Progressives try to send message of resistance at RNC security barrier: NPR

MILWAUKEE — As Republican delegates packed the floor of the Fiserv Forum Monday for the first day of the RNC, progressive activists gathered outside. Carrying handmade signs proclaiming the “racist and reactionary Republican agenda,” protesters took to the streets to try to shout their message over the Secret Service barriers and fences surrounding official RNC venues.

“It’s hot, but I’m glad we’re here,” said Lisa Taylor, who marched with other members of the Progressive Labor Party.

Organizers predicted that more than 5,000 people from across the US would participate in the show of solidarity against Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate. The crowd that turned out for the march in the hot and humid downtown Milwaukee ended up being much smaller than that, although a wide range of causes and issues were represented.

“Trump is what we get for our lack of participation,” worried Nadine Seiler, who traveled from Waldorf, Maryland, to stand under the hot sun with a colorful homemade banner and bright blue eyeliner.

Seiler says her biggest concern is Project 2025, a 900-page plan from the Heritage Foundation to reform the federal government. The conservative organization says Trump will adopt the playbook on his first day back in the Oval Office if elected — though the former president has tried to distance himself from the initiative.

“I know they want to erase Black people and our contributions, I know they want to eliminate the Department of Education, I know they want to disarm the FBI…and use the Department of Justice to prosecute their ‘enemies,’ meaning anyone who disagrees with their fascist policies,” she rattles off. “Oh yeah, I know plenty about that.”

Army veteran Renay Blanford is more concerned about Donald Trump getting a second term as commander in chief. “He took an oath as president to defend the Constitution of the United States,” she says. “And he didn’t do that during the insurrection on January 6th.”

Organizers said more than 120 different progressive causes were represented at the march, including abortion, immigrants, LGBTQ+ rights advocates and those opposed to Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza. But the overall message was anti-Trump — which New York City vendor Stan Sinberg was happy to offer in button form.

“I have ‘Non-Felon for President,'” he explains, gesturing to rows of accessories emblazoned with slogans on a pushcart. “I have ‘Another Nasty Woman against Trump,’ which is also a throwback,” Sinberg says, referring to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, when he first made the rounds as a button salesman.

“If he died tomorrow, I’d be a little conflicted,” he laughed as a few potential clients perused his offering. “I’d be very happy he was gone, but my business would be over immediately.”

The attempted assassination of Trump just days earlier hung like a dark cloud over the rally as protesters rode past lines of multistate police officers on bicycles and horses — a fresh reminder of the recent tragedy at the Pennsylvania rally. Those in attendance here were quick to deny that act of political violence, even as some joked about wanting their chants to be within “earshot” of the former president.

The Coalition to March Against the RNC fought hard over the final route of the march, to ensure that their chants would at least have a chance to be heard by RNC attendees. They filed a lawsuit against the city of Milwaukee and the U.S. Secret Service over the security perimeter that would have placed the protest too far away to be heard by RNC attendees.

Protest organizers lost that lawsuit, but reached a “handshake agreement” with the city to move the march closer to the convention’s Fiserv Forum. But after all that, protesters say Republican delegates aren’t really the audience they need to reach.

“We’re not really here for the Republican Party, we’re mainly here to highlight the demands of the people,” said Mennelli Escarez, who was present along with other Filipino-American student activists from the University of Illinois-Chicago.

“We’re also here to expose both sides, because they’re two sides of the same coin,” she said, touching on a theme common in this crowd: dissatisfaction with President Biden as a candidate.

Escarez says the real opportunity to protest will come next month in her college town of Chicago, where delegates at the Democratic National Convention may be more willing to listen.

“This was just to prepare us and cheer us up,” she says.