The Republican National Circus
New York City, Aug. 29 - Sept. 2, 2004
Movie clips coming soon!
We are proud to announce that we have no idea what a "Free Speech Area" looks like. America is our free speech area. When the Republicans went shopping, to Broadway shows and corporate parties we were there to let them know that we were not going to let them get away with exploiting the tragedy of September 11th in hopes of giving us four more years of Bush, War, corporate welfare and tax cuts for the super rich.
The response from New Yorkers was amazing. The Ronald Reagan Home for the Criminally Insane opened our hit musical "Republicans Gone Wild" on Broadway in front of a theater where the delegates were enjoying a special performance of the Lion King. The police threatened to arrest us and the crowd that gathered around us began booing the cops and started chanting "We want Dick", referring to Dick Cheney who was dancing and flashing his Halliburton tits. Even the cops laughed and they let us set up across the street in front of the theater where the Texas delegates were being treated to the musical 42nd Street.
This is where we met Texan Jeff Wilton. Mr. Wilton was drunk as a skunk at 400pm on Monday and thought that we were "New York Homos". Mr. Wilton let some of his latent tendencies get the better of him and began to stroke the nipples of Dick Cheney's Halliburton boobs and kiss the head of Lynn Cheney's Lockheed Martin missile strap-on. Mr. Wilton was so proud of being a Republican that he sold one of the guys in the group his 2004 membership card to the Republican National Committee for $20. When the member the Reagan Home felt bad about this and tried to give it back Mr. Wilton replied, "If you want me to take that back you will have to give me another $20" these Texans sure do drive a hard bargain.
Republican Freakshow
About a half million people turned out to protest the Republican National Circus on Sunday, August 29th and many of them were treated to our very own Republican Freakshow.
Stars of the Republican National Circus' Freakshow
Media Coverage:
http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2004/09/32650.php
Jailhouse Rock
Rumsfeld and Abu-Ghriab prisoner swinging to Elvis's Jailhouse Rock. And some people call this torture?
Media Coverage:
http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2004/09/32650.php
WMDs Abducted by Aliens
Do you have a better explaination of what happened to the weapons of mass destruction?
Media Coverage:
http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2004/09/32650.php
Texan Gone Wild
"Now, to me, that's a gay thing, a man showing off breasts like that," said Jeff Wilton, from Lacoste, Texas. "I've never seen real New York homos before. Is it safe to use the word 'queer' here?" A touch confused by what had obviously been a drink too many, Mr Wilton was still sure of one thing. "I'm sorry. But to be in the Republican Party you have to be a real man," he told protesters.
Hallibacon
We are still getting media from our actions at the RNC. Our Hallibacon
Breakfast for the Texas Delegates was featured in the New York
Times again for their 2004 Year in Pictures:
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/photo/20041227_YIP_FEATURE/blocker.html
(see Campaign 2004).
The photo shows two of our friends from CodePink wearing pig
noses and rolling around in the Reagan Home’s Hallibacon
Bucks ($100 bills with Cheney’s face on them). The caption
to the photo reads, “In pig snouts, protesters at the Republican
National Convention root around in money outside the Hilton Hotel,
where Halliburton, the defense contractor, was holding a breakfast
for the Texas Delegation.”
Getting Halliburton into the news during the convention was a major coup, especially since Halliburton wasn’t really having a breakfast for the Texas Delegates. We made it all up. The Radical Tejas Block sent out a phony press release with the Halliburton letterhead on it from Houston announcing the breakfast and we sent out our own press release from NYC saying that we were planning on protesting outside of the breakfast. We would have preferred not to use disinformation, but the media was only interested in printing one story – the police vs. the protesters – so we knew we had to be both creative and a little devious to breakthrough the blackout on political content.
Other Media Coverage:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50689-2004Aug31.html
(registration required)
http://slate.msn.com/id/2105965/
http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=GOP-TEXAS-08-31-04&cat=PP
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/01/uselections2004.usa
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/01/politics/main639953.shtml?CMP=ILC-SearchStories
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0831-03.htm
http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2004/09/32590.php
Fox News 'Shut-Up-A-Thon'
In honor of Bill O'Reilly, our favorite Fox News celebrity, the Ronald Reagan Home for the Criminally Insane helped to organize the official Republican National Convention Fox News Shut-up-a-thon. When we were organizing this event with our friends in CODEPINK and the Tejas Block we figured that we would have somewhere between 40 and 200 people standing in front of Fox's headquarters shouting O'Reilly's favorite line - "shut-up!". We were blown away, by what took place. A thousand people, maybe more showed up to show their appreciation for the good work that Fox is doing. All we had was a tiny 10 watt Radio Shack bullhorn that we could not even use since we did not have a permit. In fact, Andrea Buffa of CODEPINK was arrested for using the bullhorn to tell people not to block the sidewalk. However, even without any type of direction or leadership people managed to stage an incredibly effective, creative and peaceful rally despite the police provocations. We are still hoping to come across some photos of the Reagan Home's rendition of the Fox News Republican Cheerleaders to share with you.
Our Fox News Republican Cheerleaders (O'Reilly, Hannity and Hume) were dressed in red, white and blue cheerleading uniforms and led pro-Bush, pro-Republican cheers much like they do on their "news" programs.
One of our chants was "The More you Watch, the less you know". Unfortunately this chant is based on a scientific study by the well respected Program on International Policy at the University of Maryland. They found that people who depend on Fox News as their main source of news are likely to believe that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, Saddam was involved in the attack on the World Trade Center and that the world supported the war on Iraq. All three of these beliefs are verifiably incorrect. The Ronald Reagan Home for the Criminally Insane does not think that people who watch Fox are stupid but we do believe that democracy depends on having an informed citizenry and this is something Fox is clearly not interested in.
Read about the study: http://www.alternet.org/story/16892
Media Coverage:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0901-03.htm
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/01/politics/main639953.shtml?CMP=ILC-SearchStories