[act-ma] 4/21 - Help build the May 8 Jobs Protest in DC; 4/14-Boston protesters disrupt Palin’s Tea-Party rant

Thu Apr 15 10:34:45 PDT 2010

*in this email:

1) 4/21 - Bail Out The People Movement Meeting
2) Boston protesters disrupt Palin’s Tea-Party rant
*
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*1) Bail Out the People Movement meeting and discussion*

Get involved and help build the May 8 Jobs Protest 
<http://bopm-boston.blogspot.com/> in Washington DC

*Wednesday, April 21 - 6:30 pm*
Action Center
284 Amory St. (the Brewery), Jamaica Plain

There will also be a reportback and discussion on the successful April 
14th Anti-Tea Party/Palin protest
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*2)*

  Boston protesters disrupt Palin’s Tea-Party rant

Banner says: “Union jobs & healthcare for all! Stop the pro-war, racist, 
sexist, anti-LGBT Palin/Tea Party attack!”

By Steve Gillis
Vice President, Steelworkers Local 8751 - Boston School Bus Drivers

April 14 — The corporate media may give it a different spin, but for 
Palin and Wall Street’s Tea Party, Boston was a bust.

Boston, Arpil 14.

Boston, Arpil 14.
photo: Maureen Skehan

The day started with immediate tension as Bail Out the People Movement 
activists and the mostly Haitian-origin staff of Steelworkers Local 8751 
unfurled their banner in the middle of the Tea Party’s rally here today.

The banner read: “Union jobs & healthcare for all! Stop the pro-war, 
racist, sexist, anti-LGBT Palin/Tea Party attack!” At Boston’s Park 
Street subway station on Boston Common in the heart of downtown, the 
anti-racists were immediately surrounded by screaming white men, some 
wearing hardhats and carrying U.S. flags. Police dressed for battle 
looked on, smiling at the Tea Party gang.

Steelworkers Local 8751 school bus drivers.

Overcoming their hesitation, the anti-racists got out the bullhorns and 
took the racist forces on politically. They said that unions are in 
favor of free healthcare for all people and want a government-sponsored 
jobs program for all of our millions of unemployed sisters and brothers.

Within minutes, passersby were stopping to say, “Right on!” Some asked 
for signs and joined us for awhile. The red-faced white guys with signs 
reading something about “Tread on me” gradually took off, muttering 
profanities.

For 20 minutes the anti-racists took turns talking into the 
loudspeakers, telling the truth about the corporate-sponsored Tea Party. 
They told how Tea Party followers had spit on the Congressional Black 
Caucus in Washington, D.C., a few weeks ago, hurling racist epithets at 
Rep. John Lewis, a hero of the Civil Rights Movement. They told how Tea 
Party members vomited anti-gay invectives at Rep. Barney Frank.

*Class program wins support*

The anti-racists made it clear that what the union movement supports is 
government-sponsored healthcare for all people. It wants a massive 
program of job creation for public projects to put all people back to 
productive work to support their families. By then, their ranks had tripled.

A young woman who’s been leading Friday night cypher youth discussions 
at the BOPM office showed up and took over the banner. Veterans for 
Peace activists joined with their flags. Some college students came with 
signs denouncing homophobia and Tea Party bigotry. It was hugs all 
around when a transgendered activist stopped on his way to the 
statehouse to demand transgender inclusion in anti-discrimination 
legislation. Thousands of thumbs-up and vocal support from folks on the 
street emboldened the group to march in the line of Tea Party dupes 
toward the stage.

The multimillion-dollar, multimedia outdoor stage was surrounded by TV 
trucks and a police cordon. When the nearly 100 protesters reached the 
stage perimeter, anti-racist organizers hooked up a more powerful mobile 
sound unit and started a program of speakers and chanting.

Special Operations police forces soon shut it down, with threats of 
arrests for permit violations and complaints that the Tea Party speakers 
couldn’t be heard over the noise. A young Asian woman activist from the 
Coalition for Equal, Quality Education urged protesters to march. They 
began moving through the outskirts of the crowd, discovering hundreds of 
people who had come to oppose the racists.

The bullhorns went back on. The march began snaking through the lemonade 
and pretzel stands where people were selling hate literature, buttons 
and T-shirts at tables paid for by Wall Street contributions. Plenty of 
middle fingers, spittle-covered curses, shoves, blocks, taunts and 
ear-splitting whistles from red-faced haters greeted the anti-racists, 
whose numbers continued to swell.

There were a few thousand in the Tea Party crowd, not the 10,000 to 
20,000 predicted by Fox, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the front page of 
the Boston Herald. Still, many Tea Party opponents stayed on the 
sidelines in silent protest, perhaps fearing the increasingly agitated 
and violent reactions of the Sarah Palin-inspired haters. The master of 
ceremonies announced Palin’s entrance for what was to be a vicious 
anti-immigrant speech.

*Action disrupts Palin’s delivery*

Just then, the marching protesters reached a critical, determined mass, 
and took a left into the crowd, pick-and-rolling around the police line, 
directly toward stage right. As Palin opened her vitriol, the people on 
the move chanted, “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Palin/Tea Party go away!” 
while fending off punches, kicks, body blocks and other violence.

Not 20 yards from the stage, completely surrounded by and face to face 
with screaming, violent Tea Partiers, the anti-racists were able to keep 
their formation moving and message blaring, with the people’s union 
security fending off the blows and pushing forward, until the bigots 
erupted with whistles and unison booing.

Palin appeared dumbfounded, standing there for the longest time 
speechless and wide-eyed in front of the corporate media, perhaps gazing 
over the horizon to see Russia.

The protestors fought their way back to the perimeter. There were 
hundreds of young women and lesbian, gay, bi and trans anti-Tea Party 
people in that part of the crowd. They cheered the marchers, who then 
started their own rally. People took turns on the bullhorns, supporting 
a woman’s right to choose, denouncing U.S. wars and occupations, and 
declaring homophobia a crime. Others carried placards against the Afghan 
war, and a large blue banner reading “Tea Party = Racism” was on 
display. Protesters, who numbered in the hundreds, were visible 
throughout the crowd.

The protest was a step forward for people ready to fight the capitalist 
system’s tricks, diversions and violent organizational maneuvers to 
maintain its dominance over the vast majority of the world’s working and 
oppressed peoples.

-- 
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*Bail Out The People Movement
Boston*
617-522-6626
bopmboston at gmail.com <mailto:bopmboston at gmail.com>
http://bopm-boston.blogspot.com

*National Office*
212-633-6646
bailoutpeople at safewebmail.com <mailto:bailoutpeople at safewebmail.com>
http://www.BailOutPeople.org

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