NEWS STORY: Diverse Causes Bring Their Agendas to Streets of Philadelphia

c. 2000 Religion News Service PHILADELPHIA _ It was billed as Unity 2000, but the thousands of demonstrators who staged the first major street protest of the Republican National Convention on Sunday (July 30) were more often at odds than in harmony. Spilling down the Ben Franklin Parkway, bearing giant puppets and bright banners, the […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

PHILADELPHIA _ It was billed as Unity 2000, but the thousands of demonstrators who staged the first major street protest of the Republican National Convention on Sunday (July 30) were more often at odds than in harmony.

Spilling down the Ben Franklin Parkway, bearing giant puppets and bright banners, the nonviolent protesters kicked off five days of dissension designed to steal some of the Republican Party’s limelight and call attention to a wide range of issues.


On Monday (July 31) morning, police made their first arrests of convention week, taking into custody eight protesters who blocked traffic during morning rush hour in a demonstration against the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga. Efforts to close the school, which critics say trains Latin American military officers in assassination and torture techniques, has become a major cause of the religious left in recent years.

“We will do whatever it takes to get our message out,” Bill Brown, a member of the School of the Americas Watch group and one of those arrested, told the Associated Press. “If it means sitting in jail for a couple of days, so be it.”

At midday Monday, thousands of other marchers blocked traffic during a march on behalf of the homeless.

Sunday’s demonstration, however, was a cacophony of causes. It became clear from the first drumbeat just how much in conflict many of those issues are.

One singer delivered a soulful rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” just as the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade set an American flag on fire, yelling, “Burn, baby, burn!”

Only 20 paces apart in the parade, a band of anti-poverty activists chanted, “Tut, tut, tut, tut, no more welfare cuts!” as orange-shirted Libertarians responded, “Two, four, six, eight, we must end the welfare state!”

Another group of demonstrators was singing the old Sunday school hymn “This Little Light of Mine” as Dave Silverman, the New Jersey state director of the American Atheists, led a contingent demanding the removal of God from public life.


“The Republican Party has been ruined by the religious right,” said Silverman. “I’d love to vote Republican. I am a Republican at heart. I want small government and lower taxes. But I can’t vote Republican.”

From City Hall to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the event was part protest march and part street fair as vendors hawked “diggity dogs” and fruit smoothies to the passing throngs. Police officers, out in force for what proved a peaceful event, stood only yards apart in long blue lines along the length of the parade route.

News helicopters buzzed overhead. For several hours, through the late morning and early afternoon, demonstrators engaged in noisy eclecticism with the spirit of a dysfunctional family reunion. One overriding theme was corporate greed, which was denounced in almost countless ways.

One group carried a tall papier-mache skyscraper with long, grasping arms and deformed hands to represent what it sees as the pernicious effects of globalization.

But befitting the come-one-come-all ethic of the day, another group of pro-business, free-market capitalists nearby waved signs that read, “Make love, not government.”

Organizers and protesters, at various points in the program, tried to make some sense of all the disparate messages. “I look out at this sea of humanity and it is like a family, and like every family, we have our disagreements,” said one speaker. “But,” he added, searching for a common thread, “we are all for the cause of our fellow man. That’s something we’ve got to be proud of.”


As the event wound down, Emily Clark of Vermont, who carried a sign for the United Methodists for Social Action, said she felt uncomfortable with the strong abortion-rights message many other women were voicing. “I think it’s fabulous,” she said of the protest itself, “but I wish we could come together on a more unified platform. That would be better.”

DEA END GIBSON/HASSELL

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