OxBlog

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

# Posted 9:05 AM by Patrick Belton  

BENJAMIN SMITH COVERS LAST WEEKEND'S ANSWER PROTEST IN NEW YORK:
The mass of demonstrators, who streamed in a 40-block loop around the grottier southern chunk of Midtown, weren't all as hard core as their leaders. But the crowd has changed, and shrunk, since the huge protests last spring. Last year there were more parents with children, more neatly dressed forty-somethings, more mainstream city Democratic politicians. Saturday, from Madison Square Park to Times Square, I only saw one Dean for America fleece and one Kerry button on the thousands of protesters. More common was a Star of David, connected with an "=" sign to a swastika.
The rally was, in ANSWER's plans, a warm-up to this summer's Republican National Convention:
In August, New York City will be flooded with people like Teresa Gutierrez, a squat woman in a red beret and sunglasses who faced the crowd squarely to deliver an important message: "One of the corporations that we hate so much is Coca-Cola," she told the protesters. "Never ever drink Coca-Cola again. Drinking Coca-Cola is like drinking the blood of Colombian workers." If these people didn't exist, Karl Rove might have to hire actors to play them.
Of course, on the other hand there are lots of unemployed actors floating around the West Village....
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