Milwaukee, WI — Under sweltering heat, thousands of protesters rallied and marched through the outer “soft” security zone on Monday, July 15, the 2024 Republican National Convention’s opening day. It took two years of political pressure including a round of court filings to obtain a protest route within the outer security zone, local protest organizer Omar Flores told Unicorn Riot. Watch our live stream coverage from Monday here.

On Sunday and Monday, three arrests were reported but police formations along the march route were largely scaled back compared to similar events. Tragically on Tuesday, Samuel Sharpe Jr. was killed by RNC event police from Columbus, Ohio, next to King Park, leading to a vigil and march that night; this confirmed local organizers’ fears that out-of-town police at the National Special Security Event could escalate violence. [See our special on Mobile Field Force Policing at the RNC Milwaukee.]

The opening and closing rallies at Red Arrow Park featured dozens of speakers from a range of mostly Midwestern groups. While many protesters objected to GOP-specific policies, we heard repeatedly that there is immense frustration with the Democratic Party and many protesters will be back for the nearby Democratic Convention in Chicago (August 19-22). [Support Unicorn Riot’s convention coverage here.]

Right-leaning counter-demonstrations were mostly limited to anti-abortion groups and a set of fundamentalist street preachers with large signs. Reproductive rights were a major focus of the Coalition to March on the RNC since the Republican Party has effectively curtailed these rights across many parts of the country in recent years, replacing health care with dubious crisis pregnancy centers. The Trump Administration’s Supreme Court appointees helped overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, but a more hard-line national abortion ban is seen as a electoral liability within the Republican National Committee. The RNC platform committee removed its national abortion ban position that’s been pushed since the Reagan years, leaving those activists frustrated and waving signs at the gates of the event. (The 1995 political documentary Spin shows how high-ranking Republican Pat Robertson kept a lid on similar tensions during the 1992 RNC.)

We heard from abortion rights activists and LGBTQ rights activists during the march on the RNC.

We spoke with a retired Teamster who strongly objected to union president Sean O’Brien’s move to address the RNC on Monday. While American labor unions usually don’t align with Republicans, he pointed out Teamster links went back as far as Richard Nixon’s pardon of Jimmy Hoffa in 1971, which led to Hoffa supporting Nixon for president in 1972. After Jimmy Carter deregulated the trucking industry, the Teamsters endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, and George Bush in 1988. This helped solidify the idea of “Reagan Democrats” which Trump strategists have sought to revive by making inroads in traditional Democratic voter blocs.

We heard from Alissa Washington whose loved one Cornelius Jackson is among the large number of inmates who claim they were wrongfully convicted in Minnesota. She leads a group called Wrongfully Incarcerated & Over-Sentenced Families Council. (We referenced her story alongside the exonerated Marvin Haynes and last year’s report on civil disobedience at the Stillwater prison.) She was there “fighting for our rights, what needs to be done freeing our people from all oppression.”

The Midwestern peace activist scene was present at RNC protests along with groups like Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) from the Twin Cities, Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), and the Anti-War Committee, many of whom protested the 2008 RNC in the Twin Cities.

We talked with Medea Benjamin from Code Pink and Twin Cities antiwar activist and 9/11 FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley who were both there in opposition to the US-sponsored Israeli war on Gaza.

We heard from a local protester who lives within the security zone that it’s been a source of stress to even access their home:

“It’s been horrible. I live in the middle of it and there’s only one entrance into my building…. Personal restrictions. When I found out about it, they make it seem like we don’t belong here, even though they don’t live here. Like, the vibe was so off.”

Milwaukee-based Protester

Protesters wanted to use the riverfront Pere Marquette Park but RNC organizers and the Secret Service prevented this. We found the park closed off and guarded by officers from the New Jersey Department of Corrections.

A local protest organizer and teacher explained to us how city residents mobilized against the 2024 Republican National Convention.

Amid a political climate of bipartisan support for Israel’s war on Palestine, The Palestinian flag was a popular choice among the protesters on the street. We heard from Hatem Abudayyeh, a protest organizer and national chair of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) who spoke about the wider protests for Palestine and a campaign against the “racist, white supremacist” Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called “Drop the ADL.”

An organizer from the U.S. Palestinian Community Network chapter in Milwaukee explained why they are out protesting in the video below.

One protester supporting Palestine compared the militarized Coast Guard presence in the closed-off Milwaukee River to how Israel presents itself, but said they were not intimidated by this:

“It shows how they feel threatened, that the people together are saying enough is enough. This is just a sign of it. They use their military force just like Israel does against innocent people that are just fighting for their rights of freedom and justice.”

RNC Protester

Protesters from Green Bay, Wisconsin, talk about how they organize against arms companies and other campaigns in their area to oppose the war on Palestine supported by the U.S. government, and the history of socialist politics in Wisconsin going back a century.

A teacher from Minnesota described interconnected struggles and the importance of pushing for rights for Palestinians and a local physician spoke about supporting Palestine in the videos below.

Protesters in the climate movement talked with us about opposing Republican and Democratic environmental policies and a protester from PETA wearing a lab animal costume explained how the federal government wastes money on animal testing that is ineffective and harms the animals.

---

Poor People’s Army Rally and March

After 4 p.m. at King Park west of downtown, the Philadelphia-based Poor People’s Army (also known as the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign) held a small rally with Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, then marched towards the Fiserv Forum arena hosting much of the RNC proceedings. The same group faced intense repression at the 2008 RNC in St. Paul when police deployed gas munitions around Mickey’s Diner and shot marker rounds for blocks at a fleeing crowd, including this reporter, even though the crowd was not attempting to spar with the heavily armed police formations.

We heard from peace activists and youth from Philadelphia who spoke about marching for rights of unhoused people. The group also set up an encampment in the area during the RNC, echoing the other encampments that already exist in similar locations like this in Milwaukee.

During the Poor People’s Army march in Milwaukee we talked with Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein who criticized America’s massive war spending as well as moves by the Democrats to quash independent ballot access. Georgia and Nevada are among the states where Dems are trying to knock Greens off the ballot right now in court, incurring massive legal fees. Democrats are also putting up listings for “infiltrators and spies to mess up our ballot drives and organizations.”

Stein said she’s the presumptive Green nominee although the process isn’t completed. She added that while she has participated in other independent candidate debates, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West haven’t shown any interest in doing so. West and Kennedy declined to join a July 12 debate in Las Vegas hosted by the Free & Equal Elections Foundation that included Stein, Chase Oliver from the Libertarian Party and Randall Terry from the Constitution Party. Members of multiple other Green Party chapters around the Midwest also turned up to protest the RNC.

On Monday we saw an extensive presence of Columbus, Ohio police officers both on the front lines of the main march through the soft security zone, and at the Poor People’s March in King Park. Some were marked “Dialogue Team.” Tragically several officers from this group killed Samuel Sharpe Jr. near King Park Tuesday afternoon.

After the shooting, local residents told journalists that the shooting could have easily been avoided — only about 15 seconds elapsed from the police noticing Sharpe waving a knife at a distance from another person, to multiple officers quickly shooting and killing him. A vigil was placed on the site he died later that night. Ironically the Republicans’ convention theme that night, “Make America Safe Once Again.” promoted intensifying support for police.

Cover image and Day 1 videography by Chris Schiano; Live media production by Dingane Xaba & Niko Georgiades.

---

Follow us on X (aka Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, BlueSky and Patreon.

Please consider a tax-deductible donation to help sustain our horizontally-organized, non-profit media organization: