He timed the public debut of his new outfit, Prophets of Rage, to coincide with the RNC gathering. One stalwart activist who made his presence felt was Rage Against the Machine co-founder Tom Morello. Convention veterans noted that the protest efforts were more plentiful in the recent past, both for Republican and Democratic gatherings. The absence of a sizable demonstration or march indicates a lack of a centralized organization capabilities for hot-button causes such as Black Lives Matter and the Occupy movements. The female activists of Code Pink were visible but not in large numbers. Most of those who came were from fringe groups including religious fundamentalists, anarchists and Communists. And tension was high, of course, because of the recent string of police-related shootings - both police shootings of African-American men and this month’s deadly sniper attacks on police in Dallas and Baton Rouge, La.Īs it turned out, there were exponentially more police and journalists prowling the streets than protestors. There had been much speculation in the media about the potential for disturbances in Cleveland because of the controversial positions staked out by GOP nominee Donald Trump on immigration, and his more recent tough talk about being the “law and order” candidate. In the designated protest zone of Public Square, the demonstrations were noisier but not violent. But for a few shouting matches, a brief sit-in on the street and the torching of an American flag, the sporadic protests around the arena were uneventful. Police patrolled the city in large clusters - on foot, on bikes and on horseback - and in groups that appeared to be assembled with an eye toward reflecting ethnic and racial diversity. ![]() Hundreds of police, emergency technicians and crowd-control experts were enlisted from around the country to keep the peace while the GOP got down to business inside the Quicken Loans Arena in the downtown Playhouse Square district. ![]() ![]() The law enforcement presence throughout the area was enormous and impossible to miss. In the end, calm prevailed in the city that loves to brag about how much it “rocks.” CLEVELAND - Cleveland braced itself for large-scale protests and the potential for unrest in the streets as the Republican National Convention rolled in to town this week.
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