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More on police bullying and incompetence in handling RNC demonstrators in this Newsday article. Apparently orange netting is the new tear gas:
Meanwhile, at Ground Zero -- a touchstone symbol in this year's presidential race -- a peaceful march turned sour as police strung orange nets at Vesey and Church streets, corralling 200 people including journalists and onlookers. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly blamed the Ground Zero arrests on march organizers "reneging on an agreement not to block traffic" and "failing to walk on sidewalk instead of street."As Tom Hayden puts it, "The protesters got in Karl Rove's sound bite...there have never been so many people protesting a political convention of the 80 in our history, and there have never been so many people arrested." Damn right about the sound bite. It was a good feeling after marching Sunday to see the protester crowd photo on the New York Post's front page. Especially since the picture of Dick Cheney's Ellis Island convention kickoff speech ran inside. Surely that would have been given bigger play if everyone hadn't turned out in such record numbers?But many detainees told reporters they were not aware of the rules. "They said as long as you observe the red lights, it shouldn't be a problem," said Bob Curley, who was arrested with his son. "Then we walked off the sidewalk and across the street and that was the end."
Good reporting on the continuing demonstrations and shitty police arrest tactics can be found at the Village Voice (Anya Kamenetz's blog). It's hard to read this stuff without getting a knot in your stomach. It sounds like the demonstrators are just doing their thing--demonstrating--and the police are provoking, tricking, manhandling, and otherwise being complete dicks. Perfect palace guards for the Republicans, to keep them feeling safe and secure in their bubble world. Safe and secure from dissent, that is.
More RNC protest photos (click top two to enlarge). Previous group is here. Full set is here.
My photos from the United for Peace & Justice march welcoming the Republicans to NY. The huge throng started at 14th Street and moved north, filing past Madison Square Garden, where everyone did the requisite jeering. A spirited and orderly event, at least what I saw of it. A lot of cops standing around uselessly. I haven't read any reports since I got to the computer to process these pictures; I hope nothing ugly happened.
UPDATE: I just made the mistake of looking at Slate, the Microsoft-funded online journal, where man on the street correspondent Bryan Curtis follows what he and his headline writer call "the lefties" up Seventh Avenue. He makes the protest sound very silly and quaint, but of course no one can demand more balance from the magazine since there was no parade of hundreds of thousands of "righties."
UPDATE 2: More photos are here. Full set is here.
The Suspended Disbelief Puppet Theater performed tonight (Aug. 28) at Pete's Candy Store in Brooklyn. Interesting mix of dense, decrepit, Gothic ornamentalism in the puppetry and sets (think the Brothers Quay, Poe, Ivan Albright) and hip, urbane references in the songs and dialogue: Bogie and Bacall's sexually-loaded banter about horse racing from The Big Sleep; the inimitable Mrs. Miller singing "These Boots Are Made for Walking," and a bizarre novelty record by Melvin Van Peebles called "Eyes on the Rabbit" played for maximum pathos. Rose Csorba did the puppeteering, Jim Thomson of Plasmodium provided the voices and the found/treated sound, and Sarah White and Steve Ingham sang White's lovely songs on acoustic guitars between acts.
Normally Robert Christgau's writing is so unclear, but he really nails the the new Ramones documentary in the Voice. The movie's great, the only thing I still wonder is where in the world their sound came from. The film explains how intense it was for the bland mid-70s, but not why they made the particular choices they did: short, hard uncomplicated loud songs with "morbid" themes. Performance art is mentioned in the film (and by Christgau) as an analogy, but we still don't know why 4 guys from Queens who liked the Stooges and the Dolls invented this form of high-energy minimalism. They weren't from the arty set like the Talking Heads; in fact the most fascinating person in the film is Johnny, who is a Bush and Nixon-loving Republican (and who, we also learn, kept the band honed, driven, and together as a unit for 20 years). Where did his sense of style and the vision of the group come from, given that he's so non-reflective? This is not to slight the other members' contributions, but they all seem to agree at the end of the day that Johnny was the Nazi behind the Bop.
Check out Tyson the skateboarding bulldog, the canine personification of joy. [via] Be sure watch the videos: the March 2003 clip is especially good.
I did this drawing 20 years ago, when the Republican convention came to Dallas, where I was living at the time. It was published in BWANA-ART, a Dallas zine. I seem to be cursed to live in cities where Republicans flock to crown scary idiots.
A few fleeting reminiscences of convention '84: (1) Dallas still had two papers then, and the coverage in the Dallas Times Herald by John Bloom (AKA Joe Bob Briggs) and Molly Ivins was some of the best newspaper writing I've ever read. (2) A few orange haired punks went on a rampage downtown--meaning yelling and handing out some leaflets. The whole city (a place of insurance companies, Christian sales motivators, repressed non-whites, and tit bars) was scandalized. I'm sure those kids did hard time. (3) The co-op gallery where I was showing hosted a political exhibit, "Left/Right: The Political Show." Sculptor Greg Metz (a former classmate of Texas ex-pats Gary Panter and Georgeann Deen) made an ambitious sculptural tableau called Reagan's Temple of Doom, with a fanged Gipper rising from a toilet in a funnel cloud. A reporter and a photographer from Time came to look at the show--handsome blowdried dudes in tight designer jeans--but snuck out the back door, leaving us artists standing there like fools.