Organizing for the 2008 RNC Protests: A Report and Reflections

from Media Mouse

October 3 2007

Over Labor Day weekend this year, some folks from Grand Rapids made a trip to the Twin Cities to attend the “pReNC,” a meeting organized by the RNC Welcoming Committee¹ to make plans for protests surrounding the 2008 Republican National Convention. What follows is the official report from the meeting issued by the RNC Welcoming Committee, as well as some thoughts and reflections on the planning process as it compares to other recent mass mobilizations. By way of a disclaimer, this piece reflects the thoughts of one local person who attended the meeting and is not meant to influence any of the local organizing which will no doubt follow. Moreover, it’s important to be up front–both the RNC and the DNC will, and indeed should be–protested. Neither is “better” than the other. To that end, visit Unconventionalaction.org² and Recreate68.org³ for more on organizing against the DNC.

Media Mouse formed in the fall of 1999 following the protests in Seattle that shutdown the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting⁴. While no official count is available, it would probably be safe to assume that thousands of people got involved in hundreds of groups around the country that formed following Seattle. Like many of these groups, Media Mouse formed to work on what could be generally described as opposing neo-liberal economic policies both abroad in the form of undemocratic and imperialist trade agreements such as NAFTA and locally with the outsourcing of jobs to Mexico. Media Mouse also took inspiration from the Indymedia movement (http://www.indymedia.org) and was formed with the understanding–learned from the streets of Seattle and rooted in the struggles of the Zapatistas⁵–that the corporate media was not going to report on the burgeoning social movements in an accurate manner.

Like the groups that formed around the country, Media Mouse quickly began working on local issues connected to the large goal of challenging neoliberalism. One of our first actions was a “Rally for Alternative Transit⁶” that protested the shutdown of US-131’s “S-Curve” through downtown Grand Rapids and the routing of traffic onto Division in Grand Rapids’ densely populated Heartside Neighborhood. For us, it was another example of the needs of profit taking precedent over the concerns of people, embodied by the popular slogan of the post-Seattle movements “People over Profit.” This organizing continued locally with a protest held against the World Bank and the IMF⁷ in solidarity with demonstrations happening in Washington DC in April of 2000⁸. While Grand Rapids’ event was small–100 people or so–and nothing compared to the militancy of the several hundred person “black bloc” in DC⁹–there were arrests at the unpermitted march and indeed it seems hard to imagine being able to mobilize 100 people for a march against the World Bank¹⁰ in 2007 in GR.

At the risk of being overly nostalgic, the post-Seattle climate was considerably different than now. Without going into the causes of this shift in consciousness–of which numerous causes from 9/11 to burn-out can be analyzed–the post-Seattle period was considerably more exciting. Coming off of what was a clear victory in Seattle–the delay of the WTO Summit and its overall failure–there was an unmistakable sense that direct action and organizing could confront some of the most powerful institutions in the United States. Aside from the aforementioned anti-World Bank march, a protest held outside of a speech by a former World Bank economist in May of 2000 attracted fifty people, no small feat for an event at noon in downtown Grand Rapids.

In the post-Seattle period, it was not uncommon to see people travel great distances to attend the rash of demonstrations held, so it was not a surprise to see people at the World Bank event from Detroit. Similarly, when groups in Detroit and Windsor issued a call to oppose the Organization of American States meeting in June of 2000¹¹ thousands showed up to protest the two institutions¹². While this idea of “summit hopping” (http://nefac.net/node/84) was justly critiqued within the movement, thousands of activists mobilized to confront a variety of entities including the RNC¹³ in Philadelphia, he DNC in Los Angeles¹⁴, the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue in Cincinnati¹⁵.

By 2001, Media Mouse made the decision to attend and report (photos¹⁶, video¹⁷) on the April 2001 protests (http://www.infoshop.org/octo/ftaa.html) against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)¹⁸. The city had been turned into a veritable fortress, with miles of fencing enclosing the Summit site and the police geared up for a confrontation. On the day before the protests, the police reported on the arrests of a “terrorist” group that allegedly planned to use bombs against the Summit. Despite the rhetoric of the police and the militarization of much of the upper city, within an hour of the first protest beginning, Media Mouse was able to witness demonstrators knock a substantial hole in the fence and surge towards the site of the Summit. Despite being pushed back, repeated attempts on the fence would take place over the two days and nights of protests as protestors engaged in running battles with police. In the end, the demonstration overshadowed the Summit and the FTAA is dead.

Following 9/11, this energy lessened, perhaps understandably so. Many in the movement temporarily shifted their energy to antiwar work, while a debate flourished over the place of militant protest in the post-9/11 climate. However, this did not keep the movement silent for long, in January of 2002 some 10,000 protests attended the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in New York City¹⁹ to protest against global capitalism.

Media Mouse attended the 2003 protests against the FTAA in Miami²⁰, and while several thousand protestors turned out to protest the FTAA meeting, the intense police repression minimized the effectiveness of the protests. Following the FTAA protest in the fall of 2003, there was significant attention placed on the 2004 RNC protest as a chance for “the movement” to steal back its moment. However, the 2004 RNC protests lacked strategy and despite hundreds of thousands of protestors in New York City, little of consequence happened. Media Mouse observed²¹ a combination of mass arrests and masses of protestors wandering around without any clear idea where their interests should be focused, a fact that clearly showed that the strategy for the RNC–including a “direct action” day–had failed. Energy was briefly rekindled for the 2005 inauguration protests, but despite an attempt to “crash” the parade route²², those protests largely failed as well.

With the so-called “summit” protests, there was always a tension between those who prioritized organizing in their own communities and those who focused on the “summit” meetings. Criticisms can certainly be made–and should be–of the “summit” organizing model, but in thinking about the post-Seattle period, it seems clear that they served an important function in giving inspiration to local organizing efforts and fostered a greater sense of “a movement” than what exists now. Certainly, with Media Mouse coming out of that context, the post-Seattle period to 9/11 was incredibly exciting–with numerous protests planned and a sense that either “we are winning” or that we could win. To be sure, a lot of us–myself included–never really stopped to think about what “winning” meant, but the energy was infectious and thousands of folks got involved–and in many cases–participated in demonstrations and organizing campaigns that seem unheard of in the contemporary political climate. There have been antiwar convergences since 2003, but they have largely been unable to inspire people to action in the manner that the anti-globalization movement did.

Out of this context, I attended the “pReNC” in Minneapolis-St. Paul, in part to avoid the simple tactical failures of the 2004 RNC protests, but also with a desire to rekindle that energy and sense of excitement that I had in the post-Seattle period. Coming out of the “pReNC,” I am quite excited and impressed by the work that has been done thus far. I left the “pReNC” feeling that there is a potential for the RNC to rekindle the energy of the anti-globalization movement and take a step towards building a stronger anti-authoritarian “left” movement in the United States. Aside from the inspiration that always comes from interacting with radicals outside of Grand Rapids, there were a lot of conversations that were far more promising than those proceeding pre-protest discussions in recent years. There was considerable talk of having a clear strategy, and indeed, a clear call to “shut down” the RNC²³ was issued and an overall strategic framework was adopted to facilitate this. Like the best of the post-Seattle protests, people expressed a willingness to learn and be self-critical of previous protests, and the plan for the RNC builds off of recent successes at the G8 in Germany²⁴.

Moreover, there was a strong sense that the protests cannot simply be about the RNC, but rather, that they must look forward to the future. In other words, organizing in the Twin Cities and around the country must focus not only on the RNC but using the protests as a tool to involve more people and build a stronger movement. This is perhaps the most exciting aspect of the meeting, that there was a willingness to look beyond street protests and look at how we can build hundreds of decentralized and autonomous groups around the country that are capable of acting locally to achieve clear victories.