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- From: Blythe Systems <nytransfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
- Subject: NEWS:Demonstrators Crash GOP Party/WW
- Message-ID: <1992Aug25.213646.14010@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
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- Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 21:36:46 GMT
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- Via The NY Transfer News Service ^ All the News that Doesn't Fit
-
-
- Demonstrators Crash Republicans' Posh Party
-
- By Gloria Rubac
- Houston
-
- Such a reactionary gathering of rich white men just had to
- attract its opposite. And it did. AIDS activists, supporters of
- lesbian and gay rights, pro-choice women and men, opponents of
- war, racism and police brutality targeted Bush and the Republican
- party here in Houston.
-
- By the Aug. 17 opening night, as racist Pat Buchanan spouted
- anti-lesbian drivel to the Republican National Convention, these
- activists had already crashed the mayor's posh party and burned
- Bush's effigy and more outside the Astrodome.
-
- On the eve of the Republican National Convention, Aug. 16, the
- days of protest began. A diverse a coalition of progressive
- organizers as Texas has seen in years were more than satisfied
- that their weeks of reaching out had gathered 1,000 people at
- Wiley Park in the Fourth Ward.
-
- Those that came had to brave police intimidation, both during the
- building period and on the day of demonstration. Police pressure
- was especially pervasive in the oppressed Black and
- Chicano/Mexicano communities. Those that came knew they were in
- for a struggle.
-
- Organizers planned to march from the mostly oppressed Fourth Ward
- into the high-income River Oaks section, a stronghold of racism
- and the Republican party. Houston's Mayor Bob Lanier was hosting
- a party for the delegates at his River Oaks mansion.
-
- To the bankers, bosses and political hacks feeding at Lanier's
- trough, the people on the demonstration only existed in
- nightmares after a night of particularly heavy eating and
- drinking. That nightmare was to blast through the calm of their
- pre-convention partying.
-
- Demonstrators defy cops
-
- Houston police, many on horseback, tried to keep the march to
- River Oaks contained on the sidewalks. Individual cops tried to
- provoke demonstrators, poking them with their clubs. The
- demonstrators refused to give in. After a half-hour
- confrontation, they won the streets and brought their protest to
- the sharply contrasted poor and rich sections of Houston.
-
- Led by a contingent from the Ricardo Aldape Guerra Defense
- Committee, the march crashed the party at the mayor's house.
- Protesters beat drums and chanted as a band played "The Eyes of
- Texas" on Lanier's lawn. The revelers got the message. Twelve
- years of Reagan/Bush have brought suffering to workers and other
- poor people. And the sufferers are fighting back.
-
- Aldape is a Mexican immigrant now on death row in Texas allegedly
- for killing a cop. His supporters say he is innocent, found
- guilty because of anti-Mexican racism. They are fighting for a
- new trial.
-
- At the rally, Teresa Gutierrez of the National Coalition to Stop
- U.S. Intervention in the Middle East told the crowd, "You can't
- use us to go to Iraq to kill for the oil companies."
-
- Timothy Sweeney, a representative of the Gay Men's Health Crisis,
- said, "Over 150,000 Americans have been diagnosed with AIDS since
- George Bush became president, and funding is being cut across the
- country to those organizations educating the people of color."
-
- The organizer for the Texas Movement for a Peoples Assembly, John
- Anderson, chaired the rally along with Paul Mullan from Queer
- Nation and Jane Collins from the Houston Coalition to Stop U.S.
- Intervention in the Middle East.
-
- The following night, as the most rightwing Republicans whipped up
- the elitist rabble inside, ACTUP led a march to the Astrodome
- parking lot. The demonstrators burned Bush in effigy, then added
- wooden barricades to the fire until quite a blaze was going.
- Police made arrests as they charged the demonstration to clear
- the area.
-
- -30-
-
- (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
- if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World,46 W. 21
- St., New York, NY 10010; "workers@igc.apc.org".)
-
-
- -----
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