NY Repub. Convention protests photo essay

[rivertext]

team cascadia & the RNC in NYC – 1 of 3




Team Cascadia is an affinity group for folks from the 700 mile stretch of the earth that is crowned by the Cascade mountain range (i.e. the Pacific Northwest). Aug. 27th to Sept. 2nd we were 3,000 miles from home saying NO to the Republican National Convention in New York City.


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Our east coast convergence space was in this purple room in the back of St. Peter's Lutheran Church in the South Bronx. I was inspired by St. Peter's Pastor Michael Thomas' Sunday sermon to begin this report with a three sentence sermon of my own:

Jesus told a rich man seeking the kingdom of heaven to "sell all you possess and give the money to the poor." Jesus is not an easy God. He did not, as the current administration would have you believe, tell his disciples that they could get rich quick if they agreed to give up someone else's ability to choose whether or not to give birth or get married.

I honor all those who truly live as if each human life is sacred. For the children of an easy God I present the Church Ladies for Choice...



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"You make me feel like a pro-choice woman" (to the tune of "Natural Woman") was one of the hits sung by the Church Ladies for Choice August 28th, Brooklyn to Manhattan March for Women's Lives.

The bottom two images and those on the next two pages were taken the following day when close to half a million marched on Madison Square Gardens, the site of the Republican National Convention in New York City.

What is it like to march in NYC with nearly 1/2 million people? -- It's like marching in a crowded phone booth.


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With art by Eric Drooker (http://drooker.com/) and Kathe Kollwitz, Team Cascadia's banner illustrates the pain of families in America as well as in Iraq. In one image a giant hand uproots a building and shakes its inhabitants out into the street. Another image shows a couple collapsing into despair as they learn that their child has been killed in battle. The text reads, "A party that values profits over parents has no family values."

The GOP's religious right wing see things so differently than us. They don't value our concerns about how our wasteful over consumption of the world's resources damages the earth and its inhabitants. We don't value their concerns about what goes on in other people's bedrooms.

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On the evening of the big march, the evening before the convention began, most of the Republican delegates attended a Broadway play. Each theatre was guarded by a squad of cops. One citizen from Portland (lower left) was arrested preemptively for walking down the sidewalk towards one of the theatres. At the lower right a Republican delegate clenches her fists in response to Team Cascadia's enthusiastic greeting.

Some Republican delegates chose to show their commitment to family values by visiting a high class strip club (top) instead of a Broadway play.


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NEXT in part 2 of 3 - Marching on the Republicans with the poor >


© copyright, Brian Thomas, 2004
All Rights Reserved

Permission granted to non-commercial web sites to reproduce one or two of them if they link back to the beginning of this photo essay here on Democratic Underground or on my site:


http://rivertext.com/cascadia-nyc1.html


or the main rivertext photo essay page:

http://rivertext.com/stuff.html

[rivertext]

1. team cascadia & the RNC in NYC – 2 of 3

This second of a three part photo essay covers both poor people's marches on Monday, the opening day of the Republican Convention and the massive arrest and incarceration of protesters on Tuesday.



For me the best part of the protest's were the two poor people's rallies and marches that took place on the opening day of the convention. These were Portland-sized marches but with the strong support of people of color, the working poor and the homeless.

Here rally organizer Cheri Honkala with her children defies the police by marching on the Republican Convention without a permit. Ms. Honkala's family was, for a time, living on the streets. Families make up 40% of America's homeless population.

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The buttons the family is wearing in the top photo rally read, "End Homelessness -- VOTE!" The lower images show Cheri Honkala (left) and Brenda Stokely (right) at the unpermitted rally.

"Why do we take over the streets? Because people need to speak for themselves! It means that you are out speaking for yourself, but equally as important, it means you are are organizing for yourself. Because nothing absolutely nothing, in this country or in the world has ever changed unless the people who are oppressed, rose up, organized, and took over and made things the way that they need to be made in this country."

– Brenda Stokely, union organizer

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"Vote community and topple Bush" is what I'd like to title these 3 images from the permitted poor people's march. I've never been in a march with better chanting. For example this Spanish chant:

Las calles son el pueblo/El pueblo, donde estan? El pueblo estan en las calles, exigiendo liberdad!

(Translation: The streets are the people/The people, where are they? The people are in the streets, demanding liberty)

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On Monday August 30th Team Cascadia marched across Manhattan to the RNC convention in Madison Square Gardens twice -- once with each poor people's march. The unpermitted march ended in a tense stand-off with the police.

Afterwards we collapsed on the cobble stones outside the protester's sanctuary at St. Mark's Church in the East Village.


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I took this portrait of Amelia just as she first walked into the purple room of our convergence space at St. Peter's in the Bronx. Amelia started Team Cascadia and hopped freight trains to get to NYC. She'd need that kind of energy in the week ahead. Here are some excerpts from my video interview with Amelia and Chris (her partner):

Amelia: On August 31st at approximately 6 PM in the afternoon Chris & I arrived at the library we had heard about some kind of convergence that would be happening .

Chris: We were just turning around to get Indian food... there was really nothing going on when they decided to fence us in. ... One guy was worried his wife and kids were going to think he died in a car wreck. He just disappeared. We weren't allow phone calls until we were 20 hours in. .



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Chris: I was taken first and loaded into an unmarked van .... We were brought to a place called Pier 57 which is right on the waterfront on the West Side Highway.

Amelia: It was an old bus depot in the 50's, it was a bus garage. ... there had been a fire in the 90's which had released a lot of asbestos.

Chris: ... the walls were still lined with asbestos, and all the chemicals were still on the floor. I was told by one of the medics that if you sat or laid down on the ground people were complaining of respiratory problems or chemical burns and rashes so I was pretty careful not to do that. But several people I know have pretty serious chemical burns.

Amelia: I was in that cage from midnight until . Right above me, right in my view there are these signs, safety signs, that say that to be in that building, you need goggles, aprons, protective clothing which none of us had any of those things and our bare skin was on the cement that we were laying on. And they weren't taking anyone out, but they kept on putting people in. At one point we counted over a hundred people in that one 13 by 26 foot cell.

In conclusion, I was in jail for 44 hours not knowing my exact charges, without being arraigned and without seeing a lawyer until my 43rd hour in jail. the entire time I was in jail I thought I had a Class "A" felony charge. A Class "A" felony is the same as rape and murder for having a pocket knife. ... Now I have to fight this in court.

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NEXT in part 3 of 3 - hang with Team Cascadia on the final night of the convention >


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© copyright, Brian Thomas, 2004
All Rights Reserved

Permission granted to non-commercial web sites to reproduce one or two of them if they link back to the beginning of this photo essay here on Democratic Underground or on my site:

http://rivertext.com/cascadia-nyc1.html

or the main rivertext photo essay page:

http://rivertext.com/stuff.html

[rivertext]

2. team cascadia & the RNC in NYC – 3 of 3

The police arrested 1,821 people. Most of these arrests were of people who were plannning or who were peacefully and legally protesting. My final montage shows two performance protests and a close up of the orange netting the police used for their preemptive arrests.

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As we left the site of the convention for the final time and headed towards a candlelight vigil at Union Square this vehicle cruised by to encourage the protesters.

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From the over-flowing dumpster visible down the street a couple of the Team Cascadia women picked up a dummy. A few minutes later at the candle lit vigil in Union Square they created their own spontaneous protest art.

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I think this photo should be titled, "No Dick either"

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Although my photographs emphasize the young people I was traveling with, the protesters looked like America.

The minute I arrived back home in Portland my neighbor asked how the protest had gone.

"We marched against the convention with half a million people."

"And, you got half a minute of coverage on TV."

What then did we accomplish?

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I think that "accomplish" is the wrong word to use here. The mass media allows the Bush administration to hide from the real problems of global warming, homelessness, poverty and a terrorist enemy with carefully timed security alerts and a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Our nation is living a lie. What is much worse is that we fear that the greed and contempt that rules America will become its truth, if we cease from standing up at every opportunity for honesty and common decency.

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Finally, my answer to two questions that reverberated through my head on the way to NYC and as I worked on this photo essay. The first is from Sci-Fi author Philip K. Dick whose novella "Lies, Inc." I read on the plane:

"How do you tell the truth in an empire of lies?"

How do you stand up for something other than your own isolation?

First, search for the common ground on which you can stand with people from diverse backgrounds. For the last two years I have worked closely with citizens much younger and more radical than me. I wish I could also find a place to stand with citizens much more conservative than me, a place to stand against the lie that greed is good.

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For more photo essays visit my site:

http://rivertext.com/stuff.html


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Thanks to everyone in Team Cascadia for making this report possible and our deep gratitude to the two the churches, St. Peter's in the Bronx and St. Mark's in the Village that sheltered us. A special nod to Abby for sharing her reporter's notes with me and Amelia & Chris for sitting down to an interview when they had better things to do.

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© copyright, Brian Thomas, 2004
All Rights Reserved

Permission granted to non-commercial web sites to reproduce one or two of them if they link back to the beginning of this photo essay here on Democratic Underground or on my site:



http://rivertext.com/cascadia-nyc1.html

or the main rivertext photo essay page:

http://rivertext.com/stuff.html
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[rivertext]

3. P.S. regarding Central Park

Before leaving for New York, Team Cascadia voted to disregard the ban on gathering after Sunday's big march in Central Park. We weren't traveling 3,000 miles to hide our concerns on the outskirts of town. We set up a secret rendezvous point in the park because we feared that we were in for a perilous adventure.

What we got was a walk in the park. Over the course of the afternoon tens of thousands of protesters and a dozen Billionaires for Bush took Central Park's Great lawn without a fight.

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[MagickMuffin]

4. Great Pics: Thanks for sharing

I just watched the march again with some of my friends Saturday night.

I recorded the march from C-SPAN. It was incredible! The people just kept coming and coming.

I wish I could have been there, but I'm a poor TX girl. Didn't have any money.
But I did the next to the best thing and watch the whole thing, except for the first hour.
I was asleep during that portion. But as soon as a got my bearings I immediately started
my VCR. I have at least 3 hours.

C-SPAN said it was about 4.5 hours long.

I really enjoyed it when people went past the Fox News building.

People were chanting "Fuck Fox News", "Fox News Sucks", "Boycott Fox News", "Fox News Lies". I still laugh every time I see and hear that.

I don't know if you are aware of this but the RNC actually rented pier 57.

Maybe the people who were detained/imprisoned there can file a class action lawsuit against the RNC. I think it would definitely put them in the spotlight, if people knew that the RNC were responsible for locking people up in unsafe conditions. I know I read about pregnant women were imprisoned there, as well as other people who have weakened immune systems. The RNC should be exposed for exposing people to those conditions.

[rivertext]

5. proof that the RNC rented PIer 57 ?

I''m aware of the letter from a Mother of a prisoner that says that she heard a response during a phone call that indicated that the RNC had leased the Pier. Could someone please link to a follow-up story that nails this down.

Not only was there a FOX news _we report, you decide" sign as big as a ten story building at the convention. There was a separate live Fox news television LCD screen as big as the largest billboards (with the subtitles on that you get when you turn a set on mute) .

[MagickMuffin]

6. Certificate of occupation

I'm sure an attorney could get this information.

I have read a few articles about this so I guess this would be the first place to look.

I would think that the certificate of occupation would be public records.

But we know how the RNC likes to control all things.

Public records, public airwaves, and of course the Public.

Such Control Freaks!

[NYC]

7. Excellent pictures.

Thanks for coming to New York. :hi:

[prolesunited]

8. Amazing work

Thank you for sharing