Progressives try to send a message of resistance through the RNC security barrier

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MILWAUKEE — While Republican delegates gathered on the floor of the Fiserv Forum on Monday for the first day of the RNC, progressive activists were assembling outside. With handmade signs decrying the “racist and reactionary Republican agenda,” demonstrators took to the streets to try and shout their message across the U.S. Secret Service blockades and fences surrounding the official RNC venues.

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

Organizers predicted more than 5,000 people from around the U.S. would participate in the show of solidarity against Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee. The crowd that turned out for the march in hot and muggy downtown Milwaukee ended up much smaller than that, although a vast range of causes and issues were represented.

“Trump is what we get for our lack of participation,” worried Nadine Seiler, who traveled from Waldorf, Md., 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 by the Heritage Foundation to overhaul the federal government. The conservative organization says Trump will adopt its playbook on his first day back in the Oval Office if elected — although the former president has tried to distance himself from the initiative.

“I know they want to erase Black folks and our contributions, I know they want to eliminate the Department of Education, I know they want to defang the FBI … and use the DOJ to prosecute his ‘enemies,’ which means anyone who disagrees with his fascist policies,” she rattles off. “Oh yeah, I know enough about it.”

Army veteran Renay Blanford worries more about a second term of Donald Trump as commander-in-chief. “He swore an oath when he was a president to defend the Constitution of the United States,” she says. “And he did not during the insurrection of January 6th.”

Organizers say that more than 120 different progressive causes were represented at the march, including abortion, immigrant, LGBTQ+ rights proponents and people against the ongoing Israeli war against Gaza. But the overall message was anti-Trump — which vendor Stan Sinberg from New York was all to happy to provide in button form.

“So I have ‘Non-Felon for President’,” he explains, pointing to the rows of slogan-bearing accessories displayed on a hand wagon. “I have ‘Another Nasty Woman against Trump’ which is another throwback,” Sinberg says, referring to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, which is when he first started making the rounds as a button salesman.

“If he died tomorrow, I would be a little conflicted,” he laughed, as a couple of potential customers scanned his offerings. “I would be very happy he is gone, but my business would be over right away.”

The attempted assassination of Trump just a few days earlier hung over the gathering as protesters passed lines of multistate police on bikes and horseback — a fresh reminder of the recent tragedy at the Pennsylvania rally. Attendees here were quick to disavow that act of political violence, even as some cracked jokes about wanting their chants to get within “ear-shot” of the former president.

The Coalition to March on the RNC fought hard over the final route of the march, to ensure their chants would at least have a chance of being heard by RNC attendees, and sued the City of Milwaukee and the U.S. Secret Service over the security zone that would have pushed 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 allow the march closer to the convention’s Fiserv Forum. But after all that, demonstrators say Republican delegates aren’t really the audience they need to reach.

“We’re not really here for the Republican party, we’re really here to raise the demands of the people,” says Mennelli Escarez, who attended along with other Filipino-American student activists from the University of Illinois-Chicago.

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

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

“This was just getting us ready and revved up,” she says.