Unconventional Warfare

"This contract was really stark. The images portrayed of Republican and of our ACORN members curry over to real lives. The Republicans live high off the hog and we have to grovel in the dirt and scrape by ACORN people are the spirit of America--we are the wind blowing through the flaps of the flags and tents."

ELENA HANGGI, president of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), is describing the protests--and the protestors--her organization led at last month's Republican convention in Dallas. Almost for gotten in a month's worth of Mondale glitches and media forums about Reagan and religion, and soon likely to be forgotten altogether, the protests were expressive of much that is right and wrong with us.

Chanting "Ronald Reagan He's No Good. Send Him Back To Hollywood," almost a thousand people camped out along Dallas' Trinity River to protest the Republican's policies. The protests organized by ACORN--a national group of neighborhood groups in poor areas--were not the only shows in town: the protest veterans of the 60s, the Yippies, staged their pot smoke-ins; the punks did their "Rock Against Reagan" concert (chanting "Eat the Rich" and "Fuck Off and Die" when the Republican delegates came streaming out of the convention center nearby, battling to be heard over a loud school band hired on short notice by the Republicans); and the crazies did their War Chest Tour--walking around the city, splashing the 'facades of capitalism' such as banks and multinational corporate headquarters, with red paint.

Even with all this, there was no violence as there was in San Francisco, and there were not nearly as many protestors as at the March On Washington a year earlier. But there was something special here--all the more telling because of the lack of attention it received. A thousand poor people came in from all over the country to broil for three days in the hot Texas sun--where temperatures reached upwards of 110 degrees--simply to exercise their First Amendment freedom, to express the injuries and wrongs that had been done to them by the Reagan regime.

ACORN's Tent City was impressive; right by the major highway, Republican delegates coming in from the airport couldn't fail to notice the gospel tents, huge "Reagan-buster" signs, and people milling about from the ice-machines to the shade and back. The heat was so bad, that some of the older people from other parts of the country, not used to Texas heat, had medical problems. But there were not many of them, and the others who were well continued to chant; "We're Fired Up, We're Going to Dump the Chump."

Acorn members ignored media attempts to sensationalize the Tent City by focusing on the handful of abrasive Yippies camping nearby. And they refused to be tempted to air-conditioned houses by the middle-class Yuppies who left the Tent City after experiencing a little discomfort. Calling themselves "Peacekeepers" because they held seminars on how to remain nonviolent and protect their bodies when attacked by the police, these well-to-do allies field suit to have the City immediately provide another campsite with shade trees and air conditioned first aid vehicles. Dallas' responsibility to protect First Amendment rights only extends so far, the judge ruled.

Although the press was out in force for the Tent City, and most of them did capture ACORN's message that Reagan had his own version of a "War on Poverty", they were drawn largely to the more easily sensationalized small fringe groups also camping at Tent City. ACORN president Hanggi, who came from Arkansas with her husband and daughter, said that in talking to the media, "What I had to deal with was their perception of what a protest rally was." In the 60's and early 70's, she said, most of the anti-war rallies were white middle-class people, and if "you did not have 100,000 people stowed away somewhere, then it didn't mean anything. But as the issues change, so should the perception of a protest rally change."

Many press reports highlighted what was considered to be the low numbers of protestors. A long Washington Post article claimed the Tent City proved that the era of large protest demonstrations was over, prompting one participant to say: "That reporter must not have been at the same Tent City I was at." Hanggi and others shrugged off those media reports, saying the reporters just don't understand the different realities of working in a poor people's movement, as opposed to the anti-war protests. Hanggi said: "The difference is that we're working on different issues, such as economic ones, and we do protest rallies every day, every month, every year to create social change. The issues have changed, the protest has changed. The media are the ones behind the times."

Perhaps the biases in the press are understandable. After all, at the Tent City the temperature was about 110 degrees all three days and dust settled over everything. Air conditioning at the Republican convention made the place pleasantly chilly--some delegates even protested that the hall was too cold. The press was treated to free food, such as shrimp salad lunches and drinks by the GOP, while they could buy a plate of rice and beans at Tent City. The Republicans provided free phones, typewriters, tv's and work areas, while there was a bank of pay phones atop a steep hill at Tent City.

The Tent City did not allow any alcohol in the area, to make sure the press did not sensationalize the protest as a bunch of drunken revelers. But the first Republican convention official I dealt with to get my press credentials was drinking a beer at 11 a.m. while a worker behind him was refilling the beer freezer. The beer of course, was COORS, produced by the right-wing, union-busting, Reagan buddy: Joseph Coors.

DALLAS--embroiled in growing racial conflict between geographically and economically divided whites and minorities; ruled in the city chambers by a group of patronizing rich white men who seek to hide facts such as one-third of adult Black men in the city are unemployed; ruled in the streets by police draped in the "shoot first" cowboy image, an image Ronald Reagan helped to foster in his Western movies--with all this, is a more appropriate symbol of what Republicans have been doing to this country than the booming business center they had wanted to show off.

Months before the Tent City opened, ACORN had to fight with the city of Dallas, a racially segregated city with heaps of poverty in the minority and immigrant sections. The glitzy shiny tower facade of business and oil money was sparkling for the Republican delegates, while the 45 percent minority population was on the verge of calling an all out was on the rich whites who control the city.

Dallas' business community had been gearing up for the convention as a showcase in which to present the beauty and attractiveness of the city to the rest of the country. Dallas deserved to be a first-class city, not a regional outpost, and here was its big chance. The city promised the citizens that no public money would be spent on the convention costs would be met through private sources, meaning wealthy Texas REpublicans, oil companies, a local newspaper, and others. Throughout the downtown area, a logo welcoming the Republicans to Dallas (an elephant inside a large "D" for Dallas) was displayed on all storefront windows and flags with the logo flapped next to American flags from streetlight. Cab drivers were brought together at a big meeting and told that if they presented Dallas in a good light to their fares, they and Dallas would get more business in the future.

There was no way Dallas was going to let the week-long advertisement opportunity be marred by unpredictable events. So, when the Alliance For Justice (the national coalition spearheaded by ACORN to plan the Tent City) applied for a permit for a downtown campsite, the city granted one at a park a full 18 miles away from the Republican Convention Center.

After a lawsuit and a series of tough direct actions by ACORN members, the city settled out of court for a campsite a mile from the Convention Center, beside the major highway used by delegates coming from the airport to Dallas. In addition, the city agreed to set up showers, toilets, and running water for the campers. Not quite the fancy Anatole Hotel, but bearable.

Dallas still contrived to separate all protest from the delegates. Delegates were asked not to walk to the convention center, but to take special buses because there was supposedly no way to guarantee safety. And the designated "special event area" for ACORN's Monday morning rally at the convention center was out of night of the delegates going in. Behind a grassy knoll, in back of large trees, surrounded by fences, and watched by police on horses, the ACORN rally seemed to take place in a cage. The only moment of police-protestor confrontation for ACORN members took place when they sidestepped a line of police with readied batons to reach the delegate entrance.

But Dallas officials had played up the police and security precautions they were taking for weeks before the convention, receiving extensive local press coverage. In the wake of San Francisco's confrontations, much of the local population was scared off by rumored "shoot to kill" police orders. Blacks and Hispanics in Texas especially feared the Dallas police's reputation for a "shoot first ask questions later" behavior against minorities. One officer had just beer fired from the force, but community leaders said the firing was merely a cover-up to deflect criticism. And the week of the convention, police responded to minority criticism by saying: Of course minorities are shot by police more often; they shoot at us more often than others.

One white city councilman urged citizen to get involved in the shooting; he boasted of having participated in the shooting of two men he said were robbing a store. A coalition of Hispanic groups, upset by his insensitive incitement of citizens to shoot others, announced they would collect signatures to force a recall election.

Meanwhile Blacks condemned the Republican convention for not awarding any contracts to minority-owned businesses. A couple of days before the Republican Convention began, on a tour of the Convention Center with Republican fat cats the organizer of the Republican Convention came across a meeting including some city councilors. Spotting the convention organizer in the back of the room, a Black city councilman interrupted the session to challenge him on the minority contracting issue. In front of the media, the convention organizer took up the usual patronizing attitude, saying he was sorry the city councilman could not see things the way they really are.

Whites and Blacks on the city council feuded for weeks before the convention, with Blacks harshly criticizing police and city policies set by the white majority. In the bitter name-calling, some whites on the council complained that the Black city councilors were not fit for the job. The Black community responded to this by saying that white city leaders better back off, and not try to tell Blacks who their elected leaders should be.

After fighting with the city for a campsite, unsure of the direction the racial sparring would take, ACORN went ahead with plans to set up the Tent City, First, two massive gospel revival tents went up at the corner of the newly formed "Martin Luther King" and John J. Lewis streets. The Saturday afternoon before the Republicans came into town, ACORN held its own national convention.

There, Hanggi told the crowd that they were in Texas not only to get together and chant about how bad Reagan was, but to do some serious work. Everybody at the Tent City, along with another hundred allies, boarded a fleet of buses and vans Sunday morning and spread out over the poor neighborhoods of Dallas. Going door to door in groups of two along carefully mapped out "turfs", the Tent City dwellers registered over 12,000 new voters in Dallas. The largest single-day voter registration drive in the history of Texas was not short-lived either. Back at camp, there was great enthusiasm when Hanggi asked: "Will we be at the welfare offices? "Yes," cried the crowed. "Will we be at the shopping counters? Will we be at the schools registering 18 year-olds? Will we go door to door to door to door in our neighborhoods?" Yes.

Nancy Riggings, an older, quiet, poor Black woman from Fort Worth had a horrible Sunday. She had been unable to register a single voter in three hours because everyone along her turf had already registered. She was lost in an unfamiliar part of Dallas for two hours before an ACORN search party managed to rescue her from the heat.

Still, she exemplified the spirit of the Tent City dwellers who never started bitching because it was hot, or because the food arrived two hours late, or because there were so many things to bitch at. Without having accomplished anything in five hours on the streets, she was looking forward to hearing Jesse Jackson speak at the Tent City that night. He cancelled however, and she was disappointed. Then, that night at the interfaith service, she shocked me when she learned over to me and said: "I'm going to take some of those voter registration cards to where I work."

The real story, then, is about Nancy Riggings from Fort Worth. Or Nancy Riggins the maid from Chicago. Or Nancy Riggins the bed pan cleaner in Little Rock. Or Nancy Riggins the single unemployed mother in a Roxbury. Or Nancy Riggins the illegal immigrant from Mexico who works in the factory for a buck and a half an hour.

The story is not about the middle-class "peacekeepers" who forget Nancy Riggins when they "Rally for Peace and Freedom" and forget "Jobs". The story is not about the press who sip their Coors, stuff their face with shrimp, and pronounce the death of protest movements in our time. The story is not about Republicans who blow into town, spend money, drink, vote on the party platform without bothering to read it over first, and take "Fritz and Tits" buttons home as souvenirs. Nor is the story about young middle-class students like myself, who are able to take off a few weeks, months, or years to work with poor people while living under the poverty line themselves--though all the time with the knowledge in the back of their mind that they can leave the squalor when they can take it no more.

Instead it is about the Nancy Riggins of this country, who are trapped with low pay, unstable work, and ever pressing needs outrunning their budgets. They are the ones who have never heard the smug, intellectual argument I have heard so often in this corner of Cambridge--that Mondale is little different than Reagan, and the best thing for a progressive to do is not to vote at all-otherwise one is selling out. The story is about those who will fight when they can, where they can, whether they succeed fully or not, whether they attract attention or not. If this portrayal may seem a little romanticized, so be it. For perhaps romanticism is the stuff that dreams, tent cities, and social change is made of.