CWA 1180 - Political Action

Message to GOP: Go home!
October 2004

When the Republicans decided to hold their national convention in New York City this year, they were met with the biggest protests ever held against a political convention. On August 29, a half million people took to the streets to resoundingly say no to the Bush agenda. On September 1, some 5,000 people formed a symbolic unemployment line that stretched from Wall Street to 34th Street to draw attention to the almost 3 million jobs that have been lost under the Bush Administration. There were dozens of other events with tens of thousands of participants, including the massive labor rally later that day, a poor people's march, an a 25,000-person protest against the Republican assault on reproductive rights. Mayor Bloomberg, obliging his fellow Republicans, had the NYPD arrest over 1,800 people, most of them simply for exercising the First Amendment rights. The city illegally detained the protesters for excessive time, for which they were fined by a judge, in order to keep people from further demonstrations. Still, the message was loud and clear: Don't come to our town and exploit the memory of 9/11 while you gut funding for housing and education and send our sons and daughters and jobs overseas and think you can get away with it.

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