New York lockdown

Meanwhile, as protesters themselves feel squeezed, their urge to rampage grows greater. "I think people will fight back if they're provoked," Moran says. "Usually a riot is an explosion of energy and anger at a situation. The cops create a situation where peoples' desires are completely foiled, so they lash out. I don't think that's unhealthy."

The city's reluctance to issue protest permits has engendered especial bitterness. Groups that applied for permits to hold legal marches during the convention were stalled for so long -- sometimes more than a year -- that the Democrat-dominated City Council held hearings to investigate whether the mayor and the police department were deliberately stifling free speech. In July, the cops finally relented and issued a few permits, but by then many activists had given up on the system and resolved to break the law.

"In the last couple of months, the conversations have started shifting toward direct action," Moran says. "People are like, 'We've voted, we've asked for permits, we've played nice.'"

The targets, Moran says, should be far from Madison Square Garden. "Don't go where they're strongest," he says. "There's going to be a ton of people who are going to want to go to Madison Square Garden, they're going to want to yell at the building even though it's two avenues away." The activists' strength, he says, "is our ability to be creative and act in surprising ways."

Vallone concedes that with so many police deployed around the convention, the force will be stretched thin in the rest of the city. "There will be a drain of police officers from other areas," he says. "It will be difficult. But we have the best police force in the world to deal with it."

And what, exactly, will they be dealing with? Moran bristles when asked for specifics about the kind of actions New York is likely to see. "There's such an over-concentration on that question," he says, irritably. "It's really problematic. I don't want to be predictive."

Part of this is simple evasion. But Moran really doesn't know what people are going to do with his group's information. Indeed, not knowing is inherent in his anarchist model, which relies on decentralized cells or "affinity groups" of five to 20 people who dream up and carry out autonomous actions. When larger numbers are called for, affinity groups temporarily team up, forming larger units called "clusters," and then disband when the deed is done.

RNC Not Welcome gives them tools -- links to maps showing the location of "war profiteers'" offices and delegates' hotels, schedules of Republican events, instructions on protecting oneself from pepper spray and tear gas, directions for occupying rooftops and recipes for tofu cream pies to be thrown in the faces of ideological enemies. The collective sends out e-mail bulletins whenever they learn something new about the Republicans' plans. What people do with it all is up to them.

"We're trying to provide some sort of structure for people who are only coming in for five days to plug into," Moran says.

Moran hasn't always been a radical. His introduction to activism was as conventional as it gets. As a student at SUNY Buffalo surviving on student loans, he joined student government and fought against cuts in state funding for education. He got involved in militant politics somewhat by accident, when he wandered drunk out of the infamous Lower East Side nightclub Save the Robots and into Blackout Books, an anarchist bookshop. He picked up a free copy of Earth First! magazine and was intrigued enough by its combative environmentalism to go to an Earth First! meeting a few weeks later. That led to a 1997 trip to an Earth First! gathering in Wisconsin. Afterward, he was arrested while protesting a proposed mine in northern Wisconsin and spent five nights in jail. It was the first of many arrests, including one for throwing a pie in the face of a biotech CEO in Berkeley.

Moran calls himself an anarchist but is weary of the subcultural poses adopted by so many of his young black-clad comrades. Recently, he and the four other members of RNC Not Welcome put out a "position paper" urging radicals to leave their black balaclavas and facial piercings behind, and instead attempt to blend into crowds.

"Outside of marches, all-black clothing is rather conspicuous, so our dress code should be 'business casual," they wrote. "Sunglasses are suggested, the bigger the hipper. And hats are always in. Would you make the small sacrifice to cut your hair or take out your septum ring to stay out of jail? Racial and political profiling are commonly practiced here and we need you in the streets!"

Some are already adopting social camouflage. Upon learning that RNC CEO Bill Harris was scheduled to woo local Hispanic business leaders at a Harlem restaurant on June 22, two activists donned white shirts, ties and slacks and sneaked in. They went unnoticed as they replaced the Bush-Cheney stickers, posters and pamphlets with their own agitprop and covered the bathroom in anti-RNC stickers.

"The point was to let them know that yes, we are out there, and yes, they are not welcome in our city," one of them wrote in an e-mail account of the action.

For Moran, dressing like a moderate isn't to be confused with acting like one. He has an almost Zen-like attitude toward the possibility that property-destroying protesters could spark a brutal police backlash, saying, "There's a certain empowerment that happens when you shed your fear."

Most activists believe that if violence does break out, the city is to blame. Mayor Bloomberg and the cops are "flirting with or inviting chaos, says Bill Dobbs, the spokesman for United for Peace and Justice, New Yorks largest antiwar organizing group.

There's pressure on UFPJ, as the most established of the anti-RNC organizers, to condemn the tactics of activists like Moran, especially when it comes to property destruction. Journalists, says Dobbs, constantly call him and fish for negative quotes about radicals planning illegal actions, seeking to create what he calls a "good protester/bad protester" dichotomy. But right now, activists from all parts of the movement are presenting a united front. A memorandum is even circulating in which different types of organizers -- mainstream and radical, those working within the law and outside it -- promise not to undercut each other.

"We've each got our own approaches," Dobbs says. "We can still support and stand in solidarity with each other generally amidst individual differences in tactics." Moran, for his part, says, "We're not dissing anyone for applying for permits."

Next Page: It's too late to hold back the protests now

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