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Protesters
Plan Inauguration Turnout
DAVID HO, Associated Press Writer
Copyright 2024 by The Associated Press
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- Demonstrators who shut down a global trade meeting in
Seattle
last year and brawled with police at the Republican National Convention
plan to show up in force for President-elect Bush's inauguration
next
month.
Organizers
insist the protests, for a variety of causes, will be orderly
and peaceful
and that any violence will be the fault of police.
``George
Bush will not go one block down Pennsylvania Avenue without being
confronted
with signs and banners and other creatively done messages of the
movement
that says `No' to the death penalty, `No' to racism, `No' to voter
disenfranchisement,''
Brian Becker, co-director of the International Action Center,
said at a news conference Thursday.
``If
there is violence that day, it will be because -- as we've witnessed
at so
many demonstrations in the past year -- the police decided to
engage in violent
behavior against demonstrators,'' he said. No civil disobedience
has been
planned, he said.
The
issues motivating the protesters range from abortion to abolition
of the Electoral
College. Veterans of a growing movement against corporate globalization
from the Seattle protest will be joined by environmental activists,
people opposed to U.S. involvement in Latin America and those
who oppose
Bush's contested victory.
Becker
said his group requested permits six weeks ago from the District
of Columbia
police to allow hundreds to gather at locations in front of the
Justice
Department, around the Capitol and along the inaugural route.
Their permits
have not yet been granted.
District
police would not say whether the permits would be approved. The
Presidential
Inaugural Committee and the Bush transition office had no comment.
Adam
Eidinger, protest coordinator for the Justice Action Movement
and a demonstrator
at both national political conventions this summer, said police
agreed
to meet with demonstrators early next week to discuss how to avoid
confrontations
that have marked other recent protests.
Many
of the demonstrations had been planned well before the contested
presidential
election, organizers said, but the recent events in Florida galvanized
their movements.
``Because
of the outcome of the election, I think the protests will be much
larger,''
said Eidinger. His group, a coalition of organizations including
those
who protested at the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund in Washington
in April, plans to have small groups of people throughout the
crowd
at the inauguration holding anti-Bush signs.
Questioning
the legitimacy of Bush's presidency after the contested election
and
the Florida recount, many of the signs and posters being prepared
read "Hail
to the Thief.''
"However
you look at this inauguration, you will see demonstrators,'' Eidinger
said. "If police attempt to keep people out of the inauguration,
they're
going to have to screen every single person that attends.''
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