OS ANGELES - The convention ended with a literal bang yesterday: drums beaten in protest and support of every issue imaginable.
Dubbed ''The Voice of the People Don't Stop,'' the rally was the participants' last chance to mass in numbers large enough to draw international coverage. Conveniently, the TV cameras and print reporters were already in the city.
But now - after the WTO in Seattle, after the IMF in Washington, after the RNC in Philadelphia, and the DNC in Los Angeles - the protest movement finds itself without an acronym to attack. For nine months, the targets have been obvious, the attention guaranteed. The future is less clear. The alternative Shadow Convention that ran concurrently with the DNC even named one of its final sessions ''What Next?''
''I don't know if this model of big protests can be sustained, but that's OK,'' said Kevin Rudiger, a 27-year-old activist with the Direct Action Network stationed where the puppets and other props were constructed. ''What's important is that we've gotten people interested in working against sweatshops or for corporate accountability or a host of other issues.
''Big actions are great,'' he added. ''But day-to-day organizing efforts in the trenches are what matter.''
Still, the end of the convention loomed as a comedown for the protest community, with veteran organizers and rookie demonstrators alike wondering how to keep interest alive and their new connections strong. In the last year, they said, a nascent movement has emerged around a central theme: America - and much of the world - has fallen under the sway of corporate power.
That theme has united environmentalists and union advocates, human rights activists and animal rights activists, working-class mothers and gay men. It has forged bonds among groups who might otherwise be at odds with one another. Friendships and formal alliances have been made on the streets of four US cities.
''What the movement is reflecting on now is what happens between mobilizations,'' said Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of the human rights group Global Exchange and the Green Party candidate for a US Senate seat from California. ''We don't want to lose the momentum. ... We're trying to figure out how to keep building and not just running from mass demonstration to mass demonstration.'' Kevin Danaher, Benjamin's husband and another Global Exchange cofounder, cited several upcoming events as rallying points. Among them: a fall day focused on overreaching corporate power that would coincide with International Monetary Fund meetings in Prague, another day devoted to Third World debt forgiveness, and a mobilization on the US-Mexico border to highlight immigration issues. Training camps where nonviolent protest tactics are taught will continue around the country.
''Nonviolent protest is not a shirt you put on; it's a way of life,'' Danaher said. ''People will leave Los Angeles and go back to saving-the-animals movements, saving-the-earth movements, to the issues that made them come here.''
But as many activists conceded, none of the events scheduled for the near term has the cachet of a political convention. Prague is expensive and difficult to reach.
''We definitely need something to strive for,'' said Tamarack Little, 28, an elementary school teacher from Tucson who worked overtime to be able to afford the LA trip. ''These events have been easy to plan for because they're so big and we knew in advance they were coming.''
Lisa Fithian, a key organizer of the demonstrations outside the convention here, stressed how the protest community has matured in the months since Seattle police in full riot gear sprayed it with tear gas and rubber bullets - a maturity that, she said, all but ensures its survival beyond the big events.
On the streets where thousands of people marched, in the convergence center where the protest puppets were made, at the conventions for welfare mothers and homeless people that were also held this week, Fithian said the consolidation of a new kind of power was taking place.
''It's not just a moment here,'' Fithian said. ''It's a movement of the people building.''
