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Miami
Partisan Protest
Activists demonstrate that campaign ’08 has begun in earnest
By Lee Molloy
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These demonstrators protested Sen. John McCain’s White House
bid outside of McCain’s private fundraiser at Parrot Jungle
Island on Friday morning. Photo by Angie Hargot |
As Sen. John McCain prepared to speak to supporters at a
$1,000-per-plate private fundraiser at
Parrot Jungle Island last Friday, roughly 20 protestors stood
outside on the MacArthur Causeway waving signs in the blistering
heat.
The handmade banners, which essentially equated a McCain presidency
with a third Bush term, contained such messages as: “Bush =
McCain, more of the same” and “McCain thinks NAFTA was a good
idea, 1 million jobs lost overseas.” One large poster, designed to
look like the front of the book Economics for Dummies,
featured a familiar phrase from former President Bill Clinton’s
’92 campaign: “It’s the economy, stupid!”
“We’re focusing on the economy,” said Bret Berlin, the new chairman
of the Miami-Dade County Democratic Party. “In John McCain’s own
words, he doesn’t understand the economy. John McCain is promising
more of the same. We need a change, someone to lift us up out of
this Republican recession. John McCain is not the man; we’re here
to say ‘no’ to John McCain.”
Many of the protestors — including activists, union members and
Barack Obama supporters — said they are unhappy with McCain’s
strong links to President Bush’s policies. “We are voicing our
First Amendment right to say we don’t agree with what John McCain
is standing for,” protestor Greg Kelley said. “We want to help
people realize we don’t want four more years of Bush.”
Fellow demonstrator David Lawson sees McCain in a more sinister
light. “McCain favors Bush’s surveillance of Americans without
warrants, so we may as well be out here protesting while we still
can,” he said.
The price of gas was also high on the protestors’ agenda. Activists
passed around fliers with messages that McCain does nothing for
working families, while supporting tax breaks for oil companies.
“We want to reveal who the real John McCain is,” said South Florida
AFL-CIO union President Fred Frost. “People see him as a war hero;
we see him as someone with a zero percent voting record in 2007
for working families. He is focusing on big oil tax breaks to the
richest corporations in the history of the country. ExxonMobil
made $40 billion in profits last year ... [but] people can’t
afford to put gas in their cars to get to work.”
Organizers of McCain’s campaign fundraiser were not available for
comment.
As passing truckers — often the hardest hit by skyrocketing fuel
prices — honked and waved, demonstrators spoke to a handful of
reporters and television news trucks.
“Thank you John McCain for being a war hero, but hell no to being
the president of the
United States,” Frost said. |
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