For many RNC protesters, there is dissatisfaction with both Republicans and Democrats – Isthmus

Temperatures reached a high of 88 degrees Fahrenheit Monday in Milwaukee as protesters from across the country marched in protest of the Republican National Convention.

The discrepancy between conditions inside Fiserv Forum, where the convention is being held, and the temperature at nearby Red Arrow Park, where protesters met, was not lost on the demonstrators.

“Racists are sitting in the air conditioning, but the fight for liberation and justice has always been grassroots,” Janan Najeeb, executive director of the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition and Coalition to March on the RNC 2024 organizer, told a crowd of more than 300 people waiting to march. 

Monday’s march culminated a protracted legal battle over protest boundaries and years of planning, ultimately drawing more than 120 organizations — including Madison-based organizations CODEPink Madison, Jewish Voice for Peace-Madison and the Madison Abortion and Reproductive Rights Coalition for Healthcare — that oppose the Republican Party’s agenda.

As the protest kicked off with a 10 a.m. press conference, demonstrators had access to sign-making stations and water; lively music played between speakers. Protesters began marching at 12:15 p.m. Despite fears of violence — and a assassination attempt against Trump at a Saturday rally — events stayed peaceful throughout the protest. 

Though much of the protest targeted the RNC and Republican Party, many protesters also criticized the Democratic Party and an American political system they feel has disregarded their needs in such areas as foreign policy, education, immigration and beyond. Many members from the protest group, Coalition to March on the RNC 2024, will be protesting the August Democratic National Convention in Chicago as well. 

Their message: America, do better.

“The leadership in this country has given us a choice between Biden and Trump,” protester and self-described “homemaker” husband Ross Rowley, who came from Minnesota alongside his wife, former FBI agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley, tells Isthmus. “You tell me: what kind of choice is that?”

Organizers and protesters represented a variety of causes. Kobi Guillory came to Milwaukee from Chicago. He says he first began protesting in 2018, after the murder of Laquan McDonald by Chicago Police Department officer Jason Van Dyke. 

Guillory, a Chicago middle school science teacher and organizer with Freedom Road Socialist Organization, tells Isthmus that issues talked about at the convention affect his life and the lives of those he teaches.

Republican influence over educational curricula was a key concern, he said. But so are efforts to meet students’ basic needs, like housing or food, which Guillory says are pronounced at the Englewood school he works at, “one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city.” 

On meeting students’ needs, Guillory says Republicans are uninterested and Democrats neglectful. Programs to meet basic student needs, like free student lunches, experience more broad support among Democrats than Republicans. An estimated 1 in 6 students in Wisconsin experience food insecurity, according to nonprofit advocacy organization Feeding America.

Guillory was one of many protesters who came from out of state to voice dissatisfaction with Republicans and Democrats. For Rowley, the Minnesota protester, Monday’s demonstration was a continuation of decades of protesting since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Rowley says that foreign policy has “gotten worse” in the decades since — he pointed to the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, saying the level of Palestinian death is “unbelievable.”

“I’m coming to protest the RNC and the elites of the Republican Party,” Rowley says. “I haven’t quite made up my mind on Chicago. But the DNC is equally as guilty of pursuing this kind of foreign policy.”

But some protesters directed ire toward Trump specifically. Sedate Holland Kohler, a longtime protester and Milwaukee resident, says she’s concerned about the former president’s relationship to conservative policy proposal Project 2025 and “dangerous ideologies.” 

Trump maintains that the Heritage Foundation-driven proposal is separate from his candidacy, though many of his former policy advisers contributed to it. The Heritage Foundation hosted a “policy fest” near the Fiserv Forum throughout Monday morning and afternoon.

Despite the RNC drawing attention to Wisconsin, Holland Kohler says it is not representative of Milwaukee or Wisconsin: “Donald Trump doesn’t speak for me. The Republican Party doesn’t speak for me.”

For the city hosting the convention, the protesters were another consideration in a years-long planning process to prepare for more than 50,000 people to descend on Milwaukee. Part of that process, bolstered by $75 million in federal security funding, was bringing in officers from 24 states and the District of Columbia. 

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, more than 4,000 non-Milwaukee police officers have come to the city. Madison’s police force sent 85 officers to assist with security, according to The Capital Times. 

Kaprina Steward, a police officer from Columbus, Ohio, is part of a “dialogue team,” one of few in the country. Steward tells Isthmus her job at the protests is to mitigate police interactions and give protesters and counter protesters room to safely demonstrate. Giving protest organizers the first opportunity for intervention if there is a protester behaving inappropriately is one such method, Steward says.

“There’s a member of your group, [we ask] are you able to basically rein them in?” Steward says. “We leave that first approach up to them, before we have to mitigate any situation.”

Security is robust throughout downtown Milwaukee near the Fiserv Forum; officers traverse the city’s waterways in armed boats, and barriers separate the “hard line” perimeter, where convention attendees must pass through a multistep security process to enter. 

Counter-protests were limited; roughly 10 people joined a “Make America Great Again” hat-wearing counter-protester who hurled discriminatory epithets at the march. When protesters neared Fiserv Forum around 2:00 p.m., they briefly engaged with antiabortion activists who had also come to the RNC to protest updated language in the Republican platform they view as too soft on abortion. 

Milwaukee’s protest and counter-protests come as Americans are increasingly polarized and disillusioned about the political process; a September 2023 Pew Research Poll found that 28% of Americans “dislike both political parties.” 

According to a statement Tuesday from the Coalition to March on the RNC, Monday’s protest drew 3,000 protesters, though most media outlets reported smaller numbers. The group is now shifting its focus to the Democratic National Convention, slated for Chicago Aug. 19-22, said spokesperson Omar Flores. “We know that the Democrats are working just as hard as the Republicans to promote racist and reactionary policies, especially when it comes to sending money and weapons to Israel. We had a spectacular march yesterday, and our endorsers look forward to more organizing in August and beyond!”