The RNC is Over But the Fight is Just Beginning
It is over. The barricades are taken down and the thousands of cops have left. The fascist convention has ended. And as Milwaukee Beagle has said since our beginning, it was not the overwhelmingly positive experience that Mayor Johnson and Visit Milwaukee sold it to us as. Even in his post event press, Johnson has been decidedly muted in his reflections on how the convention has benefited Milwaukee, focusing on the abstract benefit of ‘publicity’ for the city, rather than referencing any concrete positive outcomes. His promise of $200 million for the city was always ludicrous and the numbers so far seem to further support just how much of a blatant lie this was. Johnson literally had to ask Wisconsin residents to come downtown and spend money because Republicans were not. While some businesses inside the security perimeter reported a boost in sales, the majority called the convention a bust, especially those in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood for example. It seems the fascists did not want to venture too far outside their police protected bubble, especially to a predominantly African-American neighborhood. Service workers and rideshare drivers reported receiving abysmal tips, awkward/uncomfortable conversations, and complicated commutes. Grindr seems to have been the only business having any real success during the RNC, with the app reportedly crashing multiple times from the number of users in the area. While the absurd level of hypocrisy of a violently anti-LGTBQA+ party crashing a gay dating app is amusing, it is clearly not the economic boom we were promised.
Economic underpromises aside, we must also discuss the violence that the convention brought to our city. Samuel Sharpe Jr., known to folks as “Jah”, was brutally murdered by out-of-state cops. Thanks to pressure from protests, the video was released much earlier than the cops would have liked and it is horrifying. The killer cops only gave Sharpe roughly 15 seconds to respond to their orders before murdering him. If they had taken only a few seconds to observe the situation, they would have noticed that Sharpe suffered from multiple sclerosis and was clearly not the active threat that they have made him out to be. There are thousands of ways the cops could have de-escalated the situation, and instead they chose violence. Now a man is dead. These cops should never have been outside the security perimeter and this situation arose because of poor planning by the city. Prior to the convention, the city allegedly pressured unhoused folks to relocate away from the convention area without giving them any assistance and ignoring offers to help mitigate the effects this mass displacement would cause in the unhoused community. Mayor Johnson only had praise for the killer cops, ignoring the blood on his hands.
And then there was the violence from Republicans themselves. Despite phony calls for ‘unity’ after the attempted assassination of Trump, Republicans were quick to show their true colors. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson unintentionally gave the original speech he had planned prior to the shooting where he made no calls for peace and instead called Democrats "a clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values and our people." Wisconsin Representative Derrick Van Orden (who has a history of violence) falsely accused a Code Pink activist of ‘assault’. In case there was any doubt about where law enforcement’s allegiances lie, despite no charges being brought because of lack of evidence, the activist still had to spend the night in jail and was only freed after constant pressure. Code Pink has now filed ethics complaints against Van Orden and have received a stream of violent threats since the incident. Republicans have remained the party of political violence.
Thankfully, the Coalition to March on the RNC was able to rally in resistance to the RNC despite their extensive battle with the city for their marching permit. Other protests were not as fortunate. The designated protest zones were so isolated from the RNC itself that these zones remained mostly empty. The city and Republicans’ effort to chill speech were not entirely successful thankfully. On Thursday night a march to demand justice for Samuel Sharpe and D'vontaye Mitchell marched through the security zone to the Hyatt. Instead of protesting, many also chose to come together in joyful resistance at one of the many Great Milwaukee Block Parties events.
All this to say, the RNC is behind us and now the real fight to keep the fascists out of office begins. With Biden recently dropping out of the race, we have a much better chance at winning.
