Bob Morris @ Aug 31st 2004 14:33 - Category: Unfiled ;
A31 at RNC
The August 31 group called for massive non-violent civil disobedience and direct action today, and it is happening now.
NYC IndyMedia is listing breaking news. There have already been quite a few actions and some arrests.
The main event is a march on Madison Square Garden tonight at 7 pm NYC time. Stay tuned.
Bob Morris @ Aug 31st 2004 09:24 - Category: Unfiled ;
ANSWER gets permit for Madison Square Garden demonstration as Bush is speaking
Forty thousand leaflets were distributed announcing the ANSWER demonstration on Thursday September 2 at Madison Square Garden. The demonstration is the one event that will take place outside the convention hall at the very moment that Bush will be accepting the nomination.
If people live in the New York area they should tell friends and family that the September 2 demonstration begins at 7pm at 31st and 8th Ave.
Bob Morris @ Aug 31st 2004 00:36 - Category: Unfiled ;
RNC protest
It was an anti-Bush march, not an anti-war or anti-US policy march. It could have been so much more. Even so, it was amazing to see 400,000 or so people marching against Bush. Fox News and others used the absurdly low police estimate of 100,000. Trust me, it was way more than that. I helped organize the Feb 15 2002 ANSWER LA march and rally, and that got 100,000, and this crowd was way larger than that.
The sponsoring organization, United for Justice and Peace, sadly caved in to the demands of NYC authorities at every step. First, they accepted the City demand that the rally be on the remote West Side Highway. When their own base rebelled at that, they dropped the West Side Highway, and attempted to sue for a rally in Central Park. They were rejected by the judge who chastized them, after months of negotiations, for taking too long to decide to file the suit. They then let the City re-route the march so it ended far away from Central Park.
A few telling points.
There was a stage at the beginning of the march. However the seats and mikes faced away from the marchers, and towards the media who were on the opposite side of the street. They never ever spoke to their own marchers. Yow.
At the end, UfPJ was on the bullhorns telling people thanks for coming, now keep marching around Union Square and into the subways, and don’t stay here. (NYPD were holding subways doors open so the ride was free - something no New Yorker remembers ever happening before). Had police been telling people to leave, there would have been resentment, so UfPJ basically was a proxy for the police, telling people to disperse quickly. What an odd thing for march organizers to be doing, especially after they’d been steadily and consistently slapped down by the City for months.
UfPJ, of course, positions themselves as the "respectable" alternative to the ANSWER Coalition, implying if you don’t deal with us, then you’ll have to deal with those crazy radicals at ANSWER. They almost act as a wing of the Democratic Party, and it was clear the Democratic establishment wanted no waves made by this march, assuming that any hint of trouble would hurt Kerry (a debatable point at best.) So UfJP, who needed little prodding on this anyway, did their best to tone things down. No heavy, militant message. Just Dump Bush. As if Kerry would do anything different in Iraq.
Peter Camejo, VP candidate on the Nader ticket spoke in Washington Square Park on Saturday saying, Democrats, just how much of this can you take, just how much will you take, until you understand that Kerry, in many ways, will be no better than Bush and that your Democratic leaders are not listening to you.
Peter was on fire like I’ve never seen him before. He got huge applause. The next speaker, the bland centrist Green Party candidate David Cobb, got scattered boos and no applause. At least some Greens get it! UfPJ and David Cobb, and those like them think they can somehow make the Democratic leadership respect their views, and then prod them towards real change, a dubious conclusion at best.
Still, it was a huge crowd, and the whole world was watching. The march was front page news across the country and the world. A message was sent from NYC, and understood by the planet - there is huge and growing opposition to Bush in the US.
ANSWER LA volunteers handing out placards and flyers. That’s me, second from right.
They fought the Fascists in Spain in 1937. And 67 years later, they’re still active.
Peter Camejo
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Bob Morris @ Aug 29th 2004 17:28 - Category: Unfiled ;
Sunday night
ANSWER handed out 30,000 flyers for their permitted rally Thursday night outside Madison Square Garden as Bush is speaking!
While several hundred thousand people marched, the muddled message from UfPJ,who acquiesed to every demand from the police and NYC, resulted in a march that was anti-Bush, not strongly anti-war or any real criticism of US policy.
I’ll blog much more on this when I return to LA on Monday night.
Bob Morris @ Aug 29th 2004 04:05 - Category: Unfiled ;
Sunday AM
We’re meeting now at the ANSWER office at 7 am to start mobilizing for the march. Several teams will do flyering, tabling, getting info out to the marchers for the ANSWER rally at the RNC on Thursday. We plan to have all teams, with flyers and signs at the staging by 8 am or so.
Bob Morris @ Aug 28th 2004 14:33 - Category: Unfiled ;
Saturday. RNC protests
We flyered this afternoon at the Pro-Choice March, which was the biggest pro-choice march ever in NYC. The flyers were for the ANSWER march and Rally on Thursday night at 7 pm, which is permitted and will end up outside Madison Square Garden as Bush is being coronated.
I walked to Washington Square Park for thre Green Party rally and heard Peter Camejo on fire like I’ve never heard him before. He was incendiary, detailing precisely how tthe Democratic Party historically co-opts any real opposition, defusing it, then forcing in, in watered down form, into the mainstream.
I’ve posted several photos on my camblog.
Bob Morris @ Aug 28th 2004 05:59 - Category: Unfiled ;
I’m here
8:30 planning meeting, then informal gathering in Central Park with no telling how many will come. More events tonight. Over 200 arrests of Critical Mass bicyle riders last night, plus 20 or so other arrests for banner drops, etc.
Bob Morris @ Aug 27th 2004 08:04 - Category: Unfiled ;
I’m off to the RNC protests
I’ll post to PoliZeros when I can find a computer, and will be emailing photos often from my cell phone to my camblog, so check the camblog often!
(If I’m not back by Monday night, send lawyers, guns, and money…)
Bob Morris @ Aug 27th 2004 00:04 - Category: Unfiled ;
Cabbies Against Bush (C.A.B.)
NYC cabbies will be giving free taxi rides to Kennedy or Newark airports for any RNC delegate willing to go to Iraq to fight! (I bet they don’t get any takers.)
They will be keeping their lights on during daylight as a protest against Bush.
Bob Morris @ Aug 27th 2004 00:03 - Category: Unfiled ;
New Yorkers are putting anti-Bush signs on roofs near airports
Bright blue tarps, painted with glaring yellow letters, are going up on dozens of rooftops in Brooklyn, under the flight paths into busy New York airports. Thousands of delegates and convention guests peering down at the city might see messages like “No more years” and “Re-defeat Bush.”
Via ProRev
Bob Morris @ Aug 27th 2004 00:02 - Category: Unfiled ;
Convention protesters plotting to speak, assemble
Prepare for the worst, Ashcroft says
Attorney General John Ashcroft today revealed that the Justice Department has credible intelligence that protesters at next week’s Republican National Convention are actively plotting to speak and assemble.
“These evildoers may speak or assemble without warning,” Mr. Ashcroft told reporters. “We are preparing for the worst.”
The Attorney General said that New York’s Central Park would be off-limits to protesters for the duration of the Convention, but said that space for the protesters to speak and assemble was being reserved in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Bob Morris @ Aug 27th 2004 00:01 - Category: Unfiled ;
Bob Morris @ Aug 27th 2004 00:00 - Category: Unfiled ;
Comments turned off here
Haloscan, where the comments on this blog are hosted, is acting up again. When that happens, this blog can take inordinately long to load, as it tries vainly to contact the Haloscan servers. So, comments have been disabled until Haloscan is up to full speed again.
Bob Morris @ Aug 26th 2004 15:59 - Category: Unfiled ;
Possible rally site? Maybe
CNN is saying there will be a rally after the march at Union Square, which is north of the East Village, and far from Central Park.
However, Newsday is reporting there is no rally
<UPJ> said the gathering at Union Square would also not be a rally, and that police had agreed not to keep the protesters there in a pen.
Also, the UJP listserv a few hours ago did mentioned the march would end in Union Square, but said nothing about a rally.
If the rally actually is happening, then UPJ has 48 hours to organize stages, sound, and logistics for an expected 250,000 people. As one who has helped organize rallies that drew upwards of 80,000 and took weeks to plan, this is a near-impossible task - as well as being a sneaky ploy by police to move people away from Central Park to what will almost certainly be chaos at Union Square.
ANSWER is circulating flyers urging people to go Central Park.
The flier issued by the ANSWER coalition outlines city regulations, which the group says allow protesters to bring political signs to the park as long as they are no larger than 2 by 3 feet.
“The fact is that people are coming to Central Park,” said Brian Becker, national coordinator for the group. “It is their constitutional right to do so.”
Bob Morris @ Aug 26th 2004 10:46 - Category: Unfiled ;
RNC protests. Do the Republicans want chaos in the streets?
From Danny Schecter’s Media Channel listserv and blog
In Britain and around the world this is front page news-a peace rally banned in New York. The BBC reported it that way: “Organizers say the ban is a violation of their constitutional rights of assembly and free speech. A judge at New York’s state Supreme Court has ruled that the rally, which was expected to attract a quarter of a million demonstrators, cannot be held in Central Park because of the damage which may be caused to the grass.”
Save the grass and kill the constitution seems to be the order of the day. What is one likely result: “.organizers have warned that in the absence of a place to gather legally, demonstrators may move on Central Park afterwards and that could bring the possibility of provoking clashes with the police.”
A PROVOCATION?
Increasingly this seems to be a planned provocation. The GOP knows how hostile this city is to them, how furious and enraged. They know how easy it is to get the kids fighting the cops — and voila we have a modern day Reichstag fire without the fire, a scene of just the kind of chaos that can be twisted and used to win support for strengthening the Patriot Act and keeping the gang in power in power.
Bush is planning to Nixon on this — to demagogue about the need for order and a strong America. If there is violence, as is probable given the hard-headed attitude of the city, the consequences are unpredictable. It is all escalating with few calm heads to cool things down. Another Vietnam parallel is threatening in the streets.
Bob Morris @ Aug 26th 2004 09:07 - Category: Unfiled ;
LA Sound Posse
LA Sound Posse has recorded leftie speeches and events in the LA area, and now has hundreds of audio tapes available for free, legal download on Radio4All.
We encourage you to download these talks and share them widely. They’re anti-copyrighted (except for several as noted), so you can burn copies and even sell them if you’d like. Our talks include the following speakers:
Vandana Shiva
Howard Zinn
Elaine Brown
Maxine Hong Kingston
Walden Bello
Stan Goff
Randall Robinson
(among dozens more)
Bob Morris @ Aug 26th 2004 09:05 - Category: Unfiled ;
US general concedes abuse was torture
Three army generals have found that 35 military intelligence soldiers and civilian contractors were partially to blame for an array of sometimes shocking detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. One general conceded that some of the acts qualified as torture
Bob Morris @ Aug 26th 2004 00:49 - Category: Unfiled ;
Those fiendish lefties
Via Greg Palast. The official Republican website (click “protesters supporting Kerry”) is all a-twitter with the hideous plans those fiendish lefties are hatching. Prostitutes with AIDS! Mice on the convention floor!! Oh the horror!!!
Next week, people who hate Republicans plan to release swarms of mice in New York City to terrorize delegates to the National Republican Convention.
Republican-haters plan on dressing up as RNC volunteers, and giving false directions to little blue hair ladies from Kansas, sending them into the sectors of New York City that are unfit for human habitation.
They plan on throwing pies and Lord knows what else at Republican visitors to the city. Prostitutes with AIDS plan to seduce Republican visitors, and discourage the use of condoms, according to liberal journalist Ted Rall.
Um, Ted Rall is also a humorist, Apparently Republicans are too dim-witted to realize he tweaked their nose. And, oh yes, the Republican website links to the above article, which is from the Manchester NH Union leader, quite possibly the most reactionary, hate-filled newspaper in the country. It’s been that way for decades too. In the late 60’s they were angry at Kissinger for something and ran a banner headline titled “Kissinger the Kike”, yes they did.
The Republicans apparently have no knowledge of the other Fiendish Plots, like anarchists setting off firecrackers to confuse bomb sniffing dogs, John Perry Barlow’s plan to have hordes of people dancing in the streets, and much more - which I am not at liberty to divulge. Bwa ha ha.
Bob Morris @ Aug 26th 2004 00:47 - Category: Unfiled ;
US military intelligence personnel, contractors involved in Iraqi prisoner abuse
A U.S. Army investigation has found that 27 members of a U.S. military intelligence unit at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were directly involved in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
Bob Morris @ Aug 25th 2004 14:28 - Category: Unfiled ;
Judge rejects Central Park Rally permit
This rejection should come as no surprise, no surprise at all
A judge rejected a last-minute plea from anti-war activists who sued the city for a permit to hold a massive rally in Central Park the day before the Republican convention, saying they were too late.
The judge blamed United for Peace and Justice for waiting too long to apply for the permit.
State Supreme Court Justice Jacqueline Silbermann ruled on Wednesday that United for Peace and Justice was “guilty of inexcusable and inequitable delay” in bringing the case to court after months of back-and-forth negotiations over plans for the Sunday demonstration.
Had United for Justice and Peace not meekly accepted the West Side Highway rally location that the city rammed down their throats, had they actually stood and fought for a Central Park permit then, quite possibly it might have been granted. But UJP, through their now notorious timidity and too easy capitulation to authority, has, one more time, let the City of New York run right over them - just like they did in early 2003 when they let the NYC deny them a permit for a U.N. rally and then barricade demonstrators into pens all over Manhattan.
I’m told the city of New York routinely refuses important permits to the ANSWER Coalition, and instead “negotiates” with the well-meaning but inept UPJ. The reason why should be obvious.
Bob Morris @ Aug 25th 2004 12:00 - Category: Unfiled ;
RNC. On the ground
From the Media Channel listserv
The signs are up on my block — no parking, no standing, no stopping, (no breathing?) as a police enforced lockdown of New York begins to roll out. Madison Square Garden, is like a crime scene already, flanked by cops galore, trailers and TV satellite trucks as the “load-in” for the RNC intensifies. It is “surrounded” by armed men, shades of Najav.
YOU DON’T NEED A WEATHERMAN . . . . .
The New York Post pushed its fog and fear machine into higher gear, reporting without any evidence:
“A number of extremists with ties to the 1970s radical Weather Underground have recently been released from prison and are in New York preparing to wreak havoc during the Republican National Convention.
And the Post spews much more “demonstrators-are-terrorists” right wing propaganda throughout their “news reporting.” These folks would be right at home in Germany in the 30’s, yes they would.
Alternet is out with one of several guides to the cultural and political activities in the convention period. MediaChannel will have an unofficial media guide available for the thousands of journalist who will outnumber the delegates 5-1.
Medics are in from California to tend to the beaten while hundreds of video cameras are being mobilized to record the expected confrontations. Confrontations feel inevitable . . . . the only question is — what will their political effect be. One senses that the GOP welcomes chaos and images of conflict which they plan to use . . . .
Or major demonstrations with massive brutal overreaction by NYPD could also blow up in the Republican’s faces.
Media Channel Unofficial Guide to RNC
MediaChannel.org and Media for Democracy present the “Unofficial Media Guide” – a resource for journalists seeking a detour from the tightly scripted rhetoric at Madison Square Garden. The Media Guide list hundreds of sources and experts available to reporters seeking to cover events occurring throughout New York’s five boroughs. Inside these pages, you’ll find:
* Dozens of New York experts, ready to talk on the record.
* Coordinates for the protest groups active citywide.
* The lowdown on political bloggers and alternative news outlets.
* The big media backstory.
* Ten New York ways to escape the spin
Bob Morris @ Aug 25th 2004 09:14 - Category: Unfiled ;
State court ruling on Central Park rally due this afternoon
A Manhattan judge is set to rule today on whether anti-war activists can hold a 250,000-person rally on Central Park’s Great Lawn.
A Federal judge on Friday ruled against a permit in the park for both ANSWER and UfJP, so I doubt a state judge would rule contrary to that.
The spontaneous reaction to the Judge’s decision and the widely publicized response to the Judge ruling from the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition spokesperson - that “Thousands of people are coming, and many of them intend to be in Central Park, and we believe that it is their right to be in Central Park” (from August 24 NY Times front page story) - has made it as clear as day to the authorities that the denial of permits for the August 28 and 29 demonstrations was a huge miscalculation.
Even unnamed police officials are now being quoted in the media that the Mayor and the city made a mistake by denying the permits because the people are likely to assert their free speech rights and descend on Central Park. This is a sign that the powers that be are getting nervous.
ANSWER will have a permitted march Thursday Sept 2 in NYC, starting at the Israeli embassy and ending at Madison Square Garden as Bush is being coronated, in addition to being involved in many other events and organizing.
Not In Our Name
Check their calender of events for the protest week. If no permit is granted for a Central Park rally, it’s a given that many protestors, including NION members who often participate in civil disobedience, will march to the park anyway.
Guerrilla dancing in the NYC streets
Plans evolve to dance in the streets during the Republican Convention, from John Perry Barlow
From their listserv
MfA is coordinating 69 workshops, 16 concerts, and 10 Street Action Teams of 10-20 volunteers at key locations throughout the city. We are also coordinating the political outreach efforts for over 90 of the Imagine Arts Festival events taking place next week. If only 15 people come to each training, we will send over 1000 volunteers back to their home states with the tools, skills, and connections to activate their communities and decide which way the election will swing.
Bob Morris @ Aug 25th 2004 09:07 - Category: Unfiled ;
Did Hell freeze over?
Vice President Dick Cheney told voters in Davenport, Iowa, he doesn’t believe there should be an amendment against gay marriage.
His lesbian daughter, who some have bashed for not being more politically active, I would assume, was the major influence here.
Bob Morris @ Aug 25th 2004 00:09 - Category: Unfiled ;
Abu Ghraib report faults Rumsfeld, top officials
U.S. soldiers running the Abu Ghraib prison are mainly to blame for the inmate abuses there, but fault also lies with the Pentagon’s most senior civilian and military officials, according to a report released Tuesday by an independent panel of civilian defense experts.
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