DEMONSTRATORS PROTESTS FRUSTRATE, INCONVENIENCE LOCALS

PHILADELPHIA - This was the scene downtown yesterday: Helicopters hovered in
the sky while hundreds of protesters such as Donald Shelter of Roxbury and
David Graeber, a Yale professor, chanted in front of the city jail.
Philadelphians trying to get home after a long day of work again faced a
band of demonstrators surrounded by hundreds of police officers - a dramatic
scene that has repeated itself each day this week during the Republican
National Convention. "I just wish the Republicans would just go home," said
Epifany Clark, a taxi driver. "They are just causing all kinds of confusion.

They are making everyone so angry." This week, protesters - teachers,
activists, the homeless and students - from across the country have
converged on "the city of brotherly love" to bring attention to a host of
social issues they say are being ignored by the GOP. But as the protest grew
from a festival on the first day of the convention to a number of large
brawls in which 400 demonstrators were arrested in the past two days, some
question who these people are and whether their actions will have any impact
long after the Republicans have gone home "It's all a show," the Rev. Eugene
Rivers of Boston said yesterday while attending the Shadow Convention, an
alternative to the GOP event. "It's nice. It's symbolic.

Young people get a chance to vent some energy, but at the end of the day it
will have no impact on policies and programs." But protesters say they are
part of a larger network of people who want to change the way the country is
governed. "We are trying to raise awareness that the Republicans and the
Democrats are lobbying for corporate interest," said Shelter, 40. "They are
not working for us and shouldn't be the ones to govern us." Emily Nepon, a
volunteer for R2K Network, the organizing committee for the various protest
groups, said the demonstrators are standing in for people who are not being
represented by politicians like Governor George W. Bush of Texas. "It's
everybody.

It's a coalition that is diverse in age, class, gender, and sexuality. The
only people who are not involved are the rich people who have nothing to
complain about," Nepon said. Graeber, 39, an assistant anthropology
professor at Yale University, said the demonstrators' main objective at the
convention has been to shed light on issues such as the death penalty,
corporate globalization, and health care. "What you are seeing is an
emergence of two movements.

One movement was in Seattle where protesters were against corporate
globalization. Then, there is a movement of people against police brutality
and the death penalty.

Here you are seeing a convergence of the two movements." Graeber said the
groups have been preparing for a year to disrupt the convention, and plan to
demonstrate during the Democratic convention in Los Angeles that starts Aug.
14. "Some people have come in small groups while others have come on their
own and formed groups once they got here. Perfect strangers would come, meet
and form their own groups," said Emily Miller, a student from Indiana. "Yes,
it's fun. We believe politics should be fun, but this is also serious.