7/27/04
- Tuesday
The
Democratic National Convention is a gaggle of
cops, media professionals and yuppie political
consultants with cell phones and attitude. If
you don't dress up for it you get treated badly.
We're here, but dressed casually. It's me, an
uncredentialed freelance media maverick, my
girlfriend, Holley Anderson, and our fellow
reporter and friend, Paul DiRienzo.
We
all were accused of being protestors by a young
flack named Toby Chattery at the media desk
at Take Back America. Our home office had called
ahead so that we could get in and see Michael
Moore and Howard Dean speak. Take Back America
is a PAC that had held meetings and summits
and speeches all week, with what might be termed
the new left wing of the Democratic Party. But
at the media desk, the chubby and officious
Toby Chattery looked us over and sniffed, "You
all had better not be protestors." One of us
broke out some well-typeset information on INN
World Report, and explained how legitimate and
forthright we all were. The Long Island Press
reaches 120,000 and INN World Report reached
250,000. No it didn't matter. Holley's tattoo
and my backwards Castro cap made us look just
slightly off. We had showed up two and
a half hours early but Chattery sent us outside.
We
stood and waited in a giant line that snaked
around the Royal Sonestra Hotel. Paul was let
in because he had the camera. We figured we'd
have no problem joining him–after all the
room was 674 capacity, and we were among the
first 100 or 150 in line. But after a three
hour wait in the Boston sun, the line let some
people in and then stopped. I knew we were in
trouble when security vanished. People cut in
front of our place in line but it didn't matter.
No more public was getting in. Suited media
pros flashed badges and got in past the three
cops that now held the door. Eventually they
too were refused. I turned to the people in
line right behind me–they were incredulous
and crestfallen. I pulled out my cell and got
Chattery on the horn.
"Toby,
how can you justify letting in only the first
100 or 200 people in a line that's been standing
around all day?"
Chattery
said some average corporate things like how
it was out of his hands, the room was full.
When I pressed him to answer my question, he
snapped, "You're DONE!" He shouted a few other
things at me and hung up the phone. Ten people
around me heard my conversation and got the
news. No one was getting into see the Democrat
speeches they waited for. What to do then but
agitate with the democracy we knew was within.
We all started chanting "Let Us In. Let Us IN!"
Almost in a blink, the three cops at the door
multiplied into a phalanx of twenty riot police.
We decided we would be unstoppable if we could
spread our chant, and get the 1000-strong line
chanting all together. I asked for five volunteers
to fan out and lead the crowd. The guy who five
minutes ago was trying to bribe me for a place
in line with Major League Baseball tickets was
now a volunteer in a little direct democracy.
But before we could expand the movement like
a prairie fire, the Chief of Police announced
Howard Dean would come out just for us and address
the mass in the back of the hotel. We declared
it a victory for the people.
We
were marched through the lobby, through a corridor
formed by police standing at attention. Perhaps
this was a cooling out process for direct action
democrats, designed to remind us who was in
charge.
The
hotel backed up on the Charles river, full of
moored yachts. The breeze was cool and Howard
Dean had pretty blue eyes. He was five yards
away. Grinning like a doctor. The whole crowd
saw him and went wild.
Ah,
but how could this guy be so supportive of a
system that had chewed him up and rejected him
for being raw and real on camera, for taking
the one strong anti-war stand? In "The Revolution
Will Not Be Televised" Joe Trippi's new book,
Dean's dot com entrepreneur and campaign consultant
explains that Dean wasn't ready for the movement
he started.
Once
Dean realizes the power of the masses, and the
power that a message of peace can have, will
he return and run again someday? Close-up, in
the breeze, off the river, I felt a power radiating
from the man. The charisma was undeniable: the
cool lasers in the eyes, over the muscular box
of his heart. Back when no Democrats had guts,
when they all voted for a war on terror, out
of their own terror, when they all helped usher
in an era of terror here at home, Dean was the
first to stand up. His message had found fertile
ground.
Dean
spoke to the us from a raised patio. It felt
natural. Spontaneous. Like Vermont. He didn't
talk about himself. He urged every single one
of us in the crowd to run for office. To take
power. To dare to lose, or win, a race for electoral
office. The crowd went berserk for his math
and his politics–"If 20 million people
all donate $25 to a campaign, we can elect a
president who owes nothing to the multi-national
corporations." But is that the strategy of the
Democrats, or just the Dean vision?
Michael
Moore never came out, he was speaking inside
while Dean entertained us outside. After Moore's
speech, Paul seemed to have a funny taste in
his mouth, "Wow, Moore has really become quite
a Democrat. His speech was so pro-Kerry."
Paul
felt it strange that Moore's anti-Bush stand
could bring the premier left wing artist in
America to throw his weight behind a pro-war
Democrat. Kerry had voted to authorize the use
of military force against a country that hadn't
threatened us. Kerry says he plans to strengthen
the troop presence there, and strengthen the
Patriot Act at home. Politics makes strange
bedfellows.
Later
that night, Dean gave his official speech on
the convention floor. He called for a national
health care system.
7/28/04
We
kept hearing there would be no formal protest,
that no one would go into the cage set aside
for official decent. Yet on Wednesday and Thursday,
we kept running into it.
On
Wednesday, in Copley Square, 200 radicals and
peace people gathered in a park to demonstrate
against Guantanamo and a host of abuses. The
situation was sparesly attended, but it was
so lively. People were really open and happy
to be there. A folksinger grinned and sang about
light. Seems like something was going to happen.
We wanted to find out what, and where.
Across
the street, inside the borrowed Community Church,
was the Indy Media Convergence Center, or IMC.
Since the WTO protest in Seattle, an IMC either
represents an interesting new grassroots movement
in decentralized media-making, or just a bunch
of punks with computers. This convergence center
had a Wellness center, internet access and a
bulletin board. We went to the IMC because we
thought we'd find radicals talking and doing
something interesting. Instead, we found most
of the young people there were paranoid of getting
objectified. They had made rules about the media.
They refused to talk on camera. They made us
sign in and wear big red badges. We tried to
talk to one guy who had just seen someone get
yanked off the street. He was trying to sputter
out how fucked up it felt to see someone just
grabbed and hauled off for seemingly no reason.
But in the middle of the story, another of his
comrades swept up, blankly looked right through
us, and turned to to him, deadpan, and said
"You know you're talking to media, right?" Poor
guy, that had to feel like an insult–of
course he knew. We were wearing big red badges
like they were Yellow Stars. It made us feel
hated. We got out of there.
I
looked at myself in the reflection of a nice
restaurant. I had left the cap at home and put
on a collared shirt, but it had been the wrong
day to look nice. Of course the kids hated me.
I was so square.
On
the street, Paul DiRienzo said, "They lack a
sense of laughing at themselves. What happens
with leftists when they take themselves too
seriously, they begin to lose perspective. They
think that their work is the most important.
When to be honest the most important work is
being done on the Left is that of some guerrilla
in Iraq somewhere."
Seems
like the IMC was paranoid about getting raided
and shut down. In many protest situations, the
IMC gets raided by police and special operations
teams. I asked Paul what he thought about the
chance of the IMC being a target of surveillance?
He replied dryly, "At 'BAI we have Mike Levine,
who's a former DEA agent, he has many friends
in the FBI, we were chatting about protest media,
and whether or not WBAI was infiltrated, bugged,
or not. He told me that they don't have to do
that, that the left fights themselves over stupid
reasons so much anyway, and that if anything,
the FBI wanted to stay out of it. Just
laugh and watch. They also would say that the
fear people have of being watched, or surveilled,
or followed, or COINTELPRO, does more damage
in terms of people self-censoring their actions,
than any infiltrating, which is expensive and
the FBI doesn't want to spend money on anyway."
Back
inside the Convergence Center were multiple
little signs: "The person you hurt by giving
out secret information might not be yourself."
The signs recalled "Loose lips sink ships" and
all the other World War II propaganda posters
that warned the population to watch out for
spies. But in this case, the signs could cause
more trouble than they might prevent. A stated
need for secrecy broadcasts that you are planning
something illegal. Or just trying to cultivate
that radical mystique.
Paul
has been attending and reporting from convention
protests consistently since the 1984 Democratic
convention in Dallas. This was the first without
a significant protest movement. "The main reason
that big groups like UFPJ aren't around is that
they get money from the Democratic party."
[that's
it for now...I haven't written the ending yet.
tell me what you think—sander[at]sanderhicks.com)
