2004 Republican National Convention Protest Activity - Tuesday, August 31

Tuesday, August 31

A group called the A31 Action Coalition called for massive civil disobedience on Tuesday, August 31.

Members of CODEPINK and others gathered in front of Fox News Channel's headquarters in New York City and held a "Fox News Shut-Up-A-Thon." About 1,000 people protested the network, complaining about lack of balance and deriding it as a propaganda arm of the Republican Party.

Most of the protesters from the War Resisters League didn't get very far from the World Trade Center on their 3-mile procession to the RNC convention at Madison Square Garden. They crossed one block and 227 of them were instantly surrounded by police and arrested. The several hundred remaining in the WRL contingent proceeded up a different route and got closer to the convention, and did a "die-in" in the street where 54 more were arrested.

• RNC 2004: 400 Detained in Massive Arrests

• THE REPUBLICANS: THE CONVENTION IN NEW YORK—DEMONSTRATIONS; At Least 900 Arrested in City As Protesters Clash With Police "It's an example of the police suckering the protesters, said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, referring to the arrest of some 200 protesters who said they thought they were abiding by an agreement they had negotiated with the police as they marched from ground zero on Fulton Street." It was a bait-and-switch tactic, she added, where they approved a demonstration and the protesters kept up their end of the bargain. They undermined people's confidence in the police, and that's a serious problem as we go forward."