New Yorker: Civil Disobedience

[Robbien]

On a midtown residential block shortly after ten o’clock last Thursday night, as the President appeared onstage at Madison Square Garden, a series of dissonant voices joined the familiar chorus of passing car stereos and sirens. “Fugheddaboutit!” the voices yelled from a few third- and fourth-story windows. The loudmouths were heeding the instructions of the liberal radio host Al Franken, who’d called for a “Great American Shout-Out,” timed to the President’s speech, to protest the Republican proceedings. In the context of a week’s worth of orchestrated civil disobedience and disruption, the scattered hollering was harmless, even a little silly. But was it effective?

“Effective” was a word you heard a lot around town last week, as New Yorkers and their guests debated the relative merits of various declarations, displays, and gestures that would, under ordinary circumstances, and in ordinary towns, be deemed uncivil, or at the very least undignified (taunting hand gestures on the Convention floor, journalists sucking up to political operatives for access and invitations, smug self-congratulation all around: “Hey, it’s a convention,” went the halfhearted refrain). Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “economic girlie men” punch line, however juvenile, seemed to rate as highly effective, according to the cocktail-party consensus, while the Bush twins’ surprise standup routine—Republican girls telling sex jokes at their grandmother’s expense?—was regarded as a dud. New York can be a brash town, and politics an increasingly boorish game, but in both there tends to be a presumption—or a façade, at least—of common courtesy. Generally speaking, the week was a success—hardly any violence, mayhem, or folksinging—and yet day-to-day life in the city has rarely seemed so rude.

. . .

It became routine, as the week wore on, to hear stories or read e-mails about friends—non-protesting friends just out doing errands—who had been inadvertently snagged and detained in police dragnets (real nets!), sometimes for hours at a time, and to encounter delegates who had been heckled, sometimes forcefully, as they approached the Garden each night. One group of journalists, confronted with a chant of “Fuck Republicans! Fuck Republicans!” as they left the building after Laura Bush’s speech on Tuesday, attempted to explain that they weren’t in fact Republicans; they were with the media. The chanters adjusted without missing a beat: “Fuck the media! Fuck the media!”

more:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040913ta_talk_mcgrath

[Eric J in MN]

1. Emily Hertzer, 25 year old Republican whose goal is to hold tea parties

to talk about etiquette, at age 18:

http://old.newhavenadvocate.com/articles/rebel.html


For Emily Hertzer, an 18-year-old Yale frosh who's sipping coffee and studying calculus in the Daily Caffe, rebels stand up for what they believe in the face of social pressure. One motivation can be religious faith. A week earlier, out of personal opposition to injustice, she had gone to Georgia to protest against the School of the Americas at Fort Benning. The school is a military training academy which has been linked to torturers in Latin American regimes.

"The majority of protesters were from Catholic religious groups. Their faith influenced them to resist wrong and to have an impact on society," Hertzer says. "They're channeling their frustrations in a way that brings about active change. In that way, they're more effective rebels."

Hertzer isn't sure if she'd call herself a rebel. She does feel she has "different priorities" from a lot of her Yale classmates who, she believes, want to "assimilate into the power structure and strive to earn high incomes."

"I'd like to be content. Not necessarily to have a lot of money or a high-powered job, but to have a job where I'm making a change, having an impact," she says.