Wednesday, August 25th, 2004

Uh Oh

The State Supreme Court has denied UFPJ’s request to demonstrate in Central Park. (More here.)

What’s the significance of this? The Park held great symbolic value, as it has been the site of historic anti-war demonstrations over the years. But much more importantly, if not widely discussed, it gave the demo organizers a way to limit the possibilities of violence.

Organizers know that over the last 5 years since WTO, police departments and authorities across the country have figured out many ways to pen in protesters and limit their movement, most of which involve heavy uses of force and are strictly about containment. These have been developed in reaction to the headless quality of such demonstrations, in which there are always blocs of protesters who will stage unpredictable marches, sit-ins, or other tactics. The result of post-WTO containment strategies, however, has been the increased potential for nonviolent protesters to get hurt.

Central Park at least offered the possibility to stage a large peaceful demonstration, expanding the anti-war and anti-Bush message to attract families and nontraditional demonstrators. Instead the city is inviting madness to the streets of New York. Just like ’68 and ’92, it’ll be some crazy Year of the Monkey shit, for sure.

Is the City making a huge strategic miscalculation or is this all part of their plan?

UPDATED: Reports this past weekend had some Republican party leaders crowing that they would welcome any street chaos as an image with which they could lambaste Kerry and paint the Democrats as extremist and unpatriotic and, yup, down with the domestic terrorists.

Turning down the Central Park permit means a bunch of things:

1) If protest organizers stick with an older plan of marching on the Westside Highway, they won’t be seen by many city-dwellers and are denied good photo opps. How urgent is a shot of protesters marching past the Chelsea Piers?

2) If they stick with the Seventh Avenue plan, they encounter lots of risks. They don’t have a destination to keep most people moving toward, and the Frozen Zone will be on lockdown. Big, bad, ugly scene.

3) If they demonstrate in Central Park anyway, they also risk clashes, fines, and legal issues.

In the first option, the protesters get upstaged in the media. Bad pictures, low coverage. In the last two, the Republican spin-meisters get their blood and their rhetorical victory.

posted by @ 5:41 pm | 0 Comments

Friday, August 20th, 2004

What You’re Getting Clobbered With

From today’s NY Times:

“High-definition cameras that photograph the undercarriages of trucks. A shiny new Italian-made helicopter with its ‘night sun’ floodlight. Little handsaws straight out of auto-body shops that can cut through chains linking protesters. A metal barrier that will stop a truck cold. Dogs that signal they have smelled explosives by simply sitting down…”

Here’s more on the Long Range Acoustic Device. It’s not a Bose subwoofer.

Meanwhile, here’s Tom Hayden on NYC ’04. And more FBI follies.

posted by @ 7:59 am | 1 Comment

Friday, August 20th, 2004

The Fourth Unheard: Twin Cities Rap

On the heels of Egon’s journey into Connecticut rap comes Peter Scholtes’ journey into the history of Minnesota rap.

Do you want more? You got it.

Here once again, for the benefit of us die-hards and all those funk-faking front-like-they-know-it-alls, is real hip-hop scholarship.

Someone–one of you gate-keepers out there that have been killing trees and wasting plastic on the wrong people–please please please please give this man what he needs to do a book, a CD compilation, a DVD, anything he wants.

While we’re at it, cop these books:

Freddy Fresh’s The Rap Records

Joe Schloss’s Making Beats

Like the man said: And if you don’t know…get an intern or a work-study.

posted by @ 7:00 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, August 19th, 2004

Still More Evidence The Reeps Are Imploding

This column by former soldier David Hackworth has resurfaced as senators inquire into the potentially biggest financial scandal in Iraq to date. $8.8 billion in missing funds to Iraq. Yup, BILLION. Does it involve Halliburton and Rumsfeld? Bet.

posted by @ 2:38 pm | 0 Comments

Thursday, August 19th, 2004

The Emerging Democratic Majority?

More Blue Vs. Red analysis in this new book by a group of liberals backed by one really rich dude. They’ve been running these interesting print ads this past week juxtaposing people like Michael Moore (metro) vs. Mel Gibson (retro).

The argument as far as I can tell isn’t that new–blue states with urban centers end up sending lots of money to red states that are largely rural. Red states are overrepresented in Congress and tend to suck up resources through subsidies for agriculture and forestry, which in turn literally starve people in the cities. What may be somewhat new is the suggestion that “metro” america can simply outvote “retro” america, establishing a new liberal majority.

Interesting to see if this book takes off, as Kevin Phillips Emerging Republican Majority did back in 1969 at the dawn of the Nixon era.

The entire book is downloadable here.

posted by @ 8:33 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, August 19th, 2004

Government’s Code Orange Strategy UPDATE

Today’s AP story is headline at CNN:

“The FBI anticipates violent protests at the upcoming Republican National Convention in New York but does not have enough evidence to move against any group or person, the bureau’s top terrorism official said Wednesday.”

and this…

“Concern over the convention comes amid heightened security across New York over fears that foreign terrorists might strike the city again. New York remains on a ‘high’ terrorism alert level, while most of the country is on elevated alert.

Federal investigators have infiltrated some organizations and are monitoring plans for protests being published on the Internet. The FBI also interviewed some protesters around the country before last month’s Democratic convention in Boston and in anticipation of the GOP convention.

‘We don’t have any specific plot where we have all the variables we need to go out and take pre-emptive and judicial action,’ said Gary Bald, assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division.”

Note that this spin-recontrol press conference came two days after the NY Times published its front-page story on FBI monitoring of protesters, which have already called pre-emptive. In any case, now the government”s Code Orange strategy is out there in the open: again, link the anti-war movement to Al-Qaeda, create a domestic-to-global-terror continuum that just doesn’t exist.

posted by @ 6:39 am | 0 Comments

Wednesday, August 18th, 2004

Marching On

If you missed this, the F.B.I. is questioning protesters about violence. (Today’s update here.) Part of the Code Orange strategy–linking the protesters with Al-Qaeda, creating a global-terror-to-domestic-terror continuum. Get us all asking: why wouldn’t anarchists and Al-Qaeda both want to target Citibank and the IMF?

Stop me if I sound conspiracist here. Then come check me next spring when protest season reopens, even if Kerry wins…

Meanwhile, the latest press release regarding what demonstrators are beginning to call “the battle for Central Park”. (Bonus reading fun: idiotic sectarian flaming!)

posted by @ 7:28 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, August 18th, 2004

Even More Signs The Reeps Are In Trouble…

This statement from outgoing Republican Representative Doug Bereuter (Nebraska). Bet he won’t be speaking in NYC or getting a news show on Fox.

posted by @ 7:04 pm | 2 Comments

Wednesday, August 18th, 2004

Welcome Peaceful Protesters

Imagine if they had these in Seattle at the WTO or even Chicago or Miami ’68? No truth to the rumor that bootleg DVDs in Chinatown are being discounted to $3 for demonstrators.

posted by @ 7:23 am | 0 Comments

Tuesday, August 17th, 2004

Republicans and the Black Vote

Here’s some cross-posting with Funkdigital, who weighs in on Republicans and the Black Vote.

Funkdigi got me thinking:

The Republican strategy is based on alienating the Black vote. It’s how they realigned the Democrats in the south under Nixon and it’s how they continue to keep Southern and interior states literally in the red. There’s a lot more to be said about this, and I’ll try to do it here over the coming months.

(By the way, Thomas Frank’s new book goes part of the way toward describing how this gets done. But, I’m afraid due to Frank’s blindspot on race he doesn’t get the whole story. Chain Reaction by the Edsalls does a much better job but it’s outdated now by over a decade–more in future posts…)

That said, I was stunned in 2000 at how diverse the Republican convention tried to be. Not just because Chaka Khan and Brian McKnight were featured performers (hope they got PAID), but sending Colin Powell out to defend affirmative action in front of a hostile hall was pretty bold. No doubt we’ll see the same rainbow effect from the dais in Madison Square Garden in two weeks.

But all THAT said, the Reeps did nothing to actively court the Black vote in 2000, and on the ground, they did a lot to disenfranchise it. They still are, esp. in the South. But aside from Florida, we mostly won’t hear about it because the “battleground states” are mainly in the Rust Belt or the Sun Belt…more on this too in future posts…

posted by @ 5:22 pm | 1 Comment



Previous Posts

Feed Me!

Revolutions

Word

Fiyahlinks


twitter_logo

@zentronix

Come follow me now...

Archives

We work with the Creative Commons license and exercise a "Some Rights Reserved" policy. Feel free to link, distribute, and share written material from cantstopwontstop.com for non-commercial uses.

Requests for commercial uses of any content here are welcome: come correct.

Creative Commons License