BETWEEN THE LINES: Major demonstrations planned for GOP convention

When Republicans meet in Philadelphia this summer for the coronation of their presidential candidate George W. Bush, they will be met by tens of thousands of demonstrators not at all happy with the GOP or its platform. But the organizers of the demonstration, dubbed "Unity 2000," encountered many obstacles in securing city permits for a health care rally scheduled July 29 and multi-issue coalition rally on July 30.

The city of Philadelphia had originally wanted to restrict demonstrators to what opponents call "the protest pit" outside the convention center. Access to this area was to be allocated to small groups of demonstrators by lottery with a 50-minute time limit, a scheme critics called unconstitutional.

Many of the same groups that came together in Seattle last year to oppose the policies of the World Trade Organization, and to Washington D.C. in April to demonstrate against the IMF and World Bank are taking part in actions targeting the Republican gathering in Philadelphia and the Democrats' August convention in Los Angeles. This new coalition, which many observers believe forms the core of an emerging global movement for social and economic justice, are planning both legal activities and non-violent civil disobedience action at both party conventions.

Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Michael Morrill, lead organizer with Unity 2000, who recounts the difficulties encountered in gaining the legal right to march against the Republicans, and explains the overall goals of the demonstration.

Michael Morrill: The city of Philadelphia, in order to attract the Republican National Convention, virtually sold the city -- or gave the city away, more accurately -- to the Republicans. It gave the Republicans right of first refusal to every venue that you can possibly imagine that is publicly owned, and secured agreements signed by companies and institutions that were privately owned. They were trying to get every downtown park, major street, auditorium, hotel, motel, restaurant, and convention center of any kind under control of the Republicans for the week prior to and the week during the convention.

To make a long story short, in order to get a permit to have any kind of legal demonstration, we had to sue the city and the Republican party in federal court. Once we did that, the city was reluctant to go to court because in the initial visit before a judge, the judge looked at the city and the Republican party and said, "You better come to a settlement pretty soon" -- giving an indication that if they ended up coming before him (again for) a trial, they were going to be in deep trouble.

This is the judge, that during the bicentennial of the Constitution, back in 1987, issued to Philadelphia the only permanent injunction to obey the First Amendment that any city in the country is under. The city of Philadelphia had banned all kinds of demonstrations during the bicentennial of the Constitution and the judge found that to be outrageous behavior, and placed the city under that permanent injunction. So the city knew they were in trouble and sat down with the Republicans and said, "We've got to work something out," and they did work something out.

They gave us virtually everything that we asked for, with the minor exception of having to change the parade route somewhat for our march and cutting the entire program by an hour. But in exchange for that, the city was forced to give us almost $100,000 worth of services that we otherwise would have had to pay for, including port-a-potties, stage building, sound system, clean up, EMS crews, water utilities, and other services. Even though we were forced to battle with the city and Republicans in federal court, we actually ended up benefitting by the whole process.