Milwaukee girded for massive convention protests. But they got something else.
MILWAUKEE — It was Tuesday evening, and roughly a dozen men dressed in matching orange T-shirts labeled “staff demonstration event safety” sat around a folding table at Haymarket Square.
Here in this free speech zone outside the Republican National Convention’s well-patrolled security perimeter stood a stage, podium, microphone and amplification system ready for someone to make a speech.
But as buses idled to ferry VIP guests to their hotels, no protesters were in sight. The scene? Calm.
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James Hayes, one of the event safety workers at Haymarket Square said he and his colleagues were there “to be extra eyes and ears for the protests — if there were any — and to coordinate with the police” but hadn’t “had much” in the way of protests.
The potential for mass protests and extremist violence at the Republican National Convention loomed as an unpredictable element in a tense election year that took a most dangerous turn with the attempted assassination of Republican nominee Donald Trump the previous weekend.
And while there was plenty of mostly peaceful protest actions in other areas surrounding the convention, the two city-designated “official speaker’s platforms” were virtual ghost towns throughout the week.
The other location, Ziegler Union Square, was tucked behind the Courtyard by Marriott — easily ignored by conventioneers, with the possible exception of the North Carolina delegation, whose marked golf carts were staged in the parking garage.
Similar to their counterparts in designated free speech area on the north end of the convention area, the event safety workers at Ziegler Union Square ambled around the park, sat at benches or stood around on Tuesday.
A man sang “Amazing Grace” through a megaphone, and then switched to preaching as he passed the park and continued down the street. A wooden podium and microphone set up in a pavilion remained dormant.
On Thursday, the final day of the convention, at 2 p.m., Hayes reported that the tempo at Haymarket Square had not picked up in the least.
“At this site, no one’s showed up today,” he said.
Likewise, at Ziegler Union Square on Thursday afternoon, a half dozen security staff lined the perimeter as a young woman sat on a bench listening to music on headphones. The pavilion yet again remained vacant.
Concern, contractors, preparation
Jeff Fleming, director of communications for the Milwaukee Mayor’s Office, said the contractors were hired through the city’s Office of Community Wellness and Safety.
“We opted to have the staff of people most involved in violence prevention activities, just because they’re familiar with tense situations and they’re well equipped to deal with them,” Fleming told Raw Story. “Their skills were not needed.”
Fleming said he would try to find out how much the city spent on the event safety team, but was not able to provide the information prior to publication.
The city committed to provide space for demonstrators and a parade route as part of its contract with the Republican National Convention, Fleming said.
The city allotted speaking time slots at the two demonstration locations from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on the four days of the convention in advance to applicants. Fleming said the city received 140 applications, but on Thursday, he estimated that only 15 percent of the applicants had used their assigned timeslots.
While describing Haymarket Square as a “premier site” with sightlines to the “front doors” of the Fiserv Forum, where the Republican’s convention took place, Fleming acknowledged that protesters had other, more appealing options.
“Frankly, people can stand on the street corner and state their opinions loudly and proudly,” he said.
Protesters were free to go anywhere outside of the pedestrian restricted perimeter, unless they had official convention credentials, which almost none — if any — did.
That afforded them the ability to protest directly outside a Secret Service checkpoint one block from the arena. Others made their voices heard throughout the week across the Milwaukee River on Water Street, where they could interact with delegates coming and going from their hotels and various restaurants and entertainment venues.
Some of those who signed up for speaking slots, Fleming said, “may have arrived anticipating there would be a crowd waiting for them to speak, and there was not any crowd waiting for them, so they left.”
Having their say
While the city’s designated demonstration areas largely went unused, that doesn’t mean protesters sat the convention out entirely.
About 3,000 people led by a local coalition of left-wing groups that highlighted support for Palestine, reproductive rights and immigrants’ concerns brought a spirited march from Red Arrow Park to the Secret Service checkpoint outside of the Fiserv Forum on Monday.
The following evening, a smaller group of people protested the police killing of a homeless veteran one mile west of the convention by visiting officers from the Columbus Police Department.
Heather Ryan and her daughter, Heaven — who have been protesting Republican nominating conventions together since 1996, when Heaven was 6-months-old — showed at Red Arrow Park around 1 p.m. Thursday, after traveling from Des Moines, Iowa.
Dressed in matching black T-shirts that said “B—--- get stuff done,” the mother and daughter pulled out bullhorns and chanted, “2-4-6-8, Donald Trump get away.”
Before long, they attracted a gaggle of right-wing counter-protesters, live-streamers and photojournalists.
Heather Ryan, a liberal activist from Iowa, and Andre Williams, co-leader of the fascist group New Frontier, face off. (Jordan Green / Raw Story)
Andre Williams, one of the leaders of the fledgling fascist group New Frontier, approached the Ryans with his own bullhorn, while holding a Donald Trump fan. (Williams’ and the other leader of the group met for the first time in person in Milwaukee on Tuesday, according to their Telegram channel.)
“Your guy’s a racist,” Heather Ryan told Williams.
Williams countered by body shaming her.
“Where’s Weight Watchers when you need it?” he said. “Oh my gosh!”
Williams had a pistol strapped to his hip, which is legal in Wisconsin.
He first challenged Ryan for calling him a fascist, but then conceded, “Okay, I’m a fascist. What are you going to do about it?”
New Frontier’s Telegram channel celebrates Corneliu Codreanu, founder of the Romanian fascist group Iron Guard, and Carl Schmitt, who was considered the preeminent jurist of the Nazi Party in World War II Germany. The group excludes Jews, and although one of its leaders, Williams, is Black, the group took pains in a recent Telegram post to clarify that it “is not and will never be an anti-white organization.”
“God blessed Donald Trump. Christ is king,” Williams told Ryan. “Maybe you should go read the Bible. Go to church.”
A woman wearing a crucifix filmed the exchange with her cell phone, and then moved closer. Heather Ryan rebuffed the woman’s attempt to engage in a debate. The woman responded through her own bullhorn: “You’re over the decibel limit. I’m going to call the police.”
About 20 feet away, four members of the city’s event safety team eyed the confrontation, but didn’t intervene. Eventually, the argument subsided and the contesting parties drifted apart.
Last year, ahead of a Republican primary debate in Milwaukee, Heather Ryan had been flagged by a special agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement as a “person of concern.” The trigger was a social media post when she was removed from the Iowa State Fair by state troopers last year. Heather Ryan and her niece were thrown out for blowing a whistle during Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ conversation with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.
The Ryans said they felt compelled to travel to Milwaukee to protest the convention because they believe a second Trump term augurs the arrival of fascism in the United States.
“There’s a sense of helplessness when you’re going up against this gigantic beast that’s taking away rights,” Heather Ryan told Raw Story.
“I refuse to go quietly into the night,” Heaven Ryan added.
“It’s Project 2025,” Heather said when asked fascism would look like. “It’s my kids carrying period passports to prove they’re not pregnant. It looks like firing civil servants and replacing them with Trump loyalists. It’s overwhelming, and I’m sure that’s by design.”
Fleming said that while it appears the city of Milwaukee over-prepared for the protests at the Republican National Convention, he would be reluctant to impart any lessons to other cities that host party conventions in the future.
Least of all, Chicago, which hosts the Democratic National Convention next month.
“I don’t want to assume that Chicago will face the same kind of predicament of having staff ready to go and not as many people showing up,” he said. “It’s possible they have better organized activist groups…. They might see more protests.”