The Daily Beast
Aug 31, 2012, by Lynn Waddell
Plagued by sparse attendance throughout the GOP convention, protesters from Code Pink and Occupy Wall Street still say they had some success. Lynn Waddell reports on the mass arrests that never materialized.
Demonstrators chant during a protest march while using a puppet in the likeness of Mitt Romney, on Aug. 30 in Tampa. (Dave Martin / AP Photo)
As delegates cheered Mitt Romney inside the Republican National Convention on Thursday night, 500 protesters at a downtown Tampa park eight blocks away crowned an effigy of the presidential nominee “king of the one percent.”
The “Romination Coronation GOP Send Off” brought together various groups that had demonstrated throughout the week. They congregated under ominous clouds as a storm once again threatened to dampen their messages. But as this was the final RNC protest, activists were not to be deterred by drops of rain and forecasted lightning. Members of Code Pink, a feminist antiwar group, donned pig noses and top hats and performed brief skits mocking the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, who they say don’t pay enough in taxes. An anarchist in a panda suit mingled in the crowd while a protester wearing a rubber boot on his head shouted through a bullhorn. Union members carried signs demanding a fair wage. Occupy Wall Street protesters itched for action, though they were ragged from a week sleeping in tents at an Occupy Tampa encampment and another dubbed “Romneyville."
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