Word: kwru
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With the beginning of the Republican National Convention on Monday came the end of sanctioned protests and the threat of unrest. A poverty rights group, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), had for weeks been publicizing the March for Economic Human Rights, which, without a permit, brought the potential for mass arrests and police confrontation...
...KWRU organizers planned Bushville both as a high-visibility reminder of poverty and a disparaging comparison between George W. Bush and Herbert Hoover. During Hoover's presidency the Depression struck, sending the poor into shantytowns which they dubbed "Hoovervilles" out of contempt for the president. With both sides hoping to avoid any ugliness, KWRU lawyers and police officials negotiated a minute-to-minute truce as the march moved slowly from Bushville's Northern Philadelphia ghetto toward the main downtown thoroughfares connecting Center City to the First Union Center, where the convention would begin that night...
...addition to the Philadephia police, the organizers sent their own orange-vested security forces up and down the line to maintain calm. Each KWRU member in the march had taken a non-violence pledge...
...months, protesters have braced themselves for conflict: KWRU leader Cheri Honkala was resolute in her plans to march, despite the denial of a permit, and being engulfed by the giant (and permitted) hoagie that invaded City Hall, and the city's determination to keep the Broad Street corridor clear for easy delegate access to the FU Center...
...made the right tactical choice in his force's mix of relentless civility and unexpected accommodation. Timoney, for example, granted out-of-town demonstrators permission to camp out in Fairmount Park's Memorial Hall. And while police could've shut down today's march, they didn't. As the KWRU group began to siphon down the east side of Broad, 33 helmeted and mounted policemen lined up two by two off to one side, exhibiting the restraint that, so far, seems to be keeping this from becoming the next Seattle...
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