AUTHORITIES AND protesters are on a collision course aimed at the Republican National Convention in New York City this summer. Fifteen groups have applied for marches or rallies of over 10,000 people and one group, United for Peace and Justice, has applied for a rally of 250,000. No permits have been granted. Spokesman for United for Peace and Justice, Bill Dobbs, called the refusal to grant the permit "an effort to derail the whole protest." With the immense number of possible issues to protest under the rubric "No to the Bush Agenda," thousands of people working on disparate areas of activism -- the environment, social justice, education, foreign policy, health care, fiscal responsibility, etc. -- will be in the streets whether or not they have a permit.

The police are gearing up, with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly estimating a $76 million price tag for security. Protesters, however, are worried about violence and arrests by the police. As student organizer at New York University, Max Uhlenbeck, put it, "I'm sure there will be horror stories." -

With 15,000 members of the press expected to be on hand for the Convention it is likely that much attention will be outside Madison Square Garden and on the streets instead.

At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, police lines advanced through protesters, shot tear gas, and clubbed students. The violence was splashed across the front page of every major paper. Some say the Convention doomed the chances of Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey. Will New York in 2004 define Generation X in a similar way?

History, from the last four years at least, suggests that New York may well resemble Chicago. The refusal of permits and massive build-up of security measures points toward a pattern of suppressing dissent, exemplified by the 2000 Republican Convention in Philadelphia and the protests at the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) talks in Florida last November.

In Philadelphia, over 400 people were arrested, including well-known organizers walking down the street, random bystanders, and a mass-arrest of political puppet makers in a warehouse. Only a minuscule number of those arrested were convicted and no one was sentenced to jail time. A Philadelphia Daily News editorial following the last trial of a protester called the mass arrests, "very disturbing for anyone who thinks the 4th, 5th, 8th, and 14th amendments to the Constitution ought to mean something in the city where they were written."

Similarly, protests at the FTAA talks last November saw the use of unrestrained violence by police. For instance, members of the Miami-Dade County's Independent Review Panel of police actions said, in a draft report released a few weeks ago, "Civil rights were trampled and the socio-political values we hold dear we undermined."

The FTAA is now known for giving birth to the "Miami Model," a method where authorities use force -- rubber bullets, tear gas, etc. -- and the arrest of legal protesters to silence dissent. -

In New York, orders to use the Miami Model may be coming from the highest source: the Bush administration. The main clue to this is Ashcroft's most recent terror alert. Numerous news organizations openly questioned why he released information that had already been revealed months earlier. One possibility is that Ashcroft may have used the terror alert for the political purpose of chilling dissenting opinions. Evidence lies in the fact that Ashcroft only named three specific events for possible terror acts: Georgia's G-8 summit, Boston's Democratic Convention in July, and New York's Republican Convention in August. These are also the three biggest national protests planned this summer.

Robert Ross, a Miami Activist Defense and National Lawyer's Guild Attorney involved in lawsuits filed this year accusing the city of Miami, Homeland Defense Secretary Ridge, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, and others for abridgment of civil rights, said, " have no doubt that, in Boston and New York, they are going to utilize tactics used in Miami." Or, as Uhlenbeck put it, "There will be plenty of violence from the police."

Joel D. Stonington (jstonington@orionsociety.org) is an editorial intern on Orion Magazine.

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