Talk:2004 Republican National Convention protest activity

Change Explanations

I (68.77.161.150) changed Bilionaires for Bush to United for Peace and Justice because B4B was just a feeder and AFAIK UPJ coordinated the main march. (http://www.nynewsday.com, others)

Locked?

Is this page locked to the public? Edits aren't showing up.

Ar57's edits

I understand that Ar57 has a different point of view than most users who edit this page, and I look forward to the perspective he can give.

However, replacing what can be seen as leaning on the left-wing sensibility with a virulant hard-line and fact-denying diatribe [1] is not an improvement. There more are neutral ways of saying things, and the article will not be improved by conjonctures and inexactitudes ("trespassing" ??) meant to "balance" it. Much better to neutralise the original part.

Also, the point about the "Protest Warriors", which is a very valid piece of information, should be a mere mention in a broader "right-wing demonstrations" part. On this respect, I would also like to stress the point that photographs which bear no source not licence can be more of a burden than of an asset, so please try and find some which are free, or which can clearly be claimed as Fair Use.

Thank you. Rama 5 July 2005 21:39 (UTC)

Thank you for your post, I hope that we can work out a compromise on this page. Yeah, I understand my POV is a little bit different. I'm actually a student living right in San Francisco, so I have a little bit of familiarity with protests and anti-Bush demonstrations. Since the war in Iraq began, I've attended all of the major ANSWER protests and Israel/Palestine ones, though I like to think of myself more as a neutral observer, because it seems that all the dominating groups (whether right or left) tend to hinge more on the extreme side. I find the rise of right-wing protest groups and the interactions of left vs right wing groups to be fascinating (since both sides aren't exactly familiar with each other). I do think many of these articles have an anti-police tilt, and bias against the target of the protests, but it's probably beyond my little scope to cover everything. Your point about the photograph is will taken and I’ll see if I can get statement from the photographer (the photos were posted on a forum).

First, I want to discuss the Protest Warrior/Communists For Kerry/RightMarch right wing protest groups and any other right wing groups. I think the fairest thing to do is proportionally represent them. Obviously, their groups were a lot a smaller, so I don't think 90% of the photos should feature them, but I do think at least a mention is important. Protest Warrior also had mentions in at least a few major sources leading up to and during the protest. [2] [3] [4] How much mention in this article should they get? I guess that's up to discussion.

I also thought the statement that "the march proceeded peacefully and without violence" was way too broad. I can recall at least few news video reports where protesters scuffled with police, and that video shows that there was a minor scuffle with Protest Warrior, and I think that's enough to change it to "For the most part, the march was...". Whether the blurb about ProtestWarrior and the video link should be added, I guess that can be discussed. It seemed to me that the blurb wasn't much less article worthy than some of the other information in the article.

Now, I want to take a look at the RNC Kicker section.

• The original version says "infiltrated", and the new version says "trespassed". I concede that this replacement might not have been accurate on my part, as I think "infiltrated" is a more complete explanation as to what happened.
• Next, we have two versions having a slightly different analysis in what happens on the video. I'm sure this part has a bit of subjectivity, so allow me to explain exactly what I see.
  1. First, the young man in the teal shirt grabs a sign from a female protestor, and pulls it in towards himself.
  2. Next, he grabs her arm, tries to pull it back, and lets go. From what I can tell, he's not the one that actually pulls her down (The previous version claims that he pulled her down and kicked her as security arrived, but security was already there when the pulling was happening). He lets go momentarily before the security guards begin to pull her to the ground. As she is pulled onto the ground, the man in teal makes one kicking motion towards the protester. When she appears to be completely on the floor, he makes two more kicking motions.
  3. The camera is always kept at shoulder level during the kicks, so we can't actually see if there is contact made or not. Hence, in my edit, I stressed that it was an alleged attack, because I don't think there is 100% proof that contact was made which would constitute an attack taking place.
• Next, I described that this circulated around the "left-wing blogosphere". The "eyebeam" website mentioned itself that the info spread through "left wing blogs", which it said it were the only websites pursuing this story, although I'm welcome to hear you out if that term isn't valid. I also replaced the "eyebeam.org" website with "reason.com" website, since Eybeam just referenced Reason, and I wanted to go to the original source.
• The original version said "So far no public action has been taken against Robinson". As mentioned in the Daily Pennsylvania article I added (which I think is essential to the article because it has the most details about the event and because it is a fairly impartial source), it seems to me that "no public action" was taken against the alleged attacker because the the alleged victim never decided to press charges as far as I can tell (I searched her name and I could not find any followup articles). I don't believe that the whole paragraph makes it clear that this is an alleged crime committed by an alleged attacker. The paragraph, as written before, focused on the alleged attacker as if he was the man that committed the crime, and I think that is POV.
• I added what happened to the ACT UP protestors because I thought it would be unfair to dedicated space to the post-convention situation about the kicker, but not discuss what happened to the ACT UP protestors post-convention. I think that's only fair.
• I hope the above explains why I believe that my version presents a more fair and accurate version of the events that took place.

Thank you for reading. --Ar57 5 July 2005 23:05 (UTC)

The pro-Bush activity was minuscule by comparison. Let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that ardent defenders of the status quo can be considered "protest activity" in the broadest sense. There's still a question of proportionality. The pro-Bush demonstrators scarcely rate even a mention in the lead section, let alone a paragraph to themselves there. I'm leaving in the mention, but moving the paragraph discussing the right-wingers down into the body of the article. JamesMLane 6 July 2005 02:08 (UTC)

Photos of protests

Here is a wikimedia commons link to 100 photos that (I think) are far better than the ones currently on this page...i don't have time to add them myself but perhaps someone here could take on the task.

[5]