Team Cascadia (photo story)

2004 Republican Convention protests in NYC

In the summer of 2004 I traveled to New York City to take part in and photograph the protests at the Republican National Convention. We start out with the Church Ladies for Choice because I wish to consider in these captions the role the church plays in the Republican party.
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I was part of Team Cascadia – an affinity group for folks from the 700 mile stretch of the earth that is crowned by the Cascade mountain range.
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A giant hand shakes families into the street and a couple collapses in despair when war kills their only child.
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A political party that values profits more than parents has no "Family Values." (This banner that I assembled for the protests shows, from left to right, 3 Images by Eric Drooker and 1 by Kathe Kollwitz).
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The night before the convention most of the delegates went to Broadway plays while squardrons of police stood guard. Many of the delegates expressed their love for "family values" at this high class strip club. Below a protester from Portland is arrested for walking towards one of these theaters. Later, a delegate shakes her fist at the protesters who were not arrested.
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Our east coast convergence space was in a purple room at St. Peter's Church in the Bronx. Inspired by the Pastor's sermon, I wrote my own sermon: Jesus told a rich man seeking the kingdom of heaven to "sell all you possess and give the money to the poor." Jesus is not an easy God. He did not encourage his followers to pursue all the world's wealth guilt-free in exchange for "giving up" someone else's ability to choose whether or not to give birth or get married.
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Amelia, the founder of Team Cascadia, hopped freight trains to get to New York City. I photographed her at the moment she first entered the purple room of St. Peter's Church in the Bronx.
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The most moving protests were the two poor people's marches that took place on the opening day of the convention. Here, in the center of the photograph, the Bible is held where its author walked—in the streets with the poor.
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Families make up 40% of America's homeless population.
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The whole world is watching. Vote community and topple Bush.
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On opening day we marched on the Republican Convention twice —once with each of the two poor people's marches.
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After marching we collapsed outside St. Marks Church and awaited news about friends who were swept up in the mass arrests.
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Our friends were arrested on their way to peaceful protests along with dozens of New Yorkers who were just on their way home. Without access to phone calls or lawyers, they were penned up in an abandoned hazardous waste site for about 24 hours and then sent to jail.
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Two of the Team Cascadia women picked up a dummy from the over-flowing dumpster visible down the street.
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This photo is titled: "No Dick either." On the final evening of the convention this candle light vigil in Union Square mourned all who have died as a result of Bush's policies.
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"An estimated 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq as a direct or indirect consequence of the March 2003 United States-led invasion, according to a new study." – NY Times, 10/29/04
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Right-wing Christian values are so different from ours. They support a president whose greedy plundering of the world's resources damages the earth and its inhabitants.
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We don't value the right-wing Christian's concerns about what goes on in other people's bedrooms. Earlier in the day, in the subway tunnels about twenty feet below where this couple stands, Mennonite women sang about simple living and true faith.
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As they sang, their men passed out free gospel CDs with these words from the Bible printed on the back: "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sins, and will heal their land."
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Religious conservatives who have allied themselves with Bush's war and his dream of unfettered capitalism talk as if they are the guardians of Western Civilization. However, capitalism is not conservative.
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"Capitalism tears down the old to keep building the new in a perpetual gamble on tomorrow. It is of all things least worthy of the name conservative." —Garry Wills. The photo shows Cheri Honkala who with her two young children was once homeless herself. Now she speaks out for everyone whose life has been torn apart by "progress."
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