on revolution and the political power of the people, I was shamed to see the size of the crowd in Italy. The majority in Genoa are correct -- the violence gets the coverage. Read between the lines, and understand that 1,000 brawlers cannot erase the truth of the 99,000 others who came peacefully to register their dissent.

Their shouts echoed within the chambers of power. Most of the leaders present at the summit swarmed George W. Bush today and threw him on the defensive. Bush now has no doubt about the damage his policies will do to our international relations. He knows this because the other G8 leaders bluntly told him so. Those leaders were responding directly to the pressure that was being applied to them outside in the streets.

Never tell me that protest is ineffective. Remember, though, the numbers present in Genoa. I had been impressed by our mob of fifty in Boston. In Genoa, across the sea, they came in the hundreds of thousands to shout down the arrogance of the American President. Why can we not muster such numbers?

I checked my mail, and found a notice from the IRS. My tax refund was on its way, I was told, thanks to Mr. Bush. Ah, I thought. Here is the answer to my question. The payoff. Why protest? I'm going to get $300 next week. All of my problems will be solved.