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Milwaukee hosted the Republican National Convention this week. Protesters turned out, but not the overwhelming crowds that many expected. NPR's Liz Baker was with the demonstrators all week and brings us this report.
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LIZ BAKER, BYLINE: The first day of the RNC kicked off with a planned protest. Over 120 different groups - mostly people representing progressive and liberal causes - joined forces for a march around part of the security perimeter for the convention.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting) No Donald. No Joe. Genocide has got to go.
BAKER: Organizers had expected over 5,000 people might show up, but attendance ended up being more like half that, possibly due to new safety concerns after the attempted assassination of former President Trump a couple of days earlier. Nadine Seiler flew in from Waldorf, Md., determined to protest the former president throughout the entire four-day convention with an anti-Trump T-shirt and banner and bright-blue eyelashes.
NADINE SEILER: I'm disappointed with this crowd.
JOE ENGEL: Is it disappointing? Yes. Is it the end of the world? No.
BAKER: Joe Engel came all the way from Nevada. His son, Reese, was 19 when he died of an overdose. And Engel and a dozen other members of the Trail of Truth organization thought the RNC would be a good place to get their nonpartisan message out - more funding for opioid addiction treatment. So they booked 20 minutes on the official protest stage. But...
ENGEL: We spoke today to a crowd of ourselves (laughter), unfortunately.
BAKER: All week, the two parks set aside for protesters were notably quiet, even deserted.
MICHAEL HEANEY: Milwaukee feels like a bit of a ghost town.
BAKER: Michael Heaney is a political science lecturer at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He's been researching political conventions for 20 years, and he says this one is notably different than others he's been to, and not just in attendance.
HEANEY: Usually, the outside of conventions are happy and celebratory, and we're just not seeing that this year. There's a very somber tone.
BAKER: Heaney's early survey results show that about a third of demonstrators here came to advocate for specific causes, not to condemn Republican politicians.
HEANEY: I mean, I think that everyone knows that you're not going to turn out at a protest, and then the world is going to change. But what people are hoping to do is to pull things in their direction.
BAKER: Even so, he says, people are more pessimistic about politics than they used to be, and that can affect turnout.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER #1: (Chanting) Say his name.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting) Samuel Sharpe.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER #1: (Chanting) Say his name.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting) Samuel Sharpe.
BAKER: On the last day of the convention, a few hundred activists gathered in the same park as they had at the start of the week, but with a very different energy, angry and sad.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER #2: Look at what RNC brought to us. We warned y'all.
BAKER: They came out to protest the recent killings of two Black men in Milwaukee - one who was killed by police in town for the RNC, the other killed a couple of weeks earlier by security guards at a local hotel. That tragedy may seem unrelated to the convention, but, says researcher Heaney...
HEANEY: I think the people who are at this event today definitely understand the connection between what's going on in national politics and the implications for their local communities.
BAKER: Demonstrator Leo Pargo puts it another way.
LEO PARGO: I mean, this is an outrage and a glaring crime of what this country and what this system of capitalism, imperialism represents, with Donald Trump being a gross concentration of that.
BAKER: By the time the last round of speeches kicked off inside the arena on Thursday, protesters had dissipated. Only one remained...
SEILER: Hello, again. I'm still here by myself.
BAKER: ... Nadine Seiler - T-shirt and sign notably grungier, but blue eye makeup still on point. I asked her, was it worth it?
SEILER: Yes. Yes. It definitely - was definitely worth it. If I weren't here, basically, nobody would be here.
BAKER: And she's not done yet. The DNC is coming up next month in Chicago.
Liz Baker, NPR News, Milwaukee.
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