February 23, 2004
500,000 to 1,000,000 Protesters Expected at GOP Convention
By Byron LaMasters
This could easily turn into a circus. The New York Times reports:
Though the Police Department and many protest organizers have been reluctant to predict how many people will ultimately turn out for protests, estimates have ranged from 500,000 people to a million.
Six months before any delegate is to take a seat at Madison Square Garden, it is clear that many groups are already planning strategy and activities. Labor unions, environmentalists, self-declared anarchists and others who merely label themselves as anti-Bush or anti-Republican are making plans to turn out. Barely a week passes without several planning sessions in New York, focusing on everything from housing and tactics to legal strategy and what to expect in interactions with the police.
Are Bush / Rove etc., still deluded into thinking Bush can actually carry New York? Hah.
Posted by Byron LaMasters at February 23, 2004 12:41 AM
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Wish I could remember where I read this, but there was a group of actors who dressed up and protested at a fundraiser in NYC where Rove was supposed to speak--called themselves Billionaires for Bush and fooled the Sierra Club protestors so well that they got catcalled.
And if 500,000 to 1 million Democrat-haters threatened to protest the Democrat Convention, what whining we would hear from the left: "Brownshirts!" "Oppression!" "Stifling free speech!" "Questioning our patriotism!"
Just more publicity for GW Bush, my friends. And if you think he won't look better to mid-America in contrast to the sort of people who will show up to protest in New York, then you don't know America.
Mark has a point. Most people will see screaming 'hippies' on the news and won't take the protests seriously. I personally like the Billionaires for Bush tactic. Making fun of Bush is much more effective than screaming your head off.
The problem is the media focuses in on the people who are the most outrageous, not the ones in the middle. I have a similar gripe about how the media portrays gays, but that's another topic...
Hopefully this stays peaceful, we don't need sympathy for Bush.
Exactly,
The protests have to be "smart." Something that will "play in Peioria." Kill them with humor. The Billionaires for Bush is just one example.
There will probably be thousands of fringe lefty Naderites, anarchists, and anti-globalists in NYC to try to get free media publicity for their own causes. Count on GOP provocateurs to stir up these groups and manufacture negative photo ops which can then be used to discredit Democrats.
Huge demonstrations are rarely effective. If the estimated one million people who are predicted to demonstrate in NYC simply stayed home and registered just five new voters and raised $100 each, George Dubya would have to start work early on his concession speech.
Are Bush / Rove etc., still deluded into thinking Bush can actually carry New York?
Hah.
The timing and placement of the GOP convention are an obvious attempt by Bush/Cheney/Rove to exploit the third anniversary of 9/11. It wouldn't be a surprise if they decided to move the site of the convention to the derelict Deutsche Bank building, badly damaged when WTC-2 collapsed. The danger for Bush in being so identified with 9/11 is that it will remind people who was president on 9/11. Bush spent the better part of September 11, 2001 fleeing deeper and deeper into the interior of the US.
