More than 52 New York City community-based organizations led by people of color and poor people marched on Madison Square Garden under the Still We Rise banner as the Republican National Convention began there today. “People came out of the shelters, out of the sweatshops, the soup kitchens, and into the streets, with a platform that speaks to all of us as New Yorkers,†says Louie Jones, a New York City AIDS Housing Network (NYCAHN) board member who has lived with HIV for 18 years and was formerly homeless.
The birth of a movement led by people who live the issues
More than 52 New York City community-based organizations led by people of color and poor people marched on Madison Square Garden under the Still We Rise banner as the Republican National Convention began there today. “People came out of the shelters, out of the sweatshops, the soup kitchens, and into the streets, with a platform that speaks to all of us as New Yorkers,†says Louie Jones, a New York City AIDS Housing Network (NYCAHN) board member who has lived with HIV for 18 years and was formerly homeless.
Instead of each planning a rally around its own issue, NYCAHN, Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE), Make the Road by Walking, Mothers on the Move, Housing Works and other groups started working last summer for a united action demanding housing, immigrants’ and welfare rights, healthcare and HIV services, and justice for those in the court and prison system. “Issues overlap in the communities most targeted by the Bush administration’s agenda,†says Julie Davids, director of the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization for Power (CHAMP). “This kind of coalition work allows people to bring their whole selves and their whole experience.â€
“In Bushwick, Brooklyn, half the population lives below the poverty level,†Jesus Gonzalez, a youth member of the Bushwick community organization Make the Road by Walking, told the rally at 29th Street and 8th Avenue after a spirited march from Union Square. “We’ve got 30 kids in a classroom, three kids sharing one book…. We don’t have college recruiters in our school, but we have military recruiters.†Make the Road not only tackles education issues, but also fights for translation services in the Latino neighborhood’s hospitals and opposes the expansion of youth detention centers, organizer Jose Lopez says.
Natasha Missick is an employment specialist for University Settlement, a Lower East Side service provider. But due to funding cuts, all that remains of her joblessness program is her title. She now helps families avoid eviction, as part of the center’s housing program. “Neighborhoods like Chinatown and the Lower East Side were directly impacted by 9/11 — through unemployment, environmental and health issues — but didn’t get the federal assistance,†Missick says. “ There’s so much we desperately need, and so much money is being spent on the war.â€
FUREE, multiracial and led by women with low or no income, struggles with the welfare system. Wanda Imasuen spoke of the self-determination that working with the group gave her: “When I first came to FUREE, they asked me, if I had a magic wand, what would I change. And I said, ‘I want for the people at the welfare center to respect me.’â€
Respect led the day. “People who’ve been marginalized were speaking, marching and leading the press conference,†says Monami Maulik of Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), an organization of South Asian immigrants that mobilizes detainees and their families for immigrant rights.
Organizers estimated the number of attendees to be about 20,000. Police — who separated the rally into two penned-in sections and told protesters not to walk on the sidewalk in some places or to re-enter the metal-barricade pens once they’d left — put the figure at 5,000.
Russell Simmons and his Hip-Hop Summit Action Network failed to appear, but Saul Williams and Michael Franti delivered inspired spoken word, and Chuck D lambasted the no-shows. “Celebrity is the drug of America, and they’re trying to make it the drug of the world,†he told the crowd. What matters, he said, is “people who do real things.â€
Marchers formed delegations and stuck to them, a structure that Davids says demonstrated the accountability of each group to the community it serves and represents. “It’s a powerful thing, and in some cases it’s a more important kind of power than coming together as individuals,†she says. “It also creates a challenge for individual and autonomous white activists to step back. That sometimes didn’t happen today. Some might not have known not to fill up the front, or that people were in delegations.â€
“We want to build solid relationships with allies, including activists who risk a lot and participate in mobilizations,†Maulik says. “We believe in connecting mass mobilizations with community-based movements, and we want to build relationships in order to mobilize not just for the RNC, but beyond it.â€
NYCAHN’s Shirlene Cooper says Still We Rise brought the city to the world — at a moment when the world was watching. “Before the convention, we already knew that 80% of New Yorkers didn’t want it here,†she says. “New York was ready. We prepared ourselves for Bush’s visit for a very long time. We were ready for him.â€
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