Philadelphia Newspaper Article, Aug. 2000

(Retrospection)

This is my 15 minutes of fame, me quoted in the front page article of a Philadelphia Newspaper during the protests surrounding the 2000 Republican National Convention.

I thought I came off sounding pretty good in this article, despite the fact that I got the impression the reporter thought I was a complete idiot when she was talking to me. She would ask me a question, I would answer, and she would shake her head dismissively as if to say, "What a dolt!"

And then she gave me a pretty nice write-up. I suspect she just needed something to tack on a "good protester" at the end of her article to counter-balance her less than complementary portrayal of the "spoiled, angry rebels."

Obviously she has a few axes to grind against the protesters. Kind of surprising that this was a front page article instead of an editorial. A lot of her claims I view with suspicion. I don't remember seeing any "urine filled balloons", although I certainly can't claim to have omniscient knowledge of every part of the protest. Likewise I'm not sure about the validity of the protesters wearing "top-of-the-line Nikes", and even if it was true I'm not sure that it matters. Does wearing Nike shoes invalidate the political beliefs? Would you comment on the shoes if this were any other groups?

Anyway, with that aside, here's the article:

The Masked Teen-agers looked like spoiled, angry rebels without a cause as they smashed police cruisers, overturned Dumpsters and hurled smoke bombs and urine filled balloons at cops.

The way they see it, they had no choice.

"We had to create a spectacle," said Timothy Doody, 26, a community organizer from New York, as he stood near City Hall yesterday, wearing military camouflage pants and googles around his neck and reflecting on the running clashes between police and protesters throughout Cneter City on Tuesday.

"If we just came to explain the need for campaign reform and said, 'Come listen,' no one would come. So we had to throw up blockades. the media is very event-oriented. If we frame it right, we instantly get attention."

The protesters, mostly white, middle-class, college-age kids in top-of-the-line Nikes, belong to a host of groups. Some, who seem to care more about fame than revolution, say smashing cars is OK because they're inanimate objects. Others appear like thoughtful, independent, social activists who don't believe in violence.

They combine idealism with cynicism.

They're frustrated with a corporate world that they say runs government and alienates, almost suffocates, minorities, the poor and disenfranchised. They eschew maintsream political parties because both, they argue, are dominated by big business....

...One protester who calls himself "Ayr" defended the vandalism of cop cars.

"I don't think we should be just smashing up random car windows," he said, "But police, it's like they have all this aggression and all this authority on their side, and they really do bad things to people sometimes."

Others are more traditional protesters who speak of equality and economic disparity.

"I don't agree with vandalism. It gives the movement a bad name," said Joel Swagman, a 22-year-old student at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., who marched for women's rights yesterday.

"The people who did the violence, did it, then got out of there. The peaceful protesters were the ones who got arrested. They didn't run away," said Swagman. "I can see a great deal of frustration out there. One percent of the population owns 98 percent of the wealth."

"I can understand where these kids are coming from, but smashing police cars was going too far," he added, as he adjusted his women's rights banner.

"I think those methods are counterproductive. People don't know what the protesters are about.

"All they see are a bunch of vandals."

Update: full article on line here.

Useless Wikipedia Fact
"Spock's Brain" where aliens steal Spock's brain to power their computer, is widely considered to be the worst Star Trek episode ever.
A close second is "The Way to Eden" when the Enterprise is captured by space hippies.

Link of the Day
Re-Interpreting Iraq: Propaganda Campaign Under Way