Sept.-Oct. 2004:
Protests Target Bush Agenda
WRL at the RNC
WRL, The RNC and the Media
Another Generation
The Profits & the War
Let Us Go Forward Together
Letters

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War Resisters League
The Nonviolent Activist

WRL, the RNC, and the Media

n the six weeks between the Convention and the October 13 dismissal of charges against the participants in a WRL-organized August 31 protest, the League got more press coverage than it has in decades. By the time the dust settled, accounts of and commentaries on our action, the arrests, the treatment of those arrested and the outcome had appeared in hundreds of newspapers and on scores of radio, television and cable stations and had been featured on dozens of websites, in this country and abroad.

The sheer volume of the coverage was astonishing by itself. A relatively small New York City protest—there had been perhaps 1,000 people at the legal vigil that began the action—was being covered by news media major and minor, mainstream and movement, in big cities and small towns. Stories appeared in The New York Times, New York Newsday and the New York Daily News and on 1010 WINS-NY and Pacifica’s WBAI radio and CBS-New York television, but also in papers from the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Bradenton Herald of Florida, to the Akron (OH) Beacon Journal to the Austin American-Statesman of Texas and the Fresno (CA) Bee. Among the more unlikely papers to cover the event was the Ledger-Enquirer of Columbus, GA, the site of the annual protest against the mis-named School of the Americas.

But what was much more unexpected was the tone of most of the coverage. Initially (that is, before August 31, the day set aside by opponents of the Bush administration for nonviolent civil disobedience), headlines had been somewhat alarmist. If no other paper (that we know of) rivaled the New York Daily News’ fear-of-anarchy-mongering, only marginally tamer versions were purveyed by the likes of the Newark Star-Ledger’s “N.Y. Wants Calm But Demonstrators Prefer Chaos.”

The stories themselves, however, were generally far more sympathetic than we would have expected, and by September 1, many of the papers and broadcasters reporting the dubious arrests of the day before were downright supportive, with extensive quotes from WRL spokespeople and from legal experts critiquing the conduct of the New York City Police Department. The New York Times reported that, “About 20 minutes before the march, [the War Resisters League’s] Ed Hedemann … stood negotiating with [the police, who] … asked about the route and the group’s plans. Mr. Hedemann [said] … the group … was willing to alter its course [but] would not abandon their objective [of] symbolically ‘dying’ in the street.” And the Washington Post quoted a statement by Chris Dunn of the American Civil Liberties Union to the effect that police arrested demonstrators who were obeying police instructions to the letter.

Some activists suspected that the unprecedented quantity and not-unfavorable tone of the accounts of the WRL action resulted from the fact that even the corporate media are increasingly unhappy with and alienated from the Bush administration. On the other hand, WRL National Committee member Frida Berrigan, one of the organizers of the A31 action, insists that “The amazing quality of the press coverage was due to the fact that WRL planned a good action and was the only group participating in the civil disobedience that was public about its plans.” —NVA