The divide between liberals and radicals is starkest on the issue of violence. Many liberals, including Passacantando, repudiate violence of any kind, whether it's against people or property. "One cannot effectively or morally oppose the violence of the Bush administration by acting violently in turn," Passacantando says. "To do so is cowardice. For Greenpeace, it's very simple. Violence is damage to people or property. Period. Throwing something through a window, whether it's a building full of people or a building that's empty, is an act of violence. That's not a new definition. Martin Luther King gave parameters that tight and tighter. Gandhi was the biggest stickler of all on nonviolence."

For the most part, though, anti-RNC organizers aren't Gandhians. Few say they're planning violence, but many refuse to condemn it, especially property destruction. Indeed, in anti-RNC circles the very idea that smashing windows constitutes violence is considered risible.

Recently Bill Millard, an East Village writer, editor and musician, posted a suggestion on an anti-RNC listserve that activists should respond to the media's fear mongering by pledging, "publicly, loudly, with absolute seriousness -- to avoid and repudiate idiotic actions like triggering blackouts, harming horses, etc. That's right-wing provocateur behavior, not principled protest. Karl Rove couldn't think up a better way for this whole event to play right into the Repugniks' hands."

To Millard, the idea seemed like common sense, and he was surprised by the vehemence with which several activists rejected it. "Denouncing violence is the equivalent of attempting to minutely define who makes up a NoRNC coalition that's actually quite diverse and hard to pin down," wrote Eric Laursen, a member the A31 coalition, a group calling for direct action against the RNC on Aug. 31. "It just complicates the story for a corporate media that can't handle much in the way of subtleties."

Rather than repudiate violence, the direct-action faction of the anti-RNC movement is trying to convince the media that violence is solely the fault of the police. "The best way to address this stuff is by working really hard in advance to use a little rhetorical jujitsu, pushing the violence issue back at the cops -- where it belongs," Laursen wrote.

Thus, at an Aug. 4 press conference, the A31 Coalition sought to finesse the issue with anarchist cant. They'd called the conference in the hopes of dispelling some of the hysteria about anarchist mayhem that's been filling the tabloids. Organizers have been outraged by stories about demonstrators who plan to hurl bags of excrement or use gunpowder to trick police dogs and trigger evacuations, insisting that such tales are part of a police disinformation campaign. They wanted to set things straight.

The media packed into the meeting room at the East Village's St. Marks Church, where the conference was held. A Fox News microphone was prominent in the cluster at the podium. The dozen or so people from the A31 coalition sat arrayed before a frieze of the Virgin Mary and an angel, looking overwhelmingly ordinary -- nothing like the black-masked saboteurs the papers have been warning of. Among them were John Shields, the white-haired mayor of Nyack, N.Y.; Naomi Gordon-Loebl, an impish high school girl in baggy shorts and a buzz cut; and Jack Waters, a "filmmaker, artist, writer and urban gardener," who wore a T-shirt of an American flag on which the stars had been replaced by corporate logos. A few of their sympathizers sat in the crowd, including Jamie Moran, whose group, RNC Not Welcome, is devoted to aiding direct action against Republican delegate events.

The A31 coalition distributed a press kit, including a photocopied list of "War Profiteers and Other Corporations That Place Profits Before People" that will be targeted on Aug. 31. One by one, they gave short speeches, and then they all took questions. When a Washington Post journalist asked about "property violence," Waters responded, "As a green-thumb gardener, I've witnessed people who have planted trees, then see these gardens bulldozed. These are living things. It's very difficult for me to see the destruction of property as violence in relation to the destruction of living things."

This kind of rhetoric strikes many in the movement as self-evidently true, but it appalls Passacantando on tactical as well as moral grounds. After all, he expects that there will be provocateurs in the crowds at the RNC, trying to provoke vandalism and spark confrontation. As Gitlin notes in his book, a 1978 CBS broadcast reported that, according to Army sources, as many as one in six protesters at the Chicago '68 protests were really undercover military intelligence agents. There were local police and FBI agents planted throughout the antiwar movement, often urging their cohorts to ever more daring feats of resistance. Richard Nixon's White House relished riots, knowing they only helped the Republicans. On a larger scale, the FBI's COINTELPRO program used its agents to provoke violence in antiwar and civil rights groups throughout the late '60s and early '70s.

Passacantando sees the current administration as capable of similarly dirty tricks. "You don't have to be that much of a strategist to see huge potential for that again. You're dealing with an administration that has seemed to stop at nothing to accomplish its ends," he says. "Certainly you would not assume that the Bush administration is more moral than the Nixon administration." There have already been some incidents of agents posing as activists and trying to ratchet up confrontation. In Denver last year Darren Christensen, an undercover policeman working with the federal Joint Terrorism Task Force, joined an antiwar group planning a peaceful sit-in and shocked them by suggesting that they charge a line of armed policemen.

"In a supercharged emotional situation, provocateurs who mean it and provocateurs who fake it have a natural alliance," says Gitlin. "It's not always easy to know who's who. It doesn't take a lot of sparks to ignite people who hate Bush."

Some believe that's precisely why the Bush team chose New York in the first place. "I think it's a deliberate strategy," Glaser says. "They knew there would be violence in the streets."

The potential for unrest has likely been exacerbated by the city's long delay in granting permits for legal protests, and by its refusal to let demonstrators rally in Central Park, instead relegating them to the West Side Highway, a barren, isolated stretch of concrete. Earlier this summer, Democratic Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, who represents a liberal Manhattan district that includes Chelsea and part of the Upper West Side, released a statement suggesting that Republicans could be deliberately trying to create an explosive situation to help them in the polls. "In Chicago at the 1968 Democratic Convention, and many times in this city, we have seen the disastrous consequences when the city fails to deal reasonably and fairly with people who feel strongly about their views," Gottfried wrote. "There may be some of the Republican Party who think that provoking disruption in our streets will benefit them politically. The Bloomberg Administration should not be playing into their hands and jeopardizing our rights and public security."

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