This is my last report from San Diego...
First a view oversights from my last reports...
I heard one speaker at the Monday night rally refer to rumors that Jack Kemp is gay. I got a bit more substance to those rumors by reading the local gay rags later in the week. These rumors apparently go back 29 years, when New York Times reporter Drew Pearson wrote an article exposing a "homosexual ring" in California Governor's Ronald Reagan's administration. Kemp, a Reagan aid at the time, had made an investment in a ski lodge with another Reagan aide. There were rumors that "homosexual parties" took place at the lodge. Kemp denied having ever visited the lodge. The HRC says that Kemp "played into gay-baiting by overreacting to rumors about his sexual orientaion" following the publication of Pearson's article. Kemp has also gone on record as being against allowing gays to teach in public schools. So he is not exactly on record as a particularly gay-friendly politician.
The Tuesday night AIDS rally was punctuated by an unannounced visit from William Baldwin, who spoke briefly to the crowd. That was worth a bit of media coverage on the local stations; I don't know if any national networks picked it up. Baldwin wanted to assure the demonstrators that actors were generally very supportive of the AIDS community and their agenda. Another character who received a bit of media attention and helped amuse the crowd was "Condom Man", a guy dressed up as a six-foot condom, complete with a smiley face. He certainly helped lighten the mood of the evening...
At the Christian Coalition "Faith and Freedom" rally on Wednesday, I saw Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, and Newt Gingrich from a distance. I recall Robertson saying at one point that the government ought to have tax breaks for mothers who stay at home. Kind of sounds like AFDC to me, which was, after all, originally a widows-and-orphans program. Does this mean that Pat's becoming a welfare queen behind our backs?
Like I said in my last post, the Christian Coalition actually stayed in Hillcrest, grand central for the gay community. Our Lesbian and Gay Men's Community Center put up barricades around the building and tightened security generally during the week of the convention. Normally, we have a pretty open-door policy at the Center (where I also volunteer), but this week visitors had to sign in and wear badges saying "Visitor." There was also a security door attached to the outside of the front door. There were no incidents, but throughout the week I heard the Center received bomb threats. Also, gay employees at several local shops were harassed, and one store, the Gay Mart, located two blocks from the Somerset Suites where the CC was staying, was actually vandalized. So it's been a bit of an experience for Hillcrest having the GOP in town.
Now on to Thursday night...
On Thursday night, we had the biggest rally of the week. The official sponsor of the rally was "Voices for Justice," a coalition of local progressive groups organized by Voices '96. At first we were not sure that many people would show up. After all, the turnout at the other rallies, though fairly large, was less than what we had hoped for. But we got a pretty good turnout after all. The coalition rally had been advertised all week, at demonstrations of a multiple number of progressive groups. At least 3000 people must have shown up over the course of the night. As the final rally with the largest number of people and the most diverse crowd of the week, it was also the most revved up. Speakers covered the gamut from gay rights to immigration, labor activism to the environment. We had a few Republicans present watching the going-ons, but no real trouble. There was a brief bomb scare when someone left an empty box unattended. A pro-life camera crew, posing as documentary film-makers, made the rounds and seemed determined to portray the demonstrators as a bunch of loons. Thus they made sure to talk to neopagans and one guy wearing a t-shirt that said (I think) "Satan for President" (this was a joke, but their viewers may miss the obvious satire), sought out the young women with pierced noses and punk hairdos, found the transvestites, etc. I'm sure that this "documentary" will show up on the Family channel...
The rally started slightly before 7 pm and lasted until after 8, so that we were speaking throughout Dole's acceptance speech, providing an alternative voice to the "younger Ronald Reagan," as he once billed himself (in 1980). Shortly after 8 pm, the demonstrators lit up their candles (of which I had bought 2000 for the coalition rally), and lined up to exit the demonstration site (known as "the concentration camp" by many protestors) for our candlelight march.
To illustrate this march and what happened during and after it, I need to make a brief digression into the geography of the immediate San Diego area. The harbor shore in the area of the Convention Center runs almost east-west. The free speech zone is located directly across Harbor Drive (which runs parallel to the harbor shore) and tracks for the San Diego trolley. Running parallel to Harbor Drive and the trolley tracks is a landscaped walkway built in tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. The free speech site is located at Fourth Ave., and the King Promenade (the walkway) runs behind it heading both east and west. It terminates about four blocks to the west at Front St. Between First Ave. and Front St. there is a spetacular fountain the size of a small pond. Our plan was to march along the promenade to the fountain, gather around the fountain, sing for about 10 minutes, and then disperse.
Well, things didn't exactly go according to plan. The crowd gathered to march. At first, as the march simply begain, they were singing, prompted by the rally's moderator still speaking from the podium. Soon, however, the singing turned into chanting. The favorite chant was probably the most all-encompassing: "Racist, sexist, anti-gay. GOP, go away." One local station covering the event mixed up the order of the verses. Thus, to TV watchers, our chant became "GOP, go away. Racist, sexist, anti-gay." Doesn't quite have the same ring...
Anyway, we marched down the promenade toward the fountain. As a safety monitor, I had to keep the crowd in line and moving. This was not an easy task for the 20 of us that were on the job. I was, as usual in these marches, bringing up the rear, helping to provide a barrier between the demonstrators and any counterprotestors that might appear. The police were present all over the place--in front, behind, on the sides...Later, I got pulled to the side, to help keep the marchers in line and off the grass. When the marchers got to First Ave., they dispersed around the fountain as planned, with the bulk of them gathering on the far side of the fountain near Front St. A small group led by ACT-UP broke off from the main crossed the trolley tracks to confront the GOP delegates now leaving the Convention Center who crossed Harbor Drive at First. The rest of the marchers confronted the delegates who crossed Harbor at Front. There was a token attempt to have the planned ten minute peaceful, singing fest. The organizers tried to get the demonstrators to sing "If I had a hammer," but that broke up after about 30 seconds to more chanting. Many of the departing delegates were more than willing to confront the demonstrators, protected as they were by a line of police between themselves and our crowd. A few of the demonstrators were more than happy to engage them back. Combine that with an energized crowd crammed into a small space, and you had a recipe for major trouble. The safety team had its hands full trying to keep the crowd away from the police and delegates. It was a pretty tense situation. Fortunately, there were only a few real confrontations between delegates and demonstrators, and those were rapidly controlled.
The demonstrators holding their lit candles in the early evening were a pretty spetacular sight, and it awaited the delegates leaving the Convention Center for more than the ten minutes originally planned. It was more like a half-hour after the demonstrators gathered that it began to break up. Some of the marchers came back to First Ave., where I was stationed still, and began chanting at the delegates walking up First. A line of police formed between the delegates and the demonstrators, and I was left with the fun task of trying to keep our people back by myself. Funny thing about this kind of volunteer work...most people readily cooperate, but some people look upon YOU as one the cops or authority figures they are demonstrating against, so they refuse to cooperate. Fortunately, most of this smaller crowd of 60 or so were cooperative...A few hundred demonstrators met back near the original rally site and continued the demonstration. I had to go back the gay and lesbian media center (a half-block up Fourth from the free speech zone) for a safety debriefing. It was around 9:30 that I was walking back to my car. And there was still a group of around 50 people marching through the streets of downtown. Very energized, very riled group that night indeed...
Now, of course, the GOP has left town, and things have quieted down some. In about a week, Chicago gets to go through the same experience. Have fun, JP.
Days Two and Three of the "street side" of the Republican National Convention...
Well, the protests have come fast and furious in the last few days, and I've been kept pretty busy keeping up with my volunteer work around the demonstrations. Monday night was gay rights rally; Tuesday afternoon, queer youth held a rally; Tuesday night, we held our large AIDS demonstration; and this morning (Wednesday), I popped in on the Christian Coalition prayer rally in Balboa Park to see what demonstrations were going on there. Except for the last, I was involved in monitoring safety at all of these events. Below, I remark on each event in turn.
On Monday night, roughly one thousand people gathered at Pantoja Park, about 10 short blocks from the free speech zone, at about 6 pm. We spent the next 40 minutes marching to the free speech site along G Street and Fourth Avenue, chanting slogans (e.g., "Racist, sexist, anti-gay. GOP, go away." Catchy, isn't it?); holding up signs demanding civil rights for gays, gay marriage, and the lifting of the military ban; and generally remaining orderly and peaceful, in large part due to the work of the safety volunteers. We marched on the streets, with the police stopping traffic for us (probably for around ten minutes at each intersections) and helping to provide separation between a small number of counterprotesters and our group. We met three counterdemonstrators on the march itself, carrying large sign condemning homosexuality as a sin and verbally spewing their religious right rhetoric. But other than that, we enountered remarkably little in the way of right-wing counterprotesters on our march.
Roughly another thousand people joined us shortly at the free speech site itself, where an anti-CCRI (the so-called California Civil Rights Initiative, Proposition 209) rally had just broken up. Apparently that rally had drawn a fair sized crowd as well, and had also had a march with around 600 demonstrators into the free speech zone. I heard on the walkie-talkies we were carrying that some Buchanan people had gone into the free speech zone close to the end of the rally, and had caused a ruckus (no reports of violence, though). By the time our march arrived, the police had escorted them out (which admittedly confused me; part of the point of a free speech zone is that counterprotestors are allowed in the zone--they just have no control of the mike and the stage. So I'm not really sure on what basis the police escorted them out, or if they left of their own free will). Some of anti-209 crowd stayed around and supported our group. The rally, which lasted about two hours, was completely peaceful. Speakers essentially spoke to the platform of VOICES '96, which is supported by the national organization. The speakers included Candace Gingrich, who said that her mother had advised her to not speak ill of her brother. Well, she didn't quite follow her mother's advice...a bit too much water under the bridge with regard to her brother allowing the House to be used as a platform for attacking gays, reducing funding for AIDS research, or trying to use federal money to prevent schools from teaching tolerance for gays and thereby easing the difficult lives of gay teens. We also heard from Urvashi Vaid, author of "Virtual Equality" and a dynamic speaker in her own right; Elizabeth Birch, head of the Human Rights Campaign with which Candace is associated; and Melinda Paras, current head of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the group Urvashi once headed. Both heads of our own organization, Tony Valenzuela and Brenda Schumaker, also spoke to the troops.
The crowd pretty much stayed in place until the GOP got out at 8:00, at which point the rally pretty much dissolved into a chanting fest. The demonstrators gathered along the fence facing the Convention Center letting the GOP know how they felt about the GOP's stands on gay rights, AIDS, and other issues. "Hey-hey, ho-ho, homophobia has got to go!" "What about AIDS? What about AIDS?" And the like...chanting doesn't exactly qualify as serious political discussion, but it can certainly be fun...Some GOP delegates engaged our demonstrators at the east side fence, so they were face-to-face, but the fence did prevent a physical confrontation from occurring. After the GOP had pretty much left, so did most of the demonstrators. When the rally ended at 8:45, only about 60 people or so were left.
Changing the topic briefly: Probably the most active right-wing group in town this week is Operation Rescue...Though I haven't been directly involved, I've heard that twice they have targeted a family planning clinic in La Mesa, about 10 miles east of downtown San Diego. The closest clinic to downtown, Womencare in Hillcrest (the area north of Balboa Park, the main gay neighborhood, and where the Christian Coalition is staying), was always consistently protected with more than one hundred volunteers to prevent Operation Rescue from getting a chance to stop clients from using the clinic. So Operation Rescue scooted away...
On Tuesday afternoon, we had a much smaller (perhaps 200 people), quieter rally spotlighting queer youth (their chosen designation). Again, the rally was pretty peaceful, with only a couple Buchanan supporters showing up to chant "Go, Pat, Go!" providing any disruption (this is the scene of the crumpled Buchanan sign, when one young woman knocked a sign out of the Buchanan supporter's hands). It was an opportunity for the young people to show off the full "rainbow" of the "queer" community. Thus, there were speakers of different races, a transgendered speaker, and speakers from across the country. The Buchanan supporters (two young guys who, if they didn't have the signs, could easily have blended into the crowd) showed up at this point and provided a bit of a diversion, until we convinced most of the demonstrators to ignore them. Many of the youth were wearing a T-shirt that read "Save Queer Youth from Republican Parents" with a picture of a stereotypical 1950's couple and their young son. His father's hand is on the boy's shoulder and neck, and the kid wears a frightened expression on his face. The back said "Republican Values Are Not Family Values" and went into some detail. I bought one myself. So did a middle-aged woman wearing a Dole button. Curiouser and curiouser...
Later that afternoon, we again gathered in Pantoja Park for a brief rally and march. Again, the march went off without incident. Those safety guys were doing a pretty good job, all things considered, keeping the march nicely collimated in the middle of the street, away from cars and spectators along the sidewalk. OK, so I'm a bit proud of our work...anyway, again we marched along, chanting our slogans, carrying placards, including some that had pictures of AIDS victims (both gay and straight--this was not a gay-specific rally)...A good time was had by all. I certainly enjoyed it.
At the demonstration site itself, we had no conflict with the group that preceded us (NOW had just had a press conference at the site, so there wasn't much of a crowd). And speakers spoke to the issue of AIDS. We had a broad cross-representation of groups that have been afflicted with the AIDS virus, including gay men, minorities, and mothers of people who have had AIDS. The main demand was that the government fund AIDS research at a level that will help to find a cure for this disease in the shortest possible time. But the speakers were also asking for money for housing and caring for people with AIDS, and for more education. The GOP has stated that enough money is being spent on AIDS, and wants to fund the Ryan White act at 1994 levels, although the number of people with the disease continues to go up. The group size was about the same--probably 1500-2000 people. It seemed to me that there were more spectators the second night, mostly GOPers from the looks of them. Again there were no conflicts. There were four "Bible-thumpers" handing out religious literature, but they were peaceful and non-confrontational, and demonstrators interacted with them without physical contact. At all times they were monitored by us, the police, or mediators from the San Diego human relations board. All in all, a peaceful demonstration...At about 8:00, the rally ended just as the GOP let out. ACT-UP led most of the remaining demonstrators to the Hilton, right next to the Convention Center, to let the GOP know directly how the PWA community feels about their AIDS policy. I did not joint the march--our duty as safety volunteers ended with the rally at the demonstration site--so I can't report directly on that. I don't think it lasted more than about 30 minutes, though.
Next short topic--the Christian Coalition prayer/rally meeting this morning. It was advertised as starting at 10:00, and they met in the Organ Pavillion in Balboa Park. Unbeknownst to them, the Organ Pavillion is also the site of regular concerts during the summer by a one-time church organist--his name escapes me at the moment--who was fired by his church because he was gay. But hey, what do you expect from the CC--they stay in Hillcrest right in the heart of the gay community, only one to four blocks from a half-dozen gay bars, a block from a theatre showing the film "Stonewall", two blocks from gay-friendly book stores, a block from "International Male" and "California Man" (the latter gay-owned and operated)---well, you get the picture by now...
Anyway, I showed up at about 10:30, not knowing quite what to expect. It turns out that the queer youth had planned a demonstration with about a dozen of their people. There were also a few pro-choice demonstrators, and a couple of more individual demonstrators...I was wearing my new T-shirt ("Save Queer Kids from Republican Parents) while the youth (from a group called SQUIRM--not sure yet what the acronym stands for) were wearing a red T-shirt describing the true meaning of the words "life," "liberty," and "happinness." They marched around in a small circle (there was little room to demonstrate), with the other demonstrators joining them, and we chanted various slogans once again, though the youth had a number of their own. They did a die-in at several points (to represent gay youth victims of suicide, drug abuse, and AIDS), and at one point, a young male couple, who had been holding hands, had a tongue duel. Designed to shock, yes--but I don't think the CC participants were easily shocked. The CC people were carrying around horrific pictures of aborted fetuses at a rally in which a large number of children were attending. I mean, one kid holding a picture like this was in a stroller! Why be concerned with children being exposed to violence on TV--just go to a Christian Coalition rally! Of course, not all the harsh rhetoric was confined to one side. The demonstrators at one point were chanting "GOP, You can't Hide! We charge you with genocide." Pro-life people joined our little demonstration circle and engaged in heated discussion with our side, sometimes preaching, sometimes not...but the presence of mediators helped prevent the discussion from getting so heated it erupted into violence.
We have our next big, and final, rally tomorrow at 6:40 pm PDT. That is a coalition rally, and hopefully will be the largest one of all. I may not report again until after that rally, unless I find something to report on later today. Peace.
This is the first of my reports from the street side of the convention...
Hillcrest, where I live, is a few miles from the Convention Center, located right on San Diego Harbor. Insofar as the site is concerned, the Republicans would have had difficulty choosing a more pleasant location. The site offers an incredible view of the bay and Coronado, the Navy burgh on the other side of the bay. The Center overlooks a dock full of pleasure yachts (a few prominently sporting rainbow flags), and is adjacent to two comfortable, grassy parks that the GOP has reserved for its exclusive use during the week. It's also right next door to Seaport Village, which offers a variety of shops and restaurants for delegates and media people to patronize. For those visitors who want to adorn themselves in GOP paraphanalia, there are plenty of vendors available who are selling various official convention merchandise. I haven't priced the stuff myself.
Security is tight, to say the least. Basically, you can't get within a couple hundred feet of the Convention Center unless you have a reason for being there. And that's for pedestrians. Streets around the Convention Center are blocked off at least one block away. Most of the nearby parking lots are reserved for convention business. This includes many of the parking lots usually reserved for people visiting Seaport Village, which is a major tourist attraction. In the wake of Atlanta, bombs are a major concern. Even bushes in Seaport Village are being roped off--it's too easy to leave a bomb under the concealment of vegetation. Police are everywhere, and they have a rapid response team ready in the case of violence or danger.
The demonstration site is located across the street from the Convention Center--a good-sized parking lot right across from the Center's front door. This is the original site proposed by the city, and endorsed by the police, the FBI, and the Secret Service. In June, the GOP tried to move the protest zone a third of a mile away, claiming that they needed the area as a special needs zone. The city proposed an alternate site, that was a bit closer to the Center, but still out of sight and sound of the front door. On behalf of Voices '96, NOW, and the Chicano Federation, the ACLU sued the city and the RNC, claiming that the free speech rights of demonstrators were being violated. The courts agreed, and we got our original demonstration site back. I should note that, although the demonstration site is just across the street, there is no easy access to the Convention Center. Trolley tracks separate the site from Harbor Drive, the street on which the Convention Center is located. You must go down about two blocks in order to turn onto Harbor Drive, and then travel back to the Convention Center. In other words, the GOP would have been serving its special needs attendants better by placing its handicapped parking in the parking lot of the Convention Center itself. The GOP motivation for placing the special needs area in this particular parking lot that had been designated the free speech zone was transparently hollow, and I think the judge realized that in ruling in favor of the ACLU.
Demonstrations are going on in the Free Speech Zone from 7 am to 10 pm each night, starting on Sunday. Yesterday I went to the Green Party rally that started at about 1 pm. It primarily served as a Nader for President rally, and I finally got my Nader '96 bumper sticker there. The speeches were fun--equal opportunity denunciations of the corporate-ruled Democrats and Republicans alike. One point repeatedly made was one I concurred with. Many people complain that Nader's candidancy could siphon votes away from Clinton, causing him to lose. The Greens made the point that the Democrats lose elections because they lack vision--in any event, a vision that sets them apart from the GOP. The high point of the rally were a group of drummers who got up a mean beat. This could be the group of people playing tom-toms that Barry referred to in his post. What made him think they were gay I don't know. There was certainly no gay rights demonstration yesterday outside the Convention Center.
Most of the demonstrations that I will be going to will be the gay rights demonstrations organized by the group I'm volunteering for, VOICES 96. I did attend the anti-Buchanan demonstration outside the Escondido Center for the Arts yesterday. At this rally, I was one of the safety monitors, assigned to try and prevent violence from erupting, either on the part of the demonstrators or on the part of counterdemonstrators. It is a distinctly nonviolent role. One of our main tactics is to try and keep the demonstrators and counter-demonstrators physically separate, and to convince our people not to engage them verbally (which is usually more of shouting match than a discussion, and can easily escalate into violence). That worked pretty well yesterday. Despite the presence of a small number of counterprotesters, who tried to incite the protesters (particularly the gays) by calling us 'faggots' and describing us as 'evil', the rally was peaceful except for one incident. A woman who got upset at a counterprotester using a bullhorn to try and drown out our speakers knocked the horn out of his hand, damaging it. She was later cited by Escondido police for misdemeanor vandalism.
The rally began with the demonstrators shouting various chants through the fence relating to gay rights, abortion rights, immigration, and various other hot topics. And in fact, one chant did draw a comparison between Buchanan and Hitler--Barry is correct about that. Speeches were made by various prominent figures speaking through a bullhorn. I couldn't really hear them, since I was standing on the outside of the crowd keeping my eyes out for signs of trouble. I never even knew, for example, that Candace Gingrich was there until I saw the. The crowd was about 300 people or so in size, and they represented a variety of different groups, not just gay groups. All in all, it was a fun little rally and a nice beginning to a week of demonstrations.
My next report tomorrow morning will be about tonight's gay rights demonstration in the Free Speech Zone...If you have any questions or comments, please address them to me in the polical forum of the message board, and I'll try to respond when I have the time.