On a clipboard on a card table held together with tape, set on the grass behind the basketball courts at Wicker Park, civil disobedience and political protest begin.
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Here, the Not On The Guest List Coalition encouraged demonstrators who planned to get arrested Tuesday to jot down their names and phone numbers if they wanted the help of the protest group’s lawyers.
“If you’re planning on participating in civil disobedience,” blared an announcement to the 1,000 protesters at the park, “come to this table and sign up.”
So much for spontaneity. But that is how it is at the Democratic National Convention, where the art of the protest has been hamstrung by the city’s restrictions on demonstrations and transformed into a struggle simply to get noticed, complete with sideshow antics.
The protests of 1968 might have been fueled by passion, the demonstrations building their own momentum around one volatile issue. These days, though, passion seems not to be enough. The momentum hardly gets going. Promises of civil disobedience rarely amount to anything.
Despite all the determination shown by Tuesday’s Not On The Guest List protesters, their efforts to get arrested fizzled in the face of a strong police presence.
Elsewhere, protesters resorted to silliness to get noticed.
What did the Chicago People’s Convention Coalition do after days of being ignored? It had a woman put on a Hillary Rodham Clinton mask–and take off her shirt to parade up Michigan Avenue.
What did the not-for-profit conservative group Public Advocate of the U.S. do to draw attention to its opposition to same-sex marriages? It slipped into a protest area near the United Center and staged a mock marriage ceremony.
The parties: a man and a donkey. The purported organizer: Gene Delgaudio and the Degenerate Organization for Normalization of Kinky Extra-species Yearnings.
“We are mocking the gay-rights organizations. . . . Same-sex marriage is simply a power grab to destroy the American family. . . . This is tomorrow’s couple, a man and a donkey, if we don’t pass the Defense of Marriage Act,” he said.
The Lesbian Avengers of Chicago asked the city if its protesters could eat fire during their demonstration in the protest pit at Michigan Avenue and Balbo Drive. The city, saying it was concerned about safety, told them no.
These protesters could take a lesson in organization from both sides of the abortion issue. The Pro-Life Action League, which has taken the lead in anti-abortion protests at the convention, often asks reporters for their pager and cellular-phone numbers, then notifies them of demonstrations.
The Christian Defense League has compiled a database of reporters who are attending the convention. The group created “Abortion Man,” a man clad in a Bill Clinton mask and blood-splattered lab coat, in hopes of getting attention.
Abortion-rights groups are just as organized and savvy. They can quickly summon dozens of volunteers, as they did Tuesday after a women’s health clinic in the Austin neighborhood was targeted for a demonstration.
Some of these pro-choice protesters arrived at the clinic before the anti-abortion demonstrators they were called to counter even began their event, which resulted in the arrests of two people on disorderly conduct charges.
“It’s not easy keeping pace with these people, but we have to,” said Dee Martin of the Los Angeles-based group Feminist Majority. “We know how to work the phones too.”
For those who do not, the city and the courts have not made things any easier. A federal judge Tuesday declined a request from the American Civil Liberties Union to force the city to move up to 20 protesters from behind 6-foot-high fences in a designated demonstration area near the United Center.
The ACLU complained that the fence barred demonstrators from close access to convention delegates and was demeaning. But U.S. District Senior Judge James B. Moran said he wasn’t going to order changes in security measures two days into the convention.
He did, however, ask the city, whose lawyers strenuously objected to any changes in security, to try to route more delegates from shuttle buses past the protesters.
Overcoming the restrictions is not easy, and a facade of organization is no substitute for the real thing. Not On The Guest List Coalition officials have been working since March on their protest–meeting, leafletting and placing ads in national magazines.
Robert MacDonald has been organizing for several months too. And even though he carries business cards identifying himself as coordinator of the Festival of Life, an anti-drug-war gathering stationed at Grant Park, he has been ineffective.
He could not even get someone to carry the festival’s small loudspeaker. With no volunteers, MacDonald had to hoist it on his back and carry it himself.
More often than not, successful expressions of protest have been of an accidental nature. New York activist Dana Beal, of a second anti-drug-war group Cures Not Wars, finally got on CNN when one of his banners became the backdrop during an unrelated interview.
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Then it was repeated throughout the day–for Beal, exposure beyond belief after four days of demonstrations and marches that added up to almost no coverage.
“You just can’t imagine how important it was,” he said. “It just made my day.”
Then again, even considerable organization and planning can fail to spark a protest. The National Space Society came to the protest pit at Michigan and Balbo with posters, T-shirts and stickers–even a woman wearing a phony spacesuit.
That, though, was not enough. The group spoke to an almost-empty lot.
“It’s pretty hard to get visibility when you are in an environment like this,” said Robert Zubrin, an aeronautical engineer from Colorado and chairman of the society’s executive committee.
“I think what we have to do next time is have three people in spacesuits.”