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Tactical Tensions
"No matter what side they’re on, young activists think they might just be the deciding factor in this election."
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By Chelsea Vargas
As the Republican National Convention gets underway, we’ll see how the widely hyped protests in NYC will play out, and who they will benefit – liberals or conservatives. Youth Radio’s Chelsea Vargas spoke with various Bush opponents before the convention to find out about the different ways they were planning to make their voices heard.
In the 2000 election, lefties got the blame for helping to elect President Bush. So it’s no wonder Evan Lederman, President of New York Young Democrats, is nervous that radical protesting at the Republican National Convention might backfire.
EVAN (on tape)
I think the Republicans are actually hoping that things get out of hand so they can point to young people and say ‘see here it is again, just like in Vietnam. These crazy young kids trying to disrupt the system.’
CHELSEA
Evan’s group calls itself young dems, but the grassroots strategies they’re using to work within the system are hardly new: phone banking, going door to door, that kind of thing. At the convention itself, while protestors throw tofu-cream pies in delegates’ faces, Evan and his friends will be planting themselves at key spots around Madison Square Garden with Kerry posters. As for those planning flashier protest?
EVAN (on tape)
I’m hoping, I’m preaching, I’m advocating, to all my members across the state of New York, to do it in a peaceful manner, to do it in an orderly fashion…
CHELSEA
Unlike Evan, protestor Kaneesha Mills, from the International ANSWER Coalition, says she’s not preaching to anyone about how to behave at the RNC. Young activists will be harassing delegates, and chaining themselves together in something called a “sleeping dragon” to block the streets. And what does Kaneesha think about the Roman style vomitorium where people pig out and then puke into a trough to oppose consumption?
KANEESHA (on tape)
I mean, that’s their choice. Whatever people choose and what form of demonstration they choose, that is their choice. I’m not going to sit here and say, if you choose this particular form of protesting, I stand against you. I don’t feel I have that right…
CHELSEA
Right now, Kaneesha’s focusing her energy on the massive civil liberties marches planned for the weekend before the convention. No one can predict whether they’ll be peaceful or chaotic or a little bit of both. But Kaneesha feels strongly that differentiating between protestors is just another way to divide the people who oppose Bush.
KANEESHA (on tape)
There’s always the attempt to create a division within the movement, in the sense that there are good and bad protestors. And I don’t see it that way at all. You know, or that there’s some people who come out to protest and are peaceful, and there are those ‘other protestors,’ we see ourselves as one united movement…
CHELSEA
Maybe so, but the President of Cal Berkeley Democrats Pamela Bachilla is counting on the American public to make those exact distinctions…
PAMELA (on tape)
And they can differentiate between people who are protesting legitimately because they’re tired of George Bush and people who are being crazy and who are breaking things, I think people can tell the difference.
CHELSEA
The Cal Berkeley Democrats lure students to their meetings with free pizza and promises of “political entertainment.” They’re registering voters, planning a bus trip to the swing state of Nevada, and passing around their patriotic flag pen, trying to get kids to sign up for their list serve.
CAL DEMS (on tape)
Hi! Are you new to Cal? Yeah. That’s exciting. Are you a democrat? Cool. That means you’re gonna have a really great year because Kerry’s gonna win, partly because of us… Yeah. Would you like to sign up for our listserve? It’s not spam…
CHELSEA
The only thing that jumps out from the heaps of John Kerry paraphernalia on the Cal Dems table, is their magazine Smart Ass, a play on the whole donkey thing. Pamela Bachilla was even handing out Smart Ass pins, trying to raise awareness in any way she can back in California, while others head off to New York.
PAMELA (on tape)
I think time is better spent organizing to make sure that we have the good leaders, to be the alternative to George Bush. Time is better spent working on the ballot initiatives that you care about in your community. Absolutely.
CHELSEA
But for others, this is absolutely the time to do something extreme, even if it could blow up in their faces. And no matter what side they’re on, young activists think they might just be the deciding factor in this election, whether they’re casting a vote or taking to the street. Or both.
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