Demonstrators Gathering for Usual Sideshow : Officials Hope to Avoid Disruptions as Varied Groups Advocate Views

As the Ku Klux Klan rallies at the Statehouse in front of the statue of a legendary white Georgia politician today, civil rights activists will be holding workshops in a church across the street as part of a special conference dedicated to the memory of a legendary black Mississippi civil rights leader.

The Democratic National Convention does not officially begin until Monday, but already the protest groups, publicity seekers and people with causes that invariably show up along with the official Democratic crowd are making their presence felt here.

The klan and the civil rights activists are just part of a wide array of groups and individuals converging on Atlanta to grab some publicity. There are gay liberationists, feminists, trade unionists, animal-rights activists, handicapped-rights supporters, environmentalists, people with AIDS, people opposed to a third world war, advocates for the homeless and prisoners of war--and even a group calling itself the U.S.-Congo Friendship Committee that opposes the regime of President Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire.

Over the next four days, they promise to deliver a spectacle-filled sideshow that has become as traditional a part of Democratic national conventions as straw hats and donkeys.

1968 Events Remembered

The hope of city and Democratic Party officials is, of course, that the sideshow remains peaceful. Memories of the riotous 1968 Chicago convention and what that did to Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey’s presidential aspirations that year are never far from the surface here.

“There was no restraint exercised in Chicago” by either the protesters or the police, Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young said Saturday at a City Hall press briefing.

By contrast, Atlanta has sent its law enforcement officers to special sensitivity training seminars to teach them not to overreact to demonstrators--especially with more than 13,000 news media representatives in town.

To keep protesters and demonstrators in hand around the sprawling convention complex, the city has restricted their activities to a 2-acre parking lot that has been designated as a “free speech area.” Each group that has been granted a permit to speak is limited to 90 minutes at the podium.

Around 40 groups have signed up to speak there. They range from the klan, which heads to the spot after its Statehouse rally today, to a Los Angeles-based gay group called March On that plans to stage a mass “die-in” to dramatize the AIDS issue.

Plans Demonstrations

Some groups have made it clear, however, that they do not intend to confine their protests to the designated area. For example, No Business As Usual, a loosely knit San Francisco-based organization that is attempting to alert people to the dangers of a third world war, plans to hold mobile street demonstrations, some of which may involve civil disobedience.

“Our purpose is not to appeal to the Democrats to take a better position on the issues but rather to expose their role in the government’s preparations for nuclear war,” said Richard Hutchinson, a spokesman for the group.

One movement that already has had an impact here is the “Justice for Janitors” campaign by downtown Atlanta office building custodians who are seeking union recognition. They urged delegates and Democratic officials to boycott several functions either sponsored by prominent Atlanta architect John Portman Jr. or held in facilities he owns or controls. This prompted the ABC television network to announce Friday that it would relocate live broadcasts of its “Good Morning, America” show this week from the Marriott Marquis, in which Portman holds a 20% interest, to another downtown hotel.

Portman became a particular target of the union after he had obtained a state court injunction limiting its organizing activities at his Peachtree Center, a 13-square-block complex, where 200 of the 1,300 downtown janitors work.

Portman asserted that he is being maligned and that the union is merely using the convention “along with a lot of other groups . . . to raise whatever flag they want to raise.”

One of the largest groups expected here is ACORN, the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a Little Rock, Ark.-based organization involved in issues of concern to low- and moderate-income people. Numerous ACORN chapters played an active role in the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign and 25 of its members are Jackson delegates here. ACORN anticipates that 1,000 delegates will take part in its annual convention today and Monday at Georgia Tech.

Potential for Disruption

Perhaps the event with the most potential for disruption is today’s klan rally around the statue of Tom Watson at the Georgia Statehouse. Watson was a populist politician of the late 1800s and early 1900s who turned into a virulent racist and anti-Semite.

Attorneys for the klan and civil rights activists involved in the Fannie Lou Hamer Convention agreed in county court Friday not to interfere with each other’s planned activities. The convention is named after the black cotton sharecropper who led a challenge to the seating of the all-white Mississippi delegation to the 1964 Democratic convention in Atlantic City, N.J.

But leaders of a third group, the All Peoples Congress, said they will hold a counterdemonstration at the Capitol and then follow the white supremacists along their parade route to the “free speech area” next to the convention complex.