REPORT FROM NYC AUG. 29, 2004


When I got to the city I figured if I found St. Marks church (In the village) I would find where the march would be and where it would start. I was along with a friend Bill who does sound for a lot of acts that come to the city.

So we went to the church and all outside on the gates were signs and info for all to read. We heard singing inside the church, so we went inside. So, we went inside and heard them singing, “Study war no more”. We got the tail end of it and after it was over, we went our own ways. Bill going to work, me looking for the march against the RNC.

I start to ask folks where the march was going to start. One guy pulled out his cell phone and looked at his phone and said something like, “Well, right now they are at 7 Ave and 28th street”. So I head that way past Washington Sq. and head to 7 Ave. I pass folks just having another day in the city, some playing chess, lying in the park getting sun, people walking their dogs. Calm in a way, so if one goes outside the march area it is very calm and strange in a way.

I see a helicopter in the sky staying very still. I figure if I can find the helicopter that is where the march might be. I see all kinds of folks with signs all heading just one way, all looking for the march.

Right now I am at 7 Ave and 14th street with about 5,000 people. We are on 14th street waiting to join the main march on 7th Ave. The march is supposed to start at 1PM but they never seem to start on time. But that’s ok and no one seems to be bothered by it. A lot of folks just talking to each other and asking where everyone is from. There is a guy that looks like Uncle Sam and he is in a barrel with not a thing on, funny as hell. The helicopter now is above us and gets lower. I see what it might be trying to do, that is drown out any singing or chants.

But all still sing out and chant. Here are some of the signs that I am reading, City to Bush, drop dead, another regime change begins at home, Stop mindless war, Dumb&Dumer ,Bush lies, who dies?, Fire the liar, Dump Bush, Give Bush the axe.
Now the drums are beating and people are chanting, “RNC go home”. The young people that are drumming have sheetrock buckets upside down with a rope around the ends of the bucket and handing from their necks.

There are about 15 of them drumming all in a beat, much energy! We very slowing join the main march. Folks all smiling and waving us on in, another sign says, “We won’t get fooled again” I move in with some vets that are marching, some from Nam, some from the Gulf, some from WW2. We all are moving very slow up 7th Ave. We all are looking up at the building as we pass them by. Folks are waving us on as we pass their building. Some have very big signs that are hanging from the buildings.

One says, “Dump Bush, no war for oil”. As we pass the building we all give a very loud cheer and they give us the thumbs up back. As I move through the march I hear some cheer leaders. I go closer and I see about 20 women all in formation doing their thing. And after each cheer they all slap their ass and say, “And Bush can kiss my ass”. As we pass another building there is a sign that must be about 40’x 80’ that says, “911 happed here and we say no to Bush!” As I move through the crowd I see an old lady in a wheel chair her sign says, “97 years old and still outraged”.

There is something very different about this march I noticed. I have been to another ones but this one is the most polite one I have been to. If some bump’s into you they say, “oh sorry”. I turn to one vet and ask him if he does not think folks are being very polite. He just smiles and says, “Yea, it seems so.” The police on the other hand just seemed bored like that have nothing to do. One thing I did not know is the police have been working since 911 without a contract; it came close of them striking on this day because they want a contact, and it does make one wonder.

As we get close up to the convention center where all the republicans are the singing gets louder and the drummers keep the beat. The chants keep on going and get louder. Around the convention center is what looks like a lot of police in riot gear and some very fat nicely dress republicans just standing there with their arms folded. It seems like they are gloating in a way and smiling. A few fly them the bird and then the rest of us join in. A sea of middle fingers all keeping a beat all singing, “Na, Na, Na, hey, hey, goodbye”

On one of the building is a very large TV screen with the Fox news on. A very loud chant starts, “Fox sucks, fox sucks, fox sucks all the while keeping our middle finger up and keeping the beat. As we pass another building a very big sign that is hanging from it says, "My Bush smells like shit".

As the march turns south I head to go to Grand Central Station to get back to NY State where I am staying. I have to go through the police line and just walk through them. They still look bored and in a way I feel sorry for them. They look like they just want to be at home on this Sunday. I pass the library on my way and see a young man talking to a crowd and I cross the street to hear what he has to say. As I get closer there must be a few hundred listening.

It’s then the policed moved in and said if we don’t move we will get arrested . I then move away and sit down with this another guy who calls someone on his cell telling them what is going on here. There seems to be a cool network of people on cells reporting back and forth to each other.

I then make it to Grand Central Station and find my train to go up north.

Still Pickin’
Bill Hudson

Thanks for the play-by-play Bill.
I watched the NYC march on C-Span. I especially enjoyed the Fox Sucks chant.
Then I went to downtown Chicago for our own little demonstration in solidarity with NYC's.

All the good stuff I missed playing shutters up - shutters down - uh oh - shutters up. Thanks for the post. I really wanted to see it, but got a little busy. When will the presidential debates take place? Anybody know?

Why Carla you filthy communist you! You would have made a great executioner during the great purges in the Soviet Union. For the rest of you who don't know the demonstration were organized by the Stalinist International Answer or it's real name The Workers World Party. The group is headed by Brian Becker and Larry Holmes, but the real man behind it all is President John Kennedy's former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. Other than forming demonstration, this group gives it's support to North Korea and Cuba. So carla you're keeping great company there.

filthy communist? I'll have you know I'm a clean freak!

Stalin has been discredited (can you say buh-bye/do cvidania).

Communism is so 20th Century.

I'm a progressive Democrat.

LOL, wow Its been a while since I have heard all that about the whole communist thing. Too much!
We use to hear all that years ago and poeple would say, "Why don't you go back to Russia?" I would tell them because I am from the South Bronx and that is where I am from.
What I did not add to my report were the anti march people. I am sure they tried their best but it was like a bad grade B movie. They had signs like, communist for Kerry and things like that.
Still Pickin'
B.H.

I found this on the W.W.P. website judge for yourself. http://www.workers.org/wwp.php

About Workers World
Workers World is more than a newspaper. It reflects the views of Workers World Party, which was formed in 1959.

We bring you news about many different kinds of struggles and issues, checked and documented for accuracy. We also bring you a viewpoint. All newspapers do, but the corporate press don't admit they do it.

What is our basic view? We're for socialism. We think that ownership of the tremendous productive wealth built up by hundreds of millions of workers can't remain in the hands of a privileged few.

The capitalist profit system is unplanned and irrational. It's wrecking the world. Improved technology brings layoffs and poverty, not comfort and lighter work. Booms lead to busts.

The competition for markets produces devastating wars and environmental destruction. Fabulous wealth alongside deep poverty poisons all human relations, stimulating racism and other blame-the-victim ideologies.

We put our ideas into practice. We are in the student movement, the labor movement, the women's movement, the lesbian/gay/bi/trans movement, the anti-war and anti-racist movements. We fight hard for a better life right now, but we know that nothing is secure--not our jobs, our homes, our health care, our pensions, our civil rights and liberties--as long as capitalism exists. So our goal is a society run by the workers, not just as pawns in a capitalist political game but as collective owners of the social wealth.

This is not a new idea. Karl Marx put socialist ideology on a scientific footing a century and a half ago. The last hundred years have seen many revolutions--and counter-revolutions--all over the world. We try to learn from the successes and the setbacks.

You might have read about Workers World Party recently. We've been attacked a lot in the big business media. So we know we must be doing something right.

We don't fit Fox News's caricatures of us. We're independent Marxists who respect the struggles for self-determination and progress of oppressed nations. We try to understand their problems in a world dominated by Western imperialism. We don't jump on the bandwagon when Third World leaders are demonized. Our goal is solidarity of all the workers and oppressed against this criminal imperialist system.


Seems like the 20th century is alive and well with these jokers. Progressive Democrat huh?

International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) is a front group for the communist Workers World Party. The Workers World Party is, literally, a Stalinist organization. It rose out of a split within the old Socialist Workers Party over the Soviet Union's 1956 invasion of Hungary -- the breakaway Workers World Party was all for the invasion. International ANSWER today unquestioningly supports any despotic regime that lays any claim to socialism, or simply to anti-Americanism. It supported the butchers of Beijing after the slaughter of Tiananmen Square. It supports Saddam Hussein and his Baathist torture-state. It supports the last official Stalinist state, North Korea, in the mass starvation of its citizens. It supported Slobodan Milosevic after the massacre at Srebrenica. It supports the mullahs of Iran, and the narco-gangsters of Colombia and the bus-bombers of Hamas.

This is whom the left now marches with. The left marches with the Stalinists. The left marches with those who would maintain in power the leading oppressors of humanity in the world. It marches with, stands with and cheers on people like a speaker at NYC rally who declared that "the real terrorists have always been the United Snakes of America." It marches with people like the former Black Panther Charles Baron, who said in Washington, "if you're looking for an axis of evil then look in the belly of this beast."

All this but how DARE! you call them communists.

Bill Hudson.. you are a true American in my book!! Thank you for the guts to join other Americans in the first-amendment right of free speech, and in the right to peacefully assemble as well! Freak.. you make a blinding leap into vitriol over a FELLOW AMERICAN.. so WHAT if he is "progressive?" What is it to you, actually, that causes this kind of hateful rhetoric? Stalinist? ..and what is your position on this.. are you saying you are against civil rights for ALL american citizens.. explain to me how this is freedom?? Are you saying you want war and racism? Explain where you are coming from, then.

We need to hear all opinions/solutions and pick and choose the best. Only by comparing and contrasting can we find reason and truth. Monolithism, whether socialist, capitalist or parnoidist, is dogmatic and offensive.

We need to be flexible in all things. Hey, call me a flip-flopper

FreakChic is probably not old enough to remember that McCarthy's Communist witch hunt probably did more to solidify the liberal element in the country than Communism did.

She may have also missed the fact that music is a "liberal art."

Touchy, touchy...we usually reserve the adjective "filthy" for people like Cary, Mitch, Jack, and Orrin. We respect each other's beliefs (well, most of us do), and besides, I'm quite sure carla is squeaky clean.

McCarthyism is the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times. Liberals are fanatical liars, then as now. The portrayal of McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is sheer liberal hobgoblinism. Liberals weren't hiding under the bed during the McCarthy era. They were systematically undermining the nation's ability to defend itself, while waging a bellicose campaign of lies to blacken McCarthy's name. Liberals denounced McCarthy because they were afraid of getting caught, so they fought back like animals to hide their own collaboration with a regime as evil as the Nazis

At the time, half the country realized liberals were lying. But after a half century of liberal myth-making, even the disgorging of Soviet and American archives half a century later could not overcome their lies. In 1995, the U.S. government released its cache of Soviet cables that had been decoded during the Cold War in a top-secret undertaking known as the Venona Project. The cables proved the overwhelming truth of McCarthy's charges. Soviet spies in the government were not a figment of right-wing imaginations. McCarthy was not tilting at windmills. He was tilting at an authentic communist conspiracy that had been laughed off by the Democratic Party.The Democrats had unpardonably connived with the greatest evil of the 20th century. This could not be nullified. But liberals could at least hope to redeem the Democratic Party by dedicating themselves to rewriting history and blackening reputations. This is what liberals had done repeatedly throughout the Cold War.It's what some have done at this webpage. At every strategic moment this century, liberals would wage a campaign of horrendous lies and disinformation simply to dull the discovery the American people had made. They have gotten good at it.

Unless we fight for proper treatment of history and counter the nonsense images of McCarthy, no history can be safe from the liberal noise machine. Someday, school children will be taught that all of America cringed with terror at Ken Starr, whose evil designs on the nation were frustrated only through the sacrifice of brave liberals. People will have vivid images of the pounding boots of Starr's subpoena-servers and the Gestapo-like wails of alarms as Ken Starr arrived to kick in the doors of innocent Sounds familiar here doesn't it? Americans and storm through their bedrooms. It will be the Reign of Terror under Ken Starr. Like with McCarthy in the past it's all nonsense. Progressive Democrats indeed.

Music as a liberal art? Tell that to the victims of the Nazi troops who butchered as they goose stepped to Richard Wagner. Music like politics can be manipulated. As Democrats already know.

Let's see how the Anti-defamation League weighs in on International Answer and racism shall we? Their webpage states

The ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition, created by the New York-based International Action Center to protest the bombing of Afghanistan, has organized many anti-war protests around the country since September 2001. The largest and most disturbing was on April 20, 2002, in Washington DC. Called the “National March for Palestine Against War and Racism,” the massive rally was attended by approximately 200,000 people, including thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators. The rally served as a forum for supporting violence and terror organizations, and for a proliferation of anti-Semitic expression. The ANSWER coalition moved up the date of its rally to April 20 to coincide with anti-globalization demonstrations, which were organized to protest the IMF and World Bank. ANSWER has become one of the most effective organizers for anti-war rallies, attracting thousands of demonstrators to subsequent rallies. ANSWER has played a key role in bringing Arab and Muslim groups into the anti-war and anti-racism movements, which has led to extreme invective against Israel during protests and expressions of support for Palestinian terrorists. Among the groups that have endorsed ANSWER events and participated in rallies are Al-Awda and the Islamic Association for Palestine. I have let the facts come forward Jazzmary2U and I've spoken. Those who wish to dispute can check the ADL at

http://www.adl.org/Israel/israel_protest_calendar_groups.asp

Or maybe Jazzmary2U you just don't agree ant-semitism are examples of racism.

"McCarthyism is the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times."

Someone's been drinking the Ann Coulter Kool Aid!

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&num=100&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=McCarthyism+is+the+greatest+Orwellian+fraud+of+our+times&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images

so why the hell are there all these protest at the RNC when there wasn't a damn one durring the DNC? why do all the librals have so much can in their vaginas? Don't they have jobs to be working at insead of protesting?
'I especially enjoyed the Fox Sucks chant.' I really don't remember that? i doubt it even happend. Fox kicks all other new networks over and over again. CNN= Communist News Network, one of the most skewed news networks next to NBC, ABC, and the rest of 'em, FOX is by far the most imforming new network. If i want news on tv I turn to fox, you anti-capitalism freaks, and anti- big media types shouldn't hate fox, for they arn't nearly as large as NBC, ABC, UPN, CBS, ect.

you all need to listen to more Sean hannity http://www.hannity.com/story.php?content=/live_stream hey it's free, and live when he's on the air.

"FOX is by far the most imforming new network."

"Study: Fox News tops in misinformed viewers"

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/news2003/oct03/oct06/4_thurs/news2thursday.html

Yes! Fox News is the best! Screw you commie bastards! Why don't you all go suck off Hitler?!

Should I even note the massive torrent of misspellings in mtekk's (aka Mr. Informed) post?

librals
durring
happend
imforming
arn't
ect.

God help us!

nah, it's not just the misspelling. It's the rampant mental illness.

God, I just dont know where to start, lol. But as far as we saying ,"FOX SUCKS", yes that is true with a sea of middle fingers towards the screen on the building. Think of about 5,000 at a time chanting, FOX SUCKS,FOX SUCKS.
There is another America and my hope is we all vote theses bums out.
Still Pickin'
Bill Hudson

Would someone please explain "so much can in their vaginas" to me? Or is that a symptom of mental illness, to speak in tongues? As for FOX---the last time I looked at it, Geraldo was still working there. 'Nuff said. And I wish I could have seen that sea of fingers!! What a glorious sight!!! Too bad there's so much hatred and paranoia on this thread. I feel like I've been in school with the teacher everybody hates.

The symptom is distorted thinking.

I love C-Span. They showed the people chanting Fox sucks. It was great.

And now even more truths and they're lots of them about this beloved defenders of freespeech and racial equality I give you ANSWER....

http://slash.autonomedia.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/03/1946241&mode=nocomment&

Since Truth seems to be a casulity on this website.

You know what? If this FreakChic is not Ann Coulter, she ought to be sued for copyright infringement. Presenting those ideas as her own is misleading not to mention annoying.
"The myth of ‘McCarthyism’ is the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times. … Liberals are fanatical liars, then as now. Everything you think you know about McCarthy is a hegemonic lie.” --Ann Coulter, in "Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terror" and thanks for the pointer, mroop. It was very educational.

I believe the saying don't believe everything you read or hear only what you need to make an informed decision.

My hope is we never have to go through what happened in the 1950's. Many people lost their jobs and lives were crushed.
Here is hoping Bush and his bunch leave town as soon as they can.
Still Pickin'
Bill H.

.. right ON.. Bill.. and Carla.. and Mroop..
Hey, Freak.. how about YOUR opinion, not flaming on liberals?? whattagot that is better for americans??

Haha, I have never showed much faith in any of the news shows. They are exactly this, shows, they compete for ratings with Friends, CSI, and such. They will often jump the gun, tell stories that aren't true, and tell them from whatever point of view they want. They are biased and to me it matters little what they say. I just wish they would do more research before running with a story in order to be the "First ones there."

As for the RNC and the DNC in my opinion (whatever that's worth) both are about the same. Rich people grouped up together trying to figure out how to get richer. I am sure there are some people in there who care about the USA and want to bring about change, but mostly its just rich people trying to score more money. If anyone can honestly tell me that either party if going to really care about lower middle-class people and such, then maybe I could change my opinion. I am human and prone to mistakes.

From what I could see on TV, protestors got a lot of freedom in NYC, at the RNC. In Boston, at the DNC, most protesting was done from a small, chain-linked fenced pen, with barbed wire!! Does anyone see the hypocrisy in this????