By David Drucker
Daily Bruin Contributor
The final 50 Democratic National Convention protesters were
released from jail Aug. 21, ending one of the most anticipated
weeks of civil unrest in recent Los Angeles history.
Though the DNC was contentious on each side of the
police-barricade, both political protesters and city officials have
claimed a victory of sorts.
“Mass protests are usually not the vehicle for change,
it’s usually the organizing before and after,” Brian
Rudiger, UCLA Class of 2000 and a member of Direct Action Network
said.
DAN was a co-plaintiff in the American Civil Liberties Union
lawsuit that forced the L.A. Police Department to redraw its
security plans and include a designated protest zone directly
across the street from Staple Center.
Rudiger said that a slightly empty protest pit during the
majority of the DNC did not indicate failure.
“Are you bringing people into the movement? Are you
politicizing them? In this context we accomplished our goal,”
he said.
L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan’s Press Secretary Peter Hidalgo
also claimed success. He brushed aside reports that the convention
was an undue hassle for local businesses and a net economic loss
for the city.
Hidalgo fully expects the final tally to show that the
city’s economy received a $132 million infusion because of
the DNC.
“The numbers aren’t in yet, but we feel they will
support this estimate,” Hidalgo said. “As far as the
Mayor’s concerned, the convention was a huge success for the
city,” Hidalgo added.
This post-DNC analysis comes just a little under a week after
Vice President Al Gore’s nomination pledge to fight for the
“people” against a myriad of “powerful
forces.”
But like the protesters who converged on L.A. to voice their
vision of the future, Gore has also left, ceding the streets back
to the people who live there.
Ironically, it’s these people who, in some cases, felt the
most ignored, despite the presence of so many who claimed to be
fighting on their behalf.
Among the disappointed, homeless activist Ted Hayes had his
city-approved march and candlelight vigil, planned for the last day
of the DNC, cancelled because the LAPD feared the anarchist
“Black Block” would compromise the group’s
safety,
“We are the disadvantaged, and these people do not speak
for us; we speak for ourselves,” said Hayes, who lives a few
blocks from Staples Center in Dome Village, a homeless shelter he
co-founded and oversees.
“These protesters assume that law enforcement, or property
owners, or wealthy people, are always wrong when there’s a
conflict, and that’s not true,” Hayes added.
“They also assume that the so-called oppressed people are
always right, and that’s not true either.”
But Rudiger said that protest organizers did consider the effect
their actions would have on the localities in which they were
taking place.
“There was a serious awareness of how our actions were
going to affect the communities in which they were taking
place,” he said. ” I appreciate Ted’s (Hayes)
comments, and think there has to be an awareness among organizers
to be grounded in the areas in which their protests
occur.”
And despite the media attention granted the anarchists, Deputy
L.A. City Attorney Howard Gluck, UCLA ’75, found the cadre of
demonstrators he negotiated with ““ none of whom accounted for
the infamous “Black Block” ““ to be earnest and
forthright in their convictions to their causes, albeit
lawbreakers.
“They wanted to explain why they were protesting, and were
extraordinarily considerate, respectful and articulate,”
Gluck said. “These were nonviolent protesters, and I feel
that they wouldn’t have allowed violence against the
police.”