by Men Manski
Mayors from 200 of the nation's 300 largest cities came to Madison, Wis. in June to be wined and dined. Instead, they found the people were upset with their feeding on corporate cash.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors meetings were held in a cordoned-off four-block area of the downtown, beyond concrete barricades, security checkpoints, and the nervous eyes of hundreds of police officers. More than 1,000 people demonstrated against the corporatization of American cities. Before it was over the police had arrested seven people and $750,000 was spent by Madison officials on event security. Also, Madison Mayor Sue Bauman had significantly damaged her re-election prospects.
Where previous meetings of the U.S. Conference of Mayors had been marked by protests, this meeting was the first in which the protests defined the agenda.Reasons for this are easily identified.
First, the meeting was taking place in Madison, a community where radical politics are very much alive and where it's fair to say that the best days of the local progressive movement are yet to come. Second, the agenda of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, an association of the mayors of the country's 300 largest cities, shifted markedly in the Clinton/Gore years as Democratic mayors began to embrace the politics of corporatization.
Corporations have gained direct access to the mayors of the nation's cities via the U.S. Conference of Mayors "Business Council," an association of corporations that each contribute at least $10,000 to the organization and thereby gain the privilege to wine and dine the mayors behind closed doors.
Finally, the fact that the mayors meeting was to take place in the aftermath of Sept. 11 made it a certainty that this meeting was to be different from all those previous. The determination of federal and local police authorities to control protest has escalated in the post-9/11 era, just as the determination of many Americans to engage in protest has also increased.
Cities for People!
In Vancouver, Seattle, Washington D.C., Quebec, and many other scenes of conflict between democratic and corporate interests, democratic organizations came together in coalition to pool their strength; in Madison the coalition was named "Cities for People!" (www.CitiesforPeople.org).
In January 2002, the members of Progressive Dane, a local political party, called an initial meeting of what was to become Cities for People! Thirty-five members of local and regional labor unions, political parties, community organizations, student groups, churches, mosques, and synagogues came together and began discussions regarding possible preparations for the mayors meeting and on seven points of unity that were to define the demands of the coalition.
The first organizations to join Progressive Dane in the coalition were the Wisconsin Green Party and the Greater Milwaukee Green Party.
Eventually Cities for People! came to include a much broader cross-section of people, including the Madison Fatherhood Alliance, Madison N.O.W., South Central Federation of Labor, Asian Freedom Project, LUChA, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, and two dozen additional organizations, including the Green Party of the United States. While Cities for People! was preparing its work, three other sets of interests were also attempting to define the agenda at the Conference of Mayors meeting. First among these was the formation called "Creative Peoples Resistance" or "CPR" (www.resistthemayors.org). CPR defined itself as acting in the tradition of anti-authoritarianism and distributed international calls for direct action at the mayors meeting. The second set of interests were those of the mayor, her staff, and the Madison Police Department. City officials seized on the emergence of CPR as a means to attempt to justify the rocketing costs of riot control preparations.
Madison Police Chief Richard Williams announced in March that the police were preparing for an incursion of "violent anarchists," and throughout the preparations for the mayors meetings, city officials made efforts to characterize the debate as one between violent protestors and liberal mayors.
The third set of interests at work were of course those of the corporate sector, who for the most part avoided the limelight at this year's events. They simply sponsored the meeting itself, paid for the mayors' meals, and shmoozed the mayors behind the barricades, but wisely avoided the public debate over their own role in the meeting.
The most significant national figure to attend the meeting was one Cities for People! invited. Rev. Al Sharpton kicked off the event by standing on the steps of the Madison City/County Building and endorsing the demands of Cities for People!. Later in the day he endorsed the Greater Milwaukee Green Party for their efforts.
News coverage the next day was played on the front page, uniformly positive, and featured Sharpton with various Progressive and Green candidates and elected officials.
"I would hope this weekend that some mayors have the audacity and the courage to stand up for American principles," Sharpton said. "My fear is that they come in for a corporate-sponsored weekend, but the tab will be paid by American citizens."
He reminded the mayors that protesters, "Are the lobby of the true America," and that unlike the corporations,"We have no gifts for you! We have no checks for you!"
Green opposition
Sharpton's "lobby of the true America" moved into high gear over the next few days. On Saturday, June 15, more than 200 people registered their participation in the Cities for People! coalition's "People's Conference on Cities," an alternative meeting to the that of the mayors downtown.
The People's Conference took place all day long at the Madison Labor Temple and featured talks on housing, corporatization, education, prisons, land use, and a host of other issues. Green Party members, such as Santa Monica Mayor Mike Feinstein; Sup. John Hendrick;, George Martin; Robert Miranda;, Amy Mondloch; John Peck; Sup. Kyle Richmond; Donna Silver; and others, figured prominently in many of the workshops and panels.
The next evening Cities for People! took to the streets with the "Community Parade for Cities." A crowd of several hundred had already formed on the steps of the Capitol Square by the time the staging rally got under way, and Coalition of Black Trade Unionists President Bill Franks joined Madison Alderperson Brenda Konkel (Grn/Pro) in launching the parade.
The parade of 1,000 people concluded with speeches by Robert Miranda, Adam Benedetto, Anne Habel, and music by the Coma Savants and David Rovics.
That was not the end of the day's event, however. Across the Library Mall a faceoff was growing between protesters and four lines of police. Scores of state troopers, backed up by hundreds of riot police in reserve, stood behind a hastily erected slat fence, blocking access to the UW-Madison Memorial Union.
Though the Union is technically the property of the Wisconsin student body and open to the public, in this case it was sealed up like a fortress. The reason? The mayors were getting down with beer, brats, and corporate lobbyists on the Union's lakeshore terrace.
This sudden corporate seizure of a Wisconsin landmark did not sit well with many people, including former Madison Police Chief David Cooper. He witnessed Madison police grab seven people out of the protesting crowd, apparently at random, and haul them off to police vehicles. The word he used in Madison's Isthmus for the police tactics? "Disgraceful." To date the charges against three of those arrested have been dropped. The other four are still contesting the charges against them.
Invasion aftermath
What was gained from all the organizing and protests?
For the broader progressive movement, the gains were substantial. Diverse members of the community united to deliver protests. The protests set the agenda. The news out of the conference was that corporations were buying access to local government officials, and additionally, that those protesting this travesty were unjustifiably being made targets of police repression. Much of the media got behind the Cities for People! agenda and agreed with the sentiment of Madison's Capital Times that the "Mayors need to protest".
For Greens, the gains were probably even more substantial Green Party elected officials and activists were highly visible at the People's Conference and on the Parade for Cities. The official spokespeople for Cities for People! included two Greens, Juscha Robinson and Brian Benford. Additionally, a third Cities for People! spokesperson, Lisa Rainwater van Suntum, the Co-President of Madison N.O.W., joined the Green Party shortly thereafter.
