Two lively and militant rallies were held on Monday, August 30 as the New York City Days of Action at the Republican National Convention continued with great enthusiasm. The two rallies were focused on demands for human rights in the U.S. Participants denounced the broad violation of civil rights and of economic, social and cultural rights. Through signs, chants and speeches they expressed their opposition to the government's crimes against the most vulnerable, the poor and immigrants, and demanded immediate funding to provide for the rights of all. 
 

Beginning at noon, Still We Rise, a broad coalition of groups taking up struggle for rights on various fronts, brought centre-stage the issue of the attacks on immigrants. A militant contingent of immigrants, many from South Asia and Latin America, demanded an end to the brutal deportations and detentions. Signs in the demonstration affirmed the just stand of the people that No One is Illegal. Numerous other contingents raised the demand to end homelessness now and called for increased funding for education and healthcare. Activists contending with AIDS and the governments refusal to provide medicines and care also had a large contingent.

The demonstration included two marching bands who kept the marchers in high spirits despite the large police presence and stifling heat. They expressed the common view of many with their chants: No to Bush, No to Kerry, We Want Choices, We Want Choices! No to Bush! No to Kerry! We Have Our Own Voices! We Have Our Own Voices!

The marchers went from Union Square to Madison Square Garden where they faced police actions that split the demonstration and penned in protesters. Even so, the rally proceeded with one speaker after the other addressing the horrendous conditions of poverty and oppression they face, proclaiming "Still We Rise! Still We Rise!"

In the afternoon, under the banner "March for Our Lives," many of the same activists and organizations joined others at the United Nations, again focusing on the massive human rights violations suffered by Americans from coast to coast and rejecting the government's repression and broad attacks on rights. A sizeable contingent from California joined those from Texas and South Carolina and many New Yorkers and thousands of others. The Kensington Welfare Rights Organization, active on the front of rights in the Philadelphia area, were the main organizers of the event and brought a contingent that included many women, youth and those in wheelchairs. United as one, they demanded their rights be guaranteed and defied police efforts to stop the action. 

Despite the City's refusal to provide a permit, people by the hundreds, again with a majority of youth and national minorities and many coming from the noon rally, came forward to join the action. Taking the stand that the march would happen and demanding their right to protest, marchers left the UN and marched down Second Ave and across on 23rd St. heading for Madison Square Garden. As occurred during other actions, numerous bystanders expressed their support, people chanted from their windows and peace signs went up from those in restaurants. The march grew as it went, with demands for housing, healthcare, jobs and living wages resounding throughout.

Brutal Police Attack Successfully Resisted

As the march from the UN drew to a close in front of Madison Square Garden, police brutally attacked the protesters, using undercover police on scooters as well as uniformed police with batons and horses. As darkness descended and participants filled the block between 29th and 30th Street, police intervened to try and split their ranks and pen people in. They charged in, swinging barricades into the march and ramming many participants. Protesters succeeded in holding back the barricades, with many linking arms to do so. As police manning the barricades radioed in for assistance, riot police stormed the crowd from the north with a two-handed baton charge. Moments later, a dozen scooters were driven through the crowd and toward many who had been knocked down. Participants continued to hold their ground against the charging motorbikes, knocking at least one rider off his bike. It was only afterwards that it became clear to many that those on scooters were police, as they were not in uniform. Police also used horses to charge into the crowd. 

Despite these attacks, the demonstrators held their ground and managed to keep most people safe from injury. Discipline and all looking out for all held off what many considered to be planned mass arrests of hundreds. It is reported that 10 were arrested, with details on the number injured still unclear.

The first-person accounts on NYCIndymedia recounted demonstrators responding to defend their rights and each other, as well as other such experiences: on Sunday evening, a civil disobedience action in Times Square was summarily surrounded by cages and all arrested without even an order to disperse; the police tactics of February 15, 2003, where dividing participants was a chief mechanism to try to prevent people from defending each other; and the daily experience of many of the march's participants, standing against police brutality and impunity to criminalize and terrorize their communities. 

As news of the police attack swept across the city and into the countless homes and community centres housing activists, their undaunted defiance was shown by a surge in planning for Tuesday's Day of Direct Action.

August 31
Day of Direct Action and Civil Disobedience

On Tuesday, August 31, direct actions and civil disobedience protests swept Manhattan -- using street theatre, disrupting Republican National Convention parties and events, reclaiming the site of the World Trade Center attacks from co-option by Bush, and targeting government offices, monopoly headquarters and other symbols of the agenda of repression and war. The day was marked by the undaunted defiance of the youth and other participants in the face of increasingly violent and arbitrary police attacks. 

Police showed their plans for the day by erecting a double-barricade four-blocks around the convention site in all directions and making early-morning "pre-emptive" arrests of two costumed street theatre groups. Protesters countered by floating "intelligence" that there would be an action at the New York Stock Exchange. Hundreds of police were sent to surround it while no protesters showed up.

A powerful noon-time demonstration against the U.S.'s inhuman torture systems and detention and deportation policies set the tone for the politically-focused resistance actions that followed throughout the day. Hundreds converged at Columbus Park in Chinatown for a spirited rally targeting the unjust racist profiling and "disappeared in America" perpetrated by the government's Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (BICE, formerly the INS). The action was mainly organized by the Philadelphia Cluster. 

The action also honoured the life of Palestinian activist Farouk Abdul-Muhti, who represented the growing resistance of the peoples at home and abroad. Abdul-Muhti was imprisoned by BICE for 718 days as one of the thousands of illegal and unjust detentions by BICE. He died in Philadelphia July 21, hours after speaking at a panel entitled "Detentions and Torture: Building Resistance." His fiancée, son and lawyer were among the speakers at Columbus Park. "We have to remember all the martyrs -- in Palestine, the U.S. and the world -- who have given their lives to fight against oppression and for human rights. I think that Farouk can only be remembered if we continue this fight," his fiancée said.

Following the speeches, a street theatre piece depicted the brutal U.S. torture system as seen in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, with activists depicting prisoners remaining defiant despite being hooded and berated by a U.S. military "general." With the crowd now swelling to 600 people, participants embarked on an unpermitted march to Thomas Paine Park near the BICE headquarters in Federal Plaza. Chants of "Stop the detentions! No one is illegal!" "Open the borders! Close the RNC!" and "Ya basta! Enough is enough!" rang out through the streets as the energetic march refused to be intimidated by the massive police presence. One participant was arrested for climbing a tree in the park.

Between 3 and 4pm in the afternoon, major actions simultaneously took place across Manhattan. Police attempted to block them with a large show of force and use of pens and netting of protesters and hundreds of arrests. But repeatedly, it was the demonstrators, with determination and defiance, who won out.

At the World Trade Center site, more than a thousand people gathered for a vigil called by the War Resisters League, School of Americas Watch and others. "Our aim is to confront the administration with the death and suffering for which they are responsible: more than 10,000 Iraqis and Afghanis, as many as 1,000 Americans killed, thousands more wounded and scarred, as well as the economic victims of Bush policies -- the unemployed, the uninsured, the undereducated," the call for the action said. "The Republicans have chosen to hold their convention in New York City to link George Bush and 'Ground Zero.' Bush's policies have created 'ground zeros' of death and suffering throughout the world and we hold him accountable for that." Organizers then negotiated with police to march single-file on the sidewalk to Madison Square Garden, where participants planned to stage a "die-in" to symbolize the countless victims of the U.S. "war on terror."

As participants organized to march, police swept in with orange netting and began encircling protestors, arbitrarily arresting 100. As one participant put it, they were arrested for the "crime" of walking on the sidewalk, without impeding foot or vehicle traffic, but having "dissenting thoughts" in their heads. Hundreds continued toward the convention site, successfully carrying out their act of civil disobedience at 28th and Broadway, blocking traffic for several hours.

Twenty blocks away, hundreds gathered outside the headquarters of Fox News, targeting the network as a symbol of the disinformation and unending lies of the monopolies and their media in service to the agenda of war and repression. "Shut up Fox!" echoed off the buildings for hours.

Uptown, a "guitar and pompadour bloc" and a "men in black bloc" were quickly joined by more than a thousand people at Sotheby's Auction House where an RNC event featured the auctioning of Johnny Cash memorabilia. With numerous references to the late performer's rebel image, and frequently mimicking his well-known photo "giving the finger," the protest remained a boisterous and spirited convergence for several hours. "No Cash for the rich!" was a frequent chant as RNC delegates and others made their way in and out of Sotheby's.

At the New York Public Library, an action which began as two women attempting a banner drop over one of the building's lion statues erupted into a fierce display of defiance and rejection of impunity for police repression. Police officers violently arrested the two women, throwing them to the ground. Within minutes, they were surrounded by hundreds of youth, other activists and passers-by. Police attempted to pen-in and arrest protestors and onlookers alike, at one point throwing everyone emerging from the subway station to the ground. This once again showed that the militarization of New York had nothing to do with the security of the people.

Throughout the day, Union Square remained a centre of activity, with marches setting off for Madison Square Garden on at least three separate occasions. The Bike Bloc, declaring "Still We Ride" after being targeted by some of the most violent police attacks on Friday and Sunday, made a spirited pass through the square. The largest group of riders withstood both the new flexible-orange netting tactic and pepper-spray and large numbers of arrests to re-converge with thousands of others at Herald Square in the evening. 

For hours at Herald Square, police attempted to contain the youth and others, only to be continuously met with non-compliance and resistance to being penned in. Participants report that police began targeting individuals not based on any action on their part, but apparently based on "intelligence" that they played leading roles in the protests. Yet each time police moved in to make arrests, they were swarmed by hundreds of protestors.

Throughout the day, other affinity groups organized disruptions and direct actions around the city targeting, among others, the Westin Hotel (housing an RNC delegation), the headquarters of the Carlyle Group, Rand Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp., and a banner drop at the Port Authority.

Into the night, another 3,000 people gathered at the historic Riverside Church in Harlem to "call attention to the real moral, social and economic issues of this election," as Senior Minister Rev. James A. Forbes put it. At 8:30pm, places of worship throughout the city rang their bells, while members gathered in the streets for an "interfaith ring of hope around Manhattan" in support of social justice.

According to news reports, more than 1,500 protesters were arrested between Friday and Tuesday. Police violence and arrests were characterized by their arbitrariness throughout the Days of Action. Some reported that it was as though a switch was being turned on and off, as police claimed to "allow" whatever actions they determined were "peaceful" and then attack, often the same demonstration or action, whenever they determined to do so. Over the course of the several days' events, it became clear that various police efforts to divide protesters on the basis of their tactics and labeling some violent and others peaceful had not succeeded. Protesters rallied together to defend and protect each other from the police violence and repeatedly affirmed their rights to freedom of speech and assembly. Into the night Tuesday, activists organized to ensure everyone's safety and the safety of their arrested comrades, and began summing up the day's experiences so as to utilize them to further develop their methods and tactics of resistance. 

On the morning of September 1, more than 5,000 people formed a symbolic unemployment line from Wall Street to the site of the Republican National Convention. Demonstrators waved oversized pink paper sheets, symbolizing the "pink slips" that workers receive when they lose their jobs. The line, which stretched some five-kilometre from the financial district to Madison Square Garden, represented the 8.1 million unemployed Americans presently seeking jobs, organizers said.

Later in the day, thousands of union activists demonstrated in the streets south of Madison Square Garden for a large labour rally. Participating contingents included the Communications Workers of America, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Service Employees International Union, Unite HERE!, Teamsters, United Federation of Teachers, Utility Workers, the Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees, the Hotel and Motel Trades Council and many others. According to media reports, by 4pm several blocks along 8th Avenue were densely packed with workers and other demonstrators. Police set up wooden and metal pens at each intersection which kept participants from merging with those occupying other blocks.

Hundreds protested the conditions under which arrested protesters are being detained before going to court, calling the facility "Guantanamo on the Hudson." They said the detention centre -- a bus depot at the Hudson River Pier 57 -- is contaminated with oil and asbestos and that arrestees are being held for many hours without access to food, water, phones or lawyers. They called for the City of New York to move all the arrestees out of the facility immediately.

At Union Square, the American Friends Service Committee displayed its "Eyes Wide Open" exhibit. It includes 978 military boots, one for each U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, and 1,000 "civilian shoes" to represent the 11,000-16,000 civilians who have died since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last year.

Six AIDS activists breached the Madison Square Garden convention hall during a speech by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card to young Republicans. The group ACT UP said its activists stood up on chairs and held signs, calling on the administration to relieve billions of dollars in debt of poor countries to help fund HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs.

In the evening, some 2,000 people participated in a "March on the Media." Sponsored by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Paper Tiger TV, mediavillain.org and others, the march went to several media buildings in Midtown Manhattan, including CBS, CNN and FOX, denouncing the role of the monopoly media in the crimes being committed against humanity.

On September 2, the final day of the convention, United For Peace and Justice will hold a candlelight vigil at Union Square, International ANSWER is holding a rally outside Madison Square Garden and the Artists and Activists United for Peace Coalition will march through Harlem, preceded by a rally at the Harlem State Office Building. Other small actions against the RNC by the people of New York will also continue throughout the day.