In spite of permits, plans or schedules, protests of Philly DNC begin Sunday, July 24, when whole world is watching.

CLEVELAND, OHIO- Already the 2016 RNC has a lesson to offer organizers of next week’s DNC in Philadelphia. Throw everything you’ve got into SUNDAY, Day Zero. Once party delegates disappear into the convention center, they take the reporters with them. It’s a mistake fresh activists make every election cycle. The biggest demonstrations are scheduled on the official start date, Monday, instead of Sunday when the streets have the undivided attention of the media, and especially of the international press. It’s no wonder Philly administrators approved protest permits for July 25-29, but none to large rally planners for Sunday July 24. My experience from conventions past is that Sunday marches will spontaneously take to the streets, but their numbers will remain limited by the fact that buses weren’t hired to bring the masses until the next day. By then only the alternative outlets will be covering events outside the convention floor. Even the largest protests on Monday will be belittled. The news stories will be about the underwelming turnout in comparison to the host city’s security preparations. Militarized cops will outnumber everyone and even protesters will feel let down by the apparent lack of resolve of their comrades who stayed home. It is dispiriting but it’s false, because the benchmark by which successful convention protests are judged is Chicago 1968, whose mythos has distorted a critical detail: the numbers. The protestors of the 1968 Democratic National Convention numbered only a thousand. The mayhem of lore was investigated and found to have been a “police riot” caused by Chicaco police forces which numbered 11,000. Those troop levels -both sides- will easily be surpassed in Philadelphia. The corporate media will of course pretend otherwise. If would-be disrupters of DNC 2016 were taught their people’s history, maybe they could take heart.