Saturday, October 10, 2015 WXPort
 Hot TixBand GuideMP3 StudioBest Music PollSummer GuideThe Best
 RNC Daily Updates
Stuff at Night
The Providence Phoenix
The Portland Phoenix
FNX Radio Network
 
   
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

Chasing the elephants out of Times Square

BY CAMILLE DODERO

MONDAY, AUGUST 30, 2004, NEW YORK -- Central Park’s Great Lawn was supposed to be the site of a post-march battle on Sunday night. But around 5:30 p.m., the most outrageous sight among the thousands of demonstrators moseying, sleeping, and walking around the green was a young trio of topless women wriggling their arms and doing a crazy little hippie-jig to the hand-slapping beats of a bongo circle.

The real action was in Times Square. Over there, along Broadway and Seventh Avenue, protestors were heckling the Republican delegates who were being bused to the theatre. The delegates were detectable not only because they were going to the shows and looked like Republicans -- well-coifed post-salon hair, conservative suit jackets, snooty faces -- but because they carried red bags, allegedly a gift from the New York Times.

On the corner of Broadway and 47th Street, I recognized a scully-capped kid with bristly sideburns and a plaid button-down shirt from Boston. He’d done security for the anti-authoritarian Bl(A)ck Tea Society during the DNC. And though he wouldn’t give me his name, he would tell me what sorts of protests were planned for the evening. Central Park, he told me, was a diversionary tactic so that activists wouldn’t come to Times Square and bother the delegates. "We’re busy tonight making sure they know they’re not welcome tonight," he explained matter-of-factly. As an aging delegate with cropped, frosted hair, and red lipstick passed by, he shouted at her, "Go home!"

She stopped. She was not happy. "Why don’t you go home?"

"I live here," he spat. Actually, two minutes earlier, he told me he was a Philly native working in Boston. But I wasn’t telling.

She paused. Clearly, she’d been waiting to use this clever retort, but hadn’t scripted a follow-up response. "Well," she stammered, searching for something. "It’s a free country!"

The scully-capped activist ignored her and howled something about Republican blood on 3000 graves. So infuriated that she’d managed to smear her lipstick on her teeth, she screamed, "Shut up!" And then hustled away.

He barely noticed. Tonight’s protests, he explained, would be happening in pockets around the city. "We just want them to know they’re not --" A red bag finished his thought. "You’re not welcome here! Go home!"


Issue Date: August 30, 2004
Back to the RNC '04 table of contents
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
 









about the phoenix |  advertising info |  Webmaster |  work for us
Copyright © 2005 Phoenix Media/Communications Group