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What I Saw at the Republican Convention Protests

Sky spies, edgy police, a flag burned, a house raided, calls for overthrow and apocalypse. Election, US-style.

John Woodside 27 Jul 2016TheTyee.ca

John Woodside is a pursuing is Masters degree at the UBC Graduate School of Journalism and is an editorial assistant at OpenCanada.

In a United States famously polarized this election year, I stood at ground zero last week – spending three days witnessing the protests raging outside the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

Inside, Donald Trump and his supporters demonized and sowed fear. Outside, a more strange face-off would be hard to imagine. Marchers for the Revolutionary Communist Party proclaimed “We need to overthrow the system” as laughing anarchists bobbled a big, piggish doll head of Trump, and the unhinged born-agains of the Westboro Baptist Church vowed God would soon wipe this gay-loving, sinful nation right off the map.

Some of the protesters brandished loaded assault rifles, because Ohio has passed laws allowing registered gun owners to “open carry.” Onlookers fired off insults, screaming back at the demonstrators from every ideological angle. Managing it all – sometimes nimbly and sometimes with rights trampling zeal – was an army of police with a spying air force buzzing overhead.

Given the recent violence in Dallas, those police were understandably on edge. Cleveland’s own force was bolstered by thousands of additional officers from around the country patrolling in squads across the city. Deputy Chief Wayne Drummond explained to me that he believed it was important to have a layered response, meaning that throughout the day police on bicycles patrolled, but if protests escalated then police would be able to bring out the riot gear and armoured jeeps if necessary. He added that it was his goal to always de-escalate conflicts -- a belief I witnessed first-hand as he handed out Gatorade to anti-state protesters after they finished marching near city hall.

On the second day of the convention, Cleveland’s public square was roiling. In one corner, Revolutionary Communists (or RevComs as they are popularly known) called for an end to police violence against black communities, their signs declaring that America “never was great.” Just across the square extremist Christian groups assured America was doomed for accepting same-sex marriage, and that all Muslims are jihadists.

Police divided the square into quadrants using bicycles to form barricades, and once they had the crowd separated they were able to push protesters to the perimeter, effectively ending the demonstrations. Using bicycles to control crowds is a technique that Seattle’s police force had mastered in response to demonstrations like 2013’s anti-capitalist May Day marches. Seattle’s police department trained a bicycle unit in Cleveland, to better prepare them for the RNC, Deputy Chief Drummond told me.

In addition to the police on the ground, if one looked up to the sky any time between two in the afternoon to two in the morning, they would see surveillance helicopters and planes monitoring where groups were forming in order to mobilize police before large demonstrations could get out of hand.

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Police arresting RevCom protesters after they burned an American flag outside the centre where Republican convention was being held. Photo: John Woodside

The most active demonstrators were the RevComs, who welcomed on the second day the African-American Princeton philosophy professor Cornel West. In a booming voice he galvanized the crowd, proclaiming “to the government and the president who always call for peace, there will be no peace unless there’s justice. They call for order, there will be no order unless there’s accountability. We’re talking about fair trials yes, but we’re calling for accountability.”

West added, “We were told the other day from the White House that an attack on a brother or sister in a police uniform is an attack on all of us, and I say okay, but an attack on the precious child of a mother in the hood on the chocolate side of Chicago, or Cleveland, or Los Angeles, or any other city or town in this nation is also an attack on all of us. We want to be morally consistent and have some kind of integrity in the situation in which we live.”

Later that day West underscored his point. “When we talk about black lives matter, it’s a matter of recognizing the vicious legacy of white supremacy in this nation that goes back 400 years.”

The next day the RevComs burned an American flag outside of the convention center. They linked arms to form a circle around the flaming icon before it was quickly extinguished by police officers. Soon after, 17 of the demonstrators were arrested for the act, including Gregeory Lee Johnson, the man who in 1984 burned an American flag at the Republican National Convention in Dallas to protest the policies of Ronald Reagan. His case set the U.S. Supreme Court precedent that burning an American flag is protected free speech. In this case, the police claimed the burning flag was a physical threat to bystanders.

On the final day of the convention, the RevComs that had not been arrested marched to the courthouse to demand the release of those detained. Knowing that the world was watching, authorities released most of the protesters from custody moments before the march arrived at the courthouse. I spoke with some of the cheering RevComs who told me that it was entirely a surprise to see that their fellow members free, but they were troubled by the fact two remained in custody, held on felonies.

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A member of the Revolutionary Communists stares down a person challenging their protest at the RNC convention. Photo: John Woodside.

Later that night, Turner Fair, a Cleveland activist marched through the streets for approximately ten minutes with a papier-mâché head that made Donald Trump look like a pig. A police officer seized the head. Fair and other activists wanted to know why. They followed the police officer, drolly asking what he was doing with the Republican nominee, given that Donald Trump was scheduled to make his acceptance speech within minutes. When the police officer threw the head in the back of a cruiser and instructed another officer to drive away with it, the activists joked that the Republican nominee hadn’t been read his rights.

Fair’s joking apparently didn’t sit well with police, who promptly hemmed in the handful of activists, along with myself. A quick count revealed at least 118 officers. We were surrounded for about half an hour, and Fair and the activists played a game of ‘Duck, Duck, Goose” to pass the time.

Then Fair had another idea. He and a few activists with him, including filmmaker Rod Webber, decided to march back to Quicken Loans Arena, where Trump was making his acceptance speech. When they tried to cross the street to the arena, police formed a barricade with bicycles.

This stand-off lasted for approximately 20 minutes before Fair and other activists were allowed to cross the street. But by then, lots more police were waiting. They surrounded the protesters, creating another stand-off, this one lasting for hours. Finally, police opened one flank to allow the activists to leave. Instead, the protesters stuck around, singing, joking and high-fiving one another.

Turner Fair needled the officers, saying, “Black lives matter, so scary, domestic terrorist…any organization that black people form to galvanize themselves is so spooky.” He waved the confederate flag, saying, “This is my heritage damn it! This is the blood of my ancestors… this is all the slave blood, spilt on the rebel flag.” Then he put the flag over his face, saying, “Look, this is the one that really scares them” and ran around joking “Watch out! I’m an anarchist! Got to get some police from all over the country! There’s going to be like ten people in Cleveland with handkerchiefs over their mouths, so we’re going to need like ten departments from around the country to come here immediately… so we’re going to need like 10,000 extra guys, because they’re super scary.”

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A four year old girl whose shirt bears the name of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy shot to death by police in Cleveland in 2014, throws her hands in the air with a toy gun in hand. The girl said she wanted to be a cop when she grows up so that she can put the bad cops in jail. Photo by John Woodside

Then the filmmaker Webber took the megaphone and adopted a different tone. To the police, he said: “I know all of you are good people. You go home to your wife and kids and all that… and Turner over here is just being silly. He’s a goofball.” But he added this: “When you line up like this it feels as though it diminishes the role of police who have been an important role in society. When you bring out this excessive show of a force it shows the absurdity of force versus love.”

Webber continued: “This is all over a papier-mâché Donald Trump pig head. If you just gave the pig head back to him, all this would all be over….”

On Wednesday morning, a group of activists were awakened by police who conducted a search of their home. The activists filmed the entire interaction. They recorded police saying “we can get a search warrant if we want”-- suggesting they had no warrant to conduct the search in the first place.

Later that day, as I interviewed the same activists on a downtown street, we were swarmed by police, including Cleveland’s Chief Calvin Williams, and searched. The activists told me that they had been searched multiple times each day since the convention began.

When the police were done patting us down, rifling our pockets, checking our bags, they had found nothing to prompt an arrest. The activists and the one journalist who happened to be caught up in that moment were turned loose back onto the street – and into the surreal maelstrom at the centre of a troubled and powerfully armed America.  [Tyee]

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