The personal stories behind the political convictions

BY NANCY DILLON, RALPH R. ORTEGA and DAVE GOLDINER

They came from around the corner and across the country to make their voices heard on the eve of the Republican National Convention. Here’s a look at the stories of some of the faces in the crowd at yesterday’s protest:

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Sue Niederer, 55, wore the floppy desert camouflage Army hat her son wore before he was killed in Iraq six months ago.

She rode from Pennington, N.J., because she says she cannot shake the sound of her 24-year-old son’s voice urging her every day to do something to stop the war in Iraq and bounce Bush out of the White House. "Do what you gotta do, Ma," Niederer said Lt. Seth Dvorin tells her. "Stand against the war and bring these kids home."

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Four years ago, Syed Hassmi voted for George W. Bush. Today, he says he doesn’t know what he was thinking.

"We’ve lost 1,000 good boys and girls in Iraq," said Hassmi, a 67-year-old retired NYPD civilian worker from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. "Bush is just after oil. He’s making the world less safe."

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Retired union organizer Art Kamell, 76, saw politics in everything, even the potholes he struggled to avoid as he shuffled along the march route with his walker. "I wouldn’t be in this walker right now if I didn’t have to rely on the Republicans for Medicare," said Kamell of upstate Beacon.

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A few curvy coeds gave fellow marchers an eyeful when they stripped off their clothes - but it was all for the cause. Tiny anti-Bush signs strategically covered their most private spots as rapt demonstrators chanted, "Boobs against Bush."

"It’s college girls gone liberal," said Ella Bollum, 18, a sophomore at the University of Central Florida.

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Unlike the vast majority of the protesters, Kemi Oni did not come first and foremost to protest the war.

Oni, a lesbian, cut orientation classes at Columbia University to express her rage over Bush’s push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. "He has no right to legislate how people love each other," said Oni, 21, of Atlanta.

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David Lieber, 42, brought his wife and two children to raise their voices against what they called the White House’s cynical misuse of the 9/11 tragedy.

The school administrator from Park Slope, Brooklyn, lost a close friend who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center. "They’ve used it as a backdrop and that’s why [the Republicans are] here," said Lieber, as his exhausted son, Henry, 3, sat on the sidewalk and sipped apple juice.

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Tim Goodrich, who served in the Air Force in Afghanistan, called the march the ultimate vote of support for the troops. He blasted the war in Iraq as a distraction from the fight against terror and said "violence begets violence."

"I’m not anti-military by any means," said Goodrich, 24, of San Diego. "But I don’t want my brothers and sisters to die needlessly."

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