The goateed and oft-pierced group gathered certainly didn’t look like bluebloods. As a visual aid, one speaker used marker drawings on a strip of cardboard. A mediator announced that, with thousands of visitors coming to help fight the good fight, AWIP had $348 in its budget. Though seemingly short on cash, AWIP, the dominant antiglobalization coalition marching on this week’s World Economic Forum, is long on volunteers. They have over 40 medics committed and a full legal defense group. The Anti-Capitalist Kitchen will be serving food all week. AWIP is offering media training, law training, psychological help, parking advice, and dance lessons to all comers.
The dancers are considered increasingly important to AWIP as the group wants this to be a “green” protest: Sunday’s speakers explicitly stressed that green means “legal and nonconfrontational.” In place of street fights there will, they hope, be street theater. As they march down Fifth Avenue on Saturday, dancing and maneuvering enormous puppets, protesters say they will set an example of how the world could be a kinder and more colorful place. It’s a sweet sentiment, but many of Saturday’s spectators, whether watching in person or through TV, will simply be following the march to see if these shiny happy people run into a buzzsaw of NYPD riot police.
Across town from St. Mark’s Place, in a warehouse scheduled for demolition in six months, AWIP twentysomethings are working on their most audacious project: a papier-mache Statue of Liberty. Maneuvered by 10 different protesters, the statue will be attacked and broken apart by fat-cat puppets and then rebuilt by puppets representing organized citizens.
Such patriotic symbolism is an unusual choice: antiglobalization is usually synonymous with anti-Americanism. Neala Byrne, a leader of AWIP’s Arts & Action group, says that the urge to “reclaim symbolism” grew out of a desire to show solidarity with New Yorkers who have lost so much. Images from the American Revolution were also under consideration. (“Those were examples of people using direct action,” says Byrne.) Among standard antiglobalization demands like debt relief and an end to war, AWIP has included an explicit call to “Rebuild New York.” Protesters hope the friendly message gets through to the police.
But in a time when stores across the country are selling NYPD hats and law enforcement is given the benefit of the doubt in the name of homeland defense, many would-be protesters are thinking twice about marching in New York. “People are really scared. They think it’s going to be a bloodbath,” says Byrne.
It doesn’t have to be. NYPD officials have stressed for weeks that peaceful protests are welcomed. But they have also made it clear that lawbreakers, including any group of three or more people hiding their faces behind a hood or mask, will not be tolerated.
And something as simple as a few masks could render moot all the talk from AWIP and the NYPD about peaceful demonstrations. Forty-year-old anarchist David Graeber of the Anti-Capitalist Convergence says he doesn’t think anything will keep him or his fellow anarchists from bringing ski masks or bandanas, though they will probably only carry them at first. “Actually, I think we’ll try to make sure we do have them,” he says. “I think a lot of people who wouldn’t be carrying them anyway will be.”
But doesn’t that contradict AWIP’s green policy? “It’s really up to the moral conscience of the individual, what sort of action they should engage in, as long as it’s not initiating harm against human beings,” says Graeber. “A lot people are deeply offended that these guys are throwing a cocktail party right next to Ground Zero.” He breaks into a giggle. “Um, you know, there are various things that might happen that might make it very difficult for them to do that. I can’t tell you exactly what we’re doing, but if we pull it off, you’ll know.” So will the NYPD. And the world.
