The fun begins on August 20 with the Life After Capitalism conference. Activity against the Republican National Convention kicks off on Friday, August 27 with a Critical Mass ride and speak-outs organized by the National Immigrant Solidarity Network.

Sunday, August 29, peace and social justice groups will flex their muscle with a march and rally organized by United for Peace and Justice, an umbrella of more than 1,000 groups. They will be joined by the Million Billionaire March staged by the Billionaires for Bush.

On August 30 ? the day the Republican National Convention begins ? the Still We Rise Coalition is organizing a march and rally in Times Square that will likely draw many young protesters and people of color. The same day, the Poor People?s Economic Human Rights Campaign is sponsoring the March for Our Lives near the United Nations.

August 31 will be the big day for anarchists and networks of radicals that sprung out of the global justice movement as direct actions take place around the city. A conference on single-payer healthcare also starts on the 31st, organized by the Campaign for a National Health Program Now. The Central Labor Council is moving its annual Labor Day March to Wednesday, September 1.

Not In Our Name is issuing a general call for a million people in the streets during the four-day convention.

The Indypendent spoke with the visionaries and activists organizing the city?s reply to the RNC. Below is a selection of interviews.

Frank Morales
Campaign to De-Militarize the Police, RNC Direct Action Working Group
This summer in New York will be the opening round of a revolutionary decade. That might be overstating it a bit, but I do feel that deep down people are sensing the need to exert their power. It may be that we need a radical solution to resonate with the depth of the problem. It?s not enough to be dissatisfied. We want change and change is about power.

I?m not suggesting a clear ideology is motivating people. It?s more of a soul movement. Any time we allow or witness or participate in the kind of atrocities taking place in Iraq, Palestine and around the globe we suffer a diminished humanity. Bush?s crude and brutal leadership flaunts its sensibilities and acts as if it isn?t ? it all adds up to a sense that ?life is becoming cheaper.?

This is a violent world. TV is violent. There?s a logic to it. This culture ? the very air we?re breathing ? is killing people. We?ve crossed the line. It?s a world historical moment with this guy coming in to pontificate among the burning embers of 9/11. Bush is blatantly trying to capitalize on what we went through. It?s obscene. This coronation is illegitimate.

I?d like to see 20-30,000 people surrounding MSG on Aug. 29 and sitting down. Not only will we resist the attempt to repress our dissent, but we?ll bring the ritual to a halt. I?m not suggesting we just walk into their jails. Strategic direct action isn?t passive. If we?re able to disrupt the proceedings non-violently through sheer force of numbers, we can create an opening that will last well beyond the RNC.

There?s the power of working people to strike, to ?slow down,? to express their deep disagreements with what this administration is: more for the rich and less for the rest. All the movement?s preparations for the RNC are about galvanizing the force that?s already there. It just needs organization and clearly articulated demands.

We are facing a real police state. Lunatics are running the show with a pathology that they?ve set loose on the world. It is feeding people?s sense of urgency. Let me put the NYPD on notice: we?re not going to be afraid.


L.A. Kauffman
United for Peace and Justice

United for Peace and Justice is planning an enormous march and rally for Sunday, Aug. 29, the day before the Convention begins. It will be a curtain-raiser and kick-off for the whole week. The headlines on the first day of the convention be that hundreds of thousands of people are in the streets opposing the Bush agenda. Overwhelming numbers of people are coming to New York, not just for this one day, but with the hope that many will stick around for the entire week.

This is a moment of incredible deception and repression from our government. Protesting is not just a statement of sentiment. Successful mass mobilizations don?t just effect public opinion through the media, they spur ongoing action in their wake. The hope I bring to the RNC mobilization is that these events will inspire people to go back to their communities and challenge every aspect of the Bush agenda. It?s not just about the election. It?s about mobilizing grassroots force to change the basic course of US policy. That means confronting both political parties.

The city would be very foolish to deny us permits. People are planning to come to NYC in huge numbers on Aug. 29. It?s really in the city government?s interest to facilitate the protests. You would think they would have gotten some common sense after the police misconduct during the Feb. 15 anti-war protests last year. One imagines that they?re feeling powerful external political pressures. It?s hard to say who?s in charge of policing now. We?ve seen repeated instances from F15 to the serious, violent repression during the Miami FTAA protests where the federal government has intervened and directed policing of a local event. So, I think it?s very hard to say who?s ultimately calling the shots.

Whether we get the permits or not, people are coming to town. I don?t think they?re going to show up and be silent. They can?t deny the permits because there are ?too many? people. It won?t work. I don?t want to get into too much speculation about what?s going to happen except to say that this is going to be huge, historic and not to be missed.


Jamie
RNCnotwelcome.org
If we kick their ass in the early part of the week, we?re going to inspire people to come out into the streets and join us. People like winners. Getting your ass kicked and capitulating to whatever authorities tell you is not an inspiring model. Roving bike blocs, sneaking into events, wildcat marches ? just harassing the shit out of the GOP delegates is going to create a mosaic of interesting, militant resistance. It will be a lot more than sloganeering and sign-waving.

We need to destroy the model of what ?normal people? think of protest movements: all that sign-holding, standing around and chanting slogans. Give people a reason to be curious. We?re going to make the Republicans so distracted by what we?re doing that they will have a hard time taking care of business.

There are a ton of parties and corporate-sponsored events planned for the week of the RNC ? ample opportunities for disruption. On the evening of Aug. 29 after the big march, 13,000 Republican delegates are hitting 13 sanitized Broadway shows. They?re not seeing Urinetown or Rent. It?s Disney, Disney, Disney. They?ve got a ?Breakfast at Tiffany?s? with Gov. Pataki?s wife, parties at Cipriani?s, Tavern on the Green and, I shit you not, the ?Hispanic Event sponsored by Coca-Cola? at the Copacabana. They?re all sponsored by a who?s who of corporate misfits.
The reason people should disrupt delegate events is because that?s where the deals are being made. The events inside MSG are just window-dressing. The clich頲e-coronation, the ritual of it all. It?s the events, parties and fundraisers ? that?s where the action is at.

We are anarchists and for direct action, but we?re native New Yorkers. There?s this idea out there about these ?rootless activists? floating from city to city causing trouble, but this situation is very different. New York City is so anti-Bush, that there will be understanding and support for more confrontational tactics.

We?ve tried to create space for ideas, for potentials and for direct action. That means taking action that directly effects what you want or what you?re in opposition to. We?re interested in the ?affinity group? model where friends or allies can get together, plan actions and form deeper relationships on a human-level.

We?ll communicate a message to the world that we?re not a bunch of zombies standing behind Bush. People in other countries think we actually support the president. We?re sending a clear message that New York?s not standing with this. Even if that?s all it is. We want the world to be a different place. We want NYC to be different. It?s our duty to confront them. They?re coming to our home turf.


Tanya Mayo
Not In Our Name Network
We are sending a message around the world that the people of the United States really are separate from our government.

Unlike in the year 2000 where Bush didn?t run on a pro-war, pro-repression platform, now we?ve got Bush and Kerry both running on the right. They are promising a war without end and the potential for a draft. We need to be out there in massive numbers to say no to this whole agenda. If we don?t put out a vision ahead of time that ignites, then we won?t actually reach our goal of more than a million people in the streets, a historic event that would put us in the best situation to go up against this repression and endless war regardless of who gets into office.

Within the movement, there seems to be resistance to putting out a loftier vision and to fight and work towards that vision. We?ve been reigned in by all this NGO thinking. A lot of people see action in the streets as a way to get Kerry into office. We see it as a way to raise the level of resistance and the spirit of the people to go up against this whole system in the coming years. For some that means ending the war. For others, stopping the attacks on the Arab and Muslim community or repealing the Patriot Act. But some of us think this system is rotten to the core.
We?re doing massive, national outreach all summer long. Flyering, in the subways and street fairs and the parks. We?ll be at Union Square. It?s all about talking to people.

We stand with the people of the world. The starting point of our politics has to be what?s happening on an international scale. Some activists play to the lowest common denominator. Some think that if we don?t speak to the immediate needs of particular constituencies that we won?t get anywhere. It?s not just about that. The starting point is whether or not the US is a global empire wrecking havoc at the expense of real lives. Until that ends, we can?t end.

This fear of violence in the streets is always directed at ?breakout marches.? But 95 percent of the time it?s the police initiating violence and disruption at protests. The government is trying to normalize fear with the Code Reds and riot police. We are going to normalize resistance.


Monami Maulik
Desis Rising Up and Moving, Still We Rise: People?s Assembly
For the last few months, DRUM has been in dialogue with South Asian communities about the elections, the RNC, the administration and the ?war on terror? through regular discussions and surveys. That includes the half of our membership locked up in detention centers during the round-ups of South Asians since 9/11. Not surprisingly, the people who responded most quickly were those in lock-down. Person after person said we need to build on this political moment. We?ve felt the brutality of the war on terrorism in the last few years.

The racist policies of this government, which were there even before September 11, have been exposed to just about everyone ? the control of immigrants, policing and jailing of people of color. It?s like the policies against our home countries.

The word we?re getting is that people believe in using any and all means to resist. Anything from voting to mass actions in the street to community forums and surveys. People are also saying over and over that we need to use all of them. Not necessarily any one without the other.

One of the things that could be really exciting, and there is history here to be made, is a more serious and accountable relationship among activists and communities of color within the United States. This is a unique opportunity to connect the growing direct action movement with struggles rooted in mass-based organizing around workers? issues, gentrification, immigrant rights, prisons ? the everyday conditions of our lives. The relationships have started to build and lines of accountability have started to form.

We?re planning borough-wide ?consultas? over the summer. The basic idea is to bring together communities trying to effect change. We face similar conditions even if we come from different neighborhoods and places in the world. If we spend most of our time engaging regular folks, anything can happen.


Cheri Honkala
Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Poor People?s Economic Human Rights Campaign
We?re going on record: with or without a permit, we?ll be marching Aug. 30 from the United Nations to the doors of the Republican National Convention. Poor people are not happy with what?s happening and we?re not happy that we?re being made to disappear. Of all the coverage of the different things going on around the world, our everyday lives are just gone from the television. The most hidden stories are the casualties from the domestic war. We?re talking about children being taken from their mothers because of poverty, because there?s no affordable housing. Our children going to jail because they?re criminalized, not rehabilitated. It?s not a statistic that over 44 million people are without healthcare. That?s life.

Our ?March For Our Lives? will be successful if here at home, and around the world, people are clear that human rights violations really exist in America and that we are determined to change things in our own country. In order to do something about the problem, you first have to know it exists. We won?t be invisible.

We don?t have money for hotel rooms for all the poor people that believe speaking up is the single most important thing we can do right now and who are coming to New York. We?re building encampments called ?Bushvilles,? like they built ?Hoovervilles? during the Great Depression, because Bush is the person most responsible for the condition we are in. We built Clintonvilles during other times, but it?s Bush right now. These encampments are a tool that will get the message out all summer long among farmworkers, public housing tenants, welfare recipients and homeless people ? among everyone.

Our country is up for debate and discussion around the entire world. We are conscious of using the American flag so that people are clear when they see pictures of people sleeping outside in a lot at one of the Bushvilles that we?re not talking about just Brazil or Africa, we?re talking about the USA.

We?ve believe that in order to change things, the people most impacted by an issue need to be involved and leading that work. That?s why poor people across this country are not surviving this administration. We?re the first to go on the Titanic and the Titanic is going down right now.


Graziela Tanaka
New York City AIDS Housing Network, Still We Rise Coalition
Most of what we want is recognition; that people see the uniqueness of the Still We Rise Coalition. We are not just another general march, we are marching for all the specific issues and policies that impact low-income communities in New York City. All of the groups work on campaigns to change policies in five issue areas ? Civil Rights/Criminal Justice, Housing/Homelessness, Healthcare/HIV/AIDS, Welfare, and Immigration.

We want to show the power of our communities marching and use that to build on our campaigns and achieve real effective change. I feel like the media can protect us. If enough cameras are out there, the police are less likely to be violent. Right now, around 35 groups have signed on. We're pretty proud of that considering it's so hard to work in coalition in this city while trying to be effective on your own campaigns. I hope this will set a good precedent for collaborating in the future. We want to set a really good feeling for groups marching together because our work in coalition doesn't end August 30th, nor after the elections, the work goes on.


Jim Lesczynski
Manhattan Libertarian Party
The LP is announcing, not organizing, a no-permit-required gathering for Central Park on Aug. 29 at the same spot the city denied permits for UFPJ on the Great Lawn. We?re going to protest this unprovoked, undeclared war in Iraq, the occupation that persists and the Patriot Act. Our point is that if you ask the government for permission to protest it, you deserve to be told no. The only permit we need is the First Amendment, which says we have the right to peaceably assemble.

We will not be participating in the RNC. We hate the Republicans. People associate us with the right, but the far-right disgusts us. We?re totally opposed to this administration's foreign policy and civil liberties policy. We?re about freedom and they?re not.


Gabriel
No-name affinity group, Brooklyn
We?ve attempted to replicate what happened in Seattle through North America in the last few years. The global justice movement expresses itself most dramatically and publicly in these large convergences. These mobilizations are fun, exciting, energizing. But it isn?t organizing. It?s more about creating an event, a moment, rather than facilitating a movement. If the goal is only to take over the streets for a week, we?re wasting our time.

We?re not making any demands, except that we want a free world. That?s just a beautiful, wonderful vision. But it?s only a vision. It needs to guide our work, but it can?t be the thing that we demand one day every few months when the rich and powerful get together and give us an excuse.

I would love to see the global justice movement start to take itself seriously enough to think strategically. If we?re talking about globalization, let?s talk about the local manifestations. The white sectors of the global justice movement have come under such heavy criticism for the implicit leadership structures and lack of analysis around white supremacy. People have tried to respond and there?s a push to change things. Here?s a real chance to build alliances with community-based organizations and to figure out how these different movements can support and work with each other.

The direct action movement isn?t talking to middle America. It?s mostly people disaffected enough to come to a protest. That?s not totally useful. What this moment provides is a time for clear demands. When we say we want a free world, that?s a question for local struggles to answer.

If we have anything, it?s visions. If we can connect those hopes with material, daily reality, then I think that we will become effective ? more effective than just ?getting the word out.?


Robert Lederman
Street Artist
Considering what this protest faces in terms of a massive police presence, blocked streets, pens, etc. what good will a permit be anyway? Thousands are likely to be arrested regardless of what they do or don?t do and tens of thousands are likely to never be allowed to reach the protest area.

Organizers have spent more than a year trying to professionally organize RNC protests according to City guidelines so that they will be safe, orderly and effective. The problem is the City and the GOP just don?t want there to be any protest. They not only don?t want a giant protest, they don?t want there to even be one sign visible at Ground Zero when Bush and Giuliani continue their ?hero? charade at the site in front of the world media.

Perhaps the solution is a dispersed protest everywhere in NYC at once, with protest signs on every street corner rather than all in one spot; with hundreds of thousands of individual protesters walking up and down on all the Midtown streets with signs and with no permit (none is needed to do this). If 100,000 protesters come to Central Park as individuals or in groups of 20 or less, no permit will be needed there either. The only way the City could stop that protest would be martial law and that would say more about the GOP than any protest.
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