BOSTON -- Being a campaign manager is a tough job. Just ask Matt Rice. \n"We've gone to all sorts of events," said Rice, a 28-year-old originally from Colorado. "We've gone to parties, and we were outside Fenway Park after the Red Sox game Sunday. We also went to the reception for the Clintons."\nRice has been driving his candidate all over town and walking the streets when they think they can meet more people. The reception, he said, is well-received. Not too bad for a guy whose candidate is a vegetable -- literally.\nRice is one of six volunteers working for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals who have taken the animal rights advocacy organization's protest campaign to Boston this week for the Democratic National Convention. Rice is working as Chris P. Carrot's "campaign manager," \nCarrot and his running mate Colonel Corn -- both PETA volunteers wearing foam suits -- are running a campaign full of wordplay: He's a "Carrot with merit," a "Candidate with vision" who says "Non-violence starts on your breakfast plate."\n"Choose compassion," Carrot yelled at people on the street.\n"Eat me!" Corn added.\nAnd, by the way, he is firmly opposed to the Atkins Diet.\nFrom anti-abortion protests to rallies against police brutality, from those advocating a free state for Palestine to everyone that can put a felt-tip marker to a piece of paper, protesters are finding a variety of ways to express their messages as they walk all over Boston this week at the Democratic National Convention.\nThe majority of local protests are actually protesting the "free speech zone," designated for protesters. One such event, orchestrated by Save Our Civil Liberties early Monday morning, led a couple dozen people into the protest zone and then had them bound at the hands and hooded. \nLed by a mock convention leader wearing a red Democratic National Committee T-shirt that many staff workers in the FleetCenter are wearing, and replicating images taken from the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility and the Abu Graib prison in Iraq, the organizer instructed his "inmates" to get on their knees and lean toward the ground.\n"This is a free speech zone where you will not be speaking!" the mock organizer yelled. \nLast week a federal judge upheld the constitutionality of the free speech zones and said that while he was dismayed such a measure must be taken, he understood the security and space concerns. Some people haven't taken it so lightly.\n"I'm outraged," said Beth Condon, a Massachusetts resident who visited the free-speech zone. "What all those '60s politicians did is now in vain."\n"If you have the right to protest, you have the right protest!" she exclaimed, adding she couldn't believe the way the containment area for the free speech zone had been constructed. \nThe zone, located under an old bridge outside the FleetCenter, has walls of chain-link fencing topped off with barbed wire. A net is strung from the top of the bridge to the ground to prevent protesters from throwing things toward delegates, who must pass the free speech zone when they are dropped off by bus. Inside, protesters were taking advantage of the set-up.\n"Don't go away!" Randall Terry yelled at passers-by from the free-speech zone. "We know it looks like a concentration camp, but it's just a clever disguise." \nTerry, considered among many to be the icon of the anti-abortion movement, focused the majority of his rhetoric Monday to free speech, although there is certainly no shortage of people concerned with abortion.\nJoanna Baker, a resident of Brookline, Mass., has taken the convention week off from work and was passing out fliers Monday for Planned Parenthood Action Fund, an abortion rights advocacy group, on Canal Street right outside the FleetCenter and adjacent to the free speech zone.\n"John Kerry is for a woman's right to choose, and we want people to know it's a critical issue," Baker said.\nShe said she believes any future appointments to the Supreme Court are the most important issues about this election.\n"(The justices a president appoints) are there for life," she said, emphasizing the importance of appointing justices who would uphold Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision which legalized abortion.\nCanal Street, a dead-end road this week because of street closures for the convention and a location of many locally owned and operated eateries, was full of many chalk scrollings on the asphalt, including, "Pro-choice is pro-death" and "Where is the babies (sic) choice?"\nAn anti-abortion group was also driving around Boston in cargo trucks whose external paneling consisted of enlarged, graphic pictures of aborted fetuses.\nBaker said she hadn't run into any anti-abortion protesters, but said she didn't think it mattered.\n"I'm not here to argue," she said. "Just to support a pro-choice candidate."\nMatt Rice, candidate Carrot's "campaign manager," wouldn't comment on the tactics other protesters are using, but instead emphasized the positive campaign PETA has been running.\n"This convention is a party, people are out there to have fun," Rice said. "We're talking about serious issues, but we have a light-hearted and fun approach people like. We've really been getting a good response from people."\nCarrot's candidacy, however, was doomed with one Bostonian.\n"Look, I'd like to vote for the carrot," he said, "but I promised Captain Morgan yesterday I'd vote for him if I got a campaign T-shirt. And I got one."\n-- Contact Opinion Editor Tony Sams at ajsams@indiana.edu.
Groups use amusing tactics to promote serious issues
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