A Protest from the City

By Steven Wishnia, AlterNet. Posted August 31, 2004.

Harlem housing organizer James Lewis calls out, "Is this a good day for a protest? We're mad as hell and we're not gonna take it any more."

"That's right," said the chorus of protesters behind him.

Lewis kicked off Monday's Still We Rise march, organized by a coalition of more than 50 mostly local New York neighborhood, housing, immigrant, homeless, and AIDS groups. It drew around 10,000 people, and addressed the gritty economic realities of life in a city where the gap between the rich and the poor is as bad as it has ever been. This is the New York outside the Republicans' glitzy cocoon in Midtown Manhattan. This isn't the New York you see on Sex and the City, where women torture their feet into Jimmy Choos; this is the New York where buying the kids a pair of sneakers is a big deal. This is the New York, where, as 19-year-old Jesus Gonzalez of Brooklyn puts it, "We've got schools that look like prisons, with metal detectors and police in the halls, and prisons that look like schools, because they've got so many kids locked up."

"The Republicans are coming to town and seeing this totally sanitized version of New York City," says Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless. "They could spend all their time there and not see the impact of Bush's policies on New Yorkers."

Homelessness in the city, he says, is up 60 percent since Bush took office, has doubled among families with children, and is likely to get a lot worse if Bush's plans to decimate the Section 8 rent-subsidy program go through.

"This is a message to the Republicans that they can't wrap themselves in the flag. There's nothing more American than dissidence," says Hector Landron, 38, a graying newspaper deliveryman from the South Bronx. Landron, who has three children, is most concerned about education: Bush's "No Child Left Behind" program has cut money for schools while requiring teachers "to teach to a test instead of teaching our children."

Brooklyn's FUREE – Families United for Racial and Economic Equality – marched in a group of about 40, mostly mothers with children, all clad in red T-shirts. Maria Jones, 43, a former child-care worker, said they're trying to ensure both that day-care centers are safe and that workers are better paid. Child-care teachers now get around $7 an hour, she said, maybe $8 to $10 if they have a college degree, and no health benefits. Joe Burrell, 29, said he became homeless about two years ago, after he lost his job in a Queens hospital and "wound up doing lots of street things, drugs and alcohol." He carried one end of the black banner for the Positive Health Project, a needle-exchange program. It's not just about needle exchange, they help you build your life back up."

Despite the grittiness of the issues, the march was far from grim. Kori, a 24-year-old percussionist from Oakland, California, played a salsafied version of James Brown's "Funky Drummer" beat on a water jug. Scores of young Asian immigrants chant "One! We are the people! Two! A little bit louder! Three! We want justice! For the Third World!" And a bass drum and cowbell lay down a breakbeat under "If Bush had AIDS, what would he do? Find a cure, Find a cure."

One of the most vivid contingents was SIAFU, who wore scarlet or bright-olive T-shirts with an ant inside a black star. The siafu is an African ant that organizes into groups big enough to attack elephants, explained Raquel Larina, 30, an education worker from Oakland, California. "All of us decided to take off work and come here," she said. "Bush will probably ignore the protests," she added, "but they send a message to American voters and the world that "there's lots of opposition and you're not alone."

A substantial number of the marchers were sympathetic middle-class whites. Will Cummins, 46, of Palm Springs, California, carried a "Fight AIDS-Vote" placard. He was here on a business trip, but arranged his schedule so he could attend the protests. "We want our country back," said Jamie, a special-education teacher from Brooklyn. "And the peacefulness of it is great."

The march headed up Eighth Avenue until it reached the designated protest area just south of Madison Square Garden. A pen for the speakers was set up between 30th and 31st streets, demarcated by interlocking metal barricades on the sidewalk and an eight-foot metal grille down the middle of the road. About 20 riot cops stood across the avenue spaced about a yard apart, legs slightly spread, waists weighted down by guns and radios, clubs and handcuffs, keeping the marchers behind the barricades at 30th Street. The adjacent sidewalks, normally inhabited by several homeless people, were vacant. Police started kicking the homeless out of the area a few months ago, said Rogers, who only gave his last name, "so the wealthy Republicans wouldn't see homeless people on the street."

Rogers, a 50-year-old with tortoise-shell glasses, says he's been homeless for about three years, alternating among friends, the shelters, and the street, and is now "in the paperwork jungle of Section 8," waiting for placement in an apartment.

The best thing about the Still We Rise coalition, Rogers said, is "the cross-pollination. Victims of domestic violence, some of them are homeless. People with AIDS, some of them are homeless. Immigrants, some of them are homeless. When you talk about them, you're talking about us."

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